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What I have seen is infact such a powerful trick that a site is dominating on a huge number of serps on google by using only the trick and nothing else.
This trick is actually similar to good old doorway pages but with a difference .. and this difference makes it so powerful.
What they are doing
1) Put a search box on their site.
2) Get some seed traffic and let the users try to search on their site.
3) Save keyword combinations used in these searches in their database.
4) Next time a user searches with similar set of keywords,
they are provided the current combination as a "related searches" links on the page.
(Like altavista)
The Trick
The purpose of search box is to get users to enter keywords and then use those keywords as a feed for creating highly targeted doorways with urls like - xyz.com/b/a/ss_keyword1_keyword2.html
the title of the page is "keyword1 keyword2 - comparison shopping for X"
The page only says
"keyword1 keyword2 did not match any thing on our site .. here are some of the related keyword searches which users have made on the site"
this is followed by links of "related searches" which also lead to pages as above with only difference being "keyword2 keyword3" instead of "keyword1 keyword2".
This obviously is a script generated page masqurading as static html which is not very difficult to create.
My take on this
What begins with an innocent search by a user on xyz.com .. ends up becoming a highly targeted doorway with
1) keywords in anchor text from other pages linking to it.
2) keywords in title.
3) keywords in top body of the page (even though it only says keyword1 keyword2 did not match any thing).
4) keywords in the url of the page.
5) And the best part:
This new page is automatically linked to some of the "related searches" and in turn links to some of its "related searches".
This becomes a web of doorway pages which are linked to each other by common keywords...and may qualify as "good themes" too.
The trick might be simple but the number of pages one can get into the search engine by this is potentially colossal. All you need to start is to write a few scripts and bring your keyword database to a critcal mass...once that is reached .. it begins self sustaining with users coming and searching newer combinations and system responds by generating more pages and links which spiders follow and index.
It is as if the site is constantly evolving to add thousands of spider friendly pages which are on "theme" every day.
About SEO vs Spam
"Where that line is is open to conjecture"
The definition of spam that is most relevant here is the one from search engines' perspective .. "Do search engines like it ..and will they like it in the days to come". There can be other definitions but this one is of the most interest to me and SEOs in general.
It is very intelligent stuff no doubt, but risky SEO, atleast IMHO.
The reason I feel its risky in this particular case is because the pages are way too barebones. Infact its just a fixed template in which keyword1 keyword2 is replaced at a number of places in title, url and body.
Any way perhaps we can stop worrying about the specific site and whether it is spam or not because specifics won't be any good for most here. I would rather like us to move on and start looking at the larger implications of the technique in general.
I find it to be of great interest from two different perspectives ie. the SEO's and philosophical :).
First being an SEO myself this has given me a lot of food for thought. Its a verrry powerful technique and can be utilized in better ways and perhaps be made much more sophisiticated than this.
Worst usage would be to generate doorway pages which will probably lead to search engine penalties unless one is able to fly under the radar.
Best usage can probably generate an intelligent shopping system which "helps" SEOs and content developers and store owners with great ideas about what products to sell, what to write content about and so on...and infact I have a gut feeling that amazon already does some thing similar .. the way their pages bring related stuff seems to me to be a similar technique done right and at a much higher level of sophistication.
Good usage of such technique will probably mean
1) Only a tiny percentage of top keyword combinations will be allowed to evolve into additional web pages and links...so that it does not grow as an uncontrolled chain reaction...or "viral and infinitely expanding" as BGumble just said.
2) The pages and links will be handwritten by content developers with real meat in them and not a keyword substitution script.
The philosophical perspective in which I see this is that it can become a potential arms race between websites and search engines...with search engines evolving more and more sophisticated filters to trap machine generated content and sites becoming more and more sophisticated at passing it as hand written without getting caught.
PS: Does any one know who holds the record of replying to maximum number of stickies on a single day on WW .. I think I am gonna break that one today ;)
I do not think the site is spamming... they may be guilty of "bate and switch"! Call the
FTC, but this is not any of Google's business.
If this was my site I would read my logs and based on the SERP's build pages and find products to sell on those pages. Then I would out source those new products with my brand. Sending traffic to Amazon is not building your brand... and I consider that spam.
This topic is a fun one and is needed!
