Spam rules, I drool?

[mrsubmit]

OK well at least it rhymes.

I study lots of different kw's and categories in AV across a broad range of topics. And I'm very surprised how much spam there still is in AV, and how well senseless kw repetition and invisible text still seem to work. [BTW I don't believe most of these are cloaked pages with red herring results to confuse SEO's.]

So my question is, what's up with that? ;)

I've been under the impression that the spammier practices are a dead end now with AV. Yet the engine still seems to be rewarding the abusers? I've been (stupidly?) trying to develop themes and relevance with related pages and keyphrases. Should I just be cashing in with hollow repetition and white-on-white text instead? ;)

These are just the non-cloaked pages, many with recent dates (verified in the non-US AV engines). It really makes me wonder what lurks behind some of the cloaked ones!

Any input here? :)

[seth_wilde]

AV has the most aggressive spam busting/banning of any SE. But with all the technology their using, some spam still slips thought the cracks. Your still going to see this crap ranking high, but you need to remember that these people are only going to have short term success. If you plan on being around for awhile you should still steer clear.....

[alexjc]

Maybe for some reason those pages haven't been spidered for a while, and the spam busting algorithms haven't had a chance to work...

Is this possible? If so, resubmitting them should solve your problem.

Alex

[mrsubmit]

seth,

You're right, I try to keep in mind that they'll all get purged eventually. It's tough though when the best hope is to end up somewhere in the top fifty (hundred?) rather than the top ten for competitive terms!

alexjc, I think you're probably right about some of the listings, but many are very recent pages (like several weeks old)! Hmm, maybe it's time for a little experiment . . .

Still, I guess if we all stay where we are in this jungle the SE's will eventually hack through and find us. ;)

[seth_wilde]

"I guess if we all stay where we are in this jungle the SE's will eventually hack through and find us"

Very true, and if you see someone heavily abusing the system, there's no reason why you can't speed up the process by dropping AV an email...

[mrsubmit]

seth,

Give the site the little extra "help" it needs, eh? Good point. So far I usually just submit sites that are 404.

That and I just repeat "Google is merciful, Google is merciful" . . .

[Brett_Tabke]

I think the majority of spam in Alta is based on Domain spamming. Hotbot is laced with spammed domains right now. I went through a search awhile ago and the top 8 pages were identicle setting on different domains. There isn't that much of it in Alta, but Google is filling up with domain spam now too.

[Napoleon]

"Hotbot is laced with spammed domains right now. I went through a search awhile ago and the top 8 pages were identicle setting on different domains. There isn't that much of it in Alta"

Try searching for - bs7799

For the past week most of the top two pages have been filled with identical Symantec sites (www.symantec.com/us.index.html, www.norton.com/, symantec.com/, www.symantec.ca/index.html and others).

This is obviously either spam, accident or some deal between AV and Symantec.

If accident, I can't figure out how they have done it. The visible page content has no reference to bs7799, neither have the meta tags.

I am beginning to wonder just how much importance is now being placed on link pop and hit pop by AV.

[Machiavelli]

What is bs7799 ? It only seems to pull up 1500 pages when I do a search for it. Looks like a simple case of cloaking to me, though.

[Napoleon]

BS7799 is a security standard.

I thought 'cloaking' as the practise of submitting a site with one set of contents, and then re-submitting with another set when this has been indexed.... sounds like I was wrong (I'll look it up!).

[Machiavelli]

Cloaking is giving different content out to a search engine spider and a normal human browser depending on either the user-agent or the IP address, or both. So the two pages will exist at the same time, but different visitors see different things.

[Machiavelli]

:) Just realised the rather surreal aspect of Napolean in dialogue with Machiavelli. ;)

[Napoleon]

Thanks for the explanation Machiavelli... I presume this is achieved via java script or some technical means beyond my understanding (I write raw html, but nothing clever).

This explains the content, but I still wonder how AV can allow them to have 16 or so duplicate pages under different domain names... unless the cloaked pages are all different... which really is ultra-spamming.

By the way, what makes you think I'm not modelled on the guy from 'Man from UNCLE', Napoleon Solo? I assume here that, like me, you're old enough to remember this! ;)

[2_much]

Lol...Discourse between Napoleon and Machiavelli...that's one for the books :)

Thanks for the laughs...

Helps the hideous headache I'm getting from reading post after post after post...I haven't moved in 2 hours and it looks like I need 2 more! 5 pages since I left work on Friday afternoon!!!!!! Outta control!!! But, most of it fascinating, of course...

:)
2M

[Machiavelli]

Old enough? I'm 531. That's plenty old enough....

[Napoleon]

Bloody hell.... you old wrinkle! I'm only 231.

[budterm]

Machievelli - "Looks like a simple case of cloaking to me, though"

I am trying to figure out how you determined that it is a cloaked page. The description in AV reads: "Enterprise Solutions. Internet Partners. Home Computing. Small Business. Partners. Insert Virus Name Here. --> --> --> Virus Alert: Download New..."

