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Came across a site on the weekend that used (toom me a while to figure it out) an interesting approach to scam Google.
Using PHP, they extracted the user-agent of the google bot.
They then wrote in a condition for if the user-agent = google to display spammed crap keyword text. Complete garbage and total keyword spamming.
If the user-agent wasn't google - display normal content, well written content.
Took me quite a while to figure out how they were doing this and why the SERP info WASN'T even close to that of the page info - no matter of word combinations could make it seem "right".
The beauty of this seems to be that if a human Googler was checking the site to ensure no spam was there they'd likely be using a user-agent that wasn't "google" therefore they'd see the perfectly fine site, just as the rest of us would.
Anyone else seen this type of crap?
Aaron
They then wrote in a condition for if the user-agent = google to display spammed crap keyword text. Complete garbage and total keyword spamming.
[...]
Anyone else seen this type of crap?
Yep... not all that uncommon, though perhaps not as common as it once was.
See [webmasterworld.com...]
I've seen it with redirects, etc but never with actual programming I don't think - or perhaps I didn't care to look hard enough :)
Aaron
It's what brought down Altavista, then Inktomi. Strong arm tactics, and hand penalties, do nobody any good.
If I auto generate 5000 pages today, get ranked tomorrow, will you report me on Wednesday?
Waste of time. Work on your own sites / market the 'clean way' worry about your users, etc - and you will do better in the long run.
Just work hard, think smart, and be creative. The rest will fall into place.
If you are concerned all day about another person's "spam" then you will never be able to truly focus on doing what you need to do - either making your clients more money, or making your own sites make more money.
After all, that is why we do SEO - and why we study Google. Leave the spam reporting / snitching / etc to Google. They have the tools, resources, and academic background to tackle the 'problem' the best, imho.
What we do, here - is learn how to do it better...of course, you can always play it both ways: set up 1 site 'by the book' as you call it, and 1 site -> full of spam.
Would be interesting to see which one does better, yes?
This don't worry about it and just work on your site bull is for the birds.
Report them with a detailed report.
Google does take action against sites that are really badly spamming.
Be sure to mention Googleguys name and this WW in the report.
It did not take much time at all for me to report some of the bigger spammers for my area. They are now gone! Now my hard work pays off more since I don't have a bunch of spammers ahead of me in the SERPS!
It is worth the few minutes it take to fill out a report and submit it. Once you submit it, then forget about it and don't dwell on it. Check back every now and then to see if any action was taken.
It's either bull or it's plain dumb. Only a spammer would advise that, period.
Google has the spam report because it wants HELP. You have to either be a crook or clueless to not report people stealing from you. Spamming isn't against the law, but it is against the rules. You play in a game where opponents are cheating, you tell the umpires so they can both call a clean game and adjust rules for the next game.
Reporting spam should be in the top five most important things for an honest webmaster to do.
Webmasterworld has spammers crying about penalties they deserve, and it has people who play by the rules who should report the cheaters. The more genuine spam reports Google gets to adjust its algorithm, the better off honest, rich-content sites will be, and the worse off garbage spammers will be.
