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I cringe every time I hear "violating Google's terms of service." What service? The one where they index your site at your cost so they have something to serve

I cringe every time I hear "violating Google's terms of service." What service? The one where they index your site at your cost so they have something to serve their users? This is starting to sound more like the RIAA complaining about a new business model undercutting its revenue. Google is not keeping up with people or technology in this case. People have figured out how to exploit (to a great enough degree) Google's ability to tell a spam site from an authority, and their response is to declare that people are in violation.

redorb 17y ago
The terms you agree to when you use Google properties. I don't like it as much as the next guy; but in the environment they are in (capitalism, public company etc..) they have to do what they can to protect their ranking method. Were they supposed to foresee people buying links back in 2003/2004? You have to have new policy or terms for new use cases. *the article feels like a bit of a 'hit job' on conductor / I would like to offer up that things might be at least a little different than they seem from one side/point of view.
- coderdude 17y ago
  You aren't using any of Google's properties simply by being indexed by them.
netsp 17y ago
I agree. It started with the whole nofollow issue. To be fair, the post misquotes Matt Cuts. He didn't say terms of service. He said:"paid links that pass PageRank are absolutely a violation of Google's quality guidelines"
fallentimes 17y ago
While I mostly agree with you, Google could easily say: "Fine, then we won't include you in our index". Such an action would easily cripple thousands upon thousands of businesses. It also shows how important it is for Google to have a legit search competitor. Danny Sullivan's comments below the Business Insider article are spot on.
- qeorge 17y ago
  Agree about Danny's comments. He sums it up quite succinctly, in stating that nothing in this article is new. Its clear the author has little knowledge of the subject matter. In his words, "Plenty of people get this stuff already. It's been out there again, for years."
  - fallentimes 17y ago
    The key is that it's nothing new to the SEO community, but it's plenty new to many small businesses and startup founders.
motoko 17y ago
What is the tell between a spam site from an authority?
- redorb 17y ago
  thats easily a million dollar question; figure out how Google could flick a switch and clean their index with out noticeable false positives - I think they would hand you a check :) * i would assume that the problem parallels with spam emails. i think webpages offer more clues to what the page is about than emails though.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I would argue that it is orders of magnitudes more complex. Spam passess a single toll gate on the way to each user. You have an address book with contacts and previous conversations and a whole pile of data about previous 'known good' emails in the inbox. Spam filtering has gotten pretty good. A lot better than google at filtering out 'bad' search results.
- fallentimes 17y ago
  In general terms: Spam: thin site, lacks original content, few pages indexed, crawled infrequently, ranks for a small selection of keywords, weak backlink profile Authority: many pages indexed, thick site, loads of original content, crawled frequently, ranks for a variety of keywords, diversified backlink profile Page Rank used to be a strong indicator of this, but currently a better indicator is how often your site is crawled. That's why one authority link can do worlds more for you than hundreds (or thousands) of spammy/low quality links.
  - dhimes 17y ago
    I guess it's all about how you define "thin," "few", "small," and "weak." A page on how to eradicate your home of carpenter ants would possibly look like all of these, yet may be the most "authoritative" site on the web on the small, niche subject.
enomar 17y ago
Their service is sending lots of traffic to your site. Their TOS is more of a spec than an agreement. It says that if you sell links, they may flag you as a spam site. I don't think that's unreasonable at all.
- coderdude 17y ago
  Yes, they do send people traffic. Many sites rely on Google for most of their traffic. However, paid links does not a spam site make. If they are flagging sites with a legitimate purpose and with original content, simply on the basis that their evermore dated method for determining authority is not working so well anymore, Google (as an authority themselves) should not be flagging them with such a label. I think it is unreasonable, not for denying them traffic, but for labeling them as spam. It's not impossible to find out who's in the supplemental index all of a sudden.
- netsp 17y ago
  It is unreasonable inasmuch as it is bullying site owners in to compliance, forcing them to disclose information. I think that this is the case. The central effect of flagging a site as spam is not a quality assurance issue. It is influencing these sites' behaviour. The use the fear of Google taking away their traffic as a way of forcing compliance. That is what I have a problem with. As an internal policy or part of their algorithm, do whatever you want. But that is not what they are doing. The point of the policy, the point of this publicly declared part of their secret sauce is not to recognise and flag spam sites, it is to intimidate sites into stopping a practice which hurts Google. It is the effects of the intimidation not the effects of the flagging which are substantial. I think it is also safe to say that they are the purpose of the policy.
  - gnaritas 17y ago
    > The central effect of flagging a site as spam is not a quality assurance issue. Sure it is, spam makes search less useful for users, keeping it out is most definitely a quality assurance issue. > it is to intimidate sites into stopping a practice which hurts Google Which hurts Google's users as well, spam hurts us all, spam sucks. Google is correct here in removing sites which partake in such practices.
dminor 17y ago
> What service? The one where they index your site at your cost so they have something to serve their users? There is a trick to save you the obscene costs of being indexed -- simply make your robots.txt like so: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /

redorb 17y ago

The terms you agree to when you use Google properties. I don't like it as much as the next guy; but in the environment they are in (capitalism, public company etc..) they have to do what they can to protect their ranking method. Were they supposed to foresee people buying links back in 2003/2004? You have to have new policy or terms for new use cases. *the article feels like a bit of a 'hit job' on conductor / I would like to offer up that things might be at least a little different than they seem from one side/point of view.

