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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

by 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.
mc32 15y ago
Amazon already provides this service itself: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=filler+item http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=filler...
- dangrossman 15y ago
  A filler item is something with a specific (low) price used to make an order near the free shipping minimum reach that minimum. A search for the words "filler item" is not at all related and not at all helpful.
  - mc32 15y ago
    Sorry, try this instead: http://www.amazon.com/Shipping-Filler-items-under-shipping/lm/R2DJJD2VEU9B7B http://www.amazon.com/Shipping-Filler-items-under-shipping/l...
    - kevindication 15y ago
      That's an Amazon user maintained list of low price items. The purpose of the filler item site is to answer the question: "What can I buy for $0.59?" That list doesn't answer that question.
    - amitparikh 15y ago
      Oh c'mon, now you're just submitting links blindly -- that's definitely not an official Amazon offering. That list is generated & curated by Amazon user "fargowifeandmom" and was last updated at the beginning of this year.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
Matt_Cutts 15y ago
My advice would be to use robots.txt to block out the autogenerated pages; when users search for e.g. a long-tail phrase and then land on a page that's nothing but affiliate links with a lot of keywords, they tend to complain to us. Users would be happier if they landed on the root page of your site or the root page of http://www.superfillers.com/ http://www.superfillers.com/ or http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ than if they landed on a deep page full of links and unrelated products.
- nirvana 15y ago
  http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ is the first hit for "filler item" on google right now. A search for hacker news results in a page full of affiliate links, just as the example you gave above. Only difference is that they didn't re-write the URL. filleritemfinder.com has no robots.txt that I was able to pull up. So, filleritem.com, a google customer, was blocked, but filleritemfinder.com, doing the same thing, is the number one result. Further, shouldn't this kind of advice be given to people who appeal being excluded from the index? Or should we all post to Hacker News when it happens to us so that you can come explain directly? I think %50 of the problem is the arbitrary picking of sites to block (and it's not working, btw[1]) and %50 of it is that google seems uninterested in explaining or advising people when it happens to them. [1] Been buying gear for a project lately, and so doing a lot of google searches in the form of product-model-number review or product-name review. Overwhelmed with spam sites, and mindless human generated spam sites like dpreview.com, etc.
  - Matt_Cutts 15y ago
    When I do the search [filler item], one of the top results I see is http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-amazon-filler-item-finders-qualify-free-shipping/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-amazon-filler-item-finder... which shows five different services to fill this information need, and that also has pictures. I do think that's a pretty helpful result. I mentioned filleritemfinder.com as a random example (there are many of these services), but filleritemfinder.com appears to use AJAX to keep results on the same page rather than making a new url. "filleritem.com, a google customer, was blocked, but filleritemfinder.com, doing the same thing, is the number one result." The filleritemfinder.com site is not doing the same thing, because it's not generating fresh urls for every possible search. But you're not really suggesting that we should treat advertising customers somehow differently in our search results, are you? The webspam team takes action regardless of whether someone is an advertising customer or not. "shouldn't this kind of advice be given to people who appeal being excluded from the index?" This advice is available to everyone in our quality guidelines. It sounds like the site owner reached out to the AdWords team, which gave him clear guidance that the site violated the ads policy on bridge pages. It sounds like the site owner also filed a reconsideration request, and we replied to let the site owner know that the reconsideration request was rejected because it was still in violation of our policies. It doesn't look like the site owner stopped by our webmaster support forum, at least that I could see in a quick look. At that point, the site owner did a blog post and submitted the post to Hacker News, where I was happy to reply.
SODaniel 15y ago
If I'm not mistaken, this type of SEO white-noise is exactly what Google work yo stop. It's just search engine spam for profit; No hands on work, just a script that targets search engine results and creates 'dumb content' to farm visits.
deleted 15y ago
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by kbrower 15y ago

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.

mc32 15y ago

Amazon already provides this service itself: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=filler+item http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=filler...

dangrossman 15y ago
A filler item is something with a specific (low) price used to make an order near the free shipping minimum reach that minimum. A search for the words "filler item" is not at all related and not at all helpful.
- mc32 15y ago
  Sorry, try this instead: http://www.amazon.com/Shipping-Filler-items-under-shipping/lm/R2DJJD2VEU9B7B http://www.amazon.com/Shipping-Filler-items-under-shipping/l...
  - kevindication 15y ago
    That's an Amazon user maintained list of low price items. The purpose of the filler item site is to answer the question: "What can I buy for $0.59?" That list doesn't answer that question.
  - amitparikh 15y ago
    Oh c'mon, now you're just submitting links blindly -- that's definitely not an official Amazon offering. That list is generated & curated by Amazon user "fargowifeandmom" and was last updated at the beginning of this year.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

Matt_Cutts 15y ago

My advice would be to use robots.txt to block out the autogenerated pages; when users search for e.g. a long-tail phrase and then land on a page that's nothing but affiliate links with a lot of keywords, they tend to complain to us. Users would be happier if they landed on the root page of your site or the root page of http://www.superfillers.com/ http://www.superfillers.com/ or http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ than if they landed on a deep page full of links and unrelated products.

nirvana 15y ago
http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ http://www.filleritemfinder.com/ is the first hit for "filler item" on google right now. A search for hacker news results in a page full of affiliate links, just as the example you gave above. Only difference is that they didn't re-write the URL. filleritemfinder.com has no robots.txt that I was able to pull up. So, filleritem.com, a google customer, was blocked, but filleritemfinder.com, doing the same thing, is the number one result. Further, shouldn't this kind of advice be given to people who appeal being excluded from the index? Or should we all post to Hacker News when it happens to us so that you can come explain directly? I think %50 of the problem is the arbitrary picking of sites to block (and it's not working, btw[1]) and %50 of it is that google seems uninterested in explaining or advising people when it happens to them. [1] Been buying gear for a project lately, and so doing a lot of google searches in the form of product-model-number review or product-name review. Overwhelmed with spam sites, and mindless human generated spam sites like dpreview.com, etc.
- Matt_Cutts 15y ago
  When I do the search [filler item], one of the top results I see is http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-amazon-filler-item-finders-qualify-free-shipping/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-amazon-filler-item-finder... which shows five different services to fill this information need, and that also has pictures. I do think that's a pretty helpful result. I mentioned filleritemfinder.com as a random example (there are many of these services), but filleritemfinder.com appears to use AJAX to keep results on the same page rather than making a new url. "filleritem.com, a google customer, was blocked, but filleritemfinder.com, doing the same thing, is the number one result." The filleritemfinder.com site is not doing the same thing, because it's not generating fresh urls for every possible search. But you're not really suggesting that we should treat advertising customers somehow differently in our search results, are you? The webspam team takes action regardless of whether someone is an advertising customer or not. "shouldn't this kind of advice be given to people who appeal being excluded from the index?" This advice is available to everyone in our quality guidelines. It sounds like the site owner reached out to the AdWords team, which gave him clear guidance that the site violated the ads policy on bridge pages. It sounds like the site owner also filed a reconsideration request, and we replied to let the site owner know that the reconsideration request was rejected because it was still in violation of our policies. It doesn't look like the site owner stopped by our webmaster support forum, at least that I could see in a quick look. At that point, the site owner did a blog post and submitted the post to Hacker News, where I was happy to reply.

SODaniel 15y ago

If I'm not mistaken, this type of SEO white-noise is exactly what Google work yo stop. It's just search engine spam for profit; No hands on work, just a script that targets search engine results and creates 'dumb content' to farm visits.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]