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I came across a website ranked #1 and I noticed that it has hundreds of incoming links coming from guestbooks. In fact, it looks like each guestbook entry is identical as if the posts were automated. My question is: wouldn't Google frown upon this? Does Google detect this sort of thing? Would Google punish the website for this?
Thanks,
Mark
Joe
Good find joeuz ;)
AlltheWeb shows 926 external links and, what a shock, a lot of them are guestbooks. :)
I think they have shied away from using their own guestbook spamming because Google might ban them for it.
Google filters out link farms. Why not filter out guestbooks? There is rarely relevant info on these pages ("nice site bob" or "who left the lights on"), and the PR is made up almost exclusively by trickle down from the front of the site. Yet, guestbooks seem to be a great source of spam, spam, and more spam, PR games, and other less than useful techniques.
Just assume any link coming off a guest book isn't worth a visit, and any page in a directoy called guestbook, or a page called guestbook.com is, while worthy of inclusion on the Google system, could be considered a non voting dead end of the net. Googlebot wouldn't read any links from these pages, and poof, guestbook spamming pretty much goes the way of crank handle starters.
I would be interested to see a basic filter of this nature used to get rid of the most blatant spam and self promotion.
Alex
What about a company who programs a free guestbook, gets users to use it, and on the top or bottom of every page have a link to one of their other sites as an advertisement. Should they be penalized when they have put energy and time and money into creating a guestbook software program? Or should each of these links be counted as legitimate links to their site?
Should Google be policing peoples content in their guestbooks? Shouldn't it be the owner of the guestbooks responsibility to delete any unwanted posts? What if they liked the post, or had a friend post their business or personal website on their guestbook? Should their friend be denied any form of acknowledgement of a link to their site simply because of the type of website page it is?
Guestbooks are only one example. Shouldn't a link be a link be a link?
I just think that by wanting Google to police the internet's content and link usage we may be censoring valuable data, and thus limiting the usefulness of the searchability of internet content.
Just some random thoughts and worries. I would much rather see Google spend time making sure every link on the search results goes to a live website, and then go after spam techniques that are verifiably spam techniques, such as hidden text - etc. (Although even this can be applicable in some instances. Anyone familiar with that game that came out a little before September 11th called Majestic - about a conspiracy with aliens. Many of the games on the fan sites, and their site had to do with codebreaking, and finding hidden text somewhere on the site.)
I understand theoretically that Google will have to put some sort of filters in their search results to maintain clean results, but is sad to think there will be websites that will be collateral damage. Maybe Google can have a few check boxes on the home page that allows users to select which filters to use - like one that filters guestbook listings, one that filters adult sites, one that filters blogs, one that filters free sites, and on and on. Then it is the choice of the user.
Cliff
Googlebot wouldn't read any links from these pages, and poof, guestbook spamming pretty much goes the way of crank handle starters.
Hate to burst your bubble, but guestbook spamming was around long, long before Google, and will probably still be there long after it's gone (unless the spam gets SO bad that most guestbooks undergo a major software change).
The primary purpose of guestbook spam was to get suckers to click on the link -- just like email spam! Hey, I can tell you, back in the day when guestbook spam first started, and I was there, it usually worked. After all, it was hard to tell a machine-created spam message from just some other webmaster pimping their site (who had entered the message manually).
Many, many guestbooks are just left there, abandoned, and nobody is going to clean up the spam. That's why most guestbook programs will now delete old messages automatically, because the number of "absentee owners" is so high.
The fact is, just like email spam, guestbook spam is not going to go away until some way is found to allow human beings to leave messages, and keep out machines. If there were an easy way to do this, it would have been done already. In the interim, keeping out spam depends on the vigilance and technical savvy of the individuals involved. There's Spam Assassin and Cancel Moose for email and netnews, and for guestbooks (and other interactive web stuff) there are various methods to give spam bots the runaround. We may eventually end up with a situation where all messageboards go to logins (I still know some that don't, and which for various other reasons have managed to avoid spam).
I do agree that it's highly obnoxious that spammers get "rewarded" in PageRank by Google for spewing all over the net. But I'm sure Google realizes this, and smarter geeks than me are working on a way to put an end to it.
<edited for clarity>
We're seeing this being done right now with the 'add url' features of some search engines (they give a unique code that the surfer must enter before the url is accepted).
Why can't a guestbook program do the same thing?
This is trivial. Take a look at Godaddy and how they do their domain name whois. They show a .jpg with a number, and you have to type in the number before it show the data. This is done to stop spammers from running bots on the whois to harvest e-mail addresses. The same technique can easily be used with guestbooks.
Some webmasters work very hard to achieve an ideal spot in Google. Only to be shot down by an unethical guestbook spammer or a Google maintenance problem. All the while, the 'bad guy' MAY float near the top. All at once, somebody notifies Google that the person is a spammer. His ranking will drop soon thereafter; perhaps the next update, or the one after that. Do we know for certain that Google 'penalized' this person? Was it a system fault with Google? Did the webmaster make a change that he shouldn't have? Nobody really knows do they? Here's a thought. Why do a lot of webmasters want a high ranking? Because they want more visitors? Think about that...
On with the ethical issues. Yes it's immoral, and shame on anyone for doing it. Is there 'morally' a difference from posting your URL on a single guestbook as opposed to automating it to hundreds or thousands? People that take advantage of this are acting in an immoral way because they are taking advantage of unsuspecting guestbook owners. Many guestbook owners have no idea what's going on. Those that do either dump the guestbook or delete the post.
Regarding the 'disposable sites' that was mentioned earlier, it is surprising what guestbook results yield for these people. One of my customers comes back time and time again with countless URL's feeding the same content. In my opinion, he is a web genius. He has taken two ideas and combined them to make everything payoff. Some spammers at the top this month WILL fall, but I suspect they wont care.
Although the entire process is 'dirty', it is welcomed whether people want it to be or not; guestbooks are for public use. Maybe not to have some off the wall spammer come by and mass post to them, but they are for the public nonetheless.
I believe that Google and the other engines I advertise with may one day drop me, as I've told you before. It does make a person wonder why it hasn't happened yet. Personally, I believe it's because there really isn't anything wrong with it, other than it's immoral. As another poster here has claimed, it isn't Google's job to police the Internet; that's why guestbooks have a delete button.
I hope this post hasn't offended anyone, I certainly didn't mean it to do so. I know everyone has their own opinions about this sort of thing and I truly respect them all. Obviously, this is a spammers point of view; assuming you want to call me that. Thanks for the vent:)
More likely, Google uses guestbook spamming as just one possible indicator of shady SEO practices. Maybe 100, 1,000, or 10,000 guestbook entries will trigger a manual check, or maybe--when Dominic has settled down--heavy guestbook posting will be one factor in a "spam scoring" algorithm. Or maybe guestbook entries are (or will be) ignored altogether.
Oh, not to mention the hatemail you'll get. It was a dopey anonymous experiment that I did. And if you think it'll bring you any decent traffic, think again. Worthless traffic that disappears in less than a week. Let my stupidity save you ten bucks.
