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11 items tagged "Web and Spam"

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Search Engine Roundtable

• 

  Competitors Spamming? Google Says Report Them

  Fetched: May 24th, 2012, 2:12am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  Matt Cutts of Google published a video on what to do if your competitors are spamming Google and benefiting from it.

  Matt Cutts talks about the various ways to report spam to Google.

  He also says that webspam doesn't last forever and algorithm updates like Panda, Penguin and so on are examples of updates that tackle these issues. He also said Google takes manual action of spam reports when needed.

  The good part of this video is that if you have a client who is complaining their competitor is ranking above you and you know they are spamming - you can show it to your client and say, which route do you want to go. Short term gain or long term plan.

  Here is the video:

  Yea, of course Google wants you to to report spam to them.

  Here is the transcript:

  0:00 Today's question comes from Hood River, where lisawilliams
  0:04 wants to know, "White hat search marketers read and
  0:07 follow Google guidelines.
  0:09 What should they tell clients whose competitors use black
  0:11 hat techniques such as doorway pages and whom continue to
  0:15 rank as a result of those techniques?"
  0:17 So first and foremost, I would say do a spam report.
  0:20 Because if you're violating Google's guidelines in terms
  0:22 of cloaking or sneaky JavaScript redirects, buying
  0:25 links, doorway pages, keyword stuffing, all those kinds of
  0:28 things, we do want to know about it.
  0:30 So you can do a spam report.
  0:32 That's private.
  0:33 You can also stop by Google's Webmaster forum, and that's
  0:36 more public.
  0:37 But you can do a spam report there.
  0:39 You can sort of say, hey, I saw this content.
  0:41 It seems like it's ranking higher than
  0:42 it should be ranking.
  0:44 Here's a real business, and it's being outranked by this
  0:46 spammer, those kinds of things.
  0:48 There are people who keep an eye on that forum, not just
  0:51 Google employees, but also sort of
  0:52 superusers or bionic posters.
  0:55 And they can also pass those reports on.
  0:57 So there are a lot of different ways to report
  0:59 specific incidents of spam.
  1:01 The other thing that I would say is if you look at the
  1:03 history of which businesses have done well over time,
  1:07 you'll find the sorts of sites and the sorts of businesses
  1:10 that are built to stand the test of time.
  1:14 If someone is using a technique that is a gimmick or
  1:19 something that's like the SEO fad of the day, that's a
  1:22 little less likely to really work well a
  1:24 few years from now.
  1:25 So a lot of the times, you'll see people just chasing after,
  1:28 OK, I'm going to use guest books, or I'm going to use
  1:30 link wheels or whatever.
  1:32 And then they find, oh, that stopped working as well.
  1:34 And sometimes it's because of broad algorithmic
  1:36 changes like Panda.
  1:38 Sometimes it's because of specific web spam targeted
  1:41 algorithms. But it can also be the case that we can crack
  1:45 down on even large companies.
  1:47 If you go back and look at the New York Times articles about
  1:51 JC Penney or Overstock, we're willing to take action on
  1:54 anything that we consider to be a violation of our
  1:56 guidelines.
  1:57 So my short answer is go ahead and do a spam report.
  2:00 You can also report it in the forums. But it's definitely
  2:03 the case that if you're taking those higher risks, that can
  2:07 come back and bite you.
  2:08 And that can have a material impact.
  2:10 So I would recommend that people avoid going with the
  2:13 black hat techniques.
  2:15 And we're happy to hear, we're happy to get feedback either
  2:17 at conferences, on Twitter, online, blogs, forums, if
  2:21 you're seeing sites that are prospering and are using black
  2:24 hat techniques.
  2:25 Now, it's possible that they have some low-quality links,
  2:27 and there are some links that people aren't aware of that we
  2:30 see that are actually high quality.
  2:32 But we're happy to get spam reports.
  2:33 We're happy to dig into them.
  2:35 And then we'll try to find either new algorithms to try
  2:37 to rank the things more appropriately in the future.
  2:40 Or we're certainly willing to take manual action on spam if
  2:43 it's egregious or if it violates our guidelines.
  2:46 We have a manual web spam team that is willing to respond to
  2:49 those spam reports.
  2:50 So thanks very much.

