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30 minutes searching around some keyword space that I plan to "move into" shows up 3 recurring main players.
2 of them use negative-co-ordinate CSS to hide keyword rich <h1>'s
1 of them uses a dozen links hidden in the page background colour on their index.
Without mentioning the keywords in question lets just say these people should know better! :D
Like I said, I plan to put a site into this keyword space, and feel I can get it to compete well except with these established players who have 50+ backlinks a piece and are PR 5, 6 and 7 respectively on their index pages. Its not even like they need to spam to get the ranking.
My mum told me never to "tell tales" but....
Pop quiz hotshots... What d'you do?
They should be reading some of the CSS tutorials around here to know that having negative co-ordinates puts words on a sentence line "slightly" to the left or slightly up (slightly in any direction for that matter?).
If they do it more than slightly the words will fall off the page. There are other ways to do this with CSS. ;)
well I think some people who wrote about a similar issue here: [webmasterworld.com...] have a point - whether it gets reported or not is unlikely to make a lot of odds considering the infringements are relatively minor in the way of things, and are on otherwise good sites.
You should reference more than that thread though. It's a subject been well discussed on WW.
I guess my moral indignation will dilute with further similar experiences, and probably I'll view this post with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment in a few month's time....
Its interesting though. I post yesterday with my own idea for a spam technique and I get "you'd have to be a fool to do that." Today I find three people (in 1,2,3 position for a popular kw combination) doing exactly that, and I get "live 'n' let live..." /me sighs
[edit due to not reading marcia's post til after I'd posted]
These are BIG corporate sites with corporate branding and domain names, not just throwaway market stalls - I believe I could get front page with reasonable optimisation and a few backlinks, its just the difference between 1-5 and 5-10, anyway; packing up & moving on would seem a little defeatist in this case.
[/edit]
id check some of the older posts. Even if youre new to it, I think youve found the problem/balance in your post.
As Marcia say, the big corps can afford to throw new pages back on. A counter argument if for you to build a great site and anyones spammy techniques will never beat your quality.
It's a tough one to shake out between filling out a spam report and not. Just as is building a quality site, or building 1000's of rubbish ones :)
hopefully quality prevails. but theh subject of spamming is old......
decisions decisions...
Who else will admit that the first time they came here they immediately sat down with a coffee and did a systematic search through all 1000 or so of GG's back posts? :p
Who else will admit that the first time they came here they immediately sat down with a coffee and did a systematic search through all 1000 or so of GG's back posts?
lol, well not that i have, i'd hedge money on people doing that. millions of people read what one man says ;) Sometimes it's just worth reading back on all the good tips that those in the know were willing to offer.
this place didnt get to where it was by a conglomerate of spam report-ees. Some people actually know stuff ;)
If Google are doing what they say, they only need to come accross a specific instance once to incorporate it into their Spam algo. And this will be doing other areas of the web favors.
I just received this email (and it really makes me worried - should I report this?);
We all know the importance of reciprocal links for the website traffic and search engine ranking.
Recently XXX (http://www.xxx.com) introduced a number of additional blue widget related websites, and each of these sites has a Link Exchange page.
We are wondering if you are interested in exchanging links with our new sites.
Get 298 reciprocal links - all at once! Avoid the hassles of contacting additional 298 webmasters, waiting for a response, and checking those sites.
With our link exchange program it is as easy as 1-2-3. The difference is -
WE OWN THESE SITES - ALL SITES ARE CLEAN AND FUNCTIONAL, HIGH QUALITY SITES PROMOTING BLUE WIDGETS.
We have already placed the link to your website
[yoursite.com...] on all our 298 Link Trader sites.
Please, find the list of reciprocal links and all the information to link back to us in the attachment or by visiting:
Our Site URL/Link Trader/Link Exchange/Increase your traffic
Please, put all links to our sites together in one category (for example "Blue Widgets") and post all three components: url, title, and description as it specified in the attached Microsoft Word file.
If you need html codes for our links, you can obtain them on the page: Our Site URL/Link Trader/Link Exchange/Increase your traffic
After you have added links to our sites, please send us an e-mail which contains the url(s) to the page(s) where these links are located.
Thank You.
--
Best regards,
You know, they are not in my exact area, but have 8 blue widgets sites, 8 red widgets sites, 8 yellow widgets sites, etc., etc.
I have just been lucky to have GoogleGuy drop 5 of another Spam group who are actually in my area (BTW, I have emailed him again as I then found another 15 of their same-same sites). They have sucked the market dry with their Spam for some time now. I was lucky, that I was here and GG picked up on what I was saying. But what about the poor guys who work in this other Spammers area. I wish someone had dropped the Hormel brigade that have infested my area before they got started.
Don't we have a duty?!
OK, so 50 ghost domains and most pages look different in the G cache than they do to you - that's one thing.
A few dozen keywords in a hidden <h1> and a hidden link to a mate's site on an otherwise worthy website, is that so worth getting stressed over? Still a duty?
I am not talking about a few keywords stuffed here or there, I am talking about duplicate content en mass. But they are not in my area. What would you do? Consider it a duty and report them (as you would hope others might report Spammers in your area), or say nothing on the basis it is none of your / my business?!
Google Guy, you watching? What should I do?
It still feels like grassing though at the end of the day :)
Go with your gut I guess...
