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How My Popular Site was Banned by Google

187 points by kbrower 15y ago

arkitaip 15y ago
I can't judge if you broke the rules or not but not showing up on Google's SERPs is terrifying and a stark reminder on how dependent we've become on Google traffic.
- kbrower 15y ago
  I included an image of my adwords account. The ad had been running for years(albeit infrequently due to very low budget), and I had not touched it since creating it. I checked after this all happened, and there were several warnings from adwords, but nothing from webmaster tools. I simply ignored the adwords warnings as I was not actively using the account and figured they were just disabling ads. If I had know these were the consequences, I would have just deleted my adwords account.
  - kposehn 15y ago
    Unfortunately, deleting an AdWords account won't remove the violation; it may actually make it worse. Google will look back several years and disable ads that haven't run for a very long time. Sometimes they even ban accounts that are inactive or deleted! It is very important to remember: when dealing with Google AdWords, the definition of a violation changes with time. If you violated the current policies in the past, you may still be banned. You take a great risk running there and any and all warnings you get should be dealt with immediately. That said, seeing an exclusion from organic based on an AdWords suspension is extremely alarming. That may be exactly what the DoJ is looking for in terms of violations by Google.
    - thematt 15y ago
      That said, seeing an exclusion from organic based on an AdWords suspension is extremely alarming. That may be exactly what the DoJ is looking for in terms of violations by Google. According to Matt Cutts, it was the exact opposite: he got the organic suspension then the AdWords suspension.
      - kposehn 15y ago
        I saw, much less alarming now.
- itswindy 15y ago
  Panda, too, did screw a lot of small businesses as well while promotion the likes of Walmart, Youtube and Bestbuy. Google's coffers are full though http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/technology/google-earnings-for-the-second-quarter-top-wall-street-expectations.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/technology/google-earnings...
yanw 15y ago
They usually change policy, or enforce existing ones before an algo update that doesn't prove any connection in you case and it's not like they are dependent on your ad expenditure.
esrauch 15y ago
Just out of curiosity, if only 30% of your results are from organic search, why did your hits drop by more than 30% after you stopped getting organic search hits?
- kbrower 15y ago
  that is the google analytics for just organic traffic from google. the site gets ~1000 visitors a day.
darksaga 15y ago
Another great example of Google randomly removing sites based on flimsy or nor evidence. The fact they don't give you a chance to plead their case is pretty scary. My hunch is one of your competitors got the site taken down. I've had a few clients who had their competitors file complaints with Google, or inform them they were using black hat SEO to get on the first page of the SERPS. In one case they were successful, but I had the site back up in less than 24 hour,s so it wasn't a huge deal. It sounds like it might be an ongoing issue and are not going to put your site back in the SERPS for a while. I feel for you brother.
- infinity 15y ago
  But often there is a reason why a site vanishes from the Google index. We would have to exclude all possible violations of the Google guidelines, before we could safely claim that this is a great example for random removal by Google. Edit: In a comment above Matt Cutts from Google gives an explanation.
trevin 15y ago
Google's definition of a bridge page: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=190435 http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...
spxdcz 15y ago
Dropping out of the organic results sounds like a result of the Panda update (http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-2-3-update-is-live-87230 http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-2-3-update...) My best guess is that you'll need to include some additional 'unique content' on the site to get it back in the listings. At the moment the Google crawler will see not a whole lot of text, quite a few Javascript buttons and some links, and will probably flag it as low quality. It may be a bit of a hassle, but may be worth adding a kind of 'interesting/unique filler items' blog to the site to increase the content to links/js ratio.
- itswindy 15y ago
  There is a difference between a ban and demotion or penalty. He is not even in the index. I wouldn't be surprised if the Adwords team clicked a box or sent an email to search
eulienohso 15y ago
Google should really get some healthy competition. filleritemfinder.com is reacheable from google, and as far as I can tell, has the same functionality, with better design. Maybe some google guru could comment if a redesign would save you.
mrbgty 15y ago
From google's bridge page definition: Not acceptable: "Websites that feature links to other websites while providing minimal or no added functionality or unique content for the user Added functionality includes, but isn't limited to, searching, sorting, comparing, ranking, and filtering" The page in question provides the added functionality listed (searching/filtering at least)
- GeoFan49 15y ago
  The filleritem.com website is a very simple tool to search for items of a certain price on Amazon. The purpose is to help select an item to fill the gap in the shopping cart to qualify for free shipping. There is no reason for Google to ban this site. What we MAY have here is an abuse of power by Google.
Matt_Cutts 15y ago