  
  

  Forum discussion at Google+.

  Image credit to ShutterStock for kid pointing finger

  
  

• 

  SEOmoz To Identify Search Spam: Automated Outing Or Helping Industry?

  Fetched: May 10th, 2012, 2:40pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  SEOmoz's CEO, Rand Fishkin, announced on his Google+ page that his company is working on project that they hope will "classifying, identifying and removing/limiting link juice passed from sites/pages."

  In short, SEOmoz is working on software to add to their toolset to help SEOs determine if their pages or competitors pages are spammy in nature. If SEOmoz can figure it out, the purpose would be to tell webmasters and SEOs that Google probably figured it out and thus the links and content on those pages classified as spammy are probably not worth much.

  Rand explained that if they classify it as spam, "we're pretty sure Google would call webspam."

  One thing Rand gets himself in trouble with, or has gotten in trouble with is "outing" SEOs for spamming. He has tarnished his reputation amongst some SEOs in doing so, either intentionally or unintentionally.

  That being said, Rand asked the public if he should go ahead with this project. He wrote:

  Some of our team members, though, do have concerns about whether SEOs will be angry that we're "exposing" spam. My feeling is that it's better to have the knowledge out there (and that anything we can catch, Google/Bing can surely better catch and discount) then to keep it hidden. I'm also hopeful this can help a lot of marketers who are trying to decide whether to acquire certain links or who have to dig themselves out of a penalty (or reverse what might have caused it).

  It seems like Rand has made up his mind and most of the responses are in favor of SEOmoz building this out. What do you think?

  Forum discussion at Google+.

  Image credit to ShutterStock for spam target

  
  

• 

  Google's Cleaner Spam Reporting Page

  Fetched: August 5th, 2011, 2:07am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  Last night, Matt Cutts from Google tweeted they have "released the biggest refresh of our spam report form in, oh, say 10 years." Indeed.

  Here is a picture of the new page:

  As you can see, they break it down by type of "spam":

  • Paid links - This page is selling or buying links.
  • Copyright and other legal issues - This page should be removed under applicable law.
  • Objectionable content - This page is inappropriate.
  • Personal/private - This page discloses private information.
  • Malware - This page is infected.
  • Phishing - This page is trying to get sensitive information.
  • Other Google products - This page abuses Google products other than Search, e.g., AdSense, Google Maps, etc.
  • Something else is wrongThis page has other, non-webspam related issues.

  Plus they have a button at the bottom that reads, "This page is really webspam. Report Spam."

  Then each form has specific fields they want you to fill out related to the topic. Should make it easier for Google to route the reports to the appropriate groups, thus making it faster for Google to take action.

  The old form, which Matt McGee posted a picture of is here:

  Google has many ways to report spam and keeps adding new ways. They tend to work for some and while many SEOs won't use it.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Many Feel Google & Bing Should Offer Spam Report Incentives

  Fetched: June 9th, 2011, 4:56pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  A couple weeks ago, we reported that Bing was considering offering spam reporting incentives.

  To encourage SEOs, who are not too likely to report spam to search engines anyway - incentivize them to increase the chances that they report spam.

  The results are in, with with over a hundred responses:

  Should Google & Bing Offer Incentives To Report Spam?

  • 57% said YES
  • 43% said NO

  Forum discussion continued at Bing Forums.

  Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.

  
  

• 

  Three Years Later, SEOs Still Won't Rat Each Other Out

  Fetched: June 9th, 2011, 4:56pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  I have to say I am completely shocked by the results of a poll I ran a few weeks ago asking would you report search spammers to Google.

  Three years ago, we ran a similar poll, soon after Google began pushing SEOs and others to report spam to them, where less than 30% would report spam to Google. I totally expected the poll to reverse, where 70% would say they would report spam to Google. I was wrong.

  That number only jumped up by 6-7 points, where 36% said they would now report spam to Google. 60% said they would not report spam to Google.

