Forum Moderators: phranque
Here's the article (subscription required): [online.wsj.com...]
Nothing that's new, but it's intriguing that it's being covered in mainstream newspapers.
google shd stop acting like world police and shd do there work in some better way...especially adsense stuff...the day they will start scanning wbsites half of rubbish from this web will be gone...and this will further lessen there job as they will have to index lesser pages...rather will use those resources some where else
You are making two contradicting statements:
There is no great difference between the number of scammers and spammers in 2001 and now.
The number of responsible publishers coming online has also increased since 2001, which should be a statistical 'wash' -- leaving the SERPs as useful as they were in 2001.
I assume you're saying that although the number of spammers has gone up, the ratio of spammers to legit publishers has remained static.
So scraper sites that convert are ok?
From advertisers point of view - yes. The first people that need to be made happy are advertisers because its them who bankrolls the whole thing. It is therefore imperative to make sure that non-converting sites won't get a dime, perhaps on per advertiser basis (not all ads will convert), but if it detected that majority of advertisers don't get conversion then its good enough hint that the site is poor, for whatever reason.
Rather than focus on conversions, adsense applications should be required for every site not just the first one belonging to a publisher.
This will require a lot more manpower, and thus will increase costs. Its possible that many sites won't be worth it and thus a cutoff limit will have to be set, perhaps even require deposit to review site. There is an airline in Europe that charges wanna-be-pilots a fee to actually have a look at their CVs :)
"If some amoral personality visits this thread and reads it, they have all the information they need for a scrapper site."
The majority of threads at WebmasterWorld have extolled the virtues of responsible SEO and the creation of "content, content, content!"
Why do you believe that spammers take great encouragement from posts deriding spam, but that honest folks take no encouragement whatsoever from the vast majority of WebmasterWorld posts that promote profitability through delivering good content to readers and good leads to advertisers?
I see no reason to believe an increase in the total number of spammers over the years has coresponded with a reduction in the number of informative sites being created by responsible publishers.
I think the content:spam ratio is about the same as it ever was. Remember, G got a great reputation circa 2001, because it gave great results, while other engines were compromised by a high percentage of...SPAM. In other word -- if alot of spam didn't exist in 2001, you never would have needed G, because the top engines at that time would have been far more relevant.
"I assume you're saying that although the number of spammers has gone up, the ratio of spammers to legit publishers has remained static."
Yes, that's what I am saying.
Also, I don't think it is a contradiction to say that a number has 1) increased, but 2) not greatly.
Why do you believe that spammers take great encouragement from posts deriding spam,
Please reread my post, it was quite clear.
but that honest folks take no encouragement whatsoever from the vast majority of WebmasterWorld posts that promote profitability through delivering good content to readers and good leads to advertisers?
I never said anything like this.
From advertisers point of view - yes.
That would depends on the advertiser. Some advertisers are concerned that appearing on junk pages would undermine their hard-earned brand image.
Actually, advertisers become irrelevant if people get so sickened by search engine scraper spam that search engine usage begins to fall off....kill the golden goose and you don't get anymore eggs.
On the bright side, this makes quality sites stand out even more.
"Google delievered the best results in 2001 because there was far fewer people playing the system, this was the reason that google's system worked because google's system relies on honest people."
"I agree that there is no way there are the same number of spammer and scrapers today as in 2001.
More and more people (I'm sure helped by sites such as WebmasterWorld) are learning about making money online and for many of these people scraper sites appear to be the easiest way to get that money."
"If some amoral personality visits this thread and reads it, they have all the information they need for a scrapper site."
I sounds to me like you ARE saying that spammers take great encouragement from posts deriding spam and that the net effect is that these spammers outperform responsible publishers based on that information.
And I think that that is wrong -- not on some 'values based' scale, but just factually wrong.
The problem G has with spam is that G has dropped the ball, not that the spammers' hive mind is vastly superior and resistance is futile.
It's more a matter of "the world is hollow and I have touched the sky..gurgle..gurgle...gasp."
On the bright side, this makes quality sites stand out even more.