You have an autogenerated web site that consists of practically nothing other than affiliate links to Amazon. You can make an infinite number of autogenerated pages on your site, e.g. http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=31.69 http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=31.69 http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex and each autogenerated page consists of literally hundreds of affiliate links stuffed with keywords for unrelated products. When Google's webspam team takes action on websites in our websearch index, we can pass that information on to the ads group so they can check for violations. But it's a one-way street: we can send the ads team signals or information about spammers or other violations of our quality guidelines, but the ads team doesn't send information over to the quality/webspam team.
- kbrower 15y ago
  Hi Matt, Thanks for responding. The point of the site is to find items of a particular price that qualify for free shipping on Amazon.com. If you want I will give you access to my google analytics to show you that this is a site people want and use. I guess I should not let people link to the search results page? http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news and http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=anything+that+is+not+a+number http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=anything+that+is+not+... returns the same thing as if you did a search for $0. I will fix the bug so it returns an error. These are pages that no one has ever linked to as far as I know.
  - lewispb 15y ago
    I think he can probably already see your analytics ;)
    - Matt_Cutts 15y ago
      Nope, I can't. I can see how often the site shows up in e.g. our search results, but Analytics is a separate property and they don't send data to the search team either.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
SODaniel 15y ago
It's a website filled with autogenerated content and links, how are you surprised that you got sandboxed?
coffee 15y ago
Yea that sucks, it's happened to me MANY times. The fact of the matter is, it's Googles world and we're just living in it...
- infinity 15y ago
  I don't think that it is as simple as that. There is some form of ecosystem on the web: there are the content creators and website providers, there are the searchers, and there are the search engine providers. Each of these has its own interests and guidelines. Searchers have quality guidelines too, though they are not explicitly published by them on the web. If a search engine delivers low-quality results, the searchers move on to the next search engine. A search engine without searchers is hardly profitable. Most of the quality guidelines of Google are just common sense, following them will in many cases increase the usability and findability of a site. If this has happend to you many times, you are likely doing something wrong. I have never had one of my sites banned from Google.
  - mjwalshe 15y ago
    All that means is your not trying hard enough :-)
  - coffee 15y ago
    > If this has happend to you many times, you are likely doing something wrong. I have never had one of my sites banned from Google. Right. So. YOU'VE never personally had a site banned, therefore others who have must be doing it wrong. You know what, I've never been hit by a car while crossing the street, therefore others who have must be crossing the street wrong. I've never been in a plane crash, therefore others who have must be doing it wrong.
josefresco 15y ago
Amazon probably complained to Google and Google despite already having the rules on the books decided to enforce it on this one site, while also keeping many other low traffic clone sites offering the same service alone. Call me paranoid, or cynical but I've seen much worse from Google on the AdWords side of their offerings.
- heelhook 15y ago
  If that were the case Amazon would have a much simpler solution by stopping the affiliate account altogether, instead of having to ask Google to stop some of the traffic.
- Matt_Cutts 15y ago
  Nope, that didn't happen.
  - webcurious 15y ago
    This has been an amazing thread but there really is a pattern that is hard to follow for webmasters. In the case of the original site couldn't Google have just de-indexed the "extra" pages but left the the index page alone since it is indeed useful? Also, how did his site get canned but others like sportslinkup.com, which is an ebay affiliate spam site cloaked as a link directory, have over 7 million indexed pages and 8 million indexed images (all hosted by ebay, not the sports site) and it gets over half a million Google visitors per month (according to compete.com)?!? I think the sports site is even scraping Google for keywords, it's full of examples of what not to do, but it's been sailing along for years with Google approval, or at least no automated detection. The fine line between sites getting canned and sites getting MASSIVE traffic for essentially the same thing is very confusing.
general-marty 15y ago
University should offer courses on Google policy. A thorough understanding of such policies will be the primary determining factor for your success on the web.
- davidwhitehouse 15y ago
  I disagree with you there general-marty, I think the primary factor determining your success on the web is a decent business plan and marketing strategy. Without that you rely on free traffic from Google. Any company that puts all its eggs in one basket (e.g. Google Organic) is skating on thin ice.
rorrr 15y ago
Your site looks totally spammy-doorway.
learc83 15y ago
For better or worse Google is the gateway to the internet. If your site isn't on Google it is virtually invisible to most of the world. Since Google has such an enormous position of power, they are really going to have to do better with customer service (and by customer service, I mean providing a way to talk to a human on their end). I understand it's expensive, but if it doesn't get any better, eventually some government somewhere (that has jurisdiction) is going to regulate them.
