Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
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Daily Search Forum Recap: July 26, 2010
Posted: July 26th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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Matt Cutts On Hacked Site & Hand Editing Search Results
Posted: July 26th, 2010, 4:01pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google Optimization
Google's Matt Cutts spoke at a SEO conference in Belgium named Search University II. He spoke for about twenty minutes about a lot of SEO topics. The specific topic he put more stress on was about hacked sites - which is a big concern out there. I'll post the video below for all to watch.
I spotted three relevant threads over the weekend, so I thought I discuss them all in this single post.
A Google Web Search Help thread has a classic example of a site being hacked to target a search query that is timely. The search query was mentioned on TV, a site was hacked to take advantage of it and the first result was impacted. The thread creator said:
I happened to be watching Deadliest Catch on Discovery tonight and when I went to Google and searched for 'phil harris' the top result is corneliamarie.com but the title of the search result is:
Cheap Cipro (Ciprofloxacin) Online - Reliable Online DrugStore...
Google's JohnMu was quick to respond, saying:
It looks like that website has been modified (probably by a third-party) to return pharmaceutical content to Google. In other words, when Googlebot looked at those pages, we saw something with that title (you can see the whole page by clicking on the "Cached" link for the search result), and not the content that you see when you visit yourself. This is something the website owner needs to fix, so I sent a short email to let them know about it :).
Matt Cutts said Google would take immediate action on certain sites that are hacked or intentionally are manipulating the results, when necessary. In a case like this, where a computer can be infected, you can see Google pull the result quickly.
A WebmasterWorldthread talks about Google hand editing search results. The consensus in that thread is that Google does not hand edit the top 10 results, but of course, when spam or hacked content gets in, they would.
In a Google Webmaster Help thread, Googler JohnMu gives advice to a webmaster who recently saw his site hacked. John said:
- You can help verify the age of a cached page by automatically adding today's date to your pages (it could be in a HTML comment, if you want).
- Set up Google Alerts for your site with problematic keywords (eg add "site:eliwhitney.org viagra|ringtones|casino" as an alert). Google Alerts is a fast way to get notified of new, potentially problematic content.
- Use the "Fetch as Googlebot" feature to double-check any suspicious page.
And now for that video:
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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Should Google AdSense Do Away With Pub IDs? Go Allowed Sites Only?
Posted: July 26th, 2010, 3:44pm CEST by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
A featured WebmasterWorld thread is titled "Shocked to See Many Sites Using My Adsense Code." It is a common story, you have a popular site with Google AdSense ads on them. There are many people out there that copy your site and put it on their own spammy sites. They not only copy your content, but copy your AdSense code.
Great! You get money for people stealing your content! Not so fast! Yes, you may get some incremental income from those who stole your content, but it may also lead to Google thinking that site is owned by you and ultimately get you banned from AdSense due to violating their spam guidelines.
Seems ridiculous? Perhaps, but it is not unheard of. Some have thought that this is why DigitalPoint was banned from AdSense until someone at Google took a closer look.
Heck, even Brett Tabke, the founder of WebmasterWorld, said:
That is a classic AdSense attack. Someone is trying to get you kicked out of AdSense by linking you to a bad neighborhood.
Getting a site listed on a block list such as repetitive email spammer, malware host, or phising host will get a hand check on that site 100% of that time if it is in the AdSense program.
People specifically try to get sites banned from using AdSense over this type of spam attack. It works and it is hard for both the publisher and Google to stay on top of.
Yes, AdSense built an allowed sites feature, but I never use it. I don't care to spend my time allowing each site manually. Plus, this feature was added as an afterthought years after AdSense went live. Honestly, I am not sure why it was ever set up this way. Allowed sites should have been the method originally.
You sign up, you add a site/application to the list of sites allowed to show ads and you stick generic ad code on the site. Google then determines who the ad income goes to based on the site or application showing the ad. Yes, this would kill revenue sharing forums and sites as they are set up now, but there are other ways to set that up.
As a publisher, I don't and I won't spend my time looking for sites trying to hurt me. I will spend time trying to build relevant, useful content that helps my audience and I enjoy writing.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.