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I have read here that this is not recommened for obtaining higher rankings, well it worked for him, why not me?
For those who say its a matter of time before google will drop him....how long? does anyone have an example where this was done before? He has been at the top for 4 months now.
Someone give me a reason not to sign those guestbooks!
Right. The original post mentions 40 guestbooks. If Google starts penalizing for this, how much do you think I should charge people to sign 40 guestbooks with their competitors URL to get the competetion booted from Google? Signing 40 guestbooks shouldn't take that long. Is standard SEO practice in the future going to be to sign guestbooks with the URL of the clients competition to get that competitor banned at Google? Heck, if signing 40 guestbooks is all it takes to get a website banned, not only are people going to do so for profit, but also for reasons of spite, malice and revenge. Someone flame you really bad and made you look like an idiot on some website bulletin board or Usenet? Well, then just add that URL he has in his .sig and get back by having him booted from Google.
Also, I really have to wonder if this case where someone is on top for a 1.7M keyword is due to signing 40 guestbooks, or for some other reason? Only way I can imagine this is if this person found those mythical PR8 guestbooks out there with few links I keep mentioning, and managed to sign their URL to all of them. Pretty much every guestbook I have seen has low PR, and tons of URLs listed. I can imagine someone rising to the top on a keyword or keyword combination with maybe 1,000 occurances on the WWW web or so, but 40 guestbook links enough for #1 on a 1.7M keyword?
Most sites with guestbooks aren't even aware what SEO means. If Kim puts up a site with her chocolate chip cookie recipes and adds a guestbook, she isn't even aware this is an issue with search engines. Also, the idea behind guestbooks was in fact to make it easy to visit the signers site. The problem isn't guestbooks. The problem is that Google is *giving benefit for guestbook links*. Google created this problem themselves. The solution is for Google to figure out how to algorhitmically filter guestbook links and give them no value. Should be easy to spot most guestbooks this way.
My intention was certainly not to bad mouth seo's. I have great respect for what they do. In fact, I have stickyed several asking to come on as a consultant, or if they new someone available. It seems the SEO community is largely overworked.
Yes, I have a thread in commercial exchange.
The frustrating thing I am running into is determining who knows what the hell their talking about.
We are aware of the cookie/indexing issue I spoke with an seo today that swore google could see and index every page, otherwise they wouldnt have a pr...Ive also been told the opposite...anyway
pageon, I understand your point completely, the questions there is how long away is the seo tools graveyard for this? 1-2 months I can live with, I cant sit back and wait a year, ya know?
Lose the javascript dropdowns for your navigation. Google does not like it.
I'm told that the cookie is embedded so deeply in every interior page it would take weeks of solid work to remove them all.
Would it make that much of difference in serp? Is it worth doing-tis the question.
Whats another option for the javascript dropdown?
The javascript navigation is just one of the issues you need to contend with, there are many others in addition to that.
P.S. This is assuming that the email in your profile is also the domain in question.
P.S.S. Also, your home page is generating 39 unique html errors producing a total of 119 total html errors. You should investigate this further as some of those appear to be fatal.
Here are some ways that it could *appear* that a site is penalized for signing guestbooks:
- A large percentage of guestbook entries might trigger a human review.
- it will "look bad" if there is a human review.
- google can install a filter to no longer count guestbook links, causing a major drop in PR for sites that depend on the PR from those links.
- google can ban the guestbook page itself (not the site containing the guestbook) for those guestbooks that feed PR to a site they suspect of spamming. This would have the same effect as the previous option, while being more targeted.
- block the guestbook PR from flowing to sites where there are too many incoming guestbook links.
Quite simply, it's not worth the bother. There are hundreds of ways to get better, more reliable links. Sponsoring a local little league team and having all the kids put a link on their home page to your site would be a much better use of your resources than picking up 1/100 of a PR2 guestbook.
If there is a good reason for you to sign a guestbook, then do it. That is what they are there for. If you abuse it, then you deserve what you get.
Also, I really have to wonder if this case where someone is on top for a 1.7M keyword is due to signing 40 guestbooks, or for some other reason?
The same story but for messageboards.
