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If so can someone give a timeline type history of the results.
Sometimes you feel like you are sending email to the deepsix server of the mailservers at google. so it is hard to believe that reporting abusive practices really does any good.
Best wishes,
GoogleGuy
Personally I see this as spam in itself. For sure there will be obvious cases of spam but I am sure there will also be self benefitting emails accusing a site of spam when in fact it could be a genuine error or mistake.
None of our sites doing anything spammy or against robots rules etc, that we know of but eh we are only human and so mistakes can be made.
So why this post? Well I want to ask how much does Google look into these cases of "abuse" - does Google attempt at all to see if it is a genuine mistake or an error and allow the webmaster time to rectify it, or does it take a look and think yep that is spam and start some kind of removal or penalty process?
I ask this as the average surfer and even average webmaster has no idea about page rank, duplicate content etc. and so what may seem a perfectly normal marketing practice to some people may in fact be regarded as spam by the more educated (SEO savvy).
Surely this could in turn lead into a lot of abuse of the abuse system, and that worries me greatly.
I can understand your concerns. But, how about this angle "doing it clean is always the best way". That is pretty hard to swallow when you lose ranking after all the hard work to blatent keyword stuff using dhtml (won't post the html obviously). And it is virtually impossible for a bot to detect something like that. So what do you do, sit back and watch the bad guys get all the breaks? No, you do what you are encouraged to do by Google, in hopes for fairness.
But this topic could go on forever and never get everyone to agree.
The outright spammers are fairly easy to spot, as are the site with beginners mistakes and the likes. Drawing the line between the too though is very difficult and involves peering into the mind of the webmaster, something no mahine can do (yet).
Whether one report blatant abuse or not is up to the individual. I tend not to, opting to spend the energy in making my sites "even much more betterer".
Visit_Thailand does raise an important issue though which is I am sure on the minds of all well meaning webmasters all the time. How much effort do the engine operators make in deducing into which category a suspect site falls and what critera do they use in deciding these ethical issues?
Onya
Woz
What should matter is "build it well and make it complelling to read and on target for their search" and you should get rewarded for a fine job. If you have to cheat to get it, then there must be something about your site that you are not confident enough to let it fly on its content, then you don't belong there. Dumb is not an excuse either.
Where as it may not be so important to report and become a seo cop, I do think that reporting it is a duty when we do come across it.
Hey and guys, stuffing over 5 keyword phrases a total of 20 times in "hidden" dhtml code to get to number 1, is not admirable, it is crappy.
I tend to like to see how number one does it. When it is good old fashioned seo'ing and great content, then bravo, stand back and admire.
I for one do not have the time to scour the Internet for examples of spam for the purpose of de-throning. But, this expample was just toooo blatant to pass up. And it is a shame to take a great technolgy like DHTML and use it to spam.
I guess I've been knocked unconscious by a zillion tons of spam so I can't appreciate what a "mistake" could possibly be. If you are going to be a webmaster or a seo, learn the freaking rules. Play nicely with others. If you break the rules by accident, learn from it. But in comparison these accidents are one in a bazillion compared to deliberate deceptions.
Reporting abuse should be the #1 priority of a good webcitizen.
In the spam report I sent this past month about a group of spam sites I mentioned webmasterworld (and GoogleGuy encouraging appropriate reports). The price of freedom (good/free/qulaity search results) is eternal vigilance.
This subject worries me a great deal and seems to come up frequently on web/world. What worries me is how some webmasters seem to be scouring the net looking for spamming practices, reporting them only in the hope that their own website benefits in some way (perhaps by the reported site being dropped)
That's an excellent point, Visit_Thailand. In addition, what concerns me a lot is that what's become an all too frequent topic of conversation is not at all productive or beneficial for our members or what the object of the Google News forum is, which is to help seasoned, experienced and novice webmasters alike.
Personally I see this as spam in itself. For sure there will be obvious cases of spam but I am sure there will also be self benefitting emails accusing a site of spam when in fact it could be a genuine error or mistake...Surely this could in turn lead into a lot of abuse of the abuse system, and that worries me greatly.
What it seems to be turning into in some cases is a subtle form of profile spamming, which does not get by us unnoticed.
First, with site reviews, which as is clearly stated in the charter, is not acceptable.
Second, for any in the know who have been around for a while, it's easy enough to look at someone's profile, know what keyword phrase they're aiming for, and check out and find the exact search they're referring to and identify the exact site they're trying to report.
So in essence, to the extent that our rules of play are being circumvented in some cases, or attempted to be so, we are being spammed. And the attempts at it, those that are deliberately undertaken, are in my humble opinion constituting an abuse of the system here.
For those with some experience and background it is very easy to spot spam, track backlinks and figure out how people are abusing Google's system. To novices, and that includes experienced web developers who are new to search engine rankings it can remain a mystery until they study and learn.
As GoogleGuy has suggested "Just make a good site and you'll do well with Google." That is exactly what we're here for; both to have discussions on topics of interet to professionals and to help those new to search engines, Google in the case of this particular forum, make good sites that are high quality both for Google and their visitors.
The continued discussion about spam does not, in my most humble opinion, serve either purpose and is counter-productive to the forum and for the members, who would be better off spending their time pursuing the knowledge they can gain here, which will eventually enable them to understand the spam questions they're asking others to figure out for them.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how figuring out "spam" can help anyone learn to make a better, more relevant site, or what purpose discussing it serves for the forum or the benefit of our members who regularly frequent it.
[edited by: Marcia at 7:15 am (utc) on Sep. 19, 2002]
"I cannot for the life of me figure out how figuring out "spam" can help anyone learn to make a better, more relevant site, or what purpose it serves for the forum or the members who regularly frequent it."
Fully agree on this. Why not trust Googles skills in detecting spam? Nowadays the only thing we don't have is time. So why don't spent your valuable time in gaining knowledge about improving your site, find more quality links, create relevant content etc. instead of only looking at your competitors and bothering them.
History has always clarified that one who only watches his competitor is always one step behind.
I can't imagine what will help webmasters more than working with Google to ensure search results that reward good, relevant sites. What could possibly be more important to a webmaster reading a Google forum than that?
The continued discussion about spam does not, in my most humble opinion, serve either purpose and is counter-productive to the forum and for the members, who would be better off spending their time pursuing the knowledge they can gain here, which will eventually enable them to understand the spam questions they're asking others to figure out for them.I cannot for the life of me figure out how figuring out "spam" can help anyone learn to make a better, more relevant site, or what purpose discussing it serves for the forum or the benefit of the members who regularly frequent it.
Marcia, as a newbie to SEO I would have to respectfully disagree. Not on the snitching issue, but on the value of discussing spamming.
I found this list while looking for information about what *not* to do. As I am in charge of a volunteer run website, I have to deal with some suggestions by some of our "expert" volunteers for ways to get better results. Other non-professionals seem to be in the same position, there is a lot of bad advice floating around out there, and discussion of what not to do is useful.
My concern as far as SEO is to make sure all of our pages are indexed, I don't care about being #1. Some of the things I was thinking of trying to do to get all the pages indexed are suspiciously close to what some people do to try and raise their PR. I did not equate in my mind that *extra* efforts to get indexed are really the same thing as cheating to get higher PR. Thanks to some of these threads I realized my error before I got myself in trouble.
Conclusion: What was the most common "call ourselves"?
SPAMMERS!
Really good thread.
Also nice post Marcia ;)
On a more serious note, paranoia is a feature of the failing spammer; it is clearly not time-effective to be nitpicking the opposition on the off chance, rather than working on your own site ... but that's what spammers do.
On the other hand, if anyone spots signs that some new trick is being used, it does us all a favor to be sure the technical team know about it. Keeps the playing field level.
As for "errors" - you'd have to make a pretty sophisticated 'mistake' to be noticed - and reported - as spam. :)
It doesn't pay for google to run around to every little site that receives a complaint and dig through their source. GoogleGuy might occasionally do that, but they look for ways to identify bad behavior automatically. Remember, google is still a rather small company.
Maybe I'm being a bit too paranoid, but it fits in better with my goals.
Believe me or not, I don't use the spam report form to try to "shop the competition"; I only use it when I find pages using blatantly deceptive techniques like tons of hidden links or cloaked content ranking in the top 10 results, no matter if the spamming site is a competitor of mine or not: they just don't deserve to be there IMO.
That said, I obviously check my own strategic keywords more often, just like everybody else here, so I'm more likely to come across spammers that also happen to be competitors, but that is not my guiding principle in deciding whether I should or should not report spam.
I really believe that a spam-free search engine is a good thing for everybody (users and webmasters alike) in the long run, and I don't understand those who oppose reporting because, they say, "a webmaster's time would be better spent building content than reporting spam": I think the 30 seconds it takes to fill out the spam report form and sending it to Google are well spent if that can help them improve the quality of their search results!
And if you don't believe that you too can benefit from better quality results, well, then maybe that's because your content is not that good / clean after all.
