Reporting Spam

Is this spam, and will Google Listen?

[liamgt]

Ive been reading webmaster world with interest for the last month or so and found some great tips so first of all thanks you guys for the good advice.

Anyway i though its about time i posted Myself So here goes.

Ive just reported a competitor to google for spamming with hidden text (using the online form). They are currently no1 and my own site is number 2 for the the term "widgets uk". The page on their site is an entry type welcome page with a logo and welcome message on a white background and thats it. Looking at the source code i found that they have loads of text in white as well. Basically will google take notice and ban or pr0 them or are we wasting our time.

Would like your opinion on this one GoogleGuy.

Thanks in Advance

Liam

[wingslevel]

I reported a site last fall. This was before they had the form. It took 3 months, but they did pr0 the site. He was a pr6 site and a big advertiser on google - he bounced back pretty quickly (maybe 2 months of pr0)! Since I was emailing in my complaint, I pasted in the hidden links from his source - made it real easy on the google person that finally reviewed my submission... Interesting, though, the site that I reported was linked to by a bunch of other sites that also had hidden links (basically it was a group of about 6 sites that all linked to each other off of their home pages - all were pr7 or better!) - the reviewer didn't spend much time on this one because there was fertile ground for more penalties...

Two months ago I reported 3 sites for hidden links (this time with 1 pixel gifs). I used the form. Nothing yet. I wasn't able to paste in all of the html, so this time the reviewer is going to have to do some work....

I started a thread on this topic a few days ago - didn't get much interest, though...

[webmasterworld.com...]

Googleguy says that their main thrust to thwart spam is to use automated traps. I have never heard of anybody getting caught in a google filter for having hidden links, though. Maybe its tougher to program than I think, but I am surprised that they can't at least get people linking off of 1x1 gifs?!?

[mayor]

There's a lot of legitimate applications of 1x1 pixel graphic links, like trackers. If Google penalized them, they would be penalizing lots of innocent sites IMHO.

Hidden links of any kind are only hidden to the casual surfer. They're not hidden from the eyes of a competitor, a spam vigilante, search engine algorithm or search engine abuse dept. So why bother hiding them? I think someone who hides links is fooling themselves. It's quite simple to keep the links visible and integrated into the page but uninviting for the casual surfer if you don't want them to be followed. Then you shouldn't have to worry about getting in trouble for hidden links.

[Chris_R]

exactly - most real spammers don't use 1x1 pixel links - it is amateurish.

[Brett_Tabke]

> Basically will google take notice

Doubtful. The majority of the algo is pagerank. It couldn't be on page one without having the pr to put it there.

[wingslevel]

> The majority of the algo is pagerank

Fair enough, but what I am talking about is people using hidden links in order to spam their page ranking. I have a competitor who has a pr7 to my pr6. He has less number and quantity of inbound links except that he has one from the homepage of a pr8 site that has very few other outbound links on it. The pr8 site is not in a related business and the link is from a hidden 1 pixel gif. I am sure that this one link is what makes his pr a 7 - and he got it by spamming google.

[mayor]

Wingslevel, my point is that the PR8 page harboring that hidden link is at risk. For instance, you've reported them. Some search engines may penalize them. They're coming up on the wrong radar screens ... given time, that site may get trashed.

If they were smart, they would make the links visible so you would have no basis for a complaint.

[Chris_R]

exactly - and they will be replaced by someone who will.

[wingslevel]

I don't think we are disagreeing. I don't know how to do it, but it seems that there ought to be a way that google could automate a way to snare people who spam pr with hidden links. pr is just too important to them to let people spam it this easily.

[mayor]

We're not disagreeing, Wingslevel. What I'm really trying to say is that they're doing you a big favor by exposing themselves to uneccessary risk that might one day get them the boot.

Sounds like you've done all you can to help them shoot themselves in the foot.

[pleeker]

Mine is not a case of hidden links, but I have twice now emailed Google to report a single site which had two of the Top 10 listings because they had different domains pointing to the same web site.

In both cases, the second domain/listing was gone from the SERPS in a matter of hours. I was quite impressed with the response.

[mahlon]

Everything I have reported for the last 6 months is still there! :(

[liquidstar]

MHO: Don't mess with it.
#1) It's not worth it, and it probably won't make a difference.
#2) One man's spam is another's SEO.
#3) We're all spammers as we try to manipulate results.

[steveb]

Abuse should be reported, and I sure disagree with this "we are all spammers" crap. I'm not. I follow the rules and provide good content.

A few days ago I reported a group of eleven sites with the same content but laid out differently, all owned by the same entity. These sites occupy Google search results between 14 and 52 for my prime keyword. Only one of these sometimes ranks higher than me (I everflux from 13 to 16), so they don't effect me that much except they ruin the search results for users, and they make meaningful page rank linking difficult since none of them will link with anybody except themself yahoo and dmoz.

This sort of flooding of worthless duplicate/doorway/affiliate/pointing-domain sites is what may eventually make searching a hopeless exercise for users, like it already is on many search engines besides Google. Each of us in our interest areas should report these cheating practices to Google.

These sites also occupy search results # 1, 4, 5, 6, 11 on Yahoo. They are all essentially the same. A good site deserves one spot. Greedy cheats who want (and need) half of the top ten should be stopped.

That said, I reported this to both Google and Yahoo and nothing has changed as of yet.

[mayor]

Got a question for the spam vigilantes ... do you expose your url to the search engines when you make your abuse report? Or do you report from your favorite hotmail account?

Be honest ... tell us! :)

[edit_g]

That is the point... I've never reported any shady things which are constantly happening on the keywords we target. Because they are very competetive everything is heavily optimized and alerting Google may make them take a look at not just the page with hidden links but the next result up and the next result down. This might be one of our sites and while we don't spam, everything is optimized, and you never know what Google will think about it.

I know that using legitimate techniques I can beat people using hidden text and screwball interlinking given time- so that is usually what I do.

Sending an abuse report about a competitor from my own email addy... I don't think so- don't rock the boat.

[lynxeffect]

Some one has spamed for all my search tearms and got to the top of google, will they get away with this and will we all be stook 2 ranks lower for the rest of this month?