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I came across a website ranked #1 and I noticed that it has hundreds of incoming links coming from guestbooks. In fact, it looks like each guestbook entry is identical as if the posts were automated. My question is: wouldn't Google frown upon this? Does Google detect this sort of thing? Would Google punish the website for this?
Thanks,
Mark
I doubt that google wants to be in the business of maintaining the worlds largest hand compiled catalog of guestbook software.
The problem is really with all publicly writable web pages. This includes, but is not limited to guestbooks, forums, public referer logs, top referer lists, wikis, and email list archives.
Essentially, these types of sites allow a promoter to manipulate a site into "voting" for their site without the editorial process that a link implies in the PR system.
Now finally I cam leave AthlonInside’s guestbook alone! `lol`
This isn't all that difficult. There really isn't that many different guestbook software apps out there. And, all of them have obvious signatures that could be spotted by the algo. Googleguy already has posted that Google is indeed filtering guestbook links.
The key is...*get* unique content. Do you know how many people are using the same free content that you are and are trying to get into the top ten? You've picked one of the hardest industries to crack the top ten, so unless you're an accomplished spammer (signing guestbooks means that you probably aren't<g>), you need to find another way. In general, you don't make much money by not having any content, unless you're really really really good. And even the really good spammers spend money on domains, software, etc.
Oh, and giving out illegal software for links back - not a good idea.
I think submitting to OPD is pointless.
Not in Google's opinion. It's free & takes 1 minute, what do you have to lose? I got in in 2 months.
1.buy a few links(pr6 or 7 will do) look around, there are lots of links for sale, even to adult sites.
2.buy more domain names and put up sites on them(1-100 pages) and link them together(for instants, if you buy 20 domain names and have 10 pages on each domain then you put a link at the bottom of "each page" to each of the home pages of each site) and you will be able to send pr site wide.
3.optimize all sites and make sure that the links all say the name of the site and the name of the site be what your targeting.
4.there is a lot of spam out there in the adult world and not alot of good SEO site so you should be able to do great if you do all the things above.
5.look at the hotel slerps and see the top 10 sites backlinking and you will see the same things I just told you about only, they are in a different cat. then you.
Hope that helps.
teeceo.
P.s. The easiest way to see how to get to the top of a cat. is to look who is already there and do the same thing:).
Yep. Little to lose doing so.
I doubt if I've gained anything from those unsolicited guestbook links, but I haven't been hurt, either. I assume that Google ignores guestbook links (because they're so easy to abuse) or that the amount of PageRank passed along by guestbook links is too negligible for Google to worry about.
In any case, I wouldn't suggest spamming guestbooks, since:
1) Doing so is an abuse of guestbooks, and it won't win you any friends.
2) Google could decide to penalize massive linking from guestbooks (although that seems unlikely, since that would encourage scumbag Webmasters to sabotage their competitors).
3) It's probably a waste of time.
In the current normal www index 2 of the top 10 are strictly guestbook sites. This is a very competitive term thats tuff to get a top 10 spot for..
>>>>I think submitting to OPD is pointless.<<<<
>> Not in Google's opinion. It's free & takes 1 minute, what do you have to lose? I got in in 2 months. <<<
1. How often can you submit to OPD?
2. Is it possible to submit all my pages or just my home page?
3. My adult webmaster resource page is a sub domain on my site
www.adult-webmaster-resource.mydomain.com so is it possible to submit it into a deferent category than my home page?
Same thing has happened to me, although it wasn't a ton. Just a few dozen. Don't think it was anyone around here, but instead my arch-enemy from Usenet, who also likes to periodically e-mail bomb me with several hundred e-mails in a few hours. :( The silly part is that I was already top 10 in any search engine worth mentioning (#1 for many in fact on the important keywords), and I already had 1 PR6 link, and half a dozen PR5 ones from related sites. My sites were PR5 before this, and are still PR5. The topics of my sites are so non-competitive that a PR5 is enough to very well. There is only one site with better than that (a PR6) out there on this topic. I'll take this as evidence that guestbook links are either ignored by Google; or that it takes an obscene number of them, such as many hundreds or thousands, to get anywhere.
