Forum Moderators: open
I just wanted to let those site owners know that those penalties are set to expire, and most of those domains will be coming back. A note to site owners who were in this program: please don't use hidden text or hidden links on your pages. Ultimately, each webmaster or site owner is responsible for what's on your own domains. If you put hidden links/text on your pages, Google may have to remove you from our index, and we'd rather not do that. More info on our guidelines is here:
[google.com...]
Hope this helps,
GoogleGuy
Right now I wish Google were not so nice :)
In between updates I added 100+ subwebs (7,000 pages), building a site that I was hoping to develop my own "directory" using duplicated subwebs to form a basic "navigation" structure. I carefully renamed the 100+ (7,000 pages), subwebs so that each reflected town, state, region etc.. Each subweb used page titles & descriptions similar to the following format:
"Find (keyword) services within the (town, state) Websites offering (keyword) products, services or information listed for the (town, state)"
After the site recived the PR0 I took away the subwebs, in the hope that the site / domain could pick up some PR value at the next update / this update.
In the mean time I have now "invested" in directory mangagement software, trade mark registration, dedicated server (ready for me to move the domain to - once the PR0 is "cured"), to allow me to develop my directory correctly.
I still need to "shake off" the PR0 - will this "expiring penalties" apply?
One thing GG. Might it not make sense to mention this be name so naive webmasters can avoid it? If this can be fatal to ones site, then webmasters would like to know about it.
The goal is not to defame them, but I think we have a need to know what to avoid. And how can we do that if we don't know the details.
I have a lot of respect for google for and it's desire to stand on simple good service and integrity.
Of course you can't be anything for anyone.
Perhaps another measure, is to reward those who do a good job, aka solid content and navigation..and so on..
What would be outstanding as a possible future idea, is to take each major category and pick 1-5 top websites. That meet and exceed all good standards for design and content. And reward them with a litte trophy or ceremony.
We all tend to focus on the bad, lets take care of the bad, but create a better incentive program to further encourage the good.
This is a free-market, and free markets tend to wean out the unsuccessful. And part of the new age is that Search Engines will wean out the abhorrent successors and their abhorrent methodologies.
Now let's turn the cheek and look and examine at the sites and their methodologies that cause them to earn higher positioning.
Let's take this to a higher level where we all want to be.
Any thoughts?
You probably mean, 10 years from now, ©2012...
>> Google may have to remove you from our index, and we'd rather not do that.
Therefore you only push 'em to the back, huh? :)
Gooooogle is Great.
Oh yes. It's the same with hidden text, etc.
It will always be hard for site owners to distinguish the "few unethical SEOs" from the "Many SEOs [who] provide useful services", so I'm pleased to see education attempts from Google.
Take a look through the Google Information for Webmasters [google.com]. Google offers quite a bit of information on what types of link exchange programs to avoid.
If I am the webmaster for 10 different websites, it's okay to have a link on each page to my company home page? Also on my company home page I have a projects page that lists all the sites I have developed. This isn't something you frown on is it?
Thanks,
Ken
[edited by: Marcia at 9:45 pm (utc) on Dec. 31, 2002]
We have a site that is sort of dynamic. We use a perl program to pass hidden form variables from one page to the other. Unfortunately, most Search Engines including Google fails to index beyond my home page, due to a rather complex querry_string after the url.
I was going to add hidden links, joining all my web pages. I don't want to make the link visible,or the user may click on the wrong link, skip out of the perl manage script, and lose the shopping cart contents.
Does google penalize sites that have internal hidden links. Im trying to make it easier for search engines to crawl my site. But I don't want to be penalized, if Google is unable to tell the difference between internal and external hidden links.
[edited by: Marcia at 9:46 pm (utc) on Dec. 31, 2002]
I just wanted to let those site owners know that those penalties are set to expire, and most of those domains will be coming back.Ya the ones that survived the wrath of Google - I wonder just how many of those Webmasters had no idea what happened to them or why?
GG was your post directed more at intimidating other Webmasters to remove link exchange links?
<edited for clarity and spelling>
Or is redemption only available to those who sinned this year, and paid good money for it, to participate in a program whose clear intent was to attain higher rankings?
Google's lawyers probably don't want them to throw names around. A big name dominant in an industry and a fat bank account makes the other guy's lawyers salivate.
Maybe some little mom or pop can spill the beans, huh?
<<2. There seems to be text that is the same color as the background >>
While it irks me and many base users whenever I find myself led to a website with so-called "White Text" (Insert appropriate color to background in place of white) tricks to get ranked higher, I must point out the few legitimate uses for white text.
The one that comes foremost to mind is a technique used on many independant entertainment news/forum type sites, where out of respect for each others, users post any and all spoilers in white text, so the random reader will not accidently ruin a highly anticipated book/movie/television show. By highlighting this white text, it becomes visible and you may read on if you wish.
Another use is for hidden logins etc.
I doubt any validator program would be able to discern between this "legitimate use" and other "unethical uses."
