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peace
Because you are reporting something that isn't spam according to them!
Read their guidelines. Why do you think putting a bunch of drivel on pages breaks the rules? Why do you think plaigarized content breaks the rules?
Mirrors, cloaking, hidden text... that is spam. The spam report form works great -- for reporting what Google calls spam. People who complain about it seem to be very often (not always) concerned about what Google does not consider reportable spam.
Spam and garbage are not the same thing.
However, that alone might be grounds for copyright infringement.
I think Google should check text to see if it has common words in it. If a paragraph has no instances of any of the following:
a, the, and, in, at, of, if, when, what to, on, in, was, is, has, etc.
Then it should be destroyed by Uncle Spam
They can read about how to file a DMCA notice with Google here -
[google.com...]
"...Do what I do - give them a "" with the toolbar.
I think Google should check text to see if it has common words in it. If a paragraph has no instances of any of the following:
a, the, and, in, at, of, if, when, what to, on, in, was, is, has, etc.
Then it should be destroyed by Uncle Spam..."
A sitemap page usually has none of the above, may not even have paragraphs, however both for users and search engines it might be the most useful page on any site. Where is the spam?
Better to devote time developing content :)
Do what I do - give them a ":(" with the toolbar.
Interesting, I do that as well. I wonder how many others do. Not sure it is making any difference though!
robertito62 - this is referring to using the voting functions on the toolbar. Can't remember but it may be one of the advanced features that you have to set up.
I've got plenty of those paragraphs... as long as they aren't written in Englisn, you cannot expect paragraphs to contain those words, don't you? ;)
Dan
I think it would be easy to tell what language text is in. The Google translator seems to be able to. :)
-phish
So what can google do? Well, they can't respond to what I'm sure is a flood of spam complaints. At least not on an efficient scale. It seems (by todays serps) that there would a billion of them to deal with. For one thing, most of the people complaining about seo-spam are the webmaster jockeying for position in the serps. That alone opens the door for even more abuse. Imagine the time it would take to hand check every complaint. And, to employ a "safe" measure of penalty in this post Bob Massa atmosphere, would be enough to drive anybody nuts.
Do they tweak the algo to eliminate certain "link farm" structured sites? I'm sure they can, but to get it right and leave the innocent alone would be a daunting task. Especially with the knowledge that someone will figure out the new algo just as fast as they figured out the old one, buy a hundred more domain names and go at it again. Google would be like the proverbial dog chasing his tail, round and round.
I'll tell you what, and I hate to say it, but I think we need to seriously look at some kind of regulation. To say that we need to make spam illegal is way too simple. But consider legislation that said that by spamming googles serps, a website owner is compromising, destroying, or altering, the intended purpose of googles patented technology. Some people would still try it, but if there were a few convictions with stiff monetary penalties enforced, I'll bet it would make spammers think twice before they spammed google again.
Google doesn't do anything to fix what's wrong because it's not Google that's broken, although I still get plenty mad at google for garbage serps, and lots of them, it's the spammers that are impeding googles ability to serve me the information I need.
heres the thing I still dont agree with..instead of doing nothing they should make an attempt. The purpose of webmasters jockeying for position though is not always the case. Even as an avid user of Google for my searches, I get frustrated having to go 4 or 5 pages deep to get results I'm lookig for on popular searches that turn up 100,000 plus results.Google made the rules..e-commerce relies very heavily on Google, and yes position is important because alot of people's livelyhoods depend on it, but it's also affecting what made Google what it is today. My whole point is that they need to take firmer actions against spam. i do feel and I will say it again, that they rely too much on the algo doing the work. They need to take actions that will make people think twice about doing it again if they get caught. We should have an enviornment where everyone has a level playing field.
-phish
>search on "blue widgets" and you get a site called "orange stuff
>that has nothing to do with widgets" in the top ten results...
>then you click on more from this site, and it has 360 different
>pages more than half of them you click on and they are just
>pages loaded line after line with keywords ...
