"SUGGESTION: The last post on this page is over 360 days old. It's sometimes better to start a new topic than to revive an old one." Yes, and in some cases it's the other way round! ;-)

No, there have been lotsa special offers for PhraseExpander (not PhraseExpress) around these last months, and Prof. version 4 will be on bits very soon.

A fellow poster of this forum touts Expander with brio, and I understand that whenever you don't want to use AHK for text expansion, both programs mentioned are very strong contenders.

I just wanted to remind you that Expander 3 did not have different vocabularies for different purposes (contexts/subjects/matters, languages), all the less so them being freely combinable, whilst Express is deemed to come with these features (i.e. even with the combination possibility), and has had those for a quite long time now.

I don't know if Expander 4 finally got it, too, to perhaps our Expander expert here could enlighten prospects about it?

Without that feature, it would simply not be worth the money, not even on bits... and vice versa: If it got it, and if you really abhorr AHK, 60$ could come as a handy offering.

( So you see, if I had started a new thread, with so little knowledge about my subject, that would have been preposterous! ;-) )

"As Google becomes aware of loopholes, they close them."

That's common sense, and is certainly true in the normal course of things, and that's why I'm wondering since my point b) above would indicate that this is not about "becoming aware" at some point in time, but of it "being evident to google" that those cannot be valid links/hits. And that's why I say point a) above is the key to my question: If we better understood how/why that site makes money, we could perhaps grasp why google plays their game, open-eyed. ;-)


(edited for plenty of typos: sorry for the inconvenience)

Yesterday, I here said, it's on purpose that I title some threads "Review" (and even if my first post there isn't a full-grown "review" (yet)) since I (rightly) assumed that such titles get good coverage with google, all the more so with DC as the site it comes from (and relative hit numbers, e.g. for the RN thread, vs. others, prove me right).

Today, I've been googling for "winsnap review" (soon on bits for 15$ = 50 p.c. off, regular price 2 months ago being 25$), and quickly gathering some hits from the first 15(! i.e. I'm among those who systematically look into the second tenner, too (and further on in some instances)), I then browse those pages.

Hit number 14 (so at least it was not listed within the very first google page, but then, those first 10 links weren't all for "reviews" either...) was

"WinSnap Review - StrategyEye Digital Media
digitalmedia.strategyeye.com/.../04/.../winsnap-revie...
21 apr. 2014 - WinSnap enables users to effortlessly capture the screen in five methods, apply drawing tools to prepare them for online publishing (including ..."

and clicking on it was this:

http://digitalmedia.strategyeye.com/article/nGDjDLvS5s/2014/04/21/winsnap-review/

with this:

"WinSnap Review
21 Apr 14RecommendTweetShareEmail
WinSnap enables users to effortlessly capture the screen in five methods, apply drawing tools to prepare them for online publishing (including watermarks and filters), and export the new images to multiple types of formats. It features an appealing and...

Read full article [this line being a link of course]
Source: Softpedia News - Global [this line being in a very tiny font]
Related Companies [plus button linking to many unrelated things]
Related Categories [ditto]",

with lots of other things, and with a pop-up "Free Daily Dose of Headlines from Our Newsletter - Submit"

and the tab was "WinSnap Review".

Now, clicking on "Read full article", you'll get a full review indeed,

"April 21st, 2014, 15:01 GMT · By Elena Opris
WinSnap Review"
[full review]

but the url being,

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/WinSnap-Review-438309.shtml

which also had been direct google hit number 8 yet.

Now that "portal" (or how would you call it?) has a search field, so I entered the name of the author there, "Elena Opris"), and I got a bunch of similar hits, i.e. some teaser on that strategyeye site, and links to external content.



Now this arises the question if Ms. Opris is somewhat connected to that strategyeye site from where she (like fellow authors there) has them link to her own articles on various sites, which would be perfectly legitimate imo, OR if strategyeye just collect material they are interested in, for commercial reasons = for touting their own site, by generating quite high-placed google hits, then delivering links to the "real stuff" which from the users' pov are worthless, since they will have clicked on the direct link (from google) anyway. Note that I'm not insinuating strategyeye does something "illegal", in that second alternative, since they don't "embed" that external content, but (except for the teaser) just provide correct, external links.

Now the first alternative would be perfectly legitimate, as said, since authors should be entirely free to do some "link gathering" for their disparate stuff spread over the web; whilst the second one would be considered a nuisance, since this "intermediate" site would be bandwagon jumpers who, for their interest, just bother the "googler";

in BOTH cases strategyeye does something really smart, they create lots of coverage for their own site, with external content, coverage that they would never get otherwise... and google's algorithms astonishingly not being "able"/willing to detect this "fraud" ("fraud" just from a philosophical pov: as said, nothing "legally illegal" here): "astonishingly" because it would have been more than easy, if they had been willing to do so, to detect (and eliminate or put them further below, say after 60th position or so) hits that just contain teasers from and links to real content that already has been listed anyway, further up (here, as said, 14th vs. 8th position).

Any insight, both re google (and why they don't cut it) and re such sites appearing as unwanted intermediates? For current google (algorithms), that seems to be a viable business model, even though, like numerous other business models, it represents a public nuisance, too?



EDIT: I should have added this link, too, perhaps, but I didn't want to blur the above question; on the other hand, google's brilliant coverage could be related to that link, in some way: http://www.strategyeyedigitalmedia.com/pricing