Google Payday Loan search update to target spammy queries

[Whitey]

Matt Cutts: We just started a new ranking update today for some spammy queries. See 2:30-3:10 of this video: [goo.gl...] #smx
[youtube.com...]
Google has officially launched a new search update to target “spammy queries” such as payday loan, #*$!ographic and other heavily spammed queries.

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, announced this on Twitter saying “We just started a new ranking update today for some spammy queries.” He pointed to the video he published where he talked about upcoming Google SEO changes.

Our summary then was:

While queries that tend to be spammy in nature, such as [pay day loans] or some #*$!ographic related queries, were somewhat less likely to be a target for Google’s search spam team – Matt Cutts said Google is more likely to look at this area in the near future. He made it sound like these requests are coming from outside of Google and thus Google wants to address those concerns with these types of queries.

[searchengineland.com...]

[hitchhiker]

@Simsi - sorry 'bout that - missed the ;) :(

Re: the game-of-the-day, this is staggering - this is 12 years of research from a multi-billion dollar company!

Here's the old one for those who missed it: [imgur.com...]

[edited by: hitchhiker at 8:06 pm (utc) on Jun 17, 2013]

[HuskyPup]

The first one won't even load for me!

[Simsi]

@hitchhiker: no worries.

@johnhh: I've never been a fan of Bing but a quick look at their results and you are right. Not perfect by any stretch and still feels alien to me but most of the spam in Google's results isn't visible there to be fair.

[hitchhiker]

The shocking reality of how easy it is to spam these SERPS is now bordering on ludicrous.

[HuskyPup]

<offtopic>
I've been a fan of Bing for the last couple of years however I've noticed some Googleisms creeping in, some spam that was never there before however the worst thing I have seen was a couple of days ago, crowd hosting, one domain took up 18/20 results ... Chinese ... and it was pointless, of no value to anyone.

[heisje]

@hitchhiker : shameless GoogleBashing here to the extreme?

I will not be the one to blame you for that, needless to say, however (correct me if I am wrong) you have been constantly accusing others of being "unhelpful" when they are at it.

Maybe it becomes more acceptable when it comes from you?

.

[heisje]

@HuskyPup : Bing? - not in a million years. Their index is a fraction of Google's, they haven't got a chance. If this does not change, Google will dominate forever - and I do not see this change happening at Bing anytime soon.

Great pity, as we desperately need real competition to the monster called Google.

.

[hitchhiker]

"Google is screwing us to make more adsense money"

Is bashing. Why: Because we can't know that for sure, we've all thought it, there's no point repeating it 1000x.

"The shocking reality of how easy it is to spam these SERPS is now bordering on ludicrous."

Is based on the amazing reality we see before us. Why: Because it's happening in front of our eyes, blackhats are playing with the Webspam team for the lulz.

[johnhh]

The joke is - we could all do it - but we don't as we know is burn and churn

Oh I got this today from adsense team "wouldn't be where it is today without publishers like you, who create and publish the web content that is consumed every day by people around the world."
ha HA

[heisje]

@hitchhiker : commenting on this I will not do, it will get me in trouble with the moderators. 'Nough said. Have a nice day.

[chrisv1963]

blackhats are playing with the Webspam team for the lulz.

Of course ... Google Pandalized and Penguinized all the whitehats. There's only blackhat with scraped content and spam left over to rank.

[Simsi]

Wow this is astounding. I just did a google.com search for a major commercial term in one of the most popular niches and the results are staggering:

Result 1 is a hacked site.
Result 2 is a banner farm.
Result 3 is Wiki
Results 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 are hacked sites (from other niches, compromised)
Result 8 is Pinterest!

Not one site delivers good content. Something, somewhere, is very very broken LOL.

[hitchhiker]

@simsi - yep, and that's not speculation :) - it's right in front of us, abnormally obvious and we're powerless to do much about it.

I sincerely hope they're not sitting around reading this, convincing themselves we're all paranoid and just pissed we don't rank #1 for every term we dream up.

The blank site I found (4 word content), is still ranking well in its 4$ PPC SERP.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:16 am (utc) on Jun 18, 2013]
[edit reason] forum Charter violation [/edit]

[johnhh]

Its fast becoming a ( expensive )joke - in my (rather expensive these days ) Sunday paper two weeks ago it said "has Google gone gaga ?"

Before anyone says anything - before 2011 I would not have written that, yes we had a few tiffs and arguments as in any relationship, but all was well until Google had this lightbulb moment in Feb 2011 - since then with everything else privacy issues, massive tax avoidance, spying issues, spam, bad SERPS, everything is changing..

[rish3]

@simsi

If that's the case though, it refers to the search terms, not the results

These "high value terms" require more unnatural links to rank. Raises the question as to why they need special treatment.

[jmccormac]

So is this Google's Altavista moment? It really highlights the utter futility of Panda, Penguin and the rest of Animal Farm. The sad thing is that the solution is so simple.