coderdude 17y ago
You aren't using any of Google's properties simply by being indexed by them.

netsp 17y ago

I agree. It started with the whole nofollow issue. To be fair, the post misquotes Matt Cuts. He didn't say terms of service. He said:"paid links that pass PageRank are absolutely a violation of Google's quality guidelines"

fallentimes 17y ago

While I mostly agree with you, Google could easily say: "Fine, then we won't include you in our index". Such an action would easily cripple thousands upon thousands of businesses. It also shows how important it is for Google to have a legit search competitor. Danny Sullivan's comments below the Business Insider article are spot on.

qeorge 17y ago
Agree about Danny's comments. He sums it up quite succinctly, in stating that nothing in this article is new. Its clear the author has little knowledge of the subject matter. In his words, "Plenty of people get this stuff already. It's been out there again, for years."
- fallentimes 17y ago
  The key is that it's nothing new to the SEO community, but it's plenty new to many small businesses and startup founders.

motoko 17y ago

What is the tell between a spam site from an authority?

redorb 17y ago
thats easily a million dollar question; figure out how Google could flick a switch and clean their index with out noticeable false positives - I think they would hand you a check :) * i would assume that the problem parallels with spam emails. i think webpages offer more clues to what the page is about than emails though.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I would argue that it is orders of magnitudes more complex. Spam passess a single toll gate on the way to each user. You have an address book with contacts and previous conversations and a whole pile of data about previous 'known good' emails in the inbox. Spam filtering has gotten pretty good. A lot better than google at filtering out 'bad' search results.
fallentimes 17y ago
In general terms: Spam: thin site, lacks original content, few pages indexed, crawled infrequently, ranks for a small selection of keywords, weak backlink profile Authority: many pages indexed, thick site, loads of original content, crawled frequently, ranks for a variety of keywords, diversified backlink profile Page Rank used to be a strong indicator of this, but currently a better indicator is how often your site is crawled. That's why one authority link can do worlds more for you than hundreds (or thousands) of spammy/low quality links.
- dhimes 17y ago
  I guess it's all about how you define "thin," "few", "small," and "weak." A page on how to eradicate your home of carpenter ants would possibly look like all of these, yet may be the most "authoritative" site on the web on the small, niche subject.

enomar 17y ago

Their service is sending lots of traffic to your site. Their TOS is more of a spec than an agreement. It says that if you sell links, they may flag you as a spam site. I don't think that's unreasonable at all.

coderdude 17y ago
Yes, they do send people traffic. Many sites rely on Google for most of their traffic. However, paid links does not a spam site make. If they are flagging sites with a legitimate purpose and with original content, simply on the basis that their evermore dated method for determining authority is not working so well anymore, Google (as an authority themselves) should not be flagging them with such a label. I think it is unreasonable, not for denying them traffic, but for labeling them as spam. It's not impossible to find out who's in the supplemental index all of a sudden.
netsp 17y ago
It is unreasonable inasmuch as it is bullying site owners in to compliance, forcing them to disclose information. I think that this is the case. The central effect of flagging a site as spam is not a quality assurance issue. It is influencing these sites' behaviour. The use the fear of Google taking away their traffic as a way of forcing compliance. That is what I have a problem with. As an internal policy or part of their algorithm, do whatever you want. But that is not what they are doing. The point of the policy, the point of this publicly declared part of their secret sauce is not to recognise and flag spam sites, it is to intimidate sites into stopping a practice which hurts Google. It is the effects of the intimidation not the effects of the flagging which are substantial. I think it is also safe to say that they are the purpose of the policy.
- gnaritas 17y ago
  > The central effect of flagging a site as spam is not a quality assurance issue. Sure it is, spam makes search less useful for users, keeping it out is most definitely a quality assurance issue. > it is to intimidate sites into stopping a practice which hurts Google Which hurts Google's users as well, spam hurts us all, spam sucks. Google is correct here in removing sites which partake in such practices.

dminor 17y ago

> What service? The one where they index your site at your cost so they have something to serve their users? There is a trick to save you the obscene costs of being indexed -- simply make your robots.txt like so: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /