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How I had reported, and reported, and written, and called Google for the last 6 months. Pointing out the exact same text between sites, the hidden links (using just a "+" to their link farm pages with garage heater companies exchanging links with them, a site about a tropical island - how themed!). How to spot their cloaks (easily). Etc. Etc.
Well, guess what? They added another 5 or 6 "Proud to be Spam and it shows" (why, they're the same but with different graphics - how unique!) sites to what they had already put out, and now they have even more of a monopoly.
Anyone else seen the same? Or am I the only one!
Interesting. It wouldn't necessarily count as a link farm though all the sites have the same content after the main page. I most admit very impressive. They even fooled DMOZ multiple times. Sometimes spam is a beautiful thing. The site is annoying, but man did they ever control the serps.
As for DMOZ, clearly explained in reponse to other posts (do you have to cheat thread0, that human nature is a significant factor.
HUMANS LIE.
As for the sites, they are not spam, just people doing exactly what been said you should do in the forum.
1. more relevant content
2. more links.
See "Search Engine Ranking Wars" thread.
Just boils to people filing spam reports on each other,
google just have no idea about how to deal with this very clearly.
[edited by: The_Subtle_Knife at 8:16 pm (utc) on Mar. 10, 2003]
GoogleGuy just told me at the phone that it's ok.
Sample of GoogleGuy's voice [asf.allwavs.com]
Sorry GG, just couldn't resist! :)
I will report them, but I will also do something much worse for them. The manufacturer whose name they are spamming in hopes of selling more product, is a friend of mine and believes in doing things in an honest fashion. I will show him the results, and they may suddenly find it to be rather difficult to get any more product to ship.
I think I will even wait a few days to report them to google just to be sure that I have a chance to show it around first.
i've been submitting reports since last summer but to no avail so i hope this time something positive will result.
EXCUSE ME
You said "As for the sites, they are not spam, just people doing exactly what been said you should do in the forum."
So 9 sites, with all the same basic html, selling the exact same hotels, using common images, and with duplicate content (re culture etc.) is not spam? And I should be doing the same thing?
Thanks, but hopefully no thanks. And if that is what you preach, I aint going to your church buddy.
I'd just add, people who like to see everything as a "war" tend to miss the best part of life IMHO.
they are not spam, just people doing exactly what been said you should do in the forum.
The_Subtle_Knife, I have been reading these forums for a long time now. I have never built a link farm, employed cloaking or created a single page for the sole purpose of improving my ranking. I have just kept adding new content each day, one page at a time, and exchanged a few links now and then with other relevant sites.
Guess what? I have been able to achieve far better rankings than many, many heavily "optimized" competitors --without the risk!
I suggest you go back to Brett's great advices [webmasterworld.com] on how to succeed with Google (and I mean in the long run) by playing fair.
A competitor has created hundreds(thousands?) of pages that are identical in appearance, they have 3 paragraphs built for interchangeable keywords, and a bulleted list of keywords (copied results from the keyword suggestion tool in overture).
No active links can be found to these pages on the site, but they are indexed in Google and thus get this site top rankings in almost every possible keyword combo in my industry.
They were using many of the tricks that I have heard about, cloaking, stuffing the cloaked page with keywords, then putting all the keywords in a list, then putting in the the links that they want googlebot to follow with optomized link text. The cached pages looked nothing like the pages served to the user.
I'm not to concerned about that particular search, it brings less than 100 visitors a month, while links from the manufacturer's site bring well over 1000. I though this would be a great opportunity to try out the spam report.
I filled out the report one one particular page that was the first of an indented group. I mentioned GoogleGuy, my nick, and my domain (just to see how dangerous it is to mention that in a spam report). I went into detail on how I checked for the cloaking.
I later went on to explain about several different domains and subdomains that they seem to be using with duplicate content.
This was late last week. When I checked today, that page was gone, and they only had one of their pages there, with no indented results. Their other subdomains are still there, as are their other domains.
They obviously checked the page I reported, and quickly removed it from the index. They may have totally missed the end of my report, or they may be planning further action later.
I'll wait till the next update before I report any other pages of theirs, just to see what happens. At least this tells me that Google does indeed read the spam reports, and they do not automatically penalize you for reporting the SPAM.
and they do not automatically penalize you for reporting the SPAM
surely nobody thinks that, the problem only arises when the person reporting the spam has been upto tricks themself, but havent done too good a job, and need a competitor wiping out :)
Shak
