Guestbook Slamming - discouraging

[Lawnboyronmiller]

Ive been lurking here for a while and i've seen this discussed already, but its really discouraging as a legit webmaster to see all the guestbook spamming going on, on Google results.

Rather then penalize guestbook links, since competitors can do that to you too,

Cant google just ignore all links from pattern *guestbook* . cgi

or from common guestbook programs/paths?

Or do you follow the other site and just start guestbook spamming?

[ciml]

Google did ignore links from guestbooks for a while last year and I don't remember there being howls of appreciation for improved index quality.

If Google want to ignore links from guestbooks again then I'm sure they can do so easily; maybe they just didn't think it makes much difference?

[JayC]

maybe they just didn't think it makes much difference?

For some queries it certainly does make a difference as far as the order in which sites rank. But that itself they may not feel is that important -- if one site uses a guestbook-related PR boost to move ahead of another, but they are both relevant to the query, does it "matter" to Google?

I just saw a competitor in a client's competitive market make a big move for a niche term, and noticed that they'd increased to a PR7 this update. A quick check shows a bunch of new guestbook entries. But neither their site nor my client's site is more relevant for the query than any other, so it's hard to say that the move has corrupted the search results at all. All it's really done is irritated me. :)

[Yidaki]

ciml, congrats for your 2k post! ;)

yep, unfortunately guestbook promo seems to work this month. But my hope is that google is smart enough to switch back to ignore them.

>maybe they just didn't think it makes much difference?

... or they didn't realize the big difference it makes!?

[rfgdxm1]

Obviously so far Google hasn't seen this as being a material issue. While a few sites out there may be doing well with signing guestbooks, is it a material enough number to worry about?

[rcjordan]

Heh, heh, heh.... going to frame this one:

But neither their site nor my client's site is more relevant for the query than any other, so it's hard to say that the move has corrupted the search results at all. All it's really done is irritated me.

[Yidaki]

Didn't see this ... :)

But allthough this statement is funny, it's not symptomatic for this kind of threads, rcjordan!

[kevinpate]

I can understand Jay's irritation about someone sashshaying ahead on SERP row via a focus on guestbook strings, but yeah if the serps are returning sites with relevant content anyways, I can't see google getting all worked up about whether A is wearing a g-string and B is wearing boxers.

[Yidaki]

Come on, let's not turn this discussion into a discussion about what's spam. Lawnboyronmiller didn't complain about a site that has relevant content. He complains about "all the guestbook spamming going on, on Google results".

[Interent Yogi]

In the days before webmaster world I signed 40 odd guestbooks for a site I was optimising with some key word links in them and I am pretty sure the site is still carrying peanlty for the key words that we in the links. Just those key words. No PR. It kicks in at the end of every update. The site drops 30 odd places in the serps, for only those keys words. I can't unsign them now. My advise is don't do it, it might come back and bite ..

[rfgdxm1]

If you are right Interent_Yogi, SEOs should be signing guestbooks in large numbers. With the URL of their client's competitor. :(

[JayC]

Come on, let's not turn this discussion into a discussion about what's spam. Lawnboyronmiller didn't complain about a site that has relevant content. He complains about "all the guestbook spamming going on, on Google results".

The discussion seems relevant as far as I'm concerned. The point is that yes, Google can and has in the past ignored guestbook links. At this time they are not doing so, and speculation as to why this is where the topic turned.

Google is not currently treating guest book links differently from any other links; since we know that they could discount them and do not, most likely they don't feel that those links are significantly degrading search quality.

The thing is, there are many legitimate guest book links. A webmaster might legitimately sign a guest book just as it was intended; one of your or my customers might recommend one of our sites by dropping its link in a guest book of a related site, etc. While it'd be technically easy for Google to drop them all, it'd mean throwing out the good along with the bad... and apparently their thinking is that it isn't worth doing that.

[rfgdxm1]

My guess is Google has bigger worries when it comes to stomping spam than guestbook signing. Such as link farms, doorway pages, hidden text, etc. While I am certain that there are some very limited cases where people got ahead materially signing guestbooks, I haven't seen much evidence it is to the point that it really degrades search quality. I tend to think when people discover a competitor is doing well and appears in lots of guestbooks that perhaps it is other aspects of the algo that explains why they are doing well. In particular, about the only people who know about guestbooks possibly helping are those with decent knowledge of SEO. Anyone with decent knowledge of SEO that would sign guestbooks would also get his ducks in a row with things like on page optimization, etc.

[EquityMind]

Why can't everyone just be straight up about their SEO processes? I've always been straight up and gotten very good results even on extremely competative keywords. No need to cheat here. (YES it's cheating).

[awoyo]

It's not cheating when the game is to gather as many links as you can while applying other sound SEO practices. Back in the day before google's founders were out of diapers, webmasters worked the web adding links wherever the could. Now google comes along and decides it's "baaaad to sign guestbooks... very baaaad... so we must penalize those who have signed guestbooks." Personally, I favor the idea that google not apply weight to links from guestbooks and known link farms. I don't, however, favor the penalty Interent Yogi spoke of. Discount the guestbook link PR for everyone, but blow the site completely out of the water because he signed a few guestbooks? Come on.

