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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
But i have to say the google guestbook spamming is BAD! BIG TIME!
Its really a shame. To me its the worst form of spamming going on at google of any kind.
Worse then hidden links, free for all sites, cross linking, one pixel gifs or whatever else our creative webmaster minds come up with!
Forcing dozens of links onto other homepage owners and webmasters is the lowest of the low! But its MOST effective!
As a good guy, i cant bring myself to do these underhanded sleezy tactics.. that just arent right! (since they negatively affect the guestbook/homepage author themselves to the point where they can no longer maintain their guestbooks)
Helppppppppppppppp! Google!
any thought?
big companies have money to advertise, force you to hear their ad on radio, tv, newspaper, everywhere you go you see you hear ...they call you, fax you, mail you, email you, ....
small companies have to outsmart to survive ..
the victim is always our regular reader, regular people's life quality get compromised...
It makes them money, and I mean serious money.
as rfgdxm1 pointed out, their model is based on the fact that 1 site on page 1 can make them $50,000 a mth, so why not.
They are NOT building a brand, just interested in sales.
Yes its duping the Google algo big time, and unfair on "ethical" SEOs, but at the same time with figures like that, Wouldnt YOU?
Shak
(same as rfgdxm1, no stickies please)
Im telling you its nasty too.. When small homepage owners have to shutoff their guestbooks because its so bad...
thats just over the way over the line!
But they are doing it and doing it for months and months staying at frontpage and top spots for months!
We hear google say its working on spam filters, but they arent if it can be pulled off so massively month to month.
Id say about 3/4 of the first pages in my industry is pure spamming of guestbooks.
Spamming Guestbooks WORKS! BIG TIME!
If you cant beat'um join um? Big Dilemma!
I've just investigated the case I mentioned in the original post in this thread. I have already found 2 other single, highly competitive keywords this company has got to the top by spamming guestbooks. DEFINITELY they are not trying to build a brand. All the domains are in the form www.buy-fuzzy-blue-widgets-online.com. These are all throwaway spam domains.
And, Google's algo to me looks so broken at the moment trying to build up a brand seems foolish. Look at all the people around here who have had established sites plummet due to missing backlinks, missing anchor text, and who else knows what Google is doing wrong at the moment. Only way to stay on page 1 now may be tossing up lots of spam domains on the theory one will do well.
Maybe, but I still think that people are finding relevent results for the terms they are searching. I bet ya dollars to donuts that joe surfer isn't bothered in the least bit by the "broken" algo.
If a GB spammer can reap 50k a month from being on the first page, my guess is that the site is relevent to the query or it wouldn't convert. Google obviously agrees.
All the new junior posters around here can be seen as a piece of "joe surfer". Joe Surfer's reactions won't be felt for awhile but people came to Google for quality, and left AV or whoever because of poor quality. Those who don't remember history are condemned to repeat it.
"my guess is that the site is relevent to the query or it wouldn't convert."
A trash site converting 1% of 50,000 referals might be very happy, even if a quality site could convert 20%.
$50k a month?
Thats for EACH keyword that they are targetting :)
Shak
If, as suggested in another thread, that Google may be looking more at relevancy and themed content, will they care about the spam if it delivers what Joe Surfer is seeking?
moral vs money?
Google can not automaticly say Guest books don't count because there isn't a way to identify a guestbook truely. You can discount certain ones by traits that they hold but not all together. a trait would be like the file name of a specific branded guest book, or a link at the bottom going to the guestbook homepage, or the style of the html or object such as the blueline.gif ;)
The next question is, in such a high trafficked industry how long will it be before someone complains. Then if yer deep into the game, you have sites going up left and right so it doesnt matter all that much.
Think of a popular keyword beginning with [edit -rcj]. The sort that people pay big bucks for at Overture. Now, look at the SECOND site listed after the official [edit] site and check out the backward links. (This only works if you get the same results as me, of course).
So why not rush out and spam these same guestbooks? Because Google is looking out for that sort of thing, that's why. We've seen how heavy-handed Google can be with PR0s on expired domains and other things.. there's a good chance that this kind of activity will kill your site and those associated with it.
[edited by: rcjordan at 9:52 pm (utc) on May 20, 2003]
[edit reason] Per the charter: no specific references to search terms. [/edit]
The way this sort of spammer works is they keep tossing up many different sites on different domains to sell the same thing. So long as you can throw up spam domains faster than Google can whack them down, you win. In the case of guestbook spamming, if you have a bot to do the spamming this is easy.
I think this may be a key reason for the "Dominic" update that has so many people frazzled. GoogleGuy has said that spam filters will be applied to the Google index in the very near future, and some of those filters are likely to be new ones. He also has said that Google prefers to fight spam with algorithms (which are infinitely scaleable) instead of relying on manual reviews.
If Google can use algorithms to identify and apply penalties to pages or entire domains that display varying degrees of shady SEO, the window of opportunity for the disposable-domain-of-the-month Webmaster will be reduced or even closed.
As guestbooks are concerned, Google can simply ignore guestbook links or--better yet--block any PageRank transfer from guestbooks and use large numbers of guestbook links as just one factor in determining a site or page's "spam score." Let's say that a competitor or enemy submits your URL to a thousand guestbooks. If your site is clean, those guestbook links could simply be ignored. But if you're using shady SEO techniques on your Web site, those unsolicited guestbook links might push you over the algorithm's "SPAM ALERT!" threshold and knock your site down 50, 100, or 150 places in Google's search results.
So, it would seem that whatever phenominal results are currently being acheived by guestbook linking will be wiped out at some point. In the meantime, the guestbook spammers will simply make hay while the sun shines.
Please note I wrote that in the context of the webmaster trying to build up a brand identity. With Google at the moment, this is bad strategy, and spamming makes more sense. As for Joe Surfer, if he likes spam then he will like Google. Google now serves spiced lunch meat up in heaping helpings.
Only webmasters do.
I doubt even poor old "joe surfer" would be happy when he stumbled upon the sites we are talking about. Although relevant to the search, to say the least, these are really spammy, ridiculous pages.
a, The GuestBook spammers are NOT building brands, all they want is pure sales, they can afford to throw away domains every hour of the day.
furthermore these guys are NEVER likely to spend any $$$ on PPC, because to them it just does NOT make sense, and they are happy with the way they do things and make Millions a year out of it.
b, The Company building a brand and using "ethical" SEO techniques, relies on repeat traffic, organic traffic, and PPC, their model is based on the fact that Orgamic traffic subsidises their PPC costs, overall making their cost per visitor.
Now that they have NO or very LITTLE organic traffic, they have to start spending a LOT more on PPC, they also know that Google traffic converts well, so they end up PUMPING serious $$$s into Google Adwords, just to achieve the same number of sales but at a LOT higher CPA.
How concerned is Google, not very I think...
just an idea at 11.30pm - I m off to bed.
Shak
they DO advertise, however they usually do it "targeted" at advertisers rather than users.
Unlike LISTED companies, they have NO shareholders to please, with large billboards in New York, showing what Your Granny is looking for.
Shak
Dude. Yahoo and AOL are using *Google* data. You can't separate Google from Yahoo and AOL. And, if you don't think people use MSN, that just means that you don't come up high on MSN. I get lots of hits from MSN according to my logs.
Right now Google cannot lose, they are undisputed champions of the web, the fickle public can change that in a matter of days.