I find the first part of this in the HTML: "Enterprise Solutions. Internet Partners. Home Computing. Small Business. Partners. " But I cant find "Insert Virus Name Here. --> --> --> Virus Alert: Download New..."

Any comments are of course appreciated.

[Machiavelli]

budterm,
I agree that it looks suspiciously uncloaked (an oxymoron if ever there was one) but a cunning cloaker will endeavour to make the description that appears in the search engine look like the real description.
However, it is still a bit of a puzzle. Napolean - does these Symantec sites have anything whatsoever to do with bs7799? Or perhaps Altavista has just done something weird.

[Machiavelli]

The point about the Symantec sites having anything to do with bs7799 is this - Altavista could have clumped the two together as a theme. If the Symantec sites did very well on some other keyword, then it is just possible that these click-throughs would boost them on every search - it is a bit of a strange idea, but not completely impossible.
Or it could be a bribe.

[Machiavelli]

I've been a fool. At the time of indexing, that right hand panel with all the news articles probably had a reference to this:

[enterprisesecurity.symantec.com...]

[georged]

>there's no reason why you can't speed up the process by dropping AV an email...

Except that, in my experience, this has never had any result. Whatever you report, hidden text on doorways etc., nothing happens. So I can't be bothered anymore, despite encouragement from certain quarters...

BTW, I would love to hear if anyone has had any success reporting spam.

[budterm]

georged:

I have reported spam and, after a couple months, the site was removed. Dont know if it was because of my email because all I got was the standard response from AV.

[Napoleon]

>>Napolean - does these Symantec sites have anything whatsoever to do with bs7799? <<

Tenuous link in that BS7799 is a security standard and sysmantec sell security related products. However, when there are dozens of sites dedicated to the standard and these are swamped out... something is going on.

The theming point is interesting... obviously Symantec will do well on the term 'anti virus' and here's the crunch, 'security'. If AV have clumped 'BS7799' and 'security' together in some way, then just maybe....

This may fall apart a bit though when you consider just how many Symantex sites there are there. Surely ALL of these can't be doing that well... well enough to swamp out all the BS7799 stuff?

>>I've been a fool. At the time of indexing, that right hand panel with all the news articles probably had a reference to this: address <<

Great spot. I agree there may have been a link to a page heavy with BS7799 content (which I hadn't found previously)... but even with theming, should this elevate the page above sites exclusively covering BS7799?

Obviously it shouldn't, because people searching for BS7799 are now finding the off-topic pages.

This does... and this is the important bit... seem to illustrate just how important theming is in the AV algorithm. I knew that it was a factor, but expected it to be fairly marginal. Looks like I was wrong.

As far as Symantec are concerned though, it still leaves the spamming arguement of having 16 identical pages on the first two AV pages.

AV have been mailed about this by one of my customers... but no joy so far. I do have some suspicions on this.

Anyhow.... thanks guys.... I've certainly learned quite a bit more about AV from this thread.

[seth_wilde]

I don't think this is a case of themes. The content your seeing now is not what AV saw at the time of indexing. It's not clear weather this is a case of cloaking or just the site changing since that last indexing.

"right hand panel with all the news articles probably had a reference to this:"

I think this is definitely a possibilty. With symantec's strong security related link popularity they could get away with a much lower keyword density/theme.

[Napoleon]

The actual keyword density on the page, at least currently, is zero... so they seem to be getting away with a lot.

You may be correct though, in that maybe their bs7799 USED TO BE the paged indexed. To check this out, and as a service to AV of course, I have re-submitted all the Symantec pages. The next re-index should be interesting.

Even if this sorts the problem... there is the issue of 16 identical pages. Not just in terms of AV preventing it (a technical nightmare probably for a SE so I am not casting blame), but in terms of the timeliness of their response to emails about spam.

I expected the latter to be dealt with within a few days, but obviously it takes a bit longer than this (assuming of course that they do consider it spam and there is not something else there). Anyone know what the normal turnaround is?

There are a lot of issues in play with this one... strong link popularity, strong theme, zero keyword density, a big corporate, repeated pages, etc. I am still a long way from figuring out the details of AV's algorithm! Maybe the next re-index will clarify this a bit.

[Machiavelli]

I wouldn't conclude that this was deliberate spam, if spam at all. Many companies are not even considering search engines at all, and more still don't consider optimising to them. More likely is that they have created several different urls which point to the same page to incorporate different names from a corporate take-over and/or regional domain names.

However, I think that you are best doing as you have done and resubmitting.

Also bear in mind that this other company has done well by being well linked and possibly highly clicked-on (for other searches). This may be where you need to concentrate some of your efforts.
Don't let the big boys give you the elba.

[Napoleon]

I agree... with their budget they don't need to spam, so it's either accidental or a deal with AV (Ok, I'm paranoid). The re-submit should determine which. They won't give me the Elba!

Wish I could get 1-5 on AV by accident!