Multi Domains Crowding "Smart Spam" Is Defeating Google Webspam Team

[reseller]

I see part of SEO industry and Webmasters communities are impressed of the effectiveness of latest Panda and Penguin algo updates to kill "traditional" spam mentioned in Google quality Guidelines [support.google.com...] .

However I have noticed that Multi Domains Crowding "Smart Spam" has emerged victorious regardless Panda & Penguin.

Allow me to clarify what I mean by "Multiple Domains Crowding (which is something entirely different than "Google Domain Crowding problem").

Multiple Domains Crowding Spam: Its a specific spam technique to own more than one top position on first page of Google SERPs for the same search term by several different domains you own or lease.

I prefer not to talk about "How To" of the said spam method as its not my mission to teach how to spam Google.

For example a kind WebmasterWorld member has sent me some search queries related to niche "Assisted Living" which illustrated how at least 3 different domains of same owner are within top 10 results of first page of Google Serps for the same search query. Such spam method is pushing possible valuable sites of honest webmasters out of top ranking on Google Serps.

I wish to mention that Multiple Domains Crowding spam isn't something new. In fact it has been know among Black Hat SEOes for several years. It is sad and discouraging for White Hat SEOes and Webmasters to see Google Websapm Team unable to win the war against Multiple Domains Crowding Spam and neither Panda nor Penguin have been able to solve the said spam problem.

And I don't see any effect on Multiple Domains Crowding spam by current Google algo rollout which Matt Cutts has announced recently, unfortunately.

[bluntforce]

While we can hope for many things, I consider a part of my job to be dealing with what algorithms present me. I've had competitors using multiple domains for years, if it works for them, then my job is to learn from what they are doing.

I'm not of the opinion that Webspam and Search Quality teams are there to provide results I consider optimum. They exist to provide a cleaner set of results, not necessarily a perfect set of results. There's no such thing as a perfect set of results unless you're dominating the top 5 places. :)

[reseller]

@bluntforce

I'm not of the opinion that Webspam and Search Quality teams are there to provide results I consider optimum.

Never give up on Google's Webspam Team & Google's Search Quality Team.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Google's Quality Guidelines [support.google.com...] sometime in near future including the following 2 items:

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

Avoid the following techniques:

- Multiple Domains Crowding

- Doorway Domains

Amen ;-)

[besnette]

Reseller..very much agreed.

The analogy I have in real world terms...there was a coffee shop in my town - awesome coffee, independent smaller brand...loved that place.

The big "Bucks" national coffee company came in, and within 1.5 miles of this coffee shop, put in 4 shops, exactly the same, surrounding this shop. New patrons would never find the local, mom and pop shop because they would first see the big brand first, and go there, zip through the drive through without giving it a second thought. Mom and pop store eventually driven out of business. After that, three of the other big bucks stores closed - mission accomplished. True story.

If one company owns, in one way or another, 60% of a search page for the same query, offering the same info ("cookie cutter") - I would guess and hope that most people would find that highly questionable...the same way that there has been a significant 'backlash' against the coffee company I have referenced in the past few years over their aggressive, unethical marketing practices once people started catching on to what they were doing. But, if you have the money, and you can, many companies will.

The top 'brand' in my niche, I have found out, now owns 28 sites, and growing - all in the same niche, going after the same keywords and queries.

[zoltan]

besnette, unfortunately your statement "If one company owns, in one way or another, 60%..." is also true for the entire search engine market. The google forum would not be that full here at WMT if google would not be the dominant player in search engine market. A much better scenario would be 3 players (google, bing, yahoo?) with a total market share of about 60-70% and another 7-8 smaller players with the rest of 30-40%.

[besnette]

zoltan, sure...that is what make it really a tough climate right now...part of it at least..

Makes it hard to motivate to make an effort right now...and I am sure that many other site owners who really have expertise, industry experience, and passion are feeling deflated right now to share what they know...if it is an ever-increasing uphill battle for it to be seen.

[Saffron]

A much better scenario would be 3 players (google, bing, yahoo?) with a total market share of about 60-70% and another 7-8 smaller players with the rest of 30-40%.

Absolutely. I've seen first hand the financial ruin having one search engine can cause to a site/business. One year you're their sweetheart, next year you're in the gutter.

[Awarn]

Reseller are you seeing the same domains dominating the positions on Bing and Yahoo as well? In my niche I see one domain having 4 of the top 5 positions on Google. It is all the same domain but the strange part is they have 30K backlinks which are really 2 mirror sites (exact duplication only different domains) that backlink right to the main site. Google just seems to love it.

