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...]

[atlrus]

The major problem with Payday Loans was that the Wordpress Social Media widget had its source code compromised ...

One of many. The MrCutts payday loan blog was ranking on pure old-fashioned comment spam (not on WP), as far as ahref was showing. The site appears to have been removed from blog co.uk completely, which would account for it not appearing in the results anymore.

I have competitors ranking via links which are 100% on unrelated websites and hidden in the code using display:none (I suspect those are hacked websites)

Basic things like that should be caught right off the bat, but are not. Google's algo is just too big for its britches and misses a lot of basic stuff. And they are adding more and more to it every week! I don't see how it would work, other than trowing in the towel and try to salvage as much of the high profile searches as possible via manual action.

[johnhh]

@jmccormac
my info it is a plugin that is used widely sets a 'hidden' link using css to locate the link outside viewable area ( don't all rush at once !)

brotherhood of LAN keeping track is difficult maybe - @but how much money do Google make ? How much of that on a % basis would it cost to create a team to deal with it ?

serve a result when there is one to be served

not that difficult on the keywords in question - theres about 3 or 4 major players in the UK

[aristotle]

currently No.4 in google UK serps for 'payday loans' is
paydayloansfrommrcutts.blog.co.uk

So when is Mr. Cutts going to make his next video about all the great things they're doing to make the algorithm even more perfect than it already is?

[jmccormac]

@atlrus What made the WP Social Media hack so effective was that it hit a lot of sites right on the index page and people thought it was secure when it was being installed. The Social Media widget had its source code compromised and it was published by Wordpress. It was pulled and a malware free version was then published. The problem is that many web developers use Wordpress as a production tool and most of them apparently have no maintenance agreements with clients so there are lots of compromised sites still around.

Perhaps the people in Google aren't as bright as the press releases and publicity would have us believe. Having seen the rubbish that is in the Google index despite the sites being hacked, I don't think that they are not dealing with this issue competently. It is fairly basic stuff but it is like they've twiddled the algorithm so badly that it is no longer effective when it comes to dealing with what is, essentially, a links problem.

@johnhh Yep. And this one is an easy enough signature to detect given that it is limited to one particular CMS.

Regards...jmcc

[JohnRoy]

Hats off to Kelowna msg:4557115 . . .
[webmasterworld.com...]

Don't believe me?
Go check out what the payday loans serps look like.

- Mar 21, 2013

[Dinkar]

it is limited to one particular CMS

not one; at least two. Add joomla to the list and there may be many others.

[johnhh]

joomla is the one I saw as well

[internetheaven]

Ha! This is hilarious! The black hat community pranked Matt Cutts over payday loans (they ranked a site for that term and called it "Matt Cutts Payday Loans") ... so Google acts all interested in spam all of a sudden?

That's funny. Personally, they should have just put their tail between their legs and kept quiet. Talk about arrogance.

[diberry]

I wish someone would attempt a spam prank like this on Bing. It would be interesting to see if they can be gamed as easily as Google, and it's just that nobody's bothering, or if they really are doing something better in that regard.

[peter2013]

Seems Google team is determined to bring down spammy sites at all costs

[jmccormac]

@Dinkar There are many others but the Wordpress Social Media plugin hack was, as far as I know, a Wordpress problem. But a lot of the recent Payday Loans link injections were from the compromised Wordpress Social Media plugin/widget. They all seem to be for a set of links. With Joomla and other site compromises, the profile of the links tends to follow the classic drugs/warez/pron pattern. The Social Media plugin compromises only had Payday Loan links. From a search engine developer viewpoint, it makes it far easier to deal with as anything with these toxic links can be considered compromised. However the hardcore search engine developer attitude is to nuke anything compromised from the index. The Google approach seems to be a bit happy-clappy in that it is content to leave hacked and spammed websites in the index.

Regards...jmcc

[atlrus]

I wish someone would attempt a spam prank like this on Bing. It would be interesting to see if they can be gamed as easily as Google, and it's just that nobody's bothering, or if they really are doing something better in that regard.

I don't think people in the UK have ever heard of bing :)

[jmccormac]

I don't think people in the UK have ever heard of bing :)

Surely they are familar with 'Friends'? :) Then again Google has about 90% of the UK Search market from what I remember. Yahoo just gave it up and Microsoft never really had much of a clue.

