Forum Moderators: open
Anyone else noticing any major changes?
Filtering out duplicate or near-duplicate content does not equate to filtering out e-commerce pages. And such a filter can be applied equally to information pages and e-commerce pages.
Sure, but duplicate content is more likely to be a problem with e-commerce and affiliate pages, because:
1) One widget, hotel, etc. can resulting hundreds or even thousands of near-duplicate pages on e-commerce and affiliate sites; and...
2) E-commerce and affiliate pages are more likely to use SEO techniques that bring them to the top of the SERPs, causing greater clutter in the search results that most users see.
(With AdSense encouraging the development of ODP clones and sitescraper pages, duplicate content is likely to grow exponentially on the "information" side of the aisle, too, which makes it the more important for Google to become more skilled at filtering or downgrading boilerplate pages.)
Google most definitely knows what pages are guestbooks, and excludes them from the algo. That they before were able to filter them when someone used the link: command is proof of that. Although I'm curious as to why they are showing guestbooks again? An interesting theory is they may actually *want* sleazy webmasters and SEOs spamming guestbooks. Better they waste their time doing that than something that may actually get higher SERPs in Google. Obviously, people with guestbooks will not be pleased Google is encouraging spamming them. :( However, I've noticed almost all guestbook spammers do so more looking for hits from people reading the guestbook than for SEO reasons. This is obvious because if they were doing it for SEO reasons, they'd try and hide the fact they are spamming. As in dropping the URL after an idle flattery of the site, rather than "Buy the best widgets at the lowest price at the link below."
So what has it claimed itself to be or not to be?
The clutter is being created by Adsense. Millions of pages created daily with just a few links, a paragraph, and sometimes a picture to induce click-throughs. Every mother’s brother is throwing up a site now to earn Adsense revenue. Many sites owners know that if they create X amount of pages a certain percentage of people will stumble through and click a few Adsense links. The sheer size of these sites normally increases rankings. The problem is that more and more sites are lifting copyrighted materials from legitimate sites and web results to create these pages at breakneck speed. Without Adsense most of these sites would die a quick death, as they should.
Most commerce sites know they’ve got to work hard, especially on the Internet, to make money. The aura of theft which grows daily forces many to bend over backwards to establish legitimacy. Most Adsense sites created lately don’t care about legitimacy they’re aiming for the click. They could care less if anybody reads what’s written. Adsense is just a form of affiliate marketing. You find me an information site and 75% of the time it will be a boilerplate site littered with links pointing to other information. In some of my areas many even the authority sites haven’t created any original content in years. It would kill them.
I could 'monetise' my wife for example; there's certainly untapped income there. She's a fine looking woman.
If only I had a personal mantra like 'Don't be Evil' -this is an excellent philosophy if you're a buffoon. With such a mantra, I could monetarise my wife with no moral concerns whatsoever.
This is because *Not being evil* covers such a multitude of potential sins, that it is absolutely meaningless. As long as you are 'not evil', you can do pretty much as you like, according to the strict definition.
I suspect its a log scale of 'badness', with evil far out of reach at the top.
Did no-one spot this?
So what has it claimed itself to be or not to be?
That's easy: Read Google's mission statement.
The clutter is being created by Adsense. Millions of pages created daily with just a few links, a paragraph, and sometimes a picture to induce click-throughs.
The clutter started with e-commerce and affiliate pages, and it reached epidemic proportions long before AdSense came along. Fortunately, it should be easier for Google to control "AdSense spam" than e-commerce and affiliate spam, because all Google has to do is tighten up its rules and close down the offenders' accounts.
Yes, but Europeforvisitors, why are Google complaining about these low content pages - if their algos keep throwing up these results in high positions?
That should be fairly obvious: The Google Search team are playing Whack-a-Mole, just as they've been doing with affiliate and e-commerce SEOs for years.
oh - and who created AdSense
Not the Google Search team, that's for sure. :-)
When Google launched AdSense, it obviously decided that winning an overwhelming market share among publishers outweighed the inevitable problems that would result from a nearly total lack of quality control. Now it's got to clean up the mess, at the same time that it needs to deal with long-existing boilerplate clutter from e-commerce and affiliate sites.