..Oh, and please don't tell me that old story about everybody here using deceptive tricks because it's just not possible for the small guy to be on the front page without "cheating" a little when you're competing against the big boys, because that's what WebMonkey said [webmasterworld.com], and it's just not true.
Aren't you cheating the minute you start "optimizing" your page? SEO is just a club for people who legitimize their own actions.
As far as I am concerned, the minute you alter your content in any way to please a search engine, you are creating spam. And that includes the simplest changes, like changing the title of the site.
Show me the rulebook and I will show you someone who doesn't break the rules
By the way, you missed a bit of the quote "....and their high pagerank cross-linking back scratching cronies". This IS true.
Show me the rulebook: [google.com...]
Many an SEO'ers justification (including mine):
You can be the most beautiful, amusing and intelligent girl in the country living in a far remote farm house of a distant village, if no one knows you, or if you do not go about getting known, there's but a small chance prince charming will meet you or vice-versa.:)
Is changing a title in your printed brochure creating spam?
Is learning to use headings to clarify a newpaper article spam?
There are rules. Optimizing is optimizing. Spamming is spamming. Two different words exist for a reason. Getting someone to link to you with your site title instead of "click here" is not spamming and it's kinda offensive to suggest it is. Thinking ahead and getting the domain name goodstuff.com rather than crappystuff.com is not spamming, it's doing a good, fair, honorable job of webmastering within the rules.
Spamming is cheating. It's not against the law but it's against the rules of the game. Spamming is stealing search ranking or pagerank from those it rightfully belongs to according to the rules of the game. As for "a webmaster's time would be better spent building content than reporting spam", I spent years building good content on my site. My time is well spent now making sure cheaters don't steal from me.
Google has five "don't" commandments. They are pithier than God was. It's not hard to obey them.
"Be very careful about allowing an individual consultant or company to 'optimize' your web site. Chances are they will engage in some of our "Don'ts" and end up hurting your site. "
Is changing a title in your printed brochure creating spam?
Is learning to use headings to clarify a newpaper article spam?
No, but adverising yourself as "AAA Ladders" in the classifieds could be!
the funny thing is that - at least in my case - the older, slyer and more experienced the SEO dog gets in optimisation, the more he reverts to classical quality content building and less to the "AAA Ladders" or keyword-rich url type thing.
If I want to ask for a quality link from a Pagerank 8 .edu site, I mostly get one chance for a lasting impression. Better take care my content is top notch.
Aren't you cheating the minute you start "optimizing" your page? SEO is just a club for people who legitimize their own actions
I think vitaplease and steveb already answered you about the not-so-subtle difference between optimization and spamming.
Let me just add 2 things:
1. If you take some time and read past posts like Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com] you'll learn that there are ways to improve the user experience by making your site more content-rich and useful which will also benefit your Google rankings a great deal. This is the kind of optimization I would personally like to see.
2. I'm an old-school webmaster, happily not affiliated with any "SEO club". Maybe that's the biggest difference between the way you and I view "optimization".
I don't go looking for spam, with all the stuff I have to catch up on I don't have the time to spare. But, Google needs to be aware of the latest and greatest technics of spamming. Hopefully they will find a way to resolve them. Using this kind of technic I discovered can make using dhtml and external css dangerous, because a se can basically dictate whatever they want, and ban wonderful technics to deliver great content and manage huge changes in large sites with the change of one file.
I am extremely gratefully for the Univeristy of Webmaster World. You are able to go from Site Building 101 all the way up to getting a doctorate in SEO. Great resouce. Thank you. (Wish I could click a button for spell check, I am sure there are errors).
Buffy
You can think of sites as having two classes of visitors, human and spider. Both types have their usability requirements. I say pay attention to both.
I promise I'll drop by the Web Design forum more often from now on. ;)
It seems to me spammers are doing something correct if they are where the "good wholesome" optimizers want to be.
(ok i am just bitter because i can't dethrone the top 10 and most of them have just a few too many words *wink* *wink*)
Are we complaining about "spammers" or the fact that our well being depends on Google and this oh so brilliant SE can't figure out a word count to stop spam?
Well, who knows, maybe our own ultragenius (BTW, welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]) can help the 400 clueless engineers at the GooglePlex design a better spam filter. ;)
It seems to me spammers are doing something correct if they are where the "good wholesome" optimizers want to be.
Oh yeah, but they're doing it at their own risk.
(ok i am just bitter because i can't dethrone the top 10 and most of them have just a few too many words *wink* *wink*)
Don't be bitter. Life's good. :)