<Disclaimer! do not take this seriously!>
Here's what's hot, Lawnboyronmiller. Build a site with few a pages full of great content and a billion links to affiliates on Commission Junction. Get it to rank number one for your keywords while calling it a "directory" of sorts. And the catch is, the only good link that does not go back to CJ is the one link on each page that goes to your other site, which also ranks high for the same keywords because it's getting all the PR from the "directory", who's got their PR from other, similar directories, all belonging to the same people (as whois reports), all deeplinked, all going round and round as nice as you please. Two sites, ranked 1 and 4 for the same keyword, and spaaammmm, Blatant Spam! Deeplinked Spam! Forget about hidden text spam, I'm talking hidden PAGES! Tones of them! </Disclaimer!>

That's what google likes these days. That's what's working in my neighborhood. Forget the guy who signed a few guestbooks. They probably figure were too dumb and lazy to deserve any rank if guestbooks is all we can do.

[GoogleGuy]

Actually, we could use a few more examples of people who sign guestbooks a lot--never hurts to have more data to improve our algorithms. JayC/Yidaki/Lawnboyronmiller, if you want to fill in a spam form, we'll use that data..

[Yidaki]

#3 of 660,000 results. 452 backlinks, 450 of them are guestbooks - from us university guestbooks (edu) to nice high pr sample guestbooks. Don't know if it's a good example but you now have another report to play with ...

;)

[EquityMind]

GoogleGuy, I sent you in a really good example of Guestbook spamming to the spamreport.

[awoyo]

First of all, I feel I should apologize for my last post in this thread as it was a bit excessive in the negative. Chalk that up to a year of frustration over this very topic, four of my favorite beers, and a big fat Dominican cigar with a hole in it. However, I still don't get it. Why assess a penalty to those of us who have, in the past, signed a few guestbooks? Why, googleguy, ask people to act as internet cops, reporting guestbook spam to improve your algorithms. With all the engineering prose going on over at google, it must be an easy matter of tweaking your algo in order to NOT offer PR from guestbook pages, and lift the ban on those of us who took advantage of a (The) most fundamental concept of the Internet. Links!

I'd venture to say a huge percentage of the people who signed guestbooks are no more spammers that you or I. If they were, they would have thousands of guestbook entries, not tens. I spend more time on the job fighting Real spam that I can even count, and yet I'm penalized. And when looking at some of the more sophisticated spam proliferating every corner of google, it's like getting thrown in jail for jay walking when the guy next to you gets away with murder.

[Yidaki]

awoyo, i just can talk for myself: i didn't speak of tens of guestbooks. I spoke about more than 450. Other examples i have spam more than 1k guestbooks. I also don't want to see these sites penalized - but the links should simply get ignored.

BTW: googleguy didn't ask for internet cops ... he asked for examples.

[BigDave]

awoyo,

Google has maintained that they will not "penalize" you for guestbook spam, as your competitor can sign your name to guestbooks.

You need to read these guestbook discussion carefully. The biggest penalty you will get is to have your incoming PR from guestbooks blocked AND you might earn yourself a hand check to see what else you are up to. Anyone that will go to the trouble of signing 10,000 guestbooks will likely have committed a few other sins.

A few guestbook entries isn't going to get you in trouble. In that case, you are using the guestbooks in the way they were intended.

[awoyo]

BTW: googleguy didn't ask for internet cops ... he asked for examples.

You're right, Yidaki. I stand corrected.

1K guestbooks?!?

LOL... dang! I think I have about 50.

I have to confess, at the time of the signing, I thought I was "inspired".

1K?!?

:)

[rfgdxm1]

>However, I still don't get it. Why assess a penalty to those of us who have, in the past, signed a few guestbooks? Why, googleguy, ask people to act as internet cops, reporting guestbook spam to improve your algorithms.

Hopefully the algo tweak would be to ignore guestbooks when counting PageRank. Although I agree that Google should be able to figure this out by themselves.

>I'd venture to say a huge percentage of the people who signed guestbooks are no more spammers that you or I.

You just got me thinking of something that hadn't occurred to me. Around here we have been assuming that a webmaster who has signed 1,000 guestbooks is doing so to cheat with Google. However, when you mentioned the most important concept of the Internet is links, something occurred to me. What if a lot of these people signing guestbooks are clueless about Google and PageRank, and are doing this just to spam? As in, it isn't Googlebot they are interested in, but the idea is to get their URL seen by as many eyeballs as possible. I've seen a number of cases where not only was the URL added, but also included a *blatantly* spammy entry into the guestbook. As in "Super prices on Widgets! By all your widgets from us." Why do that if you are only concerned about Googlebot? Should Google punish sites just because they decided to use guestbook signing as a marketing strategy?

[awoyo]

And you got me thinking of something, rfgdxm1. How do you search within the results of google's linkdomain.com command? Out of linkgoogle.com's 245,000 returns, how many of these might be gustbook entries from "way back when"?

[rfgdxm1]

Heh. No way of doing this that I know of besides hand counting them. And, this wouldn't be accurate anyhow. The link: command on Google shows only pages with a PR of 4 or higher. Most guestbooks have a lower PR than that. Thus you'd need to try this at Alltheweb.