Why do you click "more" if the title of the result allready says that it's irrelevant and not worth a click? Just move to the next result - remember, there are ten results per page. ;)
If they disturb you because they hold "your" position just build a better site with real content and target a wider range of keywords related to the "top word(s)" - you'll get more and better traffic and it'll be better for your nerves. ;)
<added>
>they rely too much on the algo doing the work.
>They need to take actions that will make people think twice ...
Impossible! Google crawls and indexes 3+ bill pages every month. They plan to get bigger and crawl more and more. Scoring so many pages MUST be done by a machine.
There have been a # of cases where spammers have been sued for this sort of thing!
One judge described this practice as the same as a shop owner posting a sign with another company's trademark in front of its shop.
You may want check out this article [nolo.com] about this topic -
You should also try searching in Google for -
meta tag lawsuit
and you will find plenty of information about this subject.
If they did this with your own trademarks, you may want to consider one or more of the following -
* Sending them a letter demanding they remove it
* Conside pursuing legal action against them
* Look into filing a DMCA complaint with Google to remove these listings
* Look into filing a DMCA complaint with their hosting company to have the offending site "taken down"
Using someone else's trademarks to steal search results from them is a lot more serious that spamming.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 11:45 am (utc) on Feb. 22, 2003]
[edit reason] url fixed [/edit]
Since Google has never detailed what it thinks are problem results or tactics, how do you know it's a problem?
You're actually in a better spot when a competitor does something this blatant. No need to worry about spam interpretations, just slap 'em with a take-down notice - problem solved!
[edited by: ciml at 3:51 pm (utc) on Feb. 22, 2003]
[edit reason] See charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
Hope that helps,
GoogleGuy
The webmaster must be getting 50.000-70-000 or more unique visitors a day with all the spam.
Seems like sometimes massive Google spamming will pay the bills and a lot more, at least for this guy.
He already did at least $100.000 this month (guess). So he won't cry if Google removes the sites in the future.
Some people would still try it, but if there were a few convictions with stiff monetary penalties enforced, I'll bet it would make spammers think twice before they spammed google again.
Convictions from whom, the United Nations? You don’t need to submit a site to Google to get indexed; so you would need a law stating that having several html pages on a server with an Internet connection anywhere in the world, that contain links to each other, non-coherent paragraphs, and/or repetitive words would be illegal. Perhaps if there was global communism this would be possible. Until then (lucky us) it ain’t gonna happen.
The law is pretty clear. You send a notice swearing that you have the legal right to publish the content. The copier gets a notice from Google. If they also swear that they have the legal right to publish the content, then it gets sticky, but I haven't run into a cheater with the gonads to do such a thing yet. Time will tell. About once a month I find another "company" out there who has copied a page or two of my company's work. The unfortunate drawback to filing a DMCA complaint is the inevitable hacking attempts that follow... Be sure to button down the hatches first. And make a daily backup.
-phish
Hire a lawyer. What does that have to do with Google?
try it for yourself and see,
There is a lot to be said for being pro-active in cleaning up your own neighbourhood rather than sitting back, wringing your hands and asking Google to do it for you. I guess the downside is the potential for creating groups of self appointed moral guardians of the index which can, and probably will, turn into self serving attacks on any competitor.
Do you concentrate only on your own pet areas or do you go further afield? What criteria do you apply when deciding what is spam and what is not?
I see enough hidden links to realise that Google's filters miss a lot of hidden stuff and the search results offered to the viewer are starting to become distorted because of it. It may be small change in terms of the big picture... but its an indication that the non-stop barrage of seo manipulation in the commercial areas seems to be influencing results faster than Google can identify and eliminate....
Seeing reports of people taking it into their own hands to bring about remedial actions comes as no surprise at all... now if Google would just change the "guidelines" to read "Site Subission Standards", give them some teeth and publish the results.
"Google found it necessary to remove 2247 sites from the index during Feb 2003 for contravention of our standards. Click here to read our site submission standards before proceeding" This message to be placed on the submission form.
Message to spammers... "when (not if) we catch you, you're gone."
Ah well, we all have our little fantasies, don't we?
