katieO,

Sorry for ignoring your post for so long. I had not realised there had been a new post to this thread.

You illuminate an aspect of what you see as this search engine site-rating problem associated with the automatic conversion of URLs to weblinks by the OLO software that I had not consciously recognised before. I did not realise that you were talking about URLs to Google (or other search engine) search result pages being converted to weblinks by OLO after having been posted by OLO users, as opposed to conversion of URLs of specific websites in such posts.

I think you have every right to complain if a poster has included a URL to a porn site in an OLO post. Such would be a direct link, and an obligation would surely rest upon a poster to have checked any site for which they have included a URL before posting on OLO. Just recommend the post for deletion, using the little red crossed batons icon below the post, and stating your grounds. If the link is considered inappropriate by OLO the offending post may well be taken down.

This in turn raises the issue as to whether posting a search result page URL, rather than a specific site URL, is a legitimate use of this OLO feature. I'll think on this one: it probably isn't a black and white issue. OLO may already have some policy with respect to this; you can but ask.

Another aspect of posting a search result page URL on OLO is that it is only that page that will have its rating raised by virtue of the OLO link: the CONTENT of that search result page (ie. the specific sites listed therein) will change over time as DIRECT links to those and other sites from elsewhere alter the search engine rankings. It would thus appear that OLO would have at most only a small vicarious involvement in affecting rankings of specific sites, if indeed it had any effect at all.

Thanks for some interesting viewpoints.