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The thing is, the site has top 3 ranking for the main search term for EACH location I checked! (and I checked a bunch of them)
How can this be? I thought Google has a duplicate page filter.
If you believe that the quality of Google's search results is seriously compromised and they've slipped up or missed something significant by presenting irrelevant search results, either send an email to search-quality@google.com or submit a query with their report form [google.com].
According to the Google News forum charter, we can't discuss specific search terms, which is a good thing, imho. We all gain more from staying with principles rather than from exposing specifics.
It is confusing sometimes, and if there's a glitch of some kind they need to work on it some more. It may seem a little eccentric, but personally, I generally just save things like that in a bookmarks folder and check out what they've done until I figure it out. ;)
>>According to the Google News forum charter, we can't discuss specific search terms, which is a good thing, imho. We all gain more from staying with principles rather than from exposing specifics.<<
Exactly, that's why I described the site the way I did as opposed to saying "type in keyword keyword and look at site #4." <G>
But, I'm still puzzled as to why the duplicate page filter didn't catch at least a few of these 8,000 pages.
Uhh....or maybe the dup page filter DID work and the site really has 64,000 pages...
After recent checks i found sooooo much dups that it was too much work to submit them all with the google spam report form. There are many areas where the top well known spam seo's have a huge success with *tons* of domains with fully generated, cloaked dub affiliate content - not my areas, no blind comlaining! I hope, google will fix this with later updates ... however i sometimes fear, it's kind of a new concept for google to make money - these spammed areas are *full* of adword links. No complain - google should make a lot of money - the should survive, but i wouldn't like this way!
Before you consider doing that, make sure your own site is squeaky clean, or the site you get banned may be your own.
>>either send an email to search-quality@google.com or submit a query with their report form. <<
Before you consider doing that, make sure your own site is squeaky clean, or the site you get banned may be your own.
Great way for google to find additional spam! ;)
... must be a idiot who submits a report and owns a unclean site in the reported results!
when I find something like that I generally fire up NN4.7 or Opera with JS and CSS disabled and root around to investigate - including backlinks
Instead of turning these in I like to learn from them. Research for hubs, directories, portals, vortals, links in any industry and you’ll find tons of sites with multiple mirrored pages with very small elements changed, often just the keywords and the links. Who’s to say whether this is ‘right’ or not, I don’t think that is an issue.
I find sites like this all the time and sometimes with pretty good PR. I’ve attributed some of that to the linking and I believe in many cases the focused themes. We don’t normally see them at the top of results though because of the lack of content. They are routinely thrown to the top of apparently random industries. When they pop up in the SERP’s there’s frequently talk of turning them in. I’m not sure why this happens either the phenomenon of sites like this rising up in different industries or the rush to turn them in instead of learning from them and the why.
It’s usually one indexing and then they fall back down. Now, there are a few angles I would look at in this situation. The first Marcia has pointed out. What I refer to as reverse engineering. I know some folks like to just copy this and reproduce it in their own format, others who would turn it in and some of us who like to figure out why and then use that information to make our own strategies better.
If I were a site owner with a site like this and it suddenly rose in the SERP’s and I found new keywords drawing a larger amount of traffic I would investigate and then if possible enhance and focus that page so that it has a better chance of staying there the next round. People wonder about how to focus the addition of content with a large site and that can be really tough. I find that the logs are my best source of data for determining that.
Before you consider doing that, make sure your own site is squeaky clean, or the site you get banned may be your own.
Words of the wise... :)
Most sites that rise in the serps with the latest spam technique generally offer no useful content or design sensibilty, they simply target "ranks", which really has nothing to do with "sales".
I generally welcome them in the serps if they don't pass the "gee, I'll trust this site with my credit card info" test. A legitimate buyer will just back button the thing and land on a site that does pass the test. In short, it's not the first or fifth rank that really matters, it's the first legitimate site.
Now, if you are genuinely concerned about the google user experience, by all means hit the spam report. ;)
added> Mind you, we never cracked Altavista ;)
john316, i only agree in parts ...
There's a difference between the one-top-position-spam and multiple-top-positions-spam: remember the fact that most searchers don't click behind the 2nd or 3rd results page - so multiple spam results within the top #30's avoid a fair selection based on decription etc. since only a few % people see the alternatives at #30+.
When a legitimate buyer just sees tens of useless spam results he prob would click on a adword link (so only big players win) or on the window close box (nobody wins).
So IMHO such results should be reported to google.
Or decide the search was poor quality and head over to try Yahoo.
or decide the search was poor quality and head over to try Yahoo.
This is prob one of the best things to do. I like the self cleaning idea - google looses users and one day they notice that they provide bad quality (in parts) and decide to work on a better quality. ;)
... but i guess with more than 150 Mio searches a day it would take a long time ...
BTW: I'm a bit confused these days. Google say they don't get more bad quality feedback than in the past. So there's no significantly bad quality. Whenever i found bad results i thought it's just within my *small* buzz area. Not enough for google to improve anything. But then i checked a lot of very different areas, did a lot of very popular searches and there are very, very often very, very bad results - not always spam but irrelevant results.
So what does the average searcher? Does he click more on sponsored links? Does he change to Yahoo or other se's? Or maybe he simply doesn't have a problem with spam? Sometimes i think my understanding of quality, of what is spam and of what the users want is too naive.
Probably it's to early for google to think about algo changes. Probably they'll loose or allready lost users. The next update will clarify some questions ...
" the site has top 3 ranking for the main search term"
The discussion somehow slid from top 3 results to:
"multiple spam results within the top #30's"
If the top 30 is spam, you may want to check your definition of spam, some folks define it as "my site isn't there, so everyone else is spam".
If that is your definition, hitting the spam report is futile.
The discussion somehow slid
Yes, i know i mixed your spam phenomenon with another phenomenon. I appologize ... ;) However when it comes to cheating the legitimate buyer there's no difference between spam and spam.
some folks define it as "my site isn't there, so everyone else is spam
I said it clearly in many posts that i'm not one of these folks! I also described a couple of times, that my examples and definitions of spam are not based on any results or frustrations within my area! I also said, that i'm doing great with the "new" google. So there's no reason to misinterpret my posts - i'm not complaining but analyzing!
There was, about 2 years ago, an outfit that had the first 62 results of the Inktomi pages in an MSN search for a phrase taken up with cookie-cutter doorway pages that all led to the same big deparment store. There were only about 5 "normal" sites mixed in a bit, they had the whole category taken up. What was ridiculous is that it's a search term that barely ever gets searched for. They didn't last long, but those pages were all over all the search engines when you went looking.
