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Well, I really don't care much one way or the other about this, but lately I'm seeing more and more sites where the seo's are just simply throwing in big chunks of keyword gibberish as part of the page content. The stuffing seems to be overflowing from the usual nooks and crannies and becoming mainstream.
"dog fluffy shampoo Denver parlour clipping grooming cheap poodle speciality" plastered everywhrere gives some idea of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Then there is the variation where a place name is used in front of every word.
"Google hasn't punished me so its OK to keep doing it.... my competitor just outranked me so I'll do whatever it takes" and so it continues to escalate. And if the site has the links it will rank irrespective of the onpage gibberish.
So when does enough become too much... when does it become detrimental? If you were Google, would you start getting serious about applying your guidelines on this issue?
Europeforvisitors: Keyword stuffing is rarely in the first paragraph, it is usually at the bottom of the page where very few people look, especially on a "glamorous" home page that immediately encourages the visitor to click an option leading to another page.
What are the guidelines specifically? The whole approach is lame and amateurish, and I've never noticed it helping any site's ranking, but I don't recall any Google warnings against doing this.
<If you were Google, would you start getting serious about applying your guidelines on this issue?>
With content like this, I think the site will repel users on its own.
If I were Google, I would not have let out as much information as far as how my algorithm works, I wouldn't give any clue to how PageRank works, and I wouldn't give out any information that would give someone the ability to optimize their site for search engines. This way, the site is judged purely on its content because no one would tweak the site one way or another for SERPs.
However, as an SEO, I want as much information as possible :-).
Make pages for users, not for search engines.
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Unfortunately I don't see any reliable way for Google's algorithm to identify keyword lists, either to reduce their effect on page ranking or to trigger a spam filter.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
That says nothing about keyword lists related to the topic of the page. Of course, as Google states elsewhere, repetitions of a any keyword beyond a certain threshold get ignored anyway.
I guess the point I was trying to make, perhaps badly, is that keyword stuffing has usually been confined to things like comments in <head> and <body>, multiple titles, abuse of meta tags, off-page divs, 100% frames, stacked descr and keywords, 1 px text, hidden stuff etc etc etc .... none of which is seen by the viewer.
It is nearly always the case in the sites I'm talking about that all/many/some of the above have been used to the max as well as loading up the visible page content with a whole bunch more of this stuff. I realize Google could not differentiate between stuffing and legit within the actual page content, but its a pretty safe bet they can recognise it elsewhere within the source code.
When there is a clear and unmistakeable intent to try and manipulate rankings ahead of site quality, should Google add teeth to their guidelines to remove the problem once and for all.... or, as you say, just keep relying on the algo to manage its effect on rankings.
