Skeptico - A "Top Resource" in Astrology

Talk about missing the point.

I received this email from the email address of Ryan Flaherty, although confusingly it was signed Mark Cutler.  The subject was “love your site” – well, who could resist that?  Here’s the email:

Our website Sunlightfoundation.org is a Professional Database that is used by over 100,000 users in the astrological/psychic world monthly to seek  psychic or astrological advice. We make this possible by updating the information daily and keeping up to date on recent astrological news. We take pride in being one of the largest websites in the industry and take what our users and affiliates say into account to make this website much more user friendly. We recently ran a poll asking the users that are most familiar with the site what types of informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. Our users primarily are interested in blogs and websites Such as yours. I have reviewed your information and must say, I absolutely love the content you have made available to the public and would like to make your site a link on ours. I would like to offer you our Featured Resource badge that can be posted on your site, which recognizes you as a top resource in the psychic/astrology field or simply a text link within your site (Psychic Reading). I would also like to post your site in our resources page with a FULL banner to make your site  available to my thousands of users. Thanks again for the great information and I look forward to the great responses your site will receive from my users!

As you can imagine I was thrilled, not to say a little proud that I was being recognized as a top resource in astrology!  I figured that all my work in this area had finally paid off.  Excitedly, I replied:

Ryan:

I'm glad you like my blog.  Please feel free to link my site on yours.  You can use my blog url, or perhaps the url to just my astrology articles would be better:

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/astrology/

Please send me your Featured Resource badge, that you described in your email. It would be great to be recognized as a top resource in the psychic/astrology field, as you mention.

Several days have passed and yet I haven’t received my Featured Resource badge, as Ryan/Mark promised. I hope he hasn’t had second thoughts.  Nah – I’m sure it’s on its way.

Comments

[AndyD]

Oh, and you were mean enough to add a "no follow" to his carefully worded link text. Is it any wonder he's ignoring you now?

[cranialhyperossification.blogspot.com]

You should make your own badge that says you were a nominee, kind of like how Academy Award(tm) winners get billed before Academy Award(tm) nominees.

[Chayanov]

Speaking of astrology, here is a recent exchange between two people I know:

1: "Damn, it's good to see investments rising again. That's the first movement to a growing economy."

2: "I wonder if Jupiter stationing has anything to do with that...it is the planet of work, success, investments, acquired wealth...He goes direct the 12th..."

1: "They have been increasing for the past six to nine months. So I doubt it."

2: "They have?... huh. I guess you can see how much attention I've been paying..."

Can't be bothered to pay attention to the real world, but knows the apparent position of Jupiter in the sky.

Hope you get your badge!

[Michael]

What the fuck is going on with that Sunlight Foundation website? Half the links are 404'd, but if you click on certain links it takes you to a sight with an identical look and feel, and the same psychic themed pictures, but all of the topics refer to dentistry.

Are you being Poe'd, Skeptico?

[Nemo]

My guess would be that they stole the layout from fluoridationcenter.org (the site that appears in the copyright notice on the pages that mention dentistry) and are gradually filling it in with their own content.

[Nate]

Seems like they simply spammed a ton of sites that ranked high for keywords related to astrology. They were merely looking for back-links and weren't paying any attention to the actual content of the site. I wouldn't be surprised if this was done through automated means. Also, there is no reason to ask someone if they can post a link to your site other than to let them know, and hope that they'll give you a link back. It's really just an annoying ploy to increase search engine rankings.

All in all, the whole thing is very humorous, I would be sent into a fit of giggling if I ever had something similar happen to me. "we at sumxtian.org recognize your expertise in the field of biblical research. We've reviewed your site and think it's super-awesome. We want to link to you but really just want you to link to us so we can get more recognition in the search engines."

[John McKay]

"A top resource in astrology" needs to go on your masthead.

[Big Al]

I've certainly seen a lot more useful and exhaustive analyses of astrology here than on many other so-called "expert" blogs.