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I have filled out the spam form a tonne of times but never any results. It seems that since they spend a lot of money on adwords and premium listings that this obvious duplicate content is ignored.
What steps can I take to level the playing field? <snip>
I'm no snitch but come on 4 copies of the same site - thats too much!
Anybody actually gotten any misbehaving sites penalized - if so how?
[edited by: Marcia at 5:04 am (utc) on Mar. 24, 2003]
[edit reason] no direct appeals, please [/edit]
Include your handle (KevinC).
Point exactly to the problem in the absolute minimum of words.
GG got a group of 5 Spam sites canned after I reported what sounds the same thing. I am still waiting to see if the other groups are also canned.
Allow at least 9 days for anything to heppen. He said they look at it and then manually adjust the algo to remove them (not just can them manually), as I suppose this kills other Spammers at the same time too.
Good luck
Keep Spam in the can
I was very clear *exactly* what the site was doing. I gave exact details on how to reproduce it. Mentioned webmasterworld, GoogleGuy, and my nick.
The sins of this site went well beyond duplicate content. In addition they were cloaking their pages and keyword stuffing their cloaked pages.
The saddest part is that given their market power, their pages would probably come up first page even if they did not spam.
This site buys lots of sponsored links, so I have no doubt that if anyone could buy their way out of getting hit with a penalty, they could.
When I checked today, their main domains were gone from the SERPs and they are grey bar. They still have a lot of other domains out there, and they are all spamming the same way. I will probably fill out another spam report suggesting an easy way to find many of their other domains, and then leave it up to Google.
If your spam reports didn't work, it might be that google does not consider them to really be that bad of spam. They might also be trying to find a way to trap that sort of spam algorithmically. Or even that you did not make it clear enough how to find the spam and whay the spam influences the quality of the results.
GrinninGordon, glad you noticed that we took action on your spam report. Thanks for sending those queries to us--it's a pretty good area to use as a test case for future algorithms, too. I appreciate you sending the feedback in. I'd like to echo BigDave's last two paragraphs too..
I also sent in to google at searchquality@google.com, outlining my spam find and mentioning that I found the searchquality... e-mail address at webmasterworld (don't know if this helped).
In any case, the relevant spam was gone within four days... Very satisfying.
Good luck!
Yes, BIG thanks :-)
But also, I wanted to find out if the other two groups were considered Spammers or not. Especially as Group 3 is also the Group 1 you did drop.
Do you get feedback on this you can share?
I tried to start a "What is Spam" thread here, where maybe we could give some generic (yet detailed) examples, and you could say "Spam or Ham". And then, if Spam, perhaps allow us to point you to the Hormel factory!
Any thoughts?
They are back in today with some Fresh listings (using new domains), and don't seem to have learned their lesson, but again I have reported this (mentioning my nick and saying Hi to GG. Hi again, by the way - and thanks!).
I would urge you to use the spam report and do as has been suggested. Report clearly and hope that you either get some "manual" or automatic action.
Incidentally, I never received a reply other than the automated one from Google. I am certainly not complaining - frankly I'd rather they spent their limited time taking action rather than replying! But don't be disheartened if you don't receive a response.
Henry
Thanks guys!
Just wanted to throw my $.02 in here as well, that we all appreciate the actions GG (and others) have taken with our spam reports.
One thing I want to point out is that lets all be careful not to get too 'nit-picky' and filling out spam repots for GG on every little site we see.
If a competitor has 100 domains all duping content, then it's pretty bad and I'd send one to GG and call his attention to it.
On the other hand if he's got 2 domains and one's barely in the SERPs at all then I might not fill out a report at all, or if I did, not wave my WebmasterWorld Nick and GG's name around.
I found about 50-60 domains doing some 'unapproved things'. I believe I sent GG 2 spam reports for the worst offenders and the worst search terms. I probibly filed about 4-5 others without calling special attention to the sites and ignored about 10 of those domains entirely. (Not to say I won't keep an eye on them after the next crawl, but for now it's not major.)
I've seen on here the Spam form does not work.
It seems to work when I use it and I am curious what is the most effective way to send a report so that you will see it?
Spamreport@google.com
or
Spam report online
Thanks!
I agree, but I think there needs to be some guidelines. I suggested an area on this forum where people can ask about specific examples (although not mentioning the URL's / search terms). Perhaps where GoogleGuy / Google can answer.
So, people can ask;
"I found a site / sites that have a link exchange program and link exchange with approximately 50% off topic sites, plus cross link between their other xx sites, which also appear high for the same search term. Is this Spam or Ham?"
And then, if GG / others says "Spam", then have somewhere they can contact GoogleGuy with the specifics. That way, if they are over zealous and plain jealous, GoogleGuy can ignore their handles in future. If they are right on, then the reverse.
I think we both have the same goals in mind. GG has been gracious enough to make an effort to examine, if not address, spam reports from members of this forum.
I can only believe that this is because he feels that we are professionals, and that we are going to report genuine issues.
I see three possible categories of spam-reports: Clearly actionable (against policy), in the other extreme, clearly inactionable (within policy / filed with predjudice), and the 'grey area' in the middle.
As a personal guideline I'm only going to file the most obvious, distracting, and quality-affecting reports and draw GG's attention to it.
I have to think that if you take the time, here, to post a thread on 'widget site' and it's spam / hidden links / etc. you can take less time from everyone, and file a spam report without tagging it for GG.
If your goal is to get GG to comment on a site here, all we may end up doing to doubling his workload as you file the spam report after he says it's spam.
At the same time, if you file a spam report, and 2 months later nothing has changed, then mabye it's not actionable? If you still feel strongly about that site's actions, then perhaps bring it up here, or file another report and address it to GG.
For the same reason Google tries to find algorythmetic solutions to problem, we should not endevour to create more work for them, but efforts to decrease the size of the 'grea area' would be welcome.
Actually, my objective is to have some clearer definitions of what is Spam and not.
I consider (say) 7 same owner sites that use some exact duplicate content between them, using link exchanges with off mostly topic sites, and that dominate a particular search term (even though only one of those sites fulfills that search term), etc. to be Spam worthy of action. I would love to know if Google think the same way. If they do, I would like to be sure they act upon it of course.
If not, no problem, then I know (if I want to do the same I can - although not saying I would), and not to report this as Spam.
I think that actually saves Google and GG time, not creates extra work.
Actually, I guess Google just let me know they also agree this is indeed Spam, as the main Hub domain / site of these 7 sites (and two Spam I am domains within the group) just got totalled! I think these were the ones with large link exchanges going on.
The "funny" thing is, 2 of the 7 were tripod sites, and they are still there, but are now suffering DNS failures. I can not believe that is related to my Spam report to Google / GG. It just is strange that the only remnants of this Spam group are the free hoster sites they had.
Maybe what happened was Google figured a way not to penalize, but to limit the sites that actually showed for certain search terms. And, unfortunately for the Spammers, this turned out to be their dns failing, not that good freebie sites :-)
I guess I should also add "Thanks again GoogleGuy and colleagues". It is *really* heart warming to know I am not going to have to follow suit. I was really beginning to worry back there that I would, and now the sun has started to shine again and fewer Hormel cans are in sight :-)
Although I agree that all official guidance is helpful, I can see why Google would want to set out only broad principles and then reserve the right to decide how it implements rules to uphold those principles.
I think if you stick to those principles on your own sites you will feel the benefit of a fair listing in the long term.