[edited by: CCowboy at 8:52 pm (utc) on April 25, 2003]
Ask yourself this, if Google were aware of the so called "Bate and Switch" on this site or any other, do you think they would be pleased, nonplussed or about to turn the lights out? They have a goal which is based on providing quality search results. These techniques do nothing for that goal.
2) The pages and links will be handwritten by content developers with real meat in them and not a keyword substitution script.
Yep. If people are hitting your site and not finding exactly what they are looking for, this could be a great way of finding out what pages you need to _manually_ generate for future searchers. I think of it as a much more effective "give us your feedback" form. And if what they are looking for is not something you sell, than it helps in broader marketing decisions. It's pretty brilliant actually, when you remove the auto-generated pages part of it. This is stuff that might not show up in your logs.
If these supposedly spammy pages are only available to site visitors after the site visitor has used the site's search engine to conduct a query, how on earth are these pages getting indexed by Google or any other SE? Since when do spiders conduct queries on search boxes?
Thanks for any help on that.
In my mind, there can be no doubt that this technique (and the url in question) is spam. But it is also great SEO.
This presents a difficult question for search engines like Google who take a hard stance against spam. They can't ban very big sites with lots of content even if they do spam. Someone like microsoft.com offers content that thousands of people are searching for right now.
To not include them would considerably devalue the results you offer. To me this says that if your site is good enough you can experiment with spam as much as you please, and the search engines will be forced to work out more and more new ways to exclude the problem techniques.
Can you imagine placing an ad to sell a BMW car then when someone comes round to take a look you say, "Ok its not a BMW its a Ford but there you go anyway..." I guess the upshot is they need to tighten up on how they implement the script which generates the pages.
[edited by: FleaPit at 8:04 pm (utc) on April 25, 2003]
Which Google gladly slurps up and indexes. Every search result page links with similar search result pages (on a small sidebar of links) forming a theme.
If these supposedly spammy pages are only available to site visitors after the site visitor has used the site's search engine to conduct a query, how on earth are these pages getting indexed by Google or any other SE? Since when do spiders conduct queries on search boxes?
The point you are probably missing here is that the pages which are auto generated by keywords of current searcher are not available to the current searcher .. they are available to the searchers coming after the current searcher as links for suggested keywords .. if you search any thing on altavista you will know what I mean .. see "AltaVista Prisma".
And you need to give just one of these links to google spider once .. it will spider its way to all the related links and their related links and so on..
1. The site is abiding by Googles guidelines, so it's not SPAM.
2. I think that many of these pages should rank MUCH, MUCH lower for such search terms.
If you think my two statements above conflict, take a step back and think about it. A site can create pages about whatever they want. It is up to Google to determine the relevancy of those pages for a particular search term. If a page states "Sorry, we don't know anything about blue widgets, but we know about Fried Chicken".....guess what? It's not a very relevant search result for "blue widgets"! In this case, we should be blaming Google. Unfortunately, the algorithm isn't smart enough to understand what "we don't know anything about blue widgets" means.....yet.
"We don't have BMWs, but we do have Fords, Chevys, and Volkswagons... would you like to see some?" - is that bait and switch, or is that just GREAT salesmanship?
Considering that this site is a shopping / pricing site, I don't see an issue with adding more and more pages of "related" links... they may also be using it to add products, consider new lines, etc...
I think people further down the list confuse "spam" with "good ideas"... the line is where you draw it, and it is always right where you stand :-)
Alex
They are even declaring that fact: 'We searched the entire site for widget and butter without finding a match containing both words'.
Not that these pages are stacking up that well in the serps. Who would link to them apart from the site who made them?
The point you are probably missing here is that the pages which are auto generated by keywords of current searcher are not available to the current searcher .. they are available to the searchers coming after the current searcher as links for suggested keywords .. if you search any thing on altavista you will know what I mean .. see "AltaVista Prisma".
I'm don't think I'm missing the point at all. I understand where the links are available and who sees them. But from what I'm reading, the links are STILL only available after the next person does a site search. Is that correct? So my original question applies: since when do spiders conduct searches when visiting web sites?
And you need to give just one of these links to google spider once .. it will spider its way to all the related links and their related links and so on..
Bingo. Exactly. HOW are they giving these pages, which I think (from what I'm reading) are only available by using the site's search box, to Google or any other spider? Are they showing a static link to one of these dynamic queries so that the spiders can follow the links?