[reseller]

Glad to see the kind WebmasterWorld member @rustybrick mentioning this thread in a post on Search Engine Roundtable.

Domain Crowding Search Spam Complaints [seroundtable.com...]

[Lorel]

I just did a check on a client's competitor who is always doing something like this and sure enough 9 out of top 10 SERPS are owned by this person, including 2 of his new domains, his facebook page, his blogspot blog, a PR release, his wordpress blog, etc.

I just reported this on Google's feedback form and the Post Penquin spam form. If enough of us do this then maybe Google will do something about it.

[edited by: Lorel at 2:27 pm (utc) on Jul 5, 2013]

[Awarn]

All of those are brand names that just have common ownership. They all are different and cater to different markets. I see nothing wrong with that. The only issue is that Pepsi is not doing a good job positioning themselves in those keywords. Might be they feel other words are more highly sought after or maybe they just don't feel like spending money to rank higher. Maybe Pepsi has been Penguinized, you know Coke also uses polar bears in their marketing campaign.

[besnette]

Treeline, I see your point, however, supermarkets and stores have much more space that people are willing to look - most people go up and down each aisle until they find what they are looking for, or to investigate different offerings. It's fun to find a local product that is tasty and delicious, and I can because although all of those "pepsi, General mills etc" products are represented, some of which I like, but other local or smaller brands have a fair shake too. Whole Foods does a really nice job at featuring lesser-known, quality offerings.

Search engines, most people will only stay in one aisle (page 1), so if you forced supermarket shoppers to only look at 'these two shelves" or if by nature, that is all they will do, and everything on those two shelves were mostly by the same company, that company would prevail hands down. We all know that most people don't go much deeper than page 1 or two in serps. In a supermarket, people will spend a lot more time looking around.

The other point in here is that Pepsi, for example does have diversity and a widely varied product line, which is great and legit. What we are talking about in this thread trying to dominate serps with different domains, owned by the same person, targeting the exact same thing (query) and offering very little if anything different on each domain.

[Awarn]

besnette - So say Coke hires a SEO service and they use these techniques is that the fault of Coke or the service? Many companies just look at the results, the traffic. In fact I would not be surprised that some of the companies have no idea the techniques some of these places even use to generate the traffic. Some just say wow we are getting more traffic and online sales are great.

[besnette]

Awarn, I'd say it is heavily, but not all on the shoulders of Coke, if they are doing it simply to push other people out, and to try to not claim responsibility for it, but I don't see Coke doing that in the way we're talking about in this thread - a lot of big companies know that the backlash could hurt them in the long-term - look at our nation's biggest coffee company - they have had a lot of reputation issues due to their practices, and it's hurt them. I would also submit that if the service was well aware of it and encouraged or promoted it, that would be highly questionable too. It's harder for people online to discern who owns what, so that's a big hurdle to overcome. Good question Awarn.

[besnette]

@lorel, sorry to hear that - makes it sort of hard to stay motivated, huh? Hopefully your efforts to report it will bring positive results.

[indyank]

I just reported this on Google's feedback form and the Post Penquin spam form. If enough of us do this then maybe Google will do something about it.

Even assuming google acts, the blogspot page, wordpress.com page and probably the facebook page will remain there. You might soon see a google+ page ranking on top...lol...

[Awarn]

you forgot the Youtube video

[indyank]

But lorel hasn't reported it as figuring in the top 10... :)

[reseller]

@Lorel

I just did a check on a client's competitor who is always doing something like this and sure enough 9 out of top 10 SERPS are owned by this person, including 2 of his new domains, his facebook page, his blogspot blog, a PR release, his wordpress blog, etc.

Thats another sad reading of the impact of Multiple Domains Crowding spam.

Thanks for your spirit of sharing.

I just reported this on Google's feedback form and the Post Penquin spam form. If enough of us do this then maybe Google will do something about it.

Well done!

[reseller]

Folks!

<snip>

This thread is illustrating that the problem of Multiple Domains Crowding Spam is hurting the business and earnings of honest White Hat webmasters.

Multiple Domains Crowding Spam must also be hurting Google users by denying them the benefit of diversity of results on Google Serps.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Google's Webspam Team in particular and Google's Search Quality Team in general taking action to fight back against those Multiple Domains Crowding spammers. I guess its just a matter of time.

[edited by: goodroi at 10:24 am (utc) on Jul 6, 2013]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]

[johnhh]

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Google's Webspam Team in particular and Google's Search Quality Team in general taking action to fight back

I wish I had your confidence in that actually happening @reseller

[Planet13]

This thread is illustrating that the problem of Multiple Domains Crowding Spam is hurting the business and earnings of honest White Hat webmasters.

