7 ms·

I saw your previous post and could not find egregious blackhat SEO stuff. The backlink profile was not too healthy though, with around 250 domains responsible f

by compbio 12y ago

I saw your previous post and could not find egregious blackhat SEO stuff. The backlink profile was not too healthy though, with around 250 domains responsible for over 7000 backlinks. You said you got a spam warning on Google Webmaster Tools: These penalties are hardly ever permanent. > As usual, if you make a public scene, a large corporation will often notice, and look closer at that individual's issue. I think that's what happened in this case. > I made 8 reconsideration requests .. all of them were denied. Probably because you did not show a good will effort to clean up your act. At least you do not tell us what were the contents of these reconsideration requests. For all we know it was: "Reconsider me!" From your previous post I gather that you were heavily annoyed with the unnatural links actions and warnings. Instead of cleaning up your act for Google you focused on a suggested unnatural link to claim it was all BS. > As usual, if you make a public scene, a large corporation will often notice, and look closer at that individual's issue. I think that's what happened in this case. I do think that the people at Google notice a prominent post on HackerNews. But I do not think that they manually removed a spam penalty to avoid bad publicity. If anything: allowing spammy sites in the index without even a slap on the wrist is not good for publicity at all (and very visible to the users). I think the pre-set penalty period was over, or a recrawl found a cleaner site. > But this experience showed me that Google has more power over my website than I do. Google has more power over their search engine index than you do. You are free to do whatever you want to do with your website. I do have a question: The DuckDuckGo widget you had on your site (now changed to a general link), was that an official widget? Did money exchange hands for placing such a widget/link on every page of your site? I am wondering why a site-wide link to a commercial page is not 'nofollow'-ed, and if that may have brought you unwanted quality guidelines attention.