ajones05 15y ago
wow, good karma +50 to Matt on this one
SteveOllington 15y ago
lol, poor Matt, always under fire from everybody who hasn't got the rankings they want. It's simple really, Google try to make it fair for everybody (and granted it doesn't always work perfectly, which is why the continue to make changes, it's evolution) and if some sites give themselves an unfair advantage and are caught, then they're punished. How else could a search engine work? If it were any different then al of our results would be greed pages with no useful info and everybody would stop Googling stuff. As somebody once quoted, "You can please some of the people, some of the time, but you can't please all of the people, all of the time!"
- option1138 15y ago
  This is a fair comment but I believe the issues stem more from the process Google follows. It is obvious that Google cannot communicate exact reasons why a site was penalized as that would help spammers. However, there is nothing that prevents them from adding a step to warn the offending website and give them a heads up before the ban/penalty takes place, along with an explanation of the policy that is/was being violated. Most of these heads up would go ignored, some would not and yes, it would incur a support cost. However, the number of websites which are significantly penalized isn't onerous... I believe fewer than 1,000 each year? When a company has become the defacto gateway to the internet, I believe they have a responsibility to webmasters. Google has lost a lot of goodwill over the years because of these seemingly arbitrary penalties... Instituting such a practice would be a worthwhile investment.
  - Matt_Cutts 15y ago
    option1138, I'm afraid you need to recalibrate your expectations of spam on the web. Blekko made a site called Spam Clock that estimates 1 million spam pages are created every hour: http://www.spamclock.com/ http://www.spamclock.com/ . There's 200+ million websites out there. 1,000 spam sites would be a spam rate of 5.0 × 10^-6. If you remember the days of Altavista before Google, the actual rate of spam on the web is much higher. Here's one stat: I once heard a search engine rep (not from Google) say that they had to crawl 20 billion pages to find 1 billion non-spam pages. So yes, we do tackle more than 1,000 websites a year. There's a ton of spam on the web, and Google has to operate on the scale of the web (e.g. in 40 different languages) to tackle all that spam.
xpose2000 15y ago
http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex This should have no results. Other queries should have relevant results, but they don't. How can anyone complain over his site being axed? The guy needs to code a better site and I sure as hell would never use that so he can get affiliate money. Sorry, but your fortunate this site has survived for so long.
- codemonkey3k 15y ago
  If you look around, almost everything you click on the web is set up to make someone money. It's none of Google's business how a website is making their money as long as it's legal and follows FTC policies. Browsers make money every time you use that little search box in the top right corner of Firefox. People have a right to be compensated for their work. If the site provides a good service, I'll use it. If you don't want people to make money off your clicks. It would be best to close your browser and never open it again. My site got hit by Panda (no manual penalty). After relaunching my site (which I had luckily been working on for over a year), my bounce rate is 30% and my direct link rate is 50%. Still, Google has me by the throat. My traffic is almost dead. Panda doesn't care if you're solving a problem for users and giving them the eye candy they want. It apparently just wants your site to be a "unique, well-written" news site. People come to my site to browse vintage items and find stuff that they didn't know existed in the niche. They usually visit during work hours and late in the evening. Reading ease for these items is on a college level (Which Panda doesn't like). They don't want to read a 1000 word article, they usually just want to hear it, see it, maybe ask question or two about the item and see who may be selling one. I offer that. Panda's obvious Bayesian nature doesn't understand nuance. It only knows napalm. Niche markets are the ones getting the crap end of the stick. And it's funny, niche markets used to be what made the web so great! Not anymore. Now it's 100% Googlized Walmart-ization. And yeah, I'll be using www.filleritem.com when shopping Amazon. I didn't know it existed until I read this post. I don't mind, transparently, giving someone a few pennies for a good service. You do it all the time.
deleted 15y ago
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deleted 15y ago
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deleted 15y ago
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Bcvvg 15y ago
Thanks matt
mutt_cutts 15y ago
To Matt Cutts and the search quality team: Why does sites like this rank for every possible term with autogenerated results (such as filleritem.com)? Nettkatalogen.no in Google.no ranks for about every possible term. http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=h%C3%A5ndverker+oslo http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=h%C3%A5ndverker+oslo http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=snekker+trondheim http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=snekker+trondheim http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=r%C3%B8rlegger+troms%C3%B8 http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=r%C3%B8rlegger+troms... (They use the "powered by Google logo". They use very aggressive phone sales tactics and scam people. They buy links from newspapers.) Is www.nettkatalogen.no violating Google Quality Guidelines? Or is this okay?