For very popular phrase(60K searchers per month as Overture says) with 3.15Ì results in SERP there are a set of sites (each site is simple one page), based on subdomains with very poor and similar content (the same text with difference country and a button "to buy"). For about 4 updates these sites have been stayed in first page. Several months ago there were 5 of them in top-10, last month 3, now again 5 (the number of them changes time after time due to everflux, I think, but they still staying).
The main disadvantage of this situation - all these sites linked with each other and the rest links - are only ~30-35 links from various (not related to described sites) messageboards with PR 3-4. Moreover, these messageboards have the same type - their adrresses are like blah-blah-blah.com/.../wwwboard/../message/xxx.html
Moreover they (competitors) use the same text and the same links (to all their subdomains) in these messageboards
And no other links. No DMOZ, no Yahoo, no others.
As I understand only the links text are working.
I've looked to this since September and nothing changing...
I.e the best way to beat them is to go to these messageboards and put my links there and find the new boards and guestbooks... or to write spam-report. but I don't want to do this
I had a client in which I was handling SEO for and right as I took over the SEO for the site, Google reindexed and gave the site a 'grey bar' with absolutely NO PR.
I have also experienced this in the past with tests that our company would run to look at guestbook link ratios vs. actual legitimate links. We succeeded each time in getting these test sites banned with a certain number of guestbook entries...
Please beware that if you do sign guestbooks, the damage can be severe, e.g. your site is your primary source of income, etc.
Also, after back and forth emails to Google support on a few of the websites that were banned by them, they mentioned that the sites were not 'banned,' but rather they were "running random experiments with their ranking system" and that the sites were taken out not by a human.
I find this hard to believe as we have experienced this on several occasions....all happening the same way.
Maybe GoogleGuy can enlighten us on the subject more, but it seems that the ratio you play with has an important factor in the elimination of the site from Google.
Our ratios were:
100 backwards links - 75 legitimate, 25 guestbook = banned
50 backwards links - 40 legitimate, 10 guestbooks = banned
450 backwards links - 403 legitimate, 47 guestbooks = Not banned
I don't know if this helps you any, but please just watch yourself as there seems to be a ratio factor, and know going into it that you could lose everything from Google, at least for a while.
And know that if you have a pissed off competitor that sees your guestbook entries, they will likely email Google support to notify them of what'd going on....a definate bummer.
bg
But who wants that...
I tend to think Google is a lot smarter than we suspect and that their algo...at max...would simply mute guesbook links values.
[edited by: talismon at 4:47 pm (utc) on Jan. 23, 2003]
Most guestbooks i have been watching are turn ing to a grey Toolbar very quickly.
DaveN
I wish we could get googleguys opinion on this.
talismon, I'm not too sure that it would matter. I'm almost certain that GG would probably mirror most of what has been stated in this thread.
Guestbooks are not meant for commercial advertising, or any advertising for that matter. There have been a few examples provided where guestbook entries may be appropriate, but, for the most part they are unprofessional and serve no long term purpose.
I think we are back to one of the original comments which was "If its good for rankings, then do it". The consensus appears to be that it is not good for your rankings.
In the original example you provided, there is something else that is influencing the positioning of that site you are referring to. I'd hate to think that 40 some guestbook entries are going to take a non-optimized site to the top of the SERPs for a highly competitive term. I just don't see that happening.
There is a good chance that the site you were originally referring to hit the density just right, has the term in the perfect spots (maybe unknowingly) and managed to outrank everyone else. I do it regularly as do many others.
Just forget the whole guestbook issue if it is not serving any other purpose than for the sole benefit of link popularity. That's where the gray line is. As soon as you start doing something to artificially inflate your link pop, sure enough, something is going to happen that you may not be real pleased with.
BTW, did you ever search backward links for that site on ATW? I'd be willing to bet that there may be more than what Google shows. What if that site has another 400 links from PR3 and below sites? That would surely have some influence.
