After a very long time today (apparently after 2006) I searched del.icio.us for tagged links about something, and I saw the advertisements on the right (I’m very not used to seeing ads anyway, thanks to AdBlock). I found it new, so I went searching about the ads on Google and I ultimately ended up with tons of pages which had nothing to do with del.icio.us.

The issue is that popular blogs which have social bookmarking sites as footer links have ‘Save to service_name’ dominate the search results, and it makes it impossible to search for news or articles about sites like del.icio.us and Digg. Why do those links have to be there anyway? People who actually do bookmark online will more often than not have a bookmarklet or button to get the job done — every service offers them the moment you sign up. Apart from cluttering up your footer and making it ugly, it adds words that are completely out of context. Search bots are dumb.