187 points by kbrower 15y ago

I can't judge if you broke the rules or not but not showing up on Google's SERPs is terrifying and a stark reminder on how dependent we've become on Google traffic.

kbrower 15y ago
I included an image of my adwords account. The ad had been running for years(albeit infrequently due to very low budget), and I had not touched it since creating it. I checked after this all happened, and there were several warnings from adwords, but nothing from webmaster tools. I simply ignored the adwords warnings as I was not actively using the account and figured they were just disabling ads. If I had know these were the consequences, I would have just deleted my adwords account.
- kposehn 15y ago
  Unfortunately, deleting an AdWords account won't remove the violation; it may actually make it worse. Google will look back several years and disable ads that haven't run for a very long time. Sometimes they even ban accounts that are inactive or deleted! It is very important to remember: when dealing with Google AdWords, the definition of a violation changes with time. If you violated the current policies in the past, you may still be banned. You take a great risk running there and any and all warnings you get should be dealt with immediately. That said, seeing an exclusion from organic based on an AdWords suspension is extremely alarming. That may be exactly what the DoJ is looking for in terms of violations by Google.
  - thematt 15y ago
    That said, seeing an exclusion from organic based on an AdWords suspension is extremely alarming. That may be exactly what the DoJ is looking for in terms of violations by Google. According to Matt Cutts, it was the exact opposite: he got the organic suspension then the AdWords suspension.
    - kposehn 15y ago
      I saw, much less alarming now.
itswindy 15y ago
Panda, too, did screw a lot of small businesses as well while promotion the likes of Walmart, Youtube and Bestbuy. Google's coffers are full though http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/technology/google-earnings-for-the-second-quarter-top-wall-street-expectations.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/technology/google-earnings...

yanw 15y ago

They usually change policy, or enforce existing ones before an algo update that doesn't prove any connection in you case and it's not like they are dependent on your ad expenditure.