<edit>Typos</edit><spellcheck>
[edited by: pageoneresults at 6:20 pm (utc) on Jan. 23, 2003]
I would hope Google isn't THIS stupid. As Thomas wrote earlier, if this is the case unethical SEOs are at this moment paying bored teenagers to do nightly guestbook signing campaigns signing their clients URLs to hundreds of guestbooks. Might not even have to pay. Are you a business webmaster and have kids? Then teach your kids a new game called "sign the guestbook". Tell your daughter Janey if she can sign your competitor's URL to 500 guestbooks in a week, then you'll take her to the zoo. Never mind he already had planned on taking Janey to the zoo, but so much the better if he can take her to the zoo to make her happy AND totally screw over his competition also. Not to mention people doing it just for reasons of spite, malice and revenge. Don't like the fact a moderator here dinged some of your posts? Sign their URL to a few hundred guestbooks. One of the posters here flame you for being an idiot? Then sign their URL to a few hundred guestbooks. The potential for abuse here using this as a weapon against the competition or just for reasons of spite, malice and revenge against someone you don't like is staggering. Google created this problem itself by the algo they choose to use, and counting guestbook links with that algo. The solution isn't for Google to allow this algo to be used as a weapon by people against competitors or those people you just want to hurt.
>Most guestbooks i have been watching are turning to a grey Toolbar very quickly.
THIS is the answer. There is no need for Google to penalize any sites. Just tweak the algo to learn how to spot guestbooks, and ignore any links that are found on them. Guestbook pages should be easy to spot robotically. Many guestbooks run standard scripts and are easy to spot, and all guestbooks have certain qualities that make them look different than ordinary pages on websites. All Google has to do is tweak the algo with a rule "IF this page looks like a guestbook THEN don't count any links on it." Worst case scenario is that if there was a false hit, then some sites would lose an inbound link from another site. This is a whole lot better than a lot of sites going down in flames because of the actions of unethical SEOs, or the merely malicious.
it's the Affiliate sites using it has just link pop.
but it's happening the big question is for how long
case study one aff site had 500 inbounds all guestbooks three months at #1 now it's pr0 the site other than the guestbooks was clean as clean can be 75% of all those GB's are grey links. IMHO i think they are been very careful but they are hitting the target with a PR0.
DaveN
The author is a REAL spammer, he has sign an incredible amount of guestbooks/messageboards where it raise itself to #1 for a keyword (where overture last highest bid is $10)
This spam page has a PR of 8 (imagine the # he signed). It stand #1 in Google, Yahoo and AOL for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, it is remove from the seacrh term. Its PR still remain at 8 when I manually check his site. Its cache is still in the index. But after another 1 week, PR=grey, delete from database.
Since it is HUMAN who manually remove him from the database. The Google Editor must have receive complaint and review his site. Then the editor saw he has a super long domain , keyword1+keyword2+keyword3.... and has all zillions of GB inbound links (without a single quality inbound links), and then the site is only 1 page! How can a 1 page site posses enough QUALITY? So the editor need only 5 minutes to categories him as SPAMMER can click the , hmm, yellow button to remove him (red for google dance right?) ;)
So, if you want to sign guestbooks.
1. Make sure your site is established with a lots of non- spam inbound links.
2. You site provide good contents (not 1-2 pages site with some affiliate links)
3. You don't sign too much until your site appear #1!
This way, the google editor can hardly decide if he wants to press the yellow button. You can't penalized Yahoo, Microsoft, EBay or Webmasterworld by signing 1,000,000 GB for them since they are 'established'.
KEYWORD - ESTABLISHED.
'if you want to spam, don't make it look like a spam'.
Write ' I like your site and I think you should ... ... ... ... ... ...' sign every guestbooks differently, instead of using the template for 1000 site
nice site!
Website: www.yoursite.com
I must stress the point that GB spammers are remove manually by google editor.
Ohh, by the way, when I see this guy appearing #1, I am jealous + some respect. So I too sign around 30 of them. HUH luckily I didn't sign 1000. I am so nervous when I saw his site removed from the database. And after the last dance, all the GB appearing in the database! WOW! I take so much effort to contact every webmasters/web host of the GB and request them to remove my link. My effort and time pay out and now I left 2. So after the next dance, I will only have 2 GB links instead of 30! ;)
Sign as much as you want, but I won't take the risk. When the yellow button is hit, everything will be too late. You will need to buy another new domain and start over again.
rfgdxm1,
I have seen you involve in GB discussion since last month when I join webmasterword. I bet you have sign a lot too! Isn't it. ;)
I wish we could get googleguys opinion on this
He has. Do a site search on [Googleguy guestbook] and you will see exactly what we have been telling you.
case study one aff site had 500 inbounds all guestbooks three months at #1 now it's pr0 the site other than the guestbooks was clean as clean can be 75% of all those GB's are grey links. IMHO i think they are been very careful but they are hitting the target with a PR0.
