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I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4

I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4 a second that a page is just SEO shit. The keyword stuffing, the irrelevant fluff before and after any relevant content (if it’s there at all), the annoying ads that take up the whole screen, etc. Let us flag it, remove it from the index. Take a snapshot of the page at the time it was removed so if the owner wants to appeal Google can say why it was removed.

thatguyagain 4y ago
I like this idea. So how would you prevent company X from flagging all their competitors as spam sites - and just in general how do you deal with the abuse of such a feature?
- cjg 4y ago
  Google know a lot about a logged in user - especially ones that have had an account for a long time. They could lean on that.
  - Avamander 4y ago
    Can't wait for real people's personal accounts to get flagged or banned. Google Maps has companies lying about their info and people correcting those will get their accounts shadowbanned with no recourse.
ZiiS 4y ago
Because SEO firms would LOVE to go though marking all real sites as spam. They are _much_ more motivated then end users so the vast bulk of report will be false.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  It would be verified by a human on Google’s side before something is taken down
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm or real. Of all the companies in the world google will be the last to employ real humans to verify anything. Look online for the shear amount of forum threads full of people disgrunted with the their poor support response and lack of humans in the loop.
    - jliptzin 4y ago
      I know, my point is that if they just take a small amount of their $50 billon in profit every year and hire a team of actual people to go through this stuff it would probably be a lot cheaper and more effective than constantly tweaking their ranking algorithm
      - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
        Coming up with new algo's gets you promoted in google's structure, proposing and managing an army of support people is not 'elegant' and nobody would want to work on it.
yason 4y ago
Or at least allow the user to flag such links to be added in his own, individual corpus of unwanted spam. They do the exact same thing with email already, so why not extend it to web pages. And, yes, allow the user to permanently filter out domains from their search results.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I use an extension for that. There used to be the collaborative "WoT", but that got issues after it got bought up by a venture capital firm. In general I think the individual use (blocking sites I will never want to see in search results) is more important than the social use, so I just use uBlocklist, which injects a "block this site" link after every Google search result.
wildrhythms 4y ago
If I was a motivated SEO booster, I would just pay a room full of people somewhere in the world to "downvote" all of my competitors search engine results. The problem still exists. As long as there is an incentive to be gained from SEO spammers, they will find a way to influence search results. This transcends Google or DDG or any specific search engine susceptible to SEO abuse. There's a great talk by Anil Dash that I like titled "The Web We Lost" that centers around on this topic - https://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/ https://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/
mellavora 4y ago
What happens when content farms start doing this, flagging links they don't like (i.e. their competitors)?
GuB-42 4y ago
And then spammers or unscrupulous competitors will flag legitimate sites as spam, pushing the signal-to-noise ratio to the point of uselessness. Plus, few users will actually flag correctly. Most will simply not notice, or not bother, others will flag perfectly legitimate results as spam just because Google wasn't psychic enough to know exactly what they want from their vague query. And Google already has a pretty good metric in the bounce rate without the need to add a "flag" option. That is, if you go back to the search page shortly after clicking a link, that link is probably irrelevant. I guess that SEO spammers found a way around that.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  Google can easily afford to have people verify a link should be taken down before doing it. And yes spammers find ways around gaming bounce rates. If we forced spammers to make web pages attractive and informative to humans instead of crawlers we’d be in a much better place
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    > Google can easily afford to have people verify a link should be taken down before doing it. Google is super rich, they probably can if they want to dedicate a huge amount of resources to that. It is hard for humans to win against bots in this game. > If we forced spammers to make web pages attractive and informative to humans instead of crawlers we’d be in a much better place It is something spammers do. They make the page attractive using psychological tricks (like typical clickbait). They make it informative by copying parts of Wikipedia or StackOverflow. It does not make the world a better place, and it is something Google fights against, with mixed success.
jpalomaki 4y ago
Google is very much build on the idea of using machines and algorithms to solve problems instead of throwing people at them.
freediver 4y ago
It can not be at Google scale because of massive incentives to mark your competitor's sites as spam. But a small, boutique search engine where every account is a paying account, does not have this problem and can do it. And guess what - we are doing it. (Kagi)

thatguyagain 4y ago

I like this idea. So how would you prevent company X from flagging all their competitors as spam sites - and just in general how do you deal with the abuse of such a feature?

cjg 4y ago
Google know a lot about a logged in user - especially ones that have had an account for a long time. They could lean on that.
- Avamander 4y ago
  Can't wait for real people's personal accounts to get flagged or banned. Google Maps has companies lying about their info and people correcting those will get their accounts shadowbanned with no recourse.