Regards...jmcc

[viral]

OK so the Matt Cutts payday loan link is gone to be replaced with another payday loan link on blog.co.uk and at position 2 there is a tripod.co.uk link.

Haha this is funny to watch. Some here said something along the lines of...

Google is a group of smart people but black hatters is a much bigger group of smart people.

I now see what he meant.

[Simsi]

So is this Google's Altavista moment? It really highlights the utter futility of Panda, Penguin and the rest of Animal Farm. The sad thing is that the solution is so simple.

I think it probably is only a "moment" to be honest. It's clear that a black-hatter (or group of) has found a loophole and is exploiting it to the full (and probably making millions in the process!). It's never been this bad and I fully expect Google to patch it up. They have to basically.

All they have to do really is just take links out of the ranking factors and black-hat is all but dead! Guess technology isn't ready for that yet though.

[HuskyPup]

Bing? - not in a million years. Their index is a fraction of Google's, they haven't got a chance.

Give me quality over quantity any day of the week:-)

[rj87uk]

The "Payday Loans" example is a joke. A few blogs, a few sites that don't load and even now one about Bonsai Trees excellent...

[aristotle]

Bing? - not in a million years. Their index is a fraction of Google's, they haven't got a chance.

Maybe Google's index is bigger because it includes a lot of spam and worthless garbage that Bing screens out.

[linkbuildr]

It seems authority sites ala Yelp.com are getting company profile pages spammed to rank for payday loans etc. Surprised this didn't catch on sooner as it's so easy to do.

[chrisv1963]

Maybe Google's index is bigger because it includes a lot of spam and worthless garbage that Bing screens out.

I agree 100%.
I have been searching for a number of (technical) things today. After reading this post I did a few of the same searches on Bing. All pages that gave answers to my questions are prominently listed on the first page of Bing. On Google I had to dig deeper and visit several sites before finding the answers.

[heisje]

ok, then, why do you think Google is by far Nr 1? Just "because"?

I happen to think that they sit on an immense pool of collected data, out of which they are able to fish what the user is looking for, despite the fact that a lot of rubbish also exists in that pool, and is returned in the serps along with the useful information.

Their pond has fish. A lot of it. Bing's pond does not. Just try an obscure specialized search, and Bing returns close to nothing. Not even rubbish, literally nothing. Not only do they have a long way to go, but they are not even considering the Google route to success (costs billions). Bing? not in a million years.

The web marketplace at present is not in equilibrium, and this, as is always the case, will eventually change. There *will* be equilibrium eventually. However, the Google monster will not be brought down by Bing. It will be brought down by circumstances that are not known at this time, and at a future point in time which is also unknown today. In short, today we do not know "how" and "when" but we know for sure it will happen. It's a matter of time, but don't hold your breath.

.

[atlrus]

ok, then, why do you think Google is by far Nr 1? Just "because"?

For the same reason IE was by far the No1 browser. It's a perfect example of monopoly. As long as the Gov gets things from Google (wink) they won't mess with it.

Without government intervention, the only way out of the monopoly is by the customers themselves.

Bing's pond does not.

Don't know about Bing, but I have a website ranking #1 on Google and Yahoo and while it gets plenty of Yahoo traffic, I am lucky to get one visitor a month from Google for its main keyword. It was a huge shock to me to see that.

I don't have high hopes for Bing (ran by Microsoft, nuf said), but Yahoo still has good bones, gets tons of traffic and could give Google and every other site the run for their money, if they wanted to.

[scotland]

I just did a search for Payday Loans on Google UK and up pops "American Bonsai Society" half way down the page - well done Google for amazingly rubbish search returns!

[ColourOfSpring]

OK so the Matt Cutts payday loan link is gone to be replaced with another payday loan link on blog.co.uk and at position 2 there is a tripod.co.uk link.

....yes, and both redirect to new domains - a clear exploit, both ranking 1 & 2. Remember Matt Cutts' promise that the SERPs would be spam free this summer?

[jmccormac]

The problem with claiming that the SERPs would be spam-free is that the SERPs frequently get overtaken by events. The major problem with Payday Loans was that the Wordpress Social Media widget had its source code compromised and it led to an uptick in compromised sites. That was at the end of March 2013. Many of the compromised sites were fire and forget sites where the client of some web developer using Wordpress has no idea that their site is compromised and no idea about how to fix the problem. There is a very simple and very brutal solution to the problem but the happy-clappies in Google don't seem to want to use it or, even worse, they haven't got the brains to figure it out. Deleting compromised sites from the index is that solution. It is obvious and effective. For those who remember the Microsoft monolith, Google is the new Microsoft.

Regards...jmcc

[brotherhood of LAN]

>Deleting compromised sites from the index is that solution

Indeed, but also discounting the link graph when it comes to them too.

My guess is Google's top priority is to serve a result when there is one to be served, they prefer to serve something over nothing.

Keeping track of all the hacks/bugs/compromises would be no small task.

[miozio]

It is clearly a glitch for "payday loans" Hacked sites pop up on google.com as well and SERPs are changing every minute where Anime related sites shuffle.