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For example, the guy who owns the no 1 ranked site for <snip> When you do a backward link seach, you find out that he also owns the top ten ranking sites for <snip>, and lots of other keyword combinations. When you search for <snip> for example, he has 2 top 10 ranking sites. Plus for other keyword phrases he has up to 4 top 10 ranking sites. These rankings are probably worth $100k per month or more in profits. Is this spam? I would have thought it is link spam. For example, the way he sets it up is to have pages specifically linked to every other page in another website. He will have one page on a high page rank site that will link to every page on another high page rank site ... all on the same theme ... and does this for all his pages.
Of course, these are areas that are prone to lots of spamming, because they are no exactly areas where there are high moral standards :) ... but they are highly profitable areas for the spammer.
Personally I do believe that this sort of thing won't work for the long term ... google will eventually catch on, and penalize these pages. However, in the mean time, these guys are making millions, literally. Perhaps from google's point of view they probably don't care about this because only a small percentage of people are searching for these things, and they are trying to get quality results for the majority of people who are searching for normal topics. What do you think?
[edited by: Marcia at 3:38 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
[edit reason] specifics removed, TOS and charter [/edit]
Did you look at the sites in question?
Does the listing actually have information and products surrounding the topic.
The same for the other - is it about the topic?
Spam is a very broad term that is loosely defined as:
The submission of pages that are intended to rank artificially high by various unethical techniques. These can include submitting hundreds of slightly different pages designed to rank high, small invisible text, or word scrambled pages. Most of these techniques are flagged by search engines as spam.
The lack of qualified content is a good indication that the listings success is derrived from spam.
You really can't infer "spam" just by the fact the 100 different types of products or services are owned by one company or 100 differwent domains. NASA itself has over 200 unique domain and I would not consider any of them "Spam".
In the world outside of search engines Amazon.com is "books" and "videos" but they also have millions on other products.
[edited by: Marcia at 4:37 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
[edit reason] typo corrected per member request [/edit]
Back to the original question in the title:
>>>>>Does spam pay - the truth now
If you are good! ;)
I personally say no.
Spam, is a Scam, and a scam is fraud.
Does credit card fraud pay... in the same context, as long as you don't get caught, I suppose. But I don't believe in either case you have much of a future.
[edited by: Marcia at 3:49 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
Bottom line folks, if you want to make money, play the game and if your going to play the game know this: If your not cheating, your not tring, and its only cheating IF you get cought.
teeceo
[edited by: Marcia at 3:50 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
And when you look at some areas ... there is an affiliate bidding $2 for one on overture and $14.73 for another on overture. This means that either:
a. They are stupid.
b. They are making more than $2 and $14.73 respectively per visitor to their website.
This means that any search engine optimization for these keywords is going to be incredibly profitable.
[edited by: Marcia at 3:43 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
This means that either:
a. They are stupid.
b. They are making more than $2 and $14.73 respectively per visitor to their website.This means that any search engine optimization for these keywords is going to be incredibly profitable.
Enron and Worldcom were increditably profitable too! So we and all their investors thought.
Although, "B" is still a possibly, "A" is more likely - it costs relative nothing to run to whole show and most spammers don't do it just for themselves, there are likely many qualified companies paying in the background that don't know a thing about SEOing... good or bad.
What I have found to be true is this. An "ethical" optimization campaign is one based upon tried and true techniques that never truly push the envelope. That is, they are certainly effective, but they never venture into a world that would make those analyzing the rankings cringe.
What most consider to be SPAMming the engines, is when one uses CSS (or other techniques) as this individual has, to falsify the page's thoroughness and truly push that envelope.
Is that spam? Who knows, and who cares. They're ranking well now, and thats fine. If it were a site that I were representing, I would be scared to be caught - and never would have employed such techniques. If I were treating this as a throw-a-way domain though, trying to make that 1000's per month - I would have done as much as this person has or more.
The question is not what is and what is not spam, but rather boils down to what is effective. if you can afford to lose some domains, then push the envelope early, and often. This individual has, and I'm sure it is paying off. If the domain is an assett though, stick to what is known to work, and work with those guidelines in mind.
Lastly, to boil down to the asnwer. Does spam pay? Yes. It is important to remember though, that it may not pay for that long.
Just my $0.02 though - I know this is a hotly debated topic.
From the Google forum charter:
Off Topic:
Spam reporting issues. If you have spam to report, please report it to Google. We are not the Google spam reporting system or the place to "shop the competition" knowing that Google techs may read it. Posting someone elses url is no different than violating them by posting their name and address. That includes posting of Google search terms.For that same reason: please No site review requests or site review questions for Google techs.
For spam reporting, use searchquality@google.com. Be very brief in your email with Google. Report both the actual search keywords and explain the problem briefly.
