My plan was to write a review for web sites interacting with the HIVE blockchain. The idea is that the reviews would provide a few inbound link to HIVE related sites which should improve the SEO of all the sites in the HIVE.
I ran into an impasse that stopped the project. The impasse is that tribal web sites all share the same basic format. Even worse. The tribal sites have very little original content.
This repetitive approach to design has negative effects.
I just did a Google search on the term "Proof of Brain."
The first link to proofofbrain.io was on Page 9.
Page 9 !!!!!
People on HIVE keep telling me I am completely wrong about this and that Google does not penalize web sites that lack original content.
But look at the results. It is hard to find good info on search engines about HIVE.
ProofOfBrain.io is on page name for the friggin' name of the friggin' web site.
The following picture shows what Googlebot sees when it holds proofofbrain.io up to the light.
No, Google doesn't see a horrifically fat hand. Look further to the right.
The googlebot judges web sites by the amount of unique content on the site. Googlebot is a robot. It judged uniqueness simply by the amount of original text.
IMHO, Proof of Brain is suffering from a problem called [tag spam](https://yintercept.com/hive/tagspam.html).
It appears that the way most people engage with POB is they write a post on LeoFinance.io. They then add the #POB tag on the listing.
People who don't want to waste brain cells writing POB in the tagline can put the tag in a template and the posts will show up on POB without any use of the brain what-so-ever.
## High Hopes for Proof of Brain
I had high hopes for POB as the name of the tribe encapsulates the goal of the ~~SteemIT~~ Hive Blockchain. The goal of the project was to find a way to reward people for using their brain.
I used all of the free HIVE I had in my personal account @yintercept to buy 38.4 POB for 3 HIVE when it first came out. I sold 90 POB for 122 HIVE and am holding 315 POB. This is by far the best investment that I've made on HIVE.
I think the POB project is great. I got more out of it than I put in. That aside, I really want this project to succeed and plan to continue staking most of my POB until I have a few thousand POB.
The tribe has a well distributed [rich list](https://he.dtools.dev/richlist/POB). I counted over 100 accounts with more than 1000 staked POB and 380 accounts with 100 or more staked POB.
My enthusiasm for the project has waned because of the lack of original content on this and other tribal web sites.
NOTE: I wrote this post on PeakD because I want it to show up in the [Review The World Community](https://peakd.com/c/hive-173119/created) . The tribal system doesn't mesh fully with the community system.
I wrote [a rant about tag spam with my personal account](https://hive.blog/hive-167922/@yintercept/tag-spam-is-killing-hive-but-the-fix-is-easy) . This is the start of my [POB review](http://irivers.com/kewl.html?dt=2021-07-24). I hope to get back to writing the HIVE site reviews.
IMHO: HIVE needs to do something about the lack of unique content on the tribal sites. The canonical link is not sufficient.
Personally, I think people should use only one money making tag per post.
My thoughts on the issue are insanity. A post with only one tribal tag will make a fraction of a post with five tags.
People who make money curating are foolish to waste their upvotes on posts with fewer than three tribal tags. A post with just one money tag will give only a fraction of a post with five tags.
Idiots who don't have any tribal tags shouldn't get any upvotes.
## Conclusion
I love POB. The best way to use POB is to go LeoFinance.io and put the POB tag in your post template. That way you can start earning POB rewards without ever having to use your brain.
Proofofbrain.io is on page nine of the Google search result for "Proof of Brain." This is a clear indication that something is wrong.
hiveblocks