Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
[google.com...]
However no action was taken and site is happily #1 still.
Why Google doesn't hear spam reports?
What can you do in that case?
3) be so good with your 'white hat' stuff that the 'black hats' can't come near you anyway
There you go! ;)
Is'nt automation the essence of the product that is Google, if its not automated then its not extrarordinary and not what Google was all about,maybe thats why they dont hand edit, they are probably torn between the revenues generated from scrap n crap and having a difficult time auto-filtering without taking a lot of good sites down with them.
Google answer this very explicitly themselves:
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.
So you have no reason to expect a hand penalty to be applied to your competitor.
So why haven't Google created an algorithm to detect and block hidden text?
There are 2 potential reasons:
1. It is very, very difficult to reliably unravel all the CSS,DHTML & HTML features that could result in hidden text.
2. Many, many sites would be penalised for accidental hidden text (although I'm not sure Google would worry too much about this) - have you checked every cell of every table of every page of every website to make sure you haven't slipped up somewhere?
Personally I hope they never attempt to penalise hidden text automatically. Firstly because the benefit that any of my competitors would get from using it is so marginal. But secondly, and more importantly, it would be one more thing for Google to get wrong - one more reason for your site to suddenly and inexplicably disappear from the SERPS. I would much rather compete with sites using hidden text than contend with the inevitable bugs that such an algorithm would bring.
1) ignore and leave them up to their own demise (eventually the engine will get it right)
OK advice, though I still think that if "white hats" fought more often against "black hats" (not only in the virtual world but in the real one as well), the world would be a better place. Unfortunately too many people live under the slogan "why me? why should I care? life is too short. better somebody else". But that's my personal opinion and if somebody feels comfortable living and ignoring the injustice, that's their right.
2) if you can't beat 'em join 'em ... get disposable domains and do what they're doing too
NO WAY! the day this advice will be my only option to survive on the net, I'll start doing something else for living, but I will never go against my beliefs of what is right and what is wrong.
3) be so good with your 'white hat' stuff that the 'black hats' can't come near you anyway
This is an excellent advice! Actually, that's what I am doing on the Internet since 1998.
To another poster:
have you checked every cell of every table of every page of every website to make sure you haven't slipped up somewhere?
Sorry to disappoint you, but I bet on my sites you'll not find a single "stray" word of hidden text. On all sites and all pages.
you either do it or not. that hat crap has got to go
"SPAM: Sites Positioned Above Me..."
That tired cliché gets trotted out every so often that Webmaster World should have a macro button for the convenience of the black hats who use it. :-)
white hat: pays to get directory links for Google only (regardless of what he might say here), uses an extra keyword on the title and a few more on the body.
need I explain black hat?
how is manipulating search engine results white hat or black hat?
you either do it or not. that hat crap has got to go
Couldn't agree with you more. Last time I checked manipulating the search engines wasn't illegal. Who's to say people are cheating or not in building pages?
If you did a site on Blue Widgets, you would put Blue Widgets in the title. How is that "manipulating" anything? Or are you suggesting we do like so many others and just put "Homepage" in the title instead?
No one said that that's bad at all. I was responding to someone said that he didn't see the difference between the black and white ones. I described what what I think a white SEO would do. The black one cloaks, hides text, has pages about Nelson Mandela redirect to v&a$ra etc. etc.
In addition to this, I have multiple pages that don't show the same thing to a regular browser as they do in Google's cache. Throw in dozens of directory sites that have scraped content from my page, and you find there isn't room for original content at the top. It's buried beneath all the useless cr@p!
Reporting this to Google does nothing. If Google truly wanted to present the most relevant results to its searchers, they would take care of these SPAM 101 sites immediately - but actions speak louder than words, so Google must not have much of a problem presenting this garbage to its searchers. I think people are going to start going elsewhere if this continues.
Google doesn't differentiate between white hat spam and black hat spam. All attempts to deliberately improve your rankings are spam to Google.
That includes adding one keyword to a title to improve your ranking. It includes changing a <B> tag to a <H> tag because you think you might rank better. It includes even thinking about PR when selecting link partners.
That's why Google keeps adjusting its algo to try and block such spam attempts.
(lights blue touchpaper) Every member of this forum is spamming Google.
Maybe that's an exaggeration, perhaps one in a thousand isn't.
What Google thinks of as spam ranges from the manipulative, through the deceptive, to the illegal. That's where the white/black distinction comes in, but it's all spam to Google.
Do I like being thought of as a spammer by Google? No, I think the SEO I do is perfectly normal, professional and ethical business practice. But then, it's their search engine.
Google's guidelines (for what they are worth) only cover what to do to get spidered and included in the index, they do not condone any attempt to improve rankings, and they just warn you off some things that might (or might not) attract a hand penalty.
We choose whether to follow Google's guidelines. They have no control over what we can and cannot put on our websites, and we have no control over whether Google does or does not include our websites.
Many of us draw the line at doing anything deceptive - few of us draw the line at doing anything manipulative.
Assume you're unaware a thing called SEO even exists. You're the brick and mortar category killer in a company founded by your grandpa. You are the undisputed Micro Wodget industry leader, the Micro Wodget authority.
