Ultra Cross Linking - how can they get away with it

Ultra Cross Linking

[xr2boy]

I have just been looking at the very famous "hotels" only web site. It is advertised on TV. Lowest Prices etc. They must be doing the worst cross link I have ever seen.

Hint Click on the period (full stop) at the bottom of the front page.

Surely this cannot work.

What does everyone else think?

[creep]

I think there is going to be another clean sweep of all the spammers just like what happened last march-april. Alot of people are doing alot of things that used to get you kicked out and now they are either changing policies or focusing on other things instead.
Crosslinking is a wierd one though....I imagine it's hard to have a feature built into the algorythym that automatically finds excesive crosslinkers but dosent ban the simple sites that are merely trying to share traffic between there other sites.

[xr2boy]

But why if they think there is legitiate reason to show those other sites would they link from only a period. Clearly it is there for bots only.

[cjtripnewton]

Google won't do anything about it unless someone reports it. It's a commonly-shared myth around here that Google has algorythyms that detect such things. The Google anti-spam algorythm is a bunch of employees reading spam reports and investigating, then manually removing sites from the index.

There are thousands of sites out there that have 1x1 pixel invisible links on their pages which have never been detected by the mythological invisible link detector. When you report them, they disappear within a couple weeks.

There are thousands of others that are using the age old font color=background color trick that haven't been detected. Others use style sheets to pull the same trick. Others are just using comment tags. When you report them, they disappear within a couple weeks.

The same goes for cross-linking.

[europeforvisitors]

In that case, it should be reported. Indeed, Google now says it's one's duty to report SEO abuses:

"Ask your SEO firm if it reports every spam abuse that it finds to Google using our spam complaint form at [google.com...] Ethical SEO firms report deceptive sites that violate Google's spam guidelines."

[rfgdxm1]

Interesting find europeforvisitors. The question is whether Google is fulfilling its duty to act on complaints? Many have complained they often don't. If I am an ethical SEO, I won't bother reporting abuse to Google unless I see Google is acting on legit complaints.

[Dante_Maure]

It's a commonly-shared myth around here that Google has algorythyms that detect such things. The Google anti-spam algorythm is a bunch of employees reading spam reports and investigating, then manually removing sites from the index.

If you can email me from a legitimate address @Google.com, I'll gladly take your word for it.

Otherwise, I'm much more inclined to look at the facts which support that there are indeed many filters which are very much automated.

GoogleGuy has repeatedly stated that they do read the spam reports and may manually intervene in cases that are particularly "annoying". (sic) He has also stated that this is the exception rather than the rule, as Google prefers to take these reports into account while focusing on engineering solutions that don't necessitate human intervention.

Hundreds of zeus link directory pages have gotten PR0'd, and I hardly think that Google payrolled an anti-zeus army to achieve this.

Thousands of link farm participants have been snubbed.

Thousands of sites were penalized and/or dropped all at once when Google instituted an agressive anti-crosslinking campaign some time ago.

GoogleGuy even commented on one occasion about possibly having one of their filters tuned "a bit too high", when there was a public outcry from countless innocents that were caught in their anti-spam net.

Of course there are going to be tens of thousands of sites that manage to slip below the radar with countless tactics... that doesn't mean that there are no filters whatsoever.

That would be like suggesting credit card companies have no automated security measures, because some people still get away with credit fraud.

Of course it works in Google's favor to have the idea spread of an inescapable all-seeing filter capable of banning sites as soon as the webmaster even thinks of using a dodgy tactic. ;)

But... propagating the "myth" that there are no spam filters at all is not only unsupported by the facts, but potentially harmful to a new webmaster that doesn't know enough to see this clearly.

[fathom]

Agree Dante_Maure.

Google won't do anything about it unless someone reports it. It's a commonly-shared myth around here that Google has algorythyms that detect such things. The Google anti-spam algorythm is a bunch of employees reading spam reports and investigating, then manually removing sites from the index.

Pure rubbish!

With 3 billion plus web pages indexed, the top of the heap get picked through quite thoroughly and routinely.

I'll stick my neck out to say if a site (near the top) had 20+ million competitive pages and employed these tactics their gone immediately, and long before they could be reported.

It's a little like driving down a back road that is rarely used. Speed all you want... you won't likely get caught.

Do it in the middle of the day on a busy highway... the tickets (penalties) pile up until no more license (google results).

[Dante_Maure]

Taken directly from Google's Webmaster Guidelines [google.com]...

If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at [google.com...] Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.