Spam Reports

[Randex]

I submitted a spam report last Wednesday and two days later dropped from #2 to #43. Made no changes to my site - nothing.
Curious as to owns the site I reported.

[martinibuster]

Do a search for "whois"

[rfgdxm1]

So it was your site Randex that dropped from #2 to #43? Question: did you identify yourself in the spam report as the #2 site? If not, how would Google know it wasn't the #3 or #4 site that complained, or just a random searcher? I've used the spam complaint form before, but never once with regard to any site where my own appeared in the SERPs. My sites are in a purely informational category, and spammer free. Thus, if Google was doing this sort of thing based on spam complaints to webmasters, they could end up penalizing you because a random searcher like me complained.

[Marcia]

There was some little change that happened after the update. There were a couple of pages that were ranking where they actually shouldn't have been (logically) and they dropped down - no changes, no reports that I know of - just a little shift. The whole first page of that search changed a bit, and it was after the update had settled.

[Randex]

Anyway, I will not be submitting any more spam reports.

[Marcos]

>I submitted a spam report last Wednesday and two days later dropped >from #2 to #43. Made no changes to my site - nothing.
>Curious as to owns the site I reported.

Did you accepted cookies from google? Investigating the whistleblower is standar police procedure.

I doubt anyhow that Google will do such a thing with someone coming from this forum. Did youmention WW or GG?

[Visit Thailand]

It should not matter where they come from, and it would IMHO be bad to think that just because they come to ww they get some form of special treatment in anyway. People come to these extremely useful forums for a multitude of reasons, not all good I am sure.

[steveb]

"Anyway, I will not be submitting any more spam reports."

If you think submitting an anonymous report will somehow lead to a penalty against you, you need to put away the voodoo doll and take a logic pill.

[Randex]

Steveb:
"If you think submitting an anonymous report"

There is no such thing as "an anonymous report" on the
internet.

[lgn]

There are dozens of services and techniques to remain anonymous on the internet.

[NovaW]

I submitted a spam report for a No.2 site that had hidden text on the page.

Guess what - that site is now in the index twice & my site is gone. This isn't across all the datacenters....but what the heck?

Last time I file one of those spam reports - I should have cleared out my cookies prior

Maybe I am being paranoid

[mack]

There really is no way for Google to know who has filed the spamm report. It has even been said within these boards that Google does not research each case they aim to work on the bigger issue , the bigger issue is the form of spamm that the site is using. By doing this they remove loads of sites that are using the same methods.

[Visit Thailand]

Just curious but does anyone send an email to the webmaster to inform them of the hidden text before reporting spam, in other words try and help the webmaster in case it is an innocent mistake before reporting them?

I ask because there is a lot of talk of spam (with many differnt meanings) and I am sure a lot is calculated in that the webmaster knows what he/she is doing but there must also be some innocent webmasters out there.

We once had a member of staff a few years ago add one line of hidden text to pages he was responsible for. This text linked to his own site that I did not even know he had. Thankfully we discovered this by accident but still.

EDIT IN : I should point out that I do not use spam reports in anyway. I do not look for it and just concentrate on getting higher myself legitimately.

[edited by: Visit_Thailand at 2:59 am (utc) on Oct. 8, 2002]

[NovaW]

I wouldn't email the webmaster. Actually i generally wouldn't file a spam report either - seems like bad karma on the whole. This occasion was a pure competitive situation. Looks like I got my pay back already.

[cminblues]

Randex:

When you submit a spam report, the Toolbar sends to Google-Home all the spam-techniques & urls saved in your h.d.

Hehe just kidding :)
[Sorry for your pages dropped. I'm hit hard too. But I don't think spam-reporting is the solution. Only my point of view of course.]

cminblues

[Marcos]

NovaW,
>I submitted a spam report for a No.2 site that had hidden text on
>the page.
>my site is gone.

Ouch.

>Last time I file one of those spam reports - I should have cleared
>out my cookies prior

May not be enought. What abot the toolbar? That is a black box you have instaled, sending God knows what kind of data to google.

>Maybe I am being paranoid

Remenber Andy Grove is CEO at Intel, "Only The Paranoid Survive"

Google IS NOT playing on our team. Google has almost shut down the SEO business, and they know it, but they will not admit it. No "Iīm sorry", no "I will change", no "it was a mistake", just, well, you "donīt understand our side of the story". Oh, come, enougth is enought. You ca be SO easy to fool. Show some backbone, you boys, I can't be the only one talking here!

How much far can they go?

Well, maybe not much more.

[Marcia]

>does anyone send an email to the webmaster

I have. There was a site that signed up with CJ - and you could tell they sank a small fortune into their site, which was beautiful. I caught them on the 3rd page at Google with their pants down. I wrote the webmaster and told him to have their SEO fix the broken cloaking script and sent the URL for the page in the cache. There was really nothing spammish about it, and I didn't report it - that site is 100% relevant for the search term.

>>Show some backbone, you boys, I can't be the only one talking here!

hehe.. Marcos, I'm not a boy but I've got enough cajones for ten. ;) I've submitted spam reports with the form when it was outrageously annoying (like spewing circle-jerks), I've inquired to search-quality with domain email with my name, I always use the toolbar and never clear cookies.

Some ladies collect chickens or elephants, I collect spam. I've got a whole bookmarks folder full and prowl around to figure out what they're doing - for research purposes - with the toolbar on. How would Google know they're not mine? Those sites have stayed in - good enough reason to research, it's part of the education. If I ever were to get zapped, I'll be that much closer to having a clue why.

