Spamming

How often can you repeat keywords

[Ove]

Hi
i have a phonecall yesterday and a man asked me if i could help him with the se`s
so i checked the site and saw that they are i 4 position on a sigle word bed but in swedish. Then i saw they have repeated the word bed 4 times in the title i would call that spam. But if i do something on that site first thing i would do is take away the repeated words in the title. I also have seen alot of pages i google that have hidden text (the same color as the background)are there easier to spam today than before?

/Ove

[agerhart]

Ove,

I have posted things like this at least 3 or 4 times in the past two months or so! I think that these things are slipping by Google.

There are two options that you can pursue in this case. If the site is getting good rankings for the desired keywords than why mess with it. But, if Google does catch on they may penalize the site.

Options:

1) Buy another domain and optimize that one for other keywords while leaving the good ranking and letting it ride out.

2) Change the "spam" title and hope that is does not change the ranking. I think that if you take out some words so that you have 2 or maybe 3 keywords instead of 4 you may be okay.

I think that I would change it, and since it isn't a huge change I think that you will be okay.

I think that the hidden text and spam titles all comes around to ethics in a weird way. Yeah, maybe you can slip some hidden text by Google, but this is not good business or optimization. In my opinion

[georged]

I've wondered about this as well - I used to report this kind of thing to Google (and I don't mean minor stuff like putting the keyword four times in the title) and they never did anything about it.
I'm sure it's pretty easy for them to spot, my theory is that if it is in fact a valid keyphrase for the info on the page, they aren't really bothered how the ranking is achieved. If the customer finds what he wants, so what?
Does anyone think that's a reasonable theory for Google's approach to spam?
I agree with agerhart though, it's not good business or optimisation.

[agerhart]

Does anyone think that's a reasonable theory for Google's approach to spam?

I have always held Google a little higher than this in my mind......maybe I shouldn't.

I would hope that they wouldn't use this theory

[Bolotomus]

my theory is that if it is in fact a valid keyphrase for the info on the page, they aren't really bothered how the ranking is achieved.

I think this is exactly what Google does. Their method of measuring inbound links means that the only spam pages that come out on top are well-linked spam pages. And if they are well linked, they must have something to do with the subject, regardless of whether or not they use invisible text tricks.

I don't think this is a matter of anything "slipping by" -- they want to do it that way, it makes the most sense. It's nearly impossible to detect hidden text, anyhow.