Amazon gets its dynamic pages spidered all the time because when you visit the Amazon home page, there are dozens of "static" links (in the site text) to the site's dynamic shopping content. I'm seeing a static link to a book called "Atonement" by Ian McEwan -- I don't need to use the search box to get to that page, so I can understand how a spider would index that page. But if that book could only be found after using the search box, I don't see how a spider could get to it.
I'm looking for enlightenment on that. :)
I must say I'm having difficulty seeing how so many people here DON'T see this as spam.
Is it clever? Absolutely!
But as Google says:
*Make pages for users, not for search engines.
*Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
*Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
*Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
*Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank.
*Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
*Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
*Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
Seems to me that while the technology of the idea (if backed up with content that supports the keywords) is top notch, this particular implementation breaks any number of Google's principles...not to mention the fact that it's deceptive.
...and I'm a marketing guy who, by training, is used to pushing the edge ;-)
I'm looking for enlightenment on that
The same way as Amazon. All you need is php and a database to create these types of links.
I continue to point users to pages with key words that other users have used to search. I then also pull in Google's seach result for those key words side by side with my site's results.
Spam or not?
I'll be announcing My IPO soon! ;)
[edited by: CCowboy at 9:07 pm (utc) on April 25, 2003]
Now if the hidden intent (and then not so hidden when the SERPs are being unindated with these machine generated pages)...is to dominate the SERPs then it is up to the individual search engine and it's comfort zone with this type of content deployment...to figure out how does it affect their available resources and user base and does it violate their respective TOS. In Google's case, it's pretty clear that this type of "on the fly", "machine generated" page generation is akin to cloaking because you are now delivering different content that is not necessisarily found via an exposed link but by backend scripting that responds to a users action.
I applaud these folks for implementing a helpful strategy for their end users but not for being tempted to trash the SERPs with this same tactic...
That's just me humble, tired opinion...
end of the day it is still misleading the user
The same way as Amazon. All you need is php and a database to create these types of links.
I know how to create such links, we do it all the time for our clients with dynamically built content -- make static links so spiders can find the product pages, etc.
But I'm asking: are these "spammy" pages available via static links on the site in question, or only after you use the search box to do a search?
(I suppose it would help if I knew what site we're all talking about......)
at the end of the day it is still misleading the user.
If anyone is, Google are misleading the user by returning these pages in the serps for a query with any decent competition ;)
are these "spammy" pages available via static links on the site in question
Sorry I probably didn't explain it very well. They're static pages that are generated by user queries on an internal site search engine, that are then placed as links on 'similar' product pages.
<If anyone is, Google are misleading the user by returning these pages in the serps for a query with any decent competition>
You guys crack me up! C'mon, the fact that Google hasn't nailed these guys yet doesn't mean it's not spam...just that it's very effective spam.
The government saw fit long ago to label this kind of stuff "bait and switch," as pointed out earlier in this string. The problem that led to the government passing laws was, and is, that this sort of thing IS deceptive...
...which probably has a lot to do with Google's reasoning when they say:
*Don't deceive your users....
*Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings...
*Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank.
lol, lol ;-)
The government saw fit long ago to label this kind of stuff "bait and switch,"
I'm not at all sure what you are talking about here.
Definitely would take a little work and high traffic to be of significant use.
You can publish on your website whatever you want.
If Google serps produce irrelevant results, it is in fact a Google problem.
Of course this is from a searchers point of view, webmasters who are not happy with their position in serps may consider doing some "real" marketing - meaning paid advertising.
<The government saw fit long ago to label this kind of stuff "bait and switch " --- I'm not at all sure what you are talking about here. >
Rather than explain, I'll just refer to an earlier quote in this string:
< What this site is doing is creating pages based on previous search terms but instead of giving you what you want it simply states "This is what you were looking for, unfortunately we don't do that product, but we do do this..." >
That is pretty classic 'bait & switch'.
Used car dealerships once employed the tactic regularly and some still do. It's deceptive. It's illegal in some circumstances. And it's inconsistent with Google guideline of "Don't deceive your users." The site is deceiving users. Google is just shining the spotlight on it...we'll see if it lasts.
But like I said, I've been wrong before ;-)
ps, what about all the people in here who regularly advocate just building quality, relavent content. any takers?