esrauch 15y ago

Just out of curiosity, if only 30% of your results are from organic search, why did your hits drop by more than 30% after you stopped getting organic search hits?

kbrower 15y ago
that is the google analytics for just organic traffic from google. the site gets ~1000 visitors a day.

darksaga 15y ago

Another great example of Google randomly removing sites based on flimsy or nor evidence. The fact they don't give you a chance to plead their case is pretty scary. My hunch is one of your competitors got the site taken down. I've had a few clients who had their competitors file complaints with Google, or inform them they were using black hat SEO to get on the first page of the SERPS. In one case they were successful, but I had the site back up in less than 24 hour,s so it wasn't a huge deal. It sounds like it might be an ongoing issue and are not going to put your site back in the SERPS for a while. I feel for you brother.

infinity 15y ago
But often there is a reason why a site vanishes from the Google index. We would have to exclude all possible violations of the Google guidelines, before we could safely claim that this is a great example for random removal by Google. Edit: In a comment above Matt Cutts from Google gives an explanation.

trevin 15y ago

Google's definition of a bridge page: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=190435 http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...

spxdcz 15y ago

Dropping out of the organic results sounds like a result of the Panda update (http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-2-3-update-is-live-87230 http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-2-3-update...) My best guess is that you'll need to include some additional 'unique content' on the site to get it back in the listings. At the moment the Google crawler will see not a whole lot of text, quite a few Javascript buttons and some links, and will probably flag it as low quality. It may be a bit of a hassle, but may be worth adding a kind of 'interesting/unique filler items' blog to the site to increase the content to links/js ratio.

itswindy 15y ago
There is a difference between a ban and demotion or penalty. He is not even in the index. I wouldn't be surprised if the Adwords team clicked a box or sent an email to search

eulienohso 15y ago

Google should really get some healthy competition. filleritemfinder.com is reacheable from google, and as far as I can tell, has the same functionality, with better design. Maybe some google guru could comment if a redesign would save you.

mrbgty 15y ago

From google's bridge page definition: Not acceptable: "Websites that feature links to other websites while providing minimal or no added functionality or unique content for the user Added functionality includes, but isn't limited to, searching, sorting, comparing, ranking, and filtering" The page in question provides the added functionality listed (searching/filtering at least)

GeoFan49 15y ago
The filleritem.com website is a very simple tool to search for items of a certain price on Amazon. The purpose is to help select an item to fill the gap in the shopping cart to qualify for free shipping. There is no reason for Google to ban this site. What we MAY have here is an abuse of power by Google.

Matt_Cutts 15y ago

You have an autogenerated web site that consists of practically nothing other than affiliate links to Amazon. You can make an infinite number of autogenerated pages on your site, e.g. http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=31.69 http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=31.69 http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex and each autogenerated page consists of literally hundreds of affiliate links stuffed with keywords for unrelated products. When Google's webspam team takes action on websites in our websearch index, we can pass that information on to the ads group so they can check for violations. But it's a one-way street: we can send the ads team signals or information about spammers or other violations of our quality guidelines, but the ads team doesn't send information over to the quality/webspam team.

kbrower 15y ago
Hi Matt, Thanks for responding. The point of the site is to find items of a particular price that qualify for free shipping on Amazon.com. If you want I will give you access to my google analytics to show you that this is a site people want and use. I guess I should not let people link to the search results page? http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=hacker+news and http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=anything+that+is+not+a+number http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=anything+that+is+not+... returns the same thing as if you did a search for $0. I will fix the bug so it returns an error. These are pages that no one has ever linked to as far as I know.
- lewispb 15y ago
  I think he can probably already see your analytics ;)
  - Matt_Cutts 15y ago
    Nope, I can't. I can see how often the site shows up in e.g. our search results, but Analytics is a separate property and they don't send data to the search team either.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