AdSense ads are so trivial to filter in Firefox (just ban IFRAME originating from pretty much single domain) that most people will switch to ad banning as means of quickly locating content.
I sounds to me like you ARE saying that spammers take great encouragement from posts deriding spam and that the net effect is that these spammers outperform responsible publishers based on that information.
Absolutely, when we say "we hate spammers because they are getting high results in google" some newer webmasters discover that spamming is a great way of getting high results in google and use that to make money. This is common sense.
I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it, I'm just saying all these sites about making great websites can just as easily be used by spammers as anyone else.
So which is it?
"I never said anything like this."
or
"Absolutely."
but that honest folks take no encouragement whatsoever from the vast majority of WebmasterWorld posts that promote profitability through delivering good content to readers and good leads to advertisers?I never said anything like this.
I never said honest folks take no encouragement from WebmasterWorld posts that promote good content to readers.
Read slower and quit snapping back replies before fulling grasping the post.
OK, but you are saying that the net effect is that the spammers make far better use of WebmasterWorld info than responsible publishers do. This is just an example of falling for the 'spammers are increasing proportionally and their methods are undefeatable' fallacy that will get you nowhere.
My original point was that you are now seeing a whole lot more spam in the SERPs because G doesn't handle spam as well as it used to, not because of some explosive growth in the percentage of spammers online.
G is deliberately penalizing sites that appear to be 'too relevant.' When relevant sites sink, the crap rises to the top. That's the problem.
OK, but you are saying that the net effect is that the spammers make far better use of WebmasterWorld info than responsible publishers do.
I never said this.
My original point was that you are now seeing a whole lot more spam in the SERPs because G doesn't handle spam as well as it used to, not because of some explosive growth in the percentage of spammers online.
This is where the core disagreement lies. I believe we are seeing a lot more spam in the SERPs because there are more spammers, not because Google has gotten worse.
This conversation between you and me is going no where.
I said, "I sounds to me like you ARE saying that spammers take great encouragement from posts deriding spam and that the net effect is that these spammers outperform responsible publishers based on that information."
To which you replied, "Absolutely."
Then I said, "OK, but you are saying that the net effect is that the spammers make far better use of WebmasterWorld info than responsible publishers do."
To which you replied, "I never said this."
At least we agree that this conversation is going nowhere.
There was a long discussion of that topic in a thread titled something like, "Why does Google sponsor scraper scam sites."
It basically came down to a question of whether copying portions of copyrighted work constituted "fair use." It's my opinion (not a lawyer!) that in many cases, copying a small amount of content (even without permission) may constitute fair use, but many scraper publishers use various methods to actually damage the performace or reputation of the sites they copy, denying them the shield of "fair use" arguements.
But good luck contesting any of this in court. It's all such 'small potatoes.' Lots of publishers with their hopes, dreams and financial futures at stake, but the individual potatoes being relatively small.
See:
[copyright.gov...]
Step one:
pick a high paying keyword
Step two:
Find free RSS feeds that update the information so you don't have to ever touch that "site".
I said, "I sounds to me like you ARE saying that spammers take great encouragement from posts deriding spam and that the net effect is that these spammers outperform responsible publishers based on that information."To which you replied, "Absolutely."
YES, ABSOLUTELY, spammers learn a lot from sites such as WebmasterWorld and use that information to outperform responsible publishers.
Then I said, "OK, but you are saying that the net effect is that the spammers make far better use of WebmasterWorld info than responsible publishers do."To which you replied, "I never said this."
YES, ABSOLUTELY. I never said spammers make far better use of WebmasterWorld info, but yes they do learn a lot from sites such as WebmasterWorld and use that information to outperform responsible publishers.
Let me take it slow one last time.
You said, "spammers learn a lot from sites such as WebmasterWorld and use that information to outperform responsible publishers," but you "never said spammers make far better use of WebmasterWorld info."
Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but it seems to me that if you believe that spammers are using publicly available information to "outperform responsible publishers," then you are saying that "spammers make far better use" of that information.
If someone has access to the same tools as you have and they "outperform" you, aren't they making "better use" of those tools?
Going slow...spammers "outperform responsible publishers" based on WebmasterWorld information, but they don't "make better use" of that information...