Please remember this forum is frequented by many of the top SEO professionals and is the oldest established Google forum on the internet. Before posting the first time, please take time to read back through some of the threads and get a feel for the level we are at here.
We have such a broad audience of professionals that it's not impossible that one of the very people involved may visit and read any thread here. While what's seen in the SERPs is there for all of us to see and study, it's not our place to point fingers or expose specific sites, webmasters or SEOs, even though it may be unintentional. That's between them and Google.
This is a very insightful, interesting discussion, so let's confine ourselves to discussing principles rather than specifics, so that we can all learn, and possibly gain insight into techniques to avoid to keep ourselves out of trouble with Google.
I a way, we are all spammers.
It just depends from where your looking at it. Dont we all try our best to get on top?
If I was some some search engine guy lurking in here. It would be a session of spying on "the spammers".
What about ethics? I have seen posts declaring that product.company.com is SPAM, so others stating product-blue.com is SPAM. Others see as SPAM the use of <H1> with CSS instead of a beautifull gif title. Some say describing some image with alt is SPAM. Some people say using the <NOFRAMES> tag is SPAM. Finally, some see trading liks as SPAM. Most of us see as SPAM any trick the competition uses, whathever that can be.
I do SEO for clients with irreplacable domain names. We just try our best staying away from the edge. My intentions are to provide my clients better positions. To achieve this, I will need to do more than prayers. Therefore, I am a SE SPAMMER, even if I dont use hidden tricks.
We are all SPAMMERS, let's live with that. :)
If I get penalised and switch domain today, how long will it take to get all those people who linked me over the last 4 years to switch their links?
1.) Use of CSS to make text (keywords and links)ultra-small
2.) Use of CSS to make text-color the same as the background
3.) Use of layers to hide links (.gif covers hidden links)
4.) Use of the the above for the obvious intent of PR manipulation
I personally don't know if I would use the word spam, but certainly it is manipulation. But again, isn't that what SEO is all about? IMO, there are some silly things that can get your site penalized on Google (checking your rank position, innocent interlinking, etc.) Bottomline, I just wish they would create some sort of subscription service where one could login to see if their site (and no one else's) is being imposed a penalty, and the reasons for it.
R2R
Bigtime.
Content spamming.
Calum I Mac Leod
Content Spammer
Google has inadvertantly encouraged businesses to produce interesting and informative Web sites. That must be a good thing.
on my keywords i am seeing spammier serps with the above tricks and the old www.keyword1_keyword2_keyword1.com urls. it used to cost $70 for a 2 year registration with network solutions. now you can get a 1 year deal for what $10? no wonder people can afford these ridiculous throwaway domains.
Definitely, but for a majority of small business sites who have no input from a pro, it can help a lot. Good content, research into the vocabulary used by people who may be interested, and robot accessible page design would be enough to increase the return of many sites hugely. No spam, just good Web building.
If you want to cut corners in the Web building and/or raise the site's search engine profile more quickly than would be natural, then you need to know about SEO and maybe take a few calculated risks.
You can get from A to B without speeding, but it just takes a little longer and some people get bored within the margins.
You can also get from A to B by speeding, then clean up your act.
You can also get from A to B by speeding, then clean up your act.
Unless you're pulled over by the Google traffic police and your Pagerank driving licence is stamped ;)
I'm starting to feel silly for using the 'clean' tactics all these months (since the 'Google as a Black Box' posting). Let's face it; what's the worst that can happen if you manipulate (I don't want to use the word 'spam') on Google? You get caught (after making mucho moneda), then penalized, possibly removed.
What's the worst that can happen if you don't manipulate? Nothing. No, really, nothing; no sales, no revenue stream, no more self employment. If you're selling a competitive product on the Internet, and are not in the top 30, you may as well not be relying on the Internet for income.
I'm not evil, but as an experiment I will be going to the dark side for a while; I've learned a lot by rev. eng-ing the 'Las Vegas' type sites; I'll report the results in a few months.
R2R
<BTW, sorry for the typo in my previous posting; meant to say interesting thread, not interested thread>
It is quite obvious to me that there has been some manual tweeking of the SERP for the <original key phrase in this post>.
Same thing happened to a #1 site in April:
[webmasterworld.com...]
If you want to know how to report spam to Google -> Post a hint on webmasterworld.
Everyone knows the rules of the game. And for every top 5 there are probably 50 buried more than ready to email searchquality, whether the accusations are correct or not.
>I'm starting to feel silly for using the 'clean' tactics
I'm sure many can identify with the feeling, R2R. ;)
This is what I wonder, though. Does it take whatever being a "spammer" is for people to be a pro and others who don't are non-pro? Is that what separates the men from the boys?