SODaniel 15y ago

It's a website filled with autogenerated content and links, how are you surprised that you got sandboxed?

coffee 15y ago

Yea that sucks, it's happened to me MANY times. The fact of the matter is, it's Googles world and we're just living in it...

infinity 15y ago
I don't think that it is as simple as that. There is some form of ecosystem on the web: there are the content creators and website providers, there are the searchers, and there are the search engine providers. Each of these has its own interests and guidelines. Searchers have quality guidelines too, though they are not explicitly published by them on the web. If a search engine delivers low-quality results, the searchers move on to the next search engine. A search engine without searchers is hardly profitable. Most of the quality guidelines of Google are just common sense, following them will in many cases increase the usability and findability of a site. If this has happend to you many times, you are likely doing something wrong. I have never had one of my sites banned from Google.
- mjwalshe 15y ago
  All that means is your not trying hard enough :-)
- coffee 15y ago
  > If this has happend to you many times, you are likely doing something wrong. I have never had one of my sites banned from Google. Right. So. YOU'VE never personally had a site banned, therefore others who have must be doing it wrong. You know what, I've never been hit by a car while crossing the street, therefore others who have must be crossing the street wrong. I've never been in a plane crash, therefore others who have must be doing it wrong.

josefresco 15y ago

Amazon probably complained to Google and Google despite already having the rules on the books decided to enforce it on this one site, while also keeping many other low traffic clone sites offering the same service alone. Call me paranoid, or cynical but I've seen much worse from Google on the AdWords side of their offerings.

heelhook 15y ago
If that were the case Amazon would have a much simpler solution by stopping the affiliate account altogether, instead of having to ask Google to stop some of the traffic.
Matt_Cutts 15y ago
Nope, that didn't happen.
- webcurious 15y ago
  This has been an amazing thread but there really is a pattern that is hard to follow for webmasters. In the case of the original site couldn't Google have just de-indexed the "extra" pages but left the the index page alone since it is indeed useful? Also, how did his site get canned but others like sportslinkup.com, which is an ebay affiliate spam site cloaked as a link directory, have over 7 million indexed pages and 8 million indexed images (all hosted by ebay, not the sports site) and it gets over half a million Google visitors per month (according to compete.com)?!? I think the sports site is even scraping Google for keywords, it's full of examples of what not to do, but it's been sailing along for years with Google approval, or at least no automated detection. The fine line between sites getting canned and sites getting MASSIVE traffic for essentially the same thing is very confusing.

general-marty 15y ago

University should offer courses on Google policy. A thorough understanding of such policies will be the primary determining factor for your success on the web.

davidwhitehouse 15y ago
I disagree with you there general-marty, I think the primary factor determining your success on the web is a decent business plan and marketing strategy. Without that you rely on free traffic from Google. Any company that puts all its eggs in one basket (e.g. Google Organic) is skating on thin ice.

rorrr 15y ago

Your site looks totally spammy-doorway.

learc83 15y ago

For better or worse Google is the gateway to the internet. If your site isn't on Google it is virtually invisible to most of the world. Since Google has such an enormous position of power, they are really going to have to do better with customer service (and by customer service, I mean providing a way to talk to a human on their end). I understand it's expensive, but if it doesn't get any better, eventually some government somewhere (that has jurisdiction) is going to regulate them.

ajones05 15y ago

wow, good karma +50 to Matt on this one

SteveOllington 15y ago

lol, poor Matt, always under fire from everybody who hasn't got the rankings they want. It's simple really, Google try to make it fair for everybody (and granted it doesn't always work perfectly, which is why the continue to make changes, it's evolution) and if some sites give themselves an unfair advantage and are caught, then they're punished. How else could a search engine work? If it were any different then al of our results would be greed pages with no useful info and everybody would stop Googling stuff. As somebody once quoted, "You can please some of the people, some of the time, but you can't please all of the people, all of the time!"