Sorry, I can't think slowly enough to catch up with that train of...thought.
If someone has access to the same tools as you have and they "outperform" you, aren't they making "better use" of those tools?
Not always. If I teach 100 people to play blackjack and a few people use that information to cheat the others, then yes they are outperforming them, but no they are not making better use of the training I provided, they just willing to use to training in ways the other people are not.
now seeing a whole lot more spam in the SERPs because G doesn't handle spam as well as it used to, not because of some explosive growth in the percentage of spammers online.
Actually, it's probably both. When G starts to slip (see blue), then potential scrapers and black hats take notice, see an opportunity to ply their trade, and step up production (see red).
Based on posts I've read right here at WebmasterWorld, this is true. The occasional scraper does mosey through here every so often, and what they always say is, "As long as the money is there for me to grab, I'm grabbing it." Just yesterday there was a detailed post by an admitted scraper who said he started doing it when a bad link farm purchase got him bumped out of the SERPs. So clearly, these two causes are feeding one another. G drops site A for whatever reason, so site A's owner turns black hat and spams the world with scraper sites B-Z.
So really, you two gentlemen are in total agreement with each other, you just didn't know it.
Don't you just love how this place brings people together? ;)
cEM
where the little site 100 pages of hand written good content is buried by the huge spammer site since the little site has less traffic, less content, and then less money....
we have some people trying to rip our content,
so we are going after then since our trademark just came through, and our site provicy stats if you take our content you are subject to paying us $200 a day per article for content loyalty fees.... and trademark license fees at @ $200 for each time they use it without a direct link back to our site.....
so do the numbers 1000's of pages at $200 a day
Granted it might take a long time , but... big business is on it as well and if google stops payments to publishers of spammer sites since they would be required to due to legal matters.... and court proceedings...pretty much like a wage garnishing
also work it out with your lawyers and do webwork for fee swaps like us, trademark your stuff, and go after them
If you're going to play sematics with the phrase "better use," and say that by definition it can not include benefits accrued by cheating, then I submit that neither should the word "outperform," by definition, include benefits accrued through cheating.
So we are right back where we started.
[edited by: Atticus at 9:31 pm (utc) on May 3, 2005]
I certainly agree that as long as G rewards spam, spam will thrive. At least until searchers get sick of the spam and bail out. Problem is that there is nowhere to bail out to right now.
This reminds me of the SE wastleland circa 1999, after the fall of AV but before the rise of G when I bounced from one engine to another hoping that one would deliver what I needed.
Times like these offer great opportunities for those who can deliver a better product. If I wasn't so darned lazy, I'd just do it myself...
Other folks in this thread are talking about how the advertiser is the bottom line. Well, as an advertiser, the bottom line is now. Affiliates and Adsense scrapers are genuinely hurting businesses and advertisers since now, we have to compete unfairly with them. We make the widgets, yet we appear way down the list and they have all the top results which they then refer to us. With as much as one page, they can rank higher than a 100 page site that's too relevant because it's very being is making widgets - making it trigger search engin filters. As a widget maker, I really do not have the time nor the resources to compete with them on their own domain. My specialty is making widgets, not optimizing my site for the word widget.
In the old thread, I discussed how they were killing the golden goose - the guys who make the widgets and the end customer who buys the widgets. Some people said exactly what has been described above "Let's make a killing while it's still hot."
In another thread describing the limited negative filter in Adwords, some posters said that black lists were hurting scrapper sites/ web park domain business model. As if they deserved to receive advertising from genuine vendors.
Atticus, I believe in Adam Smith very much and find that competition is great. But removing filters is not enough. The results will still be skewed towards spammers because only one aspect of the situation has changed. Equal changes would need to be added to major affiliate networks and programs like Adsense to allow a level playing field. Major Affiliate programs such as Amazon's, Ebay and Google's skew the results in favour of spammers, not real contents providers and vendors.
My specialty is making widgets, not optimizing my site for the word widget.
Sadly these days marketing costs (that includes SEO) account for majority of the cost on the market, actual manufacturing costs are very low in the end sale price. Ideal? No, but it is what it is.