I have no fear of Google, and they're a friend to whoever is ranking well; so far I've been very lucky. I dropped way down on one site for a search term, and they're right and I'm wrong - I made changes without checking and the site is no longer relevant for what it was ranking for, it's now ranking for something else.

Who I fear is my ISP, who are now taken over by Yahoo. The two companies have a totally different privacy policy and I have refused to download the new software and make the switch. I also loudly and at length announced why on one of their message boards, which probably got zapped.

I don't worry about Google, they've got over 3 billion pages to take care of, little Ms. Me is the least of their concerns.

[rfgdxm1]

>Who I fear is my ISP, who are now taken over by Yahoo. The two companies have a totally different privacy policy and I have refused to download the new software and make the switch. I also loudly and at length announced why on one of their message boards, which probably got zapped.

Marcia, why do you need software? What kind of ISP is this? Dial up, cable, DSL? You really shouldn't need special ISP software for an ISP connection. My dial up ISP Earthlink has software; never bothered with it and just roll my own DUN connectoids. Do be aware any ISP necessarily knows everywhere you surf, or for that matter any IP you connect to. They can know exactly what Usenet server you are downloading tons of porn from at any time. Oh, wait. That's me. Forget it. ;)

[Aprendiz]

Hi Marcia

>>hehe.. Marcos, I'm not a boy but I've got enough cajones for ten<<

It is funny hearing this from a woman but the word is "cojones".

I am new here but I like to read your posts.

[Randex]

"There are hundreds of services and techniques
to remain anonymous on the internet."

Unless Data is encrytpted there is no such thing as anonymous.

No more spam reports from me. Period. And my cojones are intact.

[wingslevel]

Randex, did YOU have any no-no's on your site?

There was a big reshuffling with the last update about 2 weeks ago, any chance that your drop in position was solely related to the index change? Many of us experienced that kind of drop on some pages....

I plan to keep on reporting sites - if you are going to report a site, though, it's pretty hypocritical to do so if your own site isn't clean.

[Marcos]

Marcia,

>I'm not a boy but I've got enough cajones for ten.

Ja. Yes I'm affraid I was starting to soung a little Mexico/Texan.
Still donīt know what happened to the last responsed I posted answering you.

PD: Am I crazy or the "Wired" tread has disapeared?

[Randex]

"Randex, did YOU have any no-no's on your site"

No, It's as clean as Marcia's cojones

[GoogleGuy]

I'll stay away from the "cojones" part of this thread, but I did want to point out that spam reports are anonymous. We don't even log IP addresses or cookies--it wouldn't be hard to submit through a proxy that stripped these anyway, and we want people to know that they're safe when they submit a spam report.

Randex, it could have been our index switchover, but submitting a spam report didn't cause the drop. I'll add this to the long list of "google myths", like advertising on Google helps your ranking. :)

[rfgdxm1]

The question to ask here: In almost all cases, HOW could Google know what sites someone who sent a spam report in owned? The only way I can think this would be possible is if you ran your site off your own server, and you made the spam report off the same IP. Cookies could not possibly explain this. There is nothing in the Google cookie that tells Google which sites you own. Google might know what the person who sent the report in had been searching about, but not what sites that person owned. Thus, the question to me doesn't seem to be would they do this, but could they do this?

[SebastianX]

I include my full name and email addy (mostly). And I name my domains, especially when I report spam violating my copyrights (some 'artists' think it's funny to use my domains and site titles in zillions of script generated fraudulent doorway pages). Also, I think it's only fair to let Google staff know a spam report is from a pissed webmaster who lost a good ranking to spammers. The definition of spam and relevancy differs depending on the POV, webmasters and engines won't agree.

Google never penalized my sites and due to this long lasting experience I (as a 'paranoid' adult webmaster) believe in Google's fairness.

The only thing I miss is a follow-up email, just to know my spam report is in the works. Coz this is wishful thinking, Google must accept repeated monthly spam reports. Sorry for the extra workload GoogleGuy, but I can't remember which URLs I've reported a month ago.

[Randex]

Yep - doorway pages and spammers.
Google has surely kicked a lot of straight arrows in the cojones and
rear end where the billfold resides (for men - don't know where
Marcia keeps hers)

[Randex]

Per GoogleGuy - Randex, it could have been our index switchover, but submitting a spam report didn't cause the drop. I'll add this to the long list of "google myths", like advertising on Google helps your ranking"

The drop happened after the index switchover.

Here's what happened:
Somebody at Google looked at the doorway page I reported and left it
alone. However, in their zeal they also looked at other sites nearby
and decided for some reason my site did not belong there and kicked
it down the well.
Add this to the long list of "google myths" and loss of credibility
suspious items.

[Jane_Doe]

In terms of being paranoid....for people who do have spam sites, it would be in their best interests to discourage others from filling out spam reports on Google. One way to do this would be to get people paranoid about filling out a spam report by having them worry that their own sites may then drop for no reason if they report spam in their listing area.

So should we be suspicious of what Google tracks when we fill out spam reports, or should we be suspicious of stories on Webmasterworld designed to discourage webmasterworld regulars from filling out spam reports? ;)

[Randex]

"So should we be suspicious of what Google tracks when we fill out spam reports, or should we be suspicious of stories on Webmasterworld designed to discourage webmasterworld regulars from filling out spam reports?"

This has to be a personal decision based on the evaluation of
evidence.

In the competitive world of the internet where there are parasites,
web page hijackers and other scum it would serve one well to
be somewhat suspicious of all comers.