jschwartzi 12y ago
A lot of the "spamminess" comes from practices that were perfectly acceptable back when Google came out, or which are encouraged by the standards which define how the Web operates. For example, each phone number in his database has a specific URL which you can use to access it. Many of these pages have similar features, being that the whole point of the site is to aggregate discussions about suspect phone numbers. This is a similar profile to the "download" sites that have proliferated, except that in this case each URL links to something useful, where the URLs on the download sites link to nothing useful. Further, the whole point of the Web is to link pages together. That Google penalizes one site author for what other site authors do is a problem with Google, not a problem with the author. In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this?
- compbio 12y ago
  The web has changed and is still changing into a more dynamic app-like structure, from static content. With that come new guidelines in regards to (search engine) accessibility. Google also is battling spammers. Spammers can saturate a single technique (such as guest blogging) to the point where Google says: "We are actively making sure that this technique does not benefit you in the rankings". It is not the site structure that is entirely at fault here. It would not make sense to aggregate phone numbers and discussions about these numbers on a single page. A "thin content" penalty is speculative and Google even gave an "unnatural links" warning, telling us where to look first. I think Google understands the power of linking pages together and weighing these links in ranking :). Reverse SEO is murky though, and in principle I could agree that other webmasters devaluing your property is a problem with Google. On the other hand: The fact that spammers complained a lot (and still complain) and were being re-purposed by Google to help clean up the web, tells me that Google is winning this battle. But we also know that collateral damage is possible in war. Finally: Google does make mistakes. And a mistake is between algorithmic superiority and malicious intent by Google. > In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this? Because else he will be slapped with an unnatural links penalty, and he clearly doesn't want that. Again, he is free to ignore these warnings and see his site removed from Google's index. Google can not force him to do this. They can however enforce quality on their own turf. Question: Could you clarify some of the currrently spammy practices which are encouraged by the standards which define how the Web operates?
- adventured 12y ago
  "In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this?" He shouldn't have to do that. It's incompetence on Google's part. The solution to spammy links, is to drop their value to zero, not to generate a penalty for the site that is the target of said spammy links. This is a flaw in how Google has chosen to handle low quality sites and spammy links. The incompetence aspect is that they failed to be creative enough to find a better solution, and fell back to using a hammer approach.
powertower 12y ago
> You are free to do whatever you want to do with your website. When you are dealing with a monopoly, which Google has on many large segments of traffic type (i.e., Bing and Yahoo are non-relevant in those segments), you are at the mercy of that monopoly. And hence they have the power over you. Which is often abused by being dismissive towards you. Google keeps forgetting that the website owners provide the content that Google indexes and monetizes-on to sells ads (via search and other channels), and that they are in a relationship. Except that relationship is often abused by treating webmasters like they are garbage.
- compbio 12y ago
  When you rely on Google for visitors/income, then they have some power over you. Agreed. Google still can't force you to change your website content. If you run Adsense on your site, and Google finds that your website content quality is low, then they will simply stop their contract with you. That Google abuses their monopoly to be dismissive towards webmasters and treating webmasters like they are garbage is, as it stands, unfounded. Which other search engine has an active webmaster forum, webmaster education and webmaster tools? Which other search engine warns you about spam or technical problems on your sites? > Google keeps forgetting that the website owners provide the content that Google indexes and monetizes-on to sells ads Google does not forget this. It just hails quality over making a buck, shown by banning ads on websites that do not conform to the quality guidelines.
  - powertower 12y ago
    I was not referring to anything adsense specific. On the rest, if you believe that, then you must have been absent for the other million times when an individual was thrown into the garbage bin by Google, and told "you did something wrong (maybe), but we won't tell you what, nor will we ever respond to you again." > It just hails quality over making a buck, shown by banning ads on websites that do not conform to the quality guidelines. While this is not true for every category, in my personal experience and in many reported other cases that analysed the traffic sent by Adwords' "partner network" (that Google derives a large part of their profits from) is half made up of auto-generated sites, links farms, and automated fraud clicks, and has been so for the last decade. This, and other shenanigans (like the 500MM pill ad settlement) goes against what you are claiming. > Which other search engine has an active webmaster forum, webmaster education and webmaster tools? Which other search engine warns you about spam or technical problems on your sites? Bing has many of those.
graeme 12y ago
What was going on with their link profile? The other post had no comments that talked about specific backlinks. The original post made it sound like there was no act to clean up. If there was spam link building on their part, it changes the story.
- compbio 12y ago
  I am not in a position to give a full report on the quality of the backlink profile. > The original post made it sound like there was no act to clean up. That seems standard: from innocent to the most hardcore spammer, of course they didn't do anything wrong, Google made a mistake and abused its power. > If there was spam link building on their part, it changes the story. It could change this story. But I do not want to point any fingers, and I think Google is smart not to reply on this case (which is kind of a shame. I miss Matt Cutts and I miss the time when HN allowed for these open discussions. It just seems too much of a PR risk these days.)
- whocalledus 12y ago
  The term "backlink" isn't part of my vocabulary. I ignore Google ranking or external linking and focus on building useful or interesting things that adhere to my principles. There was nothing to clean. Lots of websites link to whocalled.us, but I don't pay attention to them, and I certainly had nothing to do with any links to the site. "Pure Spam If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected that some of your pages may be using techniques that are outside our Webmaster Guidelines. The site appears to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or other repeated or egregious violations of Google’s quality guidelines." My reconsideration request was usually, "You're idiots."
  - CodeWriter23 12y ago
    A wise person once said to me, "If you don't like eating shit, why did you order the shit sandwich?".
    - 12y ago
whocalledus 12y ago
Do they even have official widgets or affiliate programs? I linked to them because I wanted to share the link with people.

by compbio 12y ago

jschwartzi 12y ago

A lot of the "spamminess" comes from practices that were perfectly acceptable back when Google came out, or which are encouraged by the standards which define how the Web operates. For example, each phone number in his database has a specific URL which you can use to access it. Many of these pages have similar features, being that the whole point of the site is to aggregate discussions about suspect phone numbers. This is a similar profile to the "download" sites that have proliferated, except that in this case each URL links to something useful, where the URLs on the download sites link to nothing useful. Further, the whole point of the Web is to link pages together. That Google penalizes one site author for what other site authors do is a problem with Google, not a problem with the author. In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this?