As I've read so far, it seems to me that this is the case for all the various techniques covered here. As great as Google may be, they just can't always root out the good webmasters from the devious ones.
My only suggestion would be some sort of contact/personal review system, where if your website has been penalized, and you believe this has been done so by mistake, you can plead your case to a real person, rather than just hope the penalties "wear off" one day. (Excuse me if something like this already exists, although from the tone of this thread I conjecture this is not so.)
In a world where Google is the most used search engine, a mistaken penalty can literally mean the difference between life and death for and innocent small business e-commerce website.
(But then, what do I know, this is my first post here ;) )
Hope everyone has had good holidays so far!
1. I have a page, where the background is white, the table cells alternate between white cells with black text and dark blue cells, that have the text title for each section. In the dark blue cells, I would like to have white text, I don't because this would be seen as white text on a white background, right?
2. I have seen several sites that take advantage of this oversight (comparing text color to the page background color, instead of the cell background color) where they have a solid black colored cell with black text in it, but the page background is white.
The other thing I have seen quite a bit is, the page (or cell) background image is a single pixel (or small square) black .gif and the page has black text on it.
I am wondering how can we (meaning people playing by the rules) can compete with these people who have obviously found ways of getting around this issue. I have reported a few people who do this on a pretty big scale, but after two months, I still see that they are #1 and make lots of money.
My questions is (though I guess it will not be answered), is google interested in leveling the playing field?
I have yet to see anything done about spam reports and if you look into any topics here that talk about spam reports, everyone seems to say one of two things:
1. they are a waste of time
2. the only way to compete, is to cheat
I must say that playing by the rules kind of sucks, I will never be #1 on google, my category is dominated by a competitor that has broken most of the rules, is a corrupt dmoz editor with multiple dmoz contacts/accounts and family members and employees who who are dmoz editors.
I reported him to dmoz and the next day recieved threatening telephone calls from him, he had almost all of my (and client) websites removed from dmoz.
I reported his 30 something mirrors sites and cloaking/hidden text/spam to google months ago, nothing was done.
I really enjoy this forum, but it seems like there is no way to win at the ecommerce game since there seems to be no way to compete on a level playing field, unless you break the rules.
I do have to say, that I do ok right now because I generate sales on other search engines. I'm also in the top 20 for my 3 big money phrases on google, which brings in a decent amount of sales. But the fact is, 25-50% of the top 30 listings all belong to one competitor and nobody seems to be doing anything about it.
I'm sure I'm just one of many people in this situation, just wondering how many others are still playing by the rules and never being given the chance to compete on a level playing field.
my 3 cents...
It is fairly common for a "green" webmaster to use a background image on a page -- so consider this, the body tag will have BGCOLOR and TEXT both white, as BGCOLOR is not relevant to the "look" of the page... To a bot, which is not concerned with the rendered page, this looks bad as the text will appear to be invisible, however to a human with a graphical browser, this is perfectly fine, assuming the BACKGROUND image is dark.
Obviously, most webmasters are designing their content for human clients first, which I think is a good idea -- it's very easy to get caught up in designing "bot friendly" pages that are useless or otherwise unappealing to a human client. Personally, I want them to come back after they find me on Google (I love to see hits on favicon.ico).
Google is a company that has proven itself to be of integrity that obviously tries harder than any other search engine to provide a quality service above all else.
Fair search results = Quality for Google's service.
People will always cheat, but can we really expect Google to set themselves up as the "fariness-police" of the Internet?
It's a question for Google, of how much quality for the engine is degraded by these "cheaters" versus the cost and hassle of enforcing various rules, then dealing with all the innocents that get trampled.
Google seems to have decided, at least in cases of major offenders, to lean towards enforcing fairness, but are ill prepared at the current time to deal with innocent bystanders and reformed websites, as well as whistle blowers. (Which would involve human interaction, and not a cleverly ingenious algorithym.)
If Google wishes truly to increase its link with webmasters and take web searching to the next level, they will probably have to deal with this, or step aside when another search engine company does.
I figure a system like I described in my aove post would work rather well, but as I pointed out, I'm not exactly an expert myself.
The sad thing about dmoz is that there is no system in place to take down the few editors that are corrupt, especially if they are experienced ones.
I don't know this, but I'm pretty sure that Google's spam report doesn't kick in until they have received x number of complaints for website y. There is a US agency (forgot which one) dealing with internet fraud which do not act in any way until they have received 20 complaints.
Normally I find filing spam reports stupid, ppl are usually better off focusing on their own sites, however sometimes it's needed.
I suggest you resubmit the spam report using a different IP, and get some of your friends to submit a report as well, - and eventually someone at Google will look into the sites.
As better communication is your NY resolution, pull out all the stops and notify the webmasters directly that they were penalised and now it has been removed. Otherwise 90% of them probably don't even know they have been to hell and back!
But one question, what is up with the TravelNow business? I am very distturbed by that (Admin, there is a whole seperate thread on this, so pardon the direct reference).
I'm not doing it for deceptive purposes, just to remind myself that I need to check it again later.