option1138 15y ago
This is a fair comment but I believe the issues stem more from the process Google follows. It is obvious that Google cannot communicate exact reasons why a site was penalized as that would help spammers. However, there is nothing that prevents them from adding a step to warn the offending website and give them a heads up before the ban/penalty takes place, along with an explanation of the policy that is/was being violated. Most of these heads up would go ignored, some would not and yes, it would incur a support cost. However, the number of websites which are significantly penalized isn't onerous... I believe fewer than 1,000 each year? When a company has become the defacto gateway to the internet, I believe they have a responsibility to webmasters. Google has lost a lot of goodwill over the years because of these seemingly arbitrary penalties... Instituting such a practice would be a worthwhile investment.
- Matt_Cutts 15y ago
  option1138, I'm afraid you need to recalibrate your expectations of spam on the web. Blekko made a site called Spam Clock that estimates 1 million spam pages are created every hour: http://www.spamclock.com/ http://www.spamclock.com/ . There's 200+ million websites out there. 1,000 spam sites would be a spam rate of 5.0 × 10^-6. If you remember the days of Altavista before Google, the actual rate of spam on the web is much higher. Here's one stat: I once heard a search engine rep (not from Google) say that they had to crawl 20 billion pages to find 1 billion non-spam pages. So yes, we do tackle more than 1,000 websites a year. There's a ton of spam on the web, and Google has to operate on the scale of the web (e.g. in 40 different languages) to tackle all that spam.

xpose2000 15y ago

http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex This should have no results. Other queries should have relevant results, but they don't. How can anyone complain over his site being axed? The guy needs to code a better site and I sure as hell would never use that so he can get affiliate money. Sorry, but your fortunate this site has survived for so long.

codemonkey3k 15y ago
If you look around, almost everything you click on the web is set up to make someone money. It's none of Google's business how a website is making their money as long as it's legal and follows FTC policies. Browsers make money every time you use that little search box in the top right corner of Firefox. People have a right to be compensated for their work. If the site provides a good service, I'll use it. If you don't want people to make money off your clicks. It would be best to close your browser and never open it again. My site got hit by Panda (no manual penalty). After relaunching my site (which I had luckily been working on for over a year), my bounce rate is 30% and my direct link rate is 50%. Still, Google has me by the throat. My traffic is almost dead. Panda doesn't care if you're solving a problem for users and giving them the eye candy they want. It apparently just wants your site to be a "unique, well-written" news site. People come to my site to browse vintage items and find stuff that they didn't know existed in the niche. They usually visit during work hours and late in the evening. Reading ease for these items is on a college level (Which Panda doesn't like). They don't want to read a 1000 word article, they usually just want to hear it, see it, maybe ask question or two about the item and see who may be selling one. I offer that. Panda's obvious Bayesian nature doesn't understand nuance. It only knows napalm. Niche markets are the ones getting the crap end of the stick. And it's funny, niche markets used to be what made the web so great! Not anymore. Now it's 100% Googlized Walmart-ization. And yeah, I'll be using www.filleritem.com when shopping Amazon. I didn't know it existed until I read this post. I don't mind, transparently, giving someone a few pennies for a good service. You do it all the time.

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Bcvvg 15y ago

Thanks matt

mutt_cutts 15y ago

To Matt Cutts and the search quality team: Why does sites like this rank for every possible term with autogenerated results (such as filleritem.com)? Nettkatalogen.no in Google.no ranks for about every possible term. http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=h%C3%A5ndverker+oslo http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=h%C3%A5ndverker+oslo http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=snekker+trondheim http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=snekker+trondheim http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=r%C3%B8rlegger+troms%C3%B8 http://www.google.no/search?pws=0&q=r%C3%B8rlegger+troms... (They use the "powered by Google logo". They use very aggressive phone sales tactics and scam people. They buy links from newspapers.) Is www.nettkatalogen.no violating Google Quality Guidelines? Or is this okay?