compbio 12y ago
The web has changed and is still changing into a more dynamic app-like structure, from static content. With that come new guidelines in regards to (search engine) accessibility. Google also is battling spammers. Spammers can saturate a single technique (such as guest blogging) to the point where Google says: "We are actively making sure that this technique does not benefit you in the rankings". It is not the site structure that is entirely at fault here. It would not make sense to aggregate phone numbers and discussions about these numbers on a single page. A "thin content" penalty is speculative and Google even gave an "unnatural links" warning, telling us where to look first. I think Google understands the power of linking pages together and weighing these links in ranking :). Reverse SEO is murky though, and in principle I could agree that other webmasters devaluing your property is a problem with Google. On the other hand: The fact that spammers complained a lot (and still complain) and were being re-purposed by Google to help clean up the web, tells me that Google is winning this battle. But we also know that collateral damage is possible in war. Finally: Google does make mistakes. And a mistake is between algorithmic superiority and malicious intent by Google. > In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this? Because else he will be slapped with an unnatural links penalty, and he clearly doesn't want that. Again, he is free to ignore these warnings and see his site removed from Google's index. Google can not force him to do this. They can however enforce quality on their own turf. Question: Could you clarify some of the currrently spammy practices which are encouraged by the standards which define how the Web operates?
adventured 12y ago
"In the previous posting he indicated that Google asked him to contact the various site authors and ask them to remove their links. Why should he have to do this?" He shouldn't have to do that. It's incompetence on Google's part. The solution to spammy links, is to drop their value to zero, not to generate a penalty for the site that is the target of said spammy links. This is a flaw in how Google has chosen to handle low quality sites and spammy links. The incompetence aspect is that they failed to be creative enough to find a better solution, and fell back to using a hammer approach.

powertower 12y ago

> You are free to do whatever you want to do with your website. When you are dealing with a monopoly, which Google has on many large segments of traffic type (i.e., Bing and Yahoo are non-relevant in those segments), you are at the mercy of that monopoly. And hence they have the power over you. Which is often abused by being dismissive towards you. Google keeps forgetting that the website owners provide the content that Google indexes and monetizes-on to sells ads (via search and other channels), and that they are in a relationship. Except that relationship is often abused by treating webmasters like they are garbage.

compbio 12y ago
When you rely on Google for visitors/income, then they have some power over you. Agreed. Google still can't force you to change your website content. If you run Adsense on your site, and Google finds that your website content quality is low, then they will simply stop their contract with you. That Google abuses their monopoly to be dismissive towards webmasters and treating webmasters like they are garbage is, as it stands, unfounded. Which other search engine has an active webmaster forum, webmaster education and webmaster tools? Which other search engine warns you about spam or technical problems on your sites? > Google keeps forgetting that the website owners provide the content that Google indexes and monetizes-on to sells ads Google does not forget this. It just hails quality over making a buck, shown by banning ads on websites that do not conform to the quality guidelines.
- powertower 12y ago
  I was not referring to anything adsense specific. On the rest, if you believe that, then you must have been absent for the other million times when an individual was thrown into the garbage bin by Google, and told "you did something wrong (maybe), but we won't tell you what, nor will we ever respond to you again." > It just hails quality over making a buck, shown by banning ads on websites that do not conform to the quality guidelines. While this is not true for every category, in my personal experience and in many reported other cases that analysed the traffic sent by Adwords' "partner network" (that Google derives a large part of their profits from) is half made up of auto-generated sites, links farms, and automated fraud clicks, and has been so for the last decade. This, and other shenanigans (like the 500MM pill ad settlement) goes against what you are claiming. > Which other search engine has an active webmaster forum, webmaster education and webmaster tools? Which other search engine warns you about spam or technical problems on your sites? Bing has many of those.

graeme 12y ago

What was going on with their link profile? The other post had no comments that talked about specific backlinks. The original post made it sound like there was no act to clean up. If there was spam link building on their part, it changes the story.

compbio 12y ago
I am not in a position to give a full report on the quality of the backlink profile. > The original post made it sound like there was no act to clean up. That seems standard: from innocent to the most hardcore spammer, of course they didn't do anything wrong, Google made a mistake and abused its power. > If there was spam link building on their part, it changes the story. It could change this story. But I do not want to point any fingers, and I think Google is smart not to reply on this case (which is kind of a shame. I miss Matt Cutts and I miss the time when HN allowed for these open discussions. It just seems too much of a PR risk these days.)
whocalledus 12y ago
The term "backlink" isn't part of my vocabulary. I ignore Google ranking or external linking and focus on building useful or interesting things that adhere to my principles. There was nothing to clean. Lots of websites link to whocalled.us, but I don't