  I am really all for an industry standing behind each other - so I am a bit happy to see this, to be honest. Loyalty is good to see. Of course, if this was illegal, that would be a different story. I would hope if I ran another poll asking if you would report hacked sites, 100% of you would say yes. Take our poll on that question over here.

  Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

  Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.

  
  

• 

  Do You Report Malware In Search Results To Google?

  Fetched: June 8th, 2011, 8:04pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  There is clearly a difference between search spam and hackers. Read our story from last year named Is Black Hat SEO Criminal?

  SEOs can use black hat techniques to boost their rankings. And then there is going beyond black hat, hacking sites, injecting malware and harming people and computers.

  That being said, we ran a poll a few weeks ago we ran a poll asking Would you report search spammers to Google?

  I wanted to differentiate the question by asking - Would You Report Hacked & Malicious Sites To Google?

  Please take my poll:

  Would You Report Hacked & Malicious Sites To Google?

  Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

  Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.

  
  

• 

  Bing Considering Rewards For Search Spam Reports

  Fetched: May 25th, 2011, 9:14am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  It is no secret that both Google and Bing want you to report search spam to them and people do it. It helps them both manually and algorithmically tailor their search ranking algorithms to be better quality.

  Google has gone to lengths to encourage users to report spam by creating chrome extensions, forms in webmaster tools, generic forms and heck even the block sites feature. But Google has never promised action on those spam reports nor have they offered any monetary reward for these reports.

  A Bing Forum thread has one SEO recommending to Bing to offer an incentive or "small reward" for users who report search spam to Bing. If the spam report leads to a nice unearthing of a spam technique, give the spam reporter something nice to encourage that spam reporter and others to report spam more often.

  Side note: The interesting thing about this post was that the one who suggested it dropped a anchor text rich link to his business.

  Bing's response was non-committal but yet not shut down completely. Wil from Bing said:

  Thank you for your feedback. While we cannot guarantee all requests to be granted, we will certainly have our team review this and consider it in future releases.

  Do you think Google and Bing should offer incentives to report spam? Take our poll:

  Should Google & Bing Offer Incentives To Report Spam?online survey

  Forum discussion at Bing Forum.

  
  

• 

  Do You Report Search Spammers To Google?

  Fetched: May 16th, 2011, 3:34am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  Just over three years ago, we polled you asking do you report competitors via spam reports to Google? And the results were that most do not report spam to Google.

  But that was a different time. Three years later, I'd be surprised to see 70% of our industry claim to not report competitors for spamming Google's index in order to benefit their own sites.

  Since Matt McGee created a discussion on this topic at Sphinn asking that question, I'd figure we run the poll again.

  Do you report search spammers, including competitors, to Google's spam report?

  Do You Report Search Spammers To Google?customer surveys

  Forum discussion at Sphinn.

  
  

• 

  Payback: Upset Ex-Girlfriend Spams Boyfriend In Google Images

  Fetched: February 7th, 2011, 8:21pm CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  Upset boyfriends and girlfriends are nothing new. There are plenty of stories of girlfriends getting back at their ex-boyfriends for mistreatment and visa versa. But in the age where Google ranks supreme, you do not want to mess with a girl who knows how to manipulate Google.

  One guy learned this the hard way.

  Apparently, a disturbed ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend's professional taken picture and polluted it all over Google Images for a search on his name. You can see the Google Image search spam yourself by clicking here or in the screen shot below:

  There has to be dozens of the same image, all with little notes from the girl written all over them. I won't name the individual in text on this page (because I do not want the page to rank for his name) or the notes but it is a bit interesting to see upset ex-couples use Google Images as payback.

  I suspect the images will be dropping out of Google shortly simply because it seems like the image sources have been removed from the servers they were hosted on.

  As per the complaint thread started by the boy's mother at Google Webmaster Help, the mother was extremely upset about this. She said:

  My minor son's ex-girlfriend took a copyrighted picture of him (we own copyright) and uploaded it more than 60 times to a website. On each image she wrote slanderous, defamatory and pornographic captions. The webmaster of the site states he removed the images 6 weeks ago, but Google Search still shows all the images. My son is so stressed out and embarrassed and we've done everything we can to get images off of Google including URL removal tool, a letter to Google Legal with all the URLs because of copyright infringement, and nothing has worked!