I would kindly suggest that google is uncaring about that point.

However, they do probably care that it does provide poorer quality results to their users, which is something I am sure google would care about.

[besnette]

What hit home with me, and I am sure many other site owners, editors, writers, video producers, experts, and passionate enthusiasts out there is that, after the sneak peek at a few of the updates last week, things like expertise, authorship, original content, contributorship, transparency, honesty, meaningful social participation, all didn't seem to matter. Many of the sites being rewarded (that I saw) had very little of, or none of that. Only after looking into it more deeply was it discovered that a good number of these sites belonged to the same company(s). How or why it happened, we may never know, but to simply wake up one morning and see years of honest, hard work trumped by the calculated efforts of some of these unethical players...I was about to give up on it all. I am trying to keep some degree of hope and a positive attitude that it was just a blip, and that the 'algo' will eventually be able to identify, and reward those many sites and site owners that actually give a crap about their industries and niches..those who are contributing useful, unique information or angles, who are educating their visitors, and who aren't spending time trying to game the system.

[diberry]

However, they do probably care that it does provide poorer quality results to their users, which is something I am sure google would care about.

Yes, but can they really measure this? Remember how thrilled Amit Singhal was when post-Penguin searchers were doing lots more searching, but we were all like, "Yeah, because they keep going back to refine the query in hopes maybe someday they'll actually get the results they wanted?" After all, it just wasn't physically possible that even more people would be using Google than before.

If that's how they measure user satisfaction, I'm not confident that what WE see as a crappy user experience will be seen by them the same way.

[reseller]

@diberry

I'm not confident that what WE see as a crappy user experience will be seen by them the same way.

The main problem which Google is facing is: Consumers have lost their right to choose on Top 10 search results listing on first page of Google Serps.

Today Top 10 results of first page of Google Serps are mostly occupied by either:

- several results from the same site (Domain Crowding)

and/or:

- several results from Multiple domains owned by the same owner (Multiple Domains Crowding spam).

If a consumer clicks on the first 3 results and decides not to buy from those 3 sites, he can then click on the forth or fifth results and buy from that site. However, in fact he is still buying from the same owner of the first 3 sites.

As you see Consumers have lost their right to choose on Google Top 10 search ressults listing for the same search query.

In this connection I wish to recall something which seems Google has forgotten for sometime:

The Right to Choose

The right to free choice among product offerings states that consumers should have a variety of options provided by different companies from which to choose. The federal government has taken many steps to ensure the availability of a healthy environment open to competition through legislation including limits on concept ownership through Patent Law, prevention of monopolistic business practices through anti-trust legislation, and the outlaw of price cutting and gouging. [en.wikipedia.org...]

[indyank]

But then for e-commerce, the diversity is offered thro. product listing ads and that might sound like a better choice for them, isn't it?

[EditorialGuy]

Something to keep in mind:

The Web is about more than e-commerce. Just as important, ads offer plenty of diversity for the consumer, and the AdWords program has always been based on the premise that targeted ads can be useful to searchers (just as classified ads or traditional Yellow Pages ads were useful to consumers in the pre-Web era).

If I were an online retailer, I might worry less about getting beaten out of a no. 1 ranking by Amazon or eBay and more about the possibility that Google Web Search could follow the example of Google Product Search and relegate transactional listings to the advertising portion of its SERPs.

[aboshakeeb]

That is right , I've seen and reported many of such cases , but no answer .
Problem is when you used to use such techniques ,and you decide to stop and look for the future along with Google's promise ... you'll be alone in the dark ,just looking for others enjoying the profit .

[indyank]

You do have the knowledge graph for information...Why do they want to care as long as their users are satisfied with their informational or transactional needs? They are thus providing special tools in addition to the SERP results...and if the user gets what he wants, there is no reason for them to worry about this.

[aboshakeeb]

and if the user gets what he wants

The topic starter didn't mentioned that all domains includes the exact same content spinning !

[reseller]

@EditorialGuy

Just as important, ads offer plenty of diversity for the consumer, ...

We should keep in mind that Google AdWords CTR is 2%.

Whille On organic search results, websites which rank number one receive an average CTR of 36.4 percent; number two have a CTR of 12.5%; and number three have a CTR of 9.5%. There is a good chance that those top 3 results either belong to the same site or belong to 3 different sites which belong to the same owner. I.e consumers clicking on any of the Top 3 results might end buying from the same company. Talking about consumers right to choose!