It sure sounds to me like they DID NOT hit the site with a penalty. They just greyed out the guestbooks that were being abused by spammers. If all their PR comes from GBs then if the GB gets dinged, they no longer get the PR from that site. No penalty on your site, the penalty applies to the GB page only.
Then sign competitor to 300+ guestbooks. Best of luck finding the person to sue them. Made worse by the fact how do you get the logs of the sites with guestbooks to even try to find the person? If the logs still exist; usually they are overwritten in a few weeks or so at most sites.
And, except in the case of of a Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. how can they know who did the signing was the site owner, a competitor, or just someone malicious? Except in the extreme case that you mention where the site has no legit inbound links to it except guestbooks, no way of knowing. And, if the site does have no legit inbound links then just disregarding those inbound links makes it drop to nowhere.
>I have seen you involve in GB discussion since last month when I join webmasterword. I bet you have sign a lot too! Isn't it.
If there are more than a handful out there, then it likely was one of my enemies that did it. I do have a largish number on the Internet who would try to do such a thing. Have you ever checked my Usenet posting history? I am a *very* notorious flamer, and even dabble in trolling every now and then. ;) A common response by me on Usenet when responding to people (I post mostly in the recreational drug NGs) is that they are likely to end up dead, and that the gene pool could use a little chlorine. My 2 websites are most notable because they contain news reports of documented drug deaths. My biggest problem here is that the mods don't allow serious flaming, and I feel stifled. :( ;)I'm not worried if anyone is trying to add my site to guest books, notorious link farms, etc. Both my sites are ODP listed, one even has a Yahoo listing, and I exchange links with every notable site on the topic of mine on the Internet. Even one Russian site, complete with cyrilic anchor text they supplied me. With high powered links like that, both sites having the essential keyword in the domain, and good on page optimization, there is no way I could fail because the keywords I target are so non-competitive. SEO is all kinds of easy to come up high on keywords with 30,000 occurances on the Net when there are less than 5 other webmasters that even care out there to come up high for them. Now, if I were to start a new site and wanted to get page 1 for the search "free porn"... ;)
Google Algo will be tweak and tweak and tweak, it can simply disregards links from common guestbook. Who has the most common guestbook script? Matt's? They are just the same pattern and is easy to identify.
If you want to be a notorious spammer, think of new ways! research -> spammers need research too! ;)
One more think about GB observation, a site who sign 1000+ GB (not the one I mention in previous post). Has only got a PR of 5. Which point out to us GB are now useless in bring good PR to your site.
rfgdxm1,
Your site is established, no one can did anything to it. :) Waiting to see your 'free porn' site! ;)
DaveN
That pretty much sums up what you SHOULD be doing.
I always look at it from Google's perspective:
a) They are NOT going to ban sites solely because they have a lot of guest book entries. As mentioned above, that would be a green light to take out competitors
b) They are not going to allow significant advantage to those who recklessly sign hundreds/thousands. I recken their algorithm will just downgrade the value of the links
c) They ARE going to continue their move to more theming. As a result, reckless signing of any old guestbook ain't going to help in the long run. There's a whole thread on this somewhere.
Moderation is the key. Start signing everything in site and ultimately it will prove counter-productive. There are plenty of old hands on here who will confirm that excess leads to tears in this game. Heed their advice.
'Just ran an interesting check on a site that I know is doing GB links. This is a site that has three mirrors of the same site. One of the mirrors has over 1,000 GB links and pretty much nothing else. The other two have less than 20 backlinks each but have Yahoo backlinks. The 1,000 GB link mirror is a PR4 while the other two are PR5. Doing a ranking check on one of their primary keyphrases puts the two mirrors with a PR5 at number 1 and 2 for the keyphrase while the PR4 (GB site) didn't show up for the first 20 pages of results...'