>2) Google could decide to penalize massive linking from guestbooks (although that seems unlikely, since that would encourage scumbag Webmasters to sabotage their competitors).
I should surely hope not, since one of Google's Adwords customers now advertises that if you pay them they will spam a URL to 300,000 guestbooks (YES, that is their claim) for only $129.95 USD!? Methinks there isn't anywhere near 300,000 guestbooks on the planet. However, if they are telling the truth, them for 130 clams you can spam your competitor's URL to hundreds of thousands of guestbooks. Ain't the Internet great?
>>>>Guestbook links are gold right now. Google certainly doesn't ignore them. Unfortunately. <<<<
>>>>I agree steveb.. both the 1 and 2 sites for the very competitive keyword i go after are sites with 800+ guestbook links only. These are the results in the sj index.
In the current normal www index 2 of the top 10 are strictly guestbook sites. This is a very competitive term thats tuff to get a top 10 spot for.. <<<<
Now are you guys telling me that getting links from guestbook’s is useful? I mean google doesn’t ignore them?
But all the other webmasters posting here seems to have a different kinka idea.
Pleas explain?
Uh, no. Get some content and don't spam.
One bad thing about guestbook links and the Google algo is spammers have 100% control over their anchor text. I see this is why one site is #1 for a mega-bucks two word keyword, from only guestbook links. They sign them books "widget blodgett" and they sure are #1 for widget blodgett searches.... #1 without quotes and #2 behind widget-blodgett.com for a search with quotes.
teeceo.
Methinks there isn't anywhere near 300,000 guestbooks on the planet.
I have 175000+ guestbook URLs in mySQL database on my PC and the list is not complete as there are over 150-200K more guestbooks out there that are not in my database. Most of the 175K URLs that I have are both in google & alltheweb. Rest are in ATW only. I collected those URLs a few months ago because I was thinking of creating a bot to sign those URLs but I was mislead by all the talk of 'guestbook links are worthless' on webmasterworld. Now the project to create the bot is on again as I see the evidence to the contrary in the www-sj SERPs.
Only thing that makes sense is some spammers are smarter than the programmers at the Googleplex.
Even ordinary SEOs tend to point out changes in google algo as and when they happen and tweak their pages accordingly to stay a step ahead in the game.
One bad thing about guestbook links and the Google algo is spammers have 100% control over their anchor text.
Hmmm...very good point. All the more reason for Google to ignore guestbook links if it isn't already doing so.
I have 175000+ guestbook URLs in mySQL database on my PC and the list is not complete as there are over 150-200K more guestbooks out there that are not in my database. Most of the 175K URLs that I have are both in google & alltheweb. Rest are in ATW only. I collected those URLs a few months ago because I was thinking of creating a bot to sign those URLs but I was mislead by all the talk of 'guestbook links are worthless' on webmasterworld. Now the project to create the bot is on again as I see the evidence to the contrary in the www-sj SERPs.
If people are spamming guestbooks with bots, I think we can be sure that Google will soon ignore guestbook links if it isn't already doing so.
Try taking a look at some random guestbooks. Much of the spamming is obviously being done by bots.
1. If title contain word 'Guestbook', ignore all links in it
2. Else calculate links.
Although more complicated algo is useful, but this one can block at least 80% of the guestbooks link count.
But why google are so lazy to implement it! Instead they spend their time on hidden text algo that make us worry.
Which would screw over anyone who makes available guestbook software or guestbook services, for one. Google doing nothing is better than something that buggy. However, most real world guestbooks are running standard software with obvious signnature data that can identify this software. Adding this to the algo should neutralize just about all guestbooks except those few using home rolled software, and hardly any false hits.
i read a lot of your recent posts where you complain about successfull guestbook spammers and the moral thing with google selling ads to "professional guestbook promoters".