You hire a geek to usher your company into the digital age. Your new website contains simple, direct, honest text which says it all succinctly: "This is the best Micro Wodget on the market today. Notice the attention to detail, made to our exact specifications by precision machinists in Switzerland. And our price can't be beat."
3 months later and Google says you don't exist. What do you do? You change your text. Now it reads: "Looking for Micro Wodgets? We supply fine Micro Wodgets to fulfill any Micro Wodget application. We can also customize any Micro Wodget; just tell our Micro Wodget engineers your Micro Wodget needs and we'll have a customized Micro Wodget delivered to you within days. Our Micro Wodget prices can't be beat, so buy from the Micro Wodget industry leader"...and so on.
You pinch your nose and trade links with all your competitors in the trade, and submit to a ton of directories. Lo and behold it works. Now Google sees you, and when surfers search for Micro Wodgets, they see you, the true industry leader, in position one.
Are you a spammer, or Google's best friend, helping Google find and deliver the most relevant site in a search for Micro Wodgets?
The problem is that the cat is out of the bag. Everybody knows that you can make money on Google now. Or at least enough people know to make it very crowded. A lot of us have been making relatively easy money for a while and don't like it that others have found it out. I have seen (me included) spammers complain about spam. We just don't like that others are doing it or they seem to be making the same amount of money with less effort. Some of us have put a ton of work into making our spam and making it so that it ranks well and looks better than a scraper site or a site that just says "buy keyword look here for kw you can find more information about kw on forums and newsgroups." I hate to see some person rank with a site like that they put up in an afternoon. They may make more because they put up a zillion of them and never stop. I suppose I could do the same but I'm pretty lazy. I don't like to work.
Ogletree is my alias.
So far I've resisted the temptation, but the difference between being above the fold and below on the search page is many sales a day. Both sites should rank well otherwise and offer good products, but neither moved to the top until they stared posting these illegible paragraphs of spam. It doesn't appear to have hurt their sales.
I've increased my keyword density by other means and moved up also by using related words, but it looks like that will take you only so far with Google. I'm slowly coming to the opinion that customers don't really read your text or care what it says as long as you offer the products they are looking for at a fair price.
I agree. if I'm looking for something specific I don't care to read 4 paragraphs of spam. Sadly, right now those pages are ahead in my field and I still can't rank for my name. I added 2-3 sentences. It's stupid and useless, but I have to make a living.
two sites that hold the top four positions
That's a huge chunk of the problem right there. 2=2, not 4.
According to [men.style.com...] “Evil is what Sergey [Brin] says is evil.”
Hidden text and other kinds of spam are clearly defined in Google's guidelines. However, is that kind of spam EVIL enough to be filtered by Google?
You better ask Sergey!
I have deployed the recommendations at [webmasterworld.com...] . I'm happy with the overall performance of my Web sites. I have many pages targeting many search phrases which generate many referrals per day.
However, the main search term targeted via the homepage is still beat by some Web sites using hidden text and doorway pages.
I don't think Brett's recommendations "really suck". Instead, I think spam is what Sergey [Brin] says is spam.
So, we'll have to wait ...
This kinda reminds me of three major league umpires interviewed before the world series some time back. They were each asked about their play calling:
Umpire 1 said: I call them as I see them.
Umpire 2 said: I call them like they are.
Umpire 3 said: They are what I call them.
I think Google is of the Umpire 3 type.
I quess I'll just write a spammy keyword filled paragraph and place it at the bottom of the page like my competitors. Apparently no one will ever read it anyway. It really was more enjoyable when I was just trying to provide my customers with a site that provided them with the information and products they desired and tried to make it as painless as possible. It was also more profitable.
Yeah, supplemental listings are sooooooo pointless. If you're conscious enough to navigate to a site's landing page, certainly you can navigate the rest of the site to explore on your own. And without any question whatsoever, searchers are served far better if they're given an assortment of diverse single entries rather than a logjam of repetitive same-site pages in the serps. You'd think with all that PhD power over at Googleplex they'd have figured that one out, I mean it's so self-evident. It's a no-brainer.
What they want is for every searcher to be able to find a page, any page, that is relevant enough to satisfy the searcher.
Google is going to be less bothered by that on-topic spam page than having a porn site come up for a search on teletubbies. Off topic SPAM has a much higher importance.
But even if it is on-topic SPAM, and a quality site, Google does not want to be taken for a fool. If the site is really pushing things, and what they are doing is having an *actual* effect on the rankings, then they will hand edit if it is bad enough.
80% of the spam reports that I have made are gone within days. The rest were gone from the top within 2 updates. None of them have returned till they cleaned up their act.
How did I get a 100% success rate on my SPAM reports? By only reporting sites that are being very, very bad, and filing very detailed spam reports.
I have not reported any sites where I have not been able to honestly check off at least 1/3 of the check boxes on the spam report form. They all either practiced extreme cloaking or used deceptive redirects.
In the SPAM reports I detailed exactly what they were doing and how to reproduce the results, step by step.
check off at least 1/3 of the check boxes on the spam report form
Check boxes...Where do I find this form?
Where do I find this form?
Try searching for [spam report] in google.