Regards...jmcc

[HuskyPup]

I don't think people in the UK have ever heard of bing :)

All the techies I drink with at night ALL know about Bing now, I've been hammering it down their throats for more than a year now and they're starting to use it because of G's awful results.

[ken_b]

How many of you folks PROMOTE an alt SE on your sites?

[viral]

The problem with Bing is that MS is just as bad as Google and in some ways worse. However having said that I use them and promote them to my colleagues and friends in an attempt to get some competition in place for Google.

[heisje]

The Silence from Cutts on recent developments is Deafening. But then, there is little left to say . . . .

[hitchhiker]

I was surprised by this also, either:

a) There are not enough of us hurt.
b) They are too worried about appearing weak.
c) They are planning a massive update to fix this.

My guess:

a) Isn't reasonable - the 'deafening' cry is definitely there. It is also greater than what we hear (as many didn't bother to post)

b) Likely :( As was pointed out (to me) a million +1 times!

c) A while back I would have insisted on this, but now no, i don't think there's an update coming to fix it. Reason: They could have stopped the subsequent rolling updates, they didn't.

Never seen anything like this. What's happening now is significant, one way or another we're witnessing something very odd.

[viral]

Lol currently the top 6 results in google.co.uk are all redirecting to other sites and cloaking.

Amazing Mr Cutts glad you wiped this out. It would appear that blog.co.uk is being used to facilitate this but they look like they are making an effort to stop the spammers also.

My guess is that blog.co.uk will soon be struck from the index. possibly tripod.co.uk also.

[brotherhood of LAN]

>blog.co.uk
>tripod.co.uk

The so-called-problem isn't specific to them.

You can point the finger at these sites for allowing HTML content/links, or whatever user interaction they allow.

Or perhaps put Google at fault for placing too much 'trust' in what it perceives to be trustworthy/brandworthy/googleworthy domains.

Those domains are being used because Google values 'things' from particular domains more than other domains.

[atlrus]

Really exciting times

I want to see google's response to this - the only way they can fix it is by manually selecting the top 10 results, which would be the one solid undeniable proof that certain websites are treated with preference. After all, someone has to select the top 10 and it's not going to be the algo.

[viral]

What I find really interesting is that it even outranks Wikipedia. I would have thought Google would have just tweaked up Wikipedia's power for those particular searches.

[seoskunk]

Lets face it BH is running ring round google.

To take a market they first destabilise the top ranked sites through negative seo. Then they mix links to authority sites with their own links. Use a subdomain of a so called trusted site and rank again.

Apart from the kiddies in BH there are some seriously intelligent players.

Google has become a BH2B engine, Black Hat 2 Brands...............

[viral]

@seoskunk absolutely right and the only reason we don't see it other areas is that the payment model is too hard. If the BHers could bank in other niches like they can in payday loans Google's index would be a total mess.

[rish3]

It's not just black hatters manipulating the SERPS. Plenty of large, recognizable "brands" regularly buy high PR backlinks.

[lucy24]

What I find really interesting is that it even outranks Wikipedia. I would have thought Google would have just tweaked up Wikipedia's power for those particular searches.

Either they've changed it in the past hour and a half, or they're feeding me different results. Currently browser #1 gets me wikipedia in first place, followed by-- hold on to your hats-- an article dated 2008 I suspect this is a mistake from .ftc.gov. Within the top 10 there are at least two whose domain name alone would tell any human that these are garbage results.

Browser #2 still has wikipedia at the top, but the ftc is further down in the top 10. To make up for it, the most obvious garbage links aren't there at all.

[viral]

I am looking at google.co.uk which is where the big problem appears to be.

Wikipedia last link on front page for me.

[atlrus]

First 4 results - spammy subdomains of blog and tripod co uk, next 5 - unrelated sites and Wiki at the bottom. Wow, how embarrassing this must be for Cutts et al.

[seoskunk]

Is it time we created our own SE? [webmasterworld.com...]

[nickreynolds]

I tried to post on this subject about a week ago but my post was banned. I'll try again here. This is not Google bashing - just an illustration of the problem. A search in the uk loan niche produced 10 results on page 1. All the sites had very similar domains ie randomname keyword kewyword. All were registered in the last month and all had around 3k spammy looking backlinks.