Unfortunately i have to agree that google currently doesn't do a good job in eliminating pr manipulation done by multiple guestbook links. I share your frustration. Bad thing is: google has no algo to handle guestbook links. Good thing is: sites that are exclusively promoted through guestbooks don't stand any hand check (approved!). However, i'd recommand you to report the adword ads to the google sales people. One day i found a illegal lolita ad within a family friendly field (recreation / pets) and reported the ad to the google sales team. They removed it immediately (allthough it's been 11 pm) and confirmed that there are spammers out there who set up illegal adword ads or simply ads that don't follow google guidelines. (Remember: the google sales people don't controll your ads as long as you don't use word or phrases that trap a filter. Anyone can set up a adword ad online within minutes!)
So instead of thinking that google doesn't fight guestbooks spammers because they sell them ads, i'd think about the possibility that the google fellows don't even know that such ads exist!?
I recently found one ad that "sells links to increase pr to gain better se listings". I'd say, the google fellows don't know about such ads.
Found it: ads-feedback@google.com
Reporting it right now. If by this time tomorrow that Adword is still appearing, then this will prove Google encourages and wishes to profit from guestbook spamming.
This would be the same as saying: i'll report a spammer right know - if he's still listed by tomorrow this will prove that spamming google works. Na, na - could be a big mistake to think so.
<added>rfgdxm1, i'm a adword customer - so if you'll have no success with your report, feel free to pass the facts to me - i'll report it through the internal adwords feedback form.</added>
A quick check at one scripting resource site shows 273 different PHP based guestbook scripts and 152 different Perl based guestbooks. This is by no means a complete listing for PHP and Perl guestbooks and there are many other languages out there.
Any approach that simply knocked out specific guestbook software would simply lead SE spammers to collect lists of guestbooks that were not on the list. There would probably be a small market for finding the "golden guestbooks" like password hackers have for anonymous proxy servers and email spammers have for open mail relays.
My money is on the algorithmic approach.
I also strongly suspect that any algoritm they use will NOT involve scanning the page for the word guestbook.
There are many types of publicly writable web pages that also need to be knocked out: Forums, public referer logs, online mailing list archives, etc.
One potential "anti publicly writable page" algorithm is to devalue links from irrelevant pages.
Coincidentaly, this is exactly what the recently granted google patent Ranking search results by reranking the results based on local inter-connectivity [patft.uspto.gov] does.
There are many types of publicly writable web pages that also need to be knocked out: Forums, public referer logs, online mailing list archives, etc.
I would rather that they not take aim at all publicly writeable pages, just those that are currently some sort of a problem.
Guestbooks and referer logs are currently being abused.
Almost any forum or mailing list archive where the posts are actually worth a decent amount of PR, are carefully monitored and spam is blocked. If they weren't, they would not get enough incoming links to have a very good PR.
If a toolmaker is active on the wiget builders mailing list, and the list allows sigs, I see no problem with allowing the small amount of PR that will flow from each of his posts.
We aren't talking about something like the automatic guestbook signer. These are actual useful posts that are appropriate to the field in question.
If google takes care of guestbooks specifically, then people will just move on to the next easiest publicly writable web page. There are many PR bearing unmoderated forums where you can post off topic posts with your sig. For many forums, the editorial moderation will prevent their visitors from seeing your off topic or spamming message, but won't prevent googlebot from finding it. Remove the low hanging fruit and people will simply climb higher in the tree.
Any link that was placed devoid of editorial control is a problem for google. As outlined in the patent I mentioned before, Relevency might be a good way for google to estimate the degree of editorial participation that went into placing a link. I think you can assume that links to your page from other relevent pages had a higher degree of editorial participation.
If a tool maker is active on a widget forum, then the link in his sig is relevant and should indeed count for PR. If a tool maker is active on a star trek forum, then the link in his sig should not help him rank higher in searches for widgets. Similarily, If the tool maker signs the guest book of a "historical widget collecter," then that link is relevent and should not be penalized.
The way to fix this problem is not to deal with guestbooks in particular, but to devalue irrelevant links in general.
1. How often can you submit to OPD?
2. Is it possible to submit all my pages or just my home page?
3. My adult webmaster resource page is a sub domain on my site
www.adult-webmaster-resource.mydomain.com so is it possible to submit it into a deferent category than my home page?
Help! Help! Help!
#1) No.
#2) Home page only.
#3) Maybe. If the subdomain is on a totally unrelated topic than what is on the main domain, arguably it is an independent site.
