Venerable SEO Blog Sinking Beneath The Waves

SearchEngineLowDown.com, an SEO news and advice site which launched in August of 2003, saw its last update in September of 2007. At its inception, the content at SearchEngineLowDown.com rarely contained any long-form content; instead, it simply linked in parasitical fashion to other URLs with a few lines of text. As the site developed an audience, the content became better, more analytical, and more opinionated.

Like many SEO Blogs, SearchEngineLowDown.com's content often was often overly self-referential and sometimes verged on Google ass-kissing (e.g. "I saw Matt Cutts' latest Blog entry and he referred to my site -- I'm walking on air!"), but this is behavior is characteristic of the SEO world, which is tiny (although its exponents' collective swagger is intended to suggest it's huge). Those seeking page optimization advice may miss SearchEngineLowDown.com, but can avail themselves of many similar properties that do much the same thing.

Two Ghosties (Site is Dying in ICU) Two Ghosties mean that the prognosis for the site isn't so good. Experts have examined it and shaken at its prospects. Revival is possible, but unlikely. I don't issue many "Dying in ICU" awards, because few sites spend much time there on their way out.

MemberCentralPlus.com May Soon Post Its Last Message

MemberCentralPlus.com, at the domain MemberCentralPlus.com, was a site which Ghost Site correspondent Rudy Martin describes as "the main site for some comunications between the former MSN Zone sysops and the team leaders of the Member Plus Program (paid by microsoft to maintain some order in the MSN Zone)." Martin observes that "the site is quite dead, but well preserved, except for the forum which contains a few notes from former syspops. But if you try to register you get this error:

Ran into problems sending Mail. Response: 535 Authentication failed.
Restarting authentication process.

DEBUG MODE
Line : 131
File : smtp.php"

According to Martin, "the rest of the site contains all the information that used to be valid to became a sysop in the zone. Apparently, the latest news updates posted to this site date from sometime in 2005.

The proprietors of MemberCentralPlus.com appear to be aware that it has been declining for a long time and are proposing a site shutdown. In a forum message dated September 9, 2007, its Administrator notes that "There have been few posts over the past several years, and people only come back once in a great while (if ever) to check back. Our forum is of great historical interest for many of us, but as a present-day website, it holds little value."

Unlike many sites which simply disappear, this site's admin appears to be taking steps to preserve its core knowledge, perhaps in a big Zip file.

Thanks to Rudy Martin for this interesting find.

Two Ghosties (Site is Dying in ICU) Two Ghosties mean that the prognosis for the site isn't so good. Experts have examined it and shaken at its prospects. Revival is possible, but unlikely. I don't issue many "Dying in ICU" awards, because few sites spend much time there on their way out.

There Goes the Neighborhood (National Neighborhood Coalition Is "Dying in ICU")

The National Neighborhood Coalition, at the domain neighborhoodcoalition.org, is a well-meaning non-profit organization whose purpose is to provide a platform to advocate the interests of those living in America's many low-income neighborhoods. It receives funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, Federal Home Loan Banks, the Melville Charitable Trust, and Home Depot.

So this is no crazy/flaky dotcom, but it does seem to be an extremely rusty/dusty dot-org. Its home page invites its members to take part in a conference that happened way back in April of 2006. Its most recent press releases are from March of 2005. Its "Issues Updates" page is equally moldy.

If the National Neighborhood Coalition really wants to enlist people to help clean up America's blighted areas, it really ought to spend an afternoon improving its own ramshackle Web presence.

Two Ghosties (Site is Dying in ICU) Two Ghosties mean that the prognosis for the site isn't so good. Experts have examined it and shaken at its prospects. Revival is possible, but unlikely. I don't issue many "Dying in ICU" awards, because few sites spend much time there on their way out.