ZiiS 4y ago

Because SEO firms would LOVE to go though marking all real sites as spam. They are _much_ more motivated then end users so the vast bulk of report will be false.

jliptzin 4y ago
It would be verified by a human on Google’s side before something is taken down
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm or real. Of all the companies in the world google will be the last to employ real humans to verify anything. Look online for the shear amount of forum threads full of people disgrunted with the their poor support response and lack of humans in the loop.
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    I know, my point is that if they just take a small amount of their $50 billon in profit every year and hire a team of actual people to go through this stuff it would probably be a lot cheaper and more effective than constantly tweaking their ranking algorithm
    - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      Coming up with new algo's gets you promoted in google's structure, proposing and managing an army of support people is not 'elegant' and nobody would want to work on it.

yason 4y ago

Or at least allow the user to flag such links to be added in his own, individual corpus of unwanted spam. They do the exact same thing with email already, so why not extend it to web pages. And, yes, allow the user to permanently filter out domains from their search results.

vintermann 4y ago
I use an extension for that. There used to be the collaborative "WoT", but that got issues after it got bought up by a venture capital firm. In general I think the individual use (blocking sites I will never want to see in search results) is more important than the social use, so I just use uBlocklist, which injects a "block this site" link after every Google search result.

wildrhythms 4y ago

If I was a motivated SEO booster, I would just pay a room full of people somewhere in the world to "downvote" all of my competitors search engine results. The problem still exists. As long as there is an incentive to be gained from SEO spammers, they will find a way to influence search results. This transcends Google or DDG or any specific search engine susceptible to SEO abuse. There's a great talk by Anil Dash that I like titled "The Web We Lost" that centers around on this topic - https://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/ https://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

mellavora 4y ago

What happens when content farms start doing this, flagging links they don't like (i.e. their competitors)?

GuB-42 4y ago

And then spammers or unscrupulous competitors will flag legitimate sites as spam, pushing the signal-to-noise ratio to the point of uselessness. Plus, few users will actually flag correctly. Most will simply not notice, or not bother, others will flag perfectly legitimate results as spam just because Google wasn't psychic enough to know exactly what they want from their vague query. And Google already has a pretty good metric in the bounce rate without the need to add a "flag" option. That is, if you go back to the search page shortly after clicking a link, that link is probably irrelevant. I guess that SEO spammers found a way around that.

jliptzin 4y ago
Google can easily afford to have people verify a link should be taken down before doing it. And yes spammers find ways around gaming bounce rates. If we forced spammers to make web pages attractive and informative to humans instead of crawlers we’d be in a much better place
- GuB-42 4y ago
  > Google can easily afford to have people verify a link should be taken down before doing it. Google is super rich, they probably can if they want to dedicate a huge amount of resources to that. It is hard for humans to win against bots in this game. > If we forced spammers to make web pages attractive and informative to humans instead of crawlers we’d be in a much better place It is something spammers do. They make the page attractive using psychological tricks (like typical clickbait). They make it informative by copying parts of Wikipedia or StackOverflow. It does not make the world a better place, and it is something Google fights against, with mixed success.

jpalomaki 4y ago

Google is very much build on the idea of using machines and algorithms to solve problems instead of throwing people at them.

freediver 4y ago

It can not be at Google scale because of massive incentives to mark your competitor's sites as spam. But a small, boutique search engine where every account is a paying account, does not have this problem and can do it. And guess what - we are doing it. (Kagi)