Common Courtesy

Reporting problem results

[vincevincevince]

I am interested what proceedures webmasters use when acting against spam on their SERPS. Obviously one would collect some basic evidence and submit a report of spam to google, but how about notification to the website itself?

I was in the habit of writing a note to the tune of:

"I have notified Google about your spamming/cloaking/etc, I recommend you rectify it immediately before you are manually checked and penalised heavily. Example [include example]. I will continue to report this until it is removed or your site is penalised."

Which I thought was rather fair of me to give them a chance to rectify things before they are checked out, and secondly google is so bad at acting decisively on spam reports that it will up the chance of actual results as the webmaster may clear it up even if Google never reviews it.

BUT, I have had a number of quite rude and offensive replies to my kind notification. [Obviously to a free email provider add, not to a domain identifiable address :D]

What say you all? What's the best way to go about it?

[Dolemite]

Very civil of you, IMO.

I'm not sure I'd even bother to give warning.

But then you're also covering yourself if google doesn't act on your report, which makes good sense.

[jeremy goodrich]

Spam on my SERP? Wow...hm, how would I deal?

1) ignore it

2) contemplate how much money I make

3) wait for Google to do something (after all, it's their engine...)

And then, whilst doing steps 1,2,3 above, I would work on making more money, and let the other people waste their time. :)

Business, is business, even on the internet.

[Brad]

Why should you report them at all?

[Nick_W]

>I have notified Google

Why not (if you really must), "I will be notifying Google if..."?

Nick

[itools]

I think this is a great idea. Not only are you giving your competitors fair warning, you might actually get them to change their ways on their own. As we know, Google can take a long time to getting around to spammers, so you could get them to clean up long before Google would normally get around to it.

[rfgdxm1]

Surely you jest about warning spammers? The idea there is to hope they get squished like a bug, and delight with glee if they do. Particularly in the case of a commercial webmaster reporting his competition. Only time I ever e-mailed a webmaster who was spamming involved a non-commercial site that was trying to work in the interest of public service. They were using hidden text. I had guessed that possibly they had some web designer who thought this was just the way to do things, and was clueless. Apparently I was right, as quickly the hidden text was removed.

[markdidj]

....Business, is business, even on the internet.....

Not for me, thanks to Google, #1 reference for STATIC sites.

[Crush]

I have a pain in the butt at the moment. 25 sites all interlinked with dupicate content and they change just a little graphic here and there to fly under the spam radar.

If you are in that position and they are taking whole pages of results and customers from you, you just have blood mind. No warning I want to see all there sites taken down big time with a nice PR 0;)

Mind you,20 spam reports later I still have to waste a few minutes every day until they are gone.

[vincevincevince]

Surely you jest about warning spammers?

Many sites are not totally spam, but they use techniques such as cloaking / hidden text / etc. on sites which are otherwise useful to the web user.

I don't want this info not to be accessible to users, but I don't want them to be beating me in the SERPS due to spam. Fair's fair, let's call a goose a goose, if I work harder than them and they spam and get ahead of me, I can be pacified pretty well if they just stop spamming :D

[lazyz]

Can't beat them... Join them! Want to make a buck? Get on the band-wagon! If you have a unique site, a site that everyone will want to return to, all you need is "word of mouth", a paid add on one of the other search engines... If you have a crappy site and one that looks just like the others in the serps, then get with the program... SPAM OUT BABY! Or you could just simply let it go! Don't bother with other sites spam, deal with your own linking strategy and build your content! Dedicate your time with your site, not with SPAM!

[vincevincevince]

It's the first time I have heard someone on the side of spamming in here for a while. Been on a long holiday? Spam on your site gets more and more like drinking poison by the day.