  You see, she knew to have the source site remove the images but Google still has them in their index. The issue is that although the images appear to be gone, the URLs they are sourced via are actually returning a 200 status code, which to Google means they are still there. They need to return a page not found status code, and they do not.

  Lesson? Before you upset your girlfriend or boyfriend, make sure they do not know how Google works. Oh, and never mess with an SEO.

  Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

  
  

• 

  Google's Own Content Farm: Google Translate Spam

  Fetched: January 29th, 2011, 4:17am CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  Vanessa Fox covered how Google was content spamming their own index with Google Translate pages. She discovered it via a tweet from @rishil.

  In short, if you searched site:translate.google.com up came thousands of pages that Google was indexing of a simply auto-translated set of search results. Here is a picture:

  We know Google considers Google Translated pages as spam on some level. They do not want auto-translated content in their index. But this is exactly what Google was showing in their index, even better yet, on the Google.com domain.

  This is technically a form of content spam and we know Google said they are targeting content farms and spam in 2011. Timely?

  In any event, as Vanessa explains, this is a case of one division in Google not knowing that they did something wrong. As soon as Google was informed, they put in the required robots.txt commands to block these pages. If you take a look at translate.google.com/robots.txt you will see two lines, one for Disallow: /?q= and other for Disallow: /?text=. This should fix the issue and drop all these pages from the Google index.

  Forum discussion at Sphinn.

  
  

• 

  Google's Thoughts On Link Building Through Comment Spamming

  Fetched: January 28th, 2011, 12:48pm CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Search Web SEO Spam  

  If the nofollow attribute was built for anything, it was built for comment spam. Yes, if you do not remember, Google and the search engines worked closely with MovableType, WordPress and other blog and forum systems to help them build in the nofollow attributes to help save their search index and to help reduce comment spam. That was one, if not the single most important, reason behind introducing the nofollow attribute. It has thus been expanded for other things, such as any paid link or PageRank sculpting (it gets more complicated).

  Anyway, I found an interesting thread at Google Webmaster Help which talks about the nofollow and link building through comment spamming. One thing you do not want to do is ask Google if it is okay to drop comments on blogs with the sole intent of building links. But people do crazy and wild things in official Google forums.

  I was initially going to name this post, Google's final word on what the nofollow attribute blocks, but then I saw JohnMu at Google somewhat mocking the use of comment spam for link building. Hence the new focus. Let me pull out the reply from John.

  Going back to the original question, commenting only with the goal of getting links is a bit lame, in my opinion. Do you honestly think that any site owner appreciates comments like "I really enjoyed the article. It proved to be Very helpful to me and I am sure to all the commenter here! It's always nice when you can be informed In such way,I'm sure you had fun reading and watching this post. san diego wrongful death attorney" or "It would also be useful have the plugins categorized a little better on the website. Browsing them is a pain the backside, since you have to go thru about 10 million social plugins that are a waste of time when you specifically need web dev tools. Domain Names Australia" (both taken from our blog's spam queue this morning)? That's just pure spam, and if you're contributing to it by posting more comments like that, then I know a few people who would like to talk to you out back...

  He gives two examples of poor comment spam. You and I see it every day, it is nothing new. If they get passed my spam filters, I try to manually block them - some always slip by.

  But then John ends with the line that I love, "if you're contributing to it by posting more comments like that, then I know a few people who would like to talk to you out back..."

  Sometimes I love the honesty here.

  And what is Google's official word on how the nofollow works?

  Let's be absolutely clear about this: Links that use the rel=nofollow microformat do not pass PageRank and are not used in our ranking algorithms.

  This does not mean that the target URL will never be crawled. By adding a rel=nofollow to a link, you're essentially removing a sign pointing to the restroom. Just because that sign is gone does not mean that Googlebot will never find the restroom. Using rel=nofollow is not a way to block crawling altogether -- if you need to do that, then use the robots.txt file.

  Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.