Smart Pages

[novasoft]

Hi,
I have heard lots of varying opinions on smart pages.

Some say that google bans sites that use smart pages where as others say that theyve gotten away with it, and with great positions.

My question: Since search engines arent able to read flash, how does google know that you are using flash redirection from a keyword rich page to the main site( smartpage) , unless a human intervenes?

Does google have a set of volunteers that do this? i mean unless you competitor complains about your page how will google ever find out?

Question two: if google does eventually find out and penalizes the site, which site gets penalized the one that holds the smart pages, or the site that the smart pages are redirecting to?

Thanks for your comments..

[Skylo]

Hi novasoft and welcome to WW.

Um, excuse my ignorance but could you explain to me what a smart page is? I have never heard anyone refer to this. By smart do you mean dynamic? An asp page?

Happy Surfing:)
Skye

[richardb]

Er skylo I think novasoft is referring to doorway generating software?!

<snip>

Rich

[edited by: pageoneresults at 3:58 pm (utc) on July 23, 2003]
[edit reason] No specifics please. Thank you. [/edit]

[Imaster]

For a minute I thought you were referring to advertisement banners of Smartpages.com ;)

[novasoft]

Skylo, smart pages are doorway pages that are highly satured with the keywords you want to target and instead of regular javascript or meta refresh redirects employs flash redirection.

The contention is that since the googlebot cant decipher flash, its unable to detect the page as a doorway page.

This technique was first promoted by "Renowned e-marketer" Stephen Price in his e-book "The whole truth"

There are 2 main software that design these smart pages that i have seen.They are

<snip> from armand morin and <snip>

The latter offers a free download that makes 6 pages.

The technique claims that 10 pages is the optimal number to go for( for reasons unknown to me).

Its quite an easy task to make the remaining 4 pages taking the 6 generated by the trial software..

Well back to my questions... Anybody tried out smartpages ever?

Thanks

[edited by: pageoneresults at 3:59 pm (utc) on July 23, 2003]
[edit reason] No specifics please. Thank you. [/edit]

[Skylo]

Thanks novasoft, hmmm that is interesting. Very sneaky and obviously it must work if people have come up with the idea and it is still around.
If you are debating whether to use it or not and whether or not google will detect it, your decision would have to come down to the ethics thing that has been discussed many a time here. Do the right thing and in the long term you will benefit. But how long is long term? And are your competitors beating you cause they employ this dodgy maneuvre?
I Frankly would not use it and notify google. At the end of the day google will eventually find a way to counteract this and punish those doing it:)
So has anyone used this. Be interesting to see someones experience on this

Well thanks for the education on smart pages, I'm back to the link development:)
Skye

[claus]

In another thread i had a discussion with a webmaster whose main competitors had a keyword stuffed flash page. I ended up concluding that it was "right on that very thin line", as the keywords (commented out text in this case) did nothing for users, only for SE's. They did rank high.

As SE bots could not read the Flash page, but could read the text (which was reported to be relevant), i figured that it was hard telling if this was bad or good cloaking (as in "ethical", not as in "skilled"). Anyway, cloaking it is.

/claus

<added>This was not reported to be a doorway though, it was their main site</added>

[richardb]

Hi Claus

In another thread i had a discussion with a webmaster whose main competitors had a keyword stuffed flash page. I ended up concluding that it was "right on that very thin line", as the keywords (commented out text in this case) did nothing for users, only for SE's. They did rank high.

I have always assumed that SE's ignored commented out text, how long ago was that thread?

Rich

[claus]

richardb, i have spent more than an hour looking for it now, using site search as well as Google and also looking through stickies (it is no longer in My Threads). It was less than two weeks ago, i think. I am sure that the expression "right on that very thin line" is very close to, if not perfectly, verbatim. I also recall something else from my post in this thread: "usability for users: no." "usability for SEs: yes." (again, close to verbatim, perhaps with "accesibility" in stead). I did not see the flash site myself and i do not remember who was the other party in the thread.

The thread could have been removed, as the flash-discussion was only a minor offspring of a general issue that has been touched a lot of times, i think it might have been htaccess, redirect, or something like that. It could very well have been considered a me-too post, but i don't even remember which forum it was in (it was on WW though, i can visually recall the formatting of my last post).

Sorry i can't be of much help, i feel rather bad about it, it wasn't something i made up, but what can i do now - should i save all posts to my local hard drive or what? Does this happen often? I guess you will have to regard my last post as utter nonsense and the comment-thing as yet another unconfirmed piece of speculation. Sad about that i am - think i better collect a few nuggets i've spread around the place right this very moment.

/claus

[shasan]

that flash redirect thing sounds a little fishy. I don't think I would be comfortable in trying to 'fool' the search engine that blatantly.

my $0.02