Google spam reports... when to pull the trigger?

[kidder]

I was just wondering how often and under what circumstances other webmasters here pull the trigger and file a google spam report on a suspect competitor? I've been looking at a couple of sites pushing into some familiar ground, I can see they are not 100% clean and I'm thinking about squeeling on them. I can of course get heavy handed and try to knock them out but that will then expose our site to a degree of risk.. What to do?

[MLHmptn]

If I see spam, I report it because it's not improving anybody's user experience being shown and/or indexed but I don't report stuff just because they are a competitor either. It has to be blatant spam or G will just brush your spam report off. If they are blatantly spamming do it immediately though to improve the user experience. Also, what's the "heavy handed" supposed to mean?! Are you trying to admit in a nonchalant way that your own site is somewhat spammy? If your site has no issues you need not worry about retaliation.

Remember, there is ALMOST nothing that a competitor can do to harm your site according to GORG.

[internetheaven]

I was just wondering how often and under what circumstances other webmasters here pull the trigger and file a google spam report on a suspect competitor?

Never, anymore. Have reported some blatant stuff and not a single one every got penalised. I believe the description of the spam reporting system is that is a general info box for engineers to make algorithm changes.

I don't think spam reports create a manual review at all.

[dstiles]

I don't think they do much good either.

I reported to google way back that ANY forum posting that contained a specific domain was definitely prn injection into dead forums. Someone had scraped an SSL URL from a careless customer's Control Panel access, probably through a keylogger in an internet cafe or hotel scenario. There has never been publicly advertised access using the domain (robots.txt says all disallowed) so it should never have been in google or any other engine.

Some of the forums have died, probably through domain expiration, but some forums are in google, listed for that specific URL and for literally hundreds of other URLs. There was no evidence on any forum I looked at that it had been legitimtely in use for months at least.

Five minutes would have shown a reviewer that the report was accurate and that the forums were now pure prn form spam. Ergo, no one ever looked. Nor did I have any report back.

[tedster]

Reporting spam to Google gives the engineers more data points to work with - instances of what gets through their current spam detection. But unless something illegal is involved, a spam report is unlikely to generate any kind of immediate action, just a possible, eventual tweak of the algo.

Parasite hosting is one of the epidemic problems that Google is wrestling with - and it affects many websites that are running on common platforms that are not updated with the most recent security updates. I can see how this kind of report would fall into the "let's work on the algo" category, rather than any immediate action.

[dstiles]

I accept the idea, tedster, but acting on the report would have prevented subsequent pollution of their database. I doubt it would have taken much to add in a short bit of code to kill those AND many other sites based on the content layout, which was very consistent.

Whatever, the tweaks don't seem to have worked if they ever were added.

My current view of google is that they seem to be adding as much as they can, including illegal sites KNOWN to be so by their IPs and domains and plus useless twitter garbage, whilst not doing much to clean up their database. And at the same time apparently managing to punish a lot of genuine sites. And other anti-social behaviour, of course. :)

[tedster]

I'm not defending the way that Google does things - just saying the way it is, you know?

[Lame_Wolf]

I reported one a while back and took about a month for them to do anything. The person has kept their account. (Bringing attention to adverts).

I reported one today. This one was asking people to click on the adverts. I will (if I remember) to report back here how long this one will take, and if they will keep their account or not.

PS: None were my niche. Just annoyed by blatent and serious TOS breaking.

(Above relating to Adsense)

(General below)
Anything like hidden text, blackhat etc always gets reported by me. Rarely, anything happens.

[edited by: Lame_Wolf at 11:49 pm (utc) on Mar 13, 2010]

[tedster]

Reports about Adsense violations are definitely a different story than reports about spam in the organic SERPs.

What might seem like a no-brainer to us as individuals can look very different at the scale of an operation that is Google's size.

[BaseballGuy]

How do I report a massive linkfarm to Google?

I found "paid links" report and I found "Spam" report, but I haven't been able to find a form to report a massive link farm to Google.

How do you guys handle this when you find out your competitors are up to shady stuff?

[edited by: tedster at 2:42 am (utc) on Mar 14, 2010]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[tedster]

You found two of the standard avenues, BaseballGuy. There are some other ideas listed in our Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com]. Also Matt Cutts recently asked for link spam reports, from his blog [mattcutts.com] and he gave some special instructions.

[BaseballGuy]

Thanks, Ted !

[internetheaven]

What might seem like a no-brainer to us as individuals can look very different at the scale of an operation that is Google's size.

But if they already have a manual review team set up to investigate red flags sent up by Googlebot software - it seems kind of rude and arrogant to ignore human flagged websites ... well it does to me.

[buckworks]

I have used the spam report a total of twice.

On one occasion, the site I reported was totally gone from the index within 48 hours. For the other, nothing much seemed to happen.

My advice: if something spammy is extremely bad, report it in detail ... enough detail that an engineer looking at the situation for the first time would have no trouble understanding what's happening and what the problems are.

But for "ordinary" spam, submit a quick note of complaint via "Help Us Improve" at the bottom of the search results, then get back to your own work. Do not get wrapped up in obsessing about a competitor's evil ways, just submit a quick note then get back to your own work.

In general, it's more productive to focus your energies on positive ways to improve your own site and strengthen its web presence. A spam report might (or might not) help you get past one competitor, but positive work on your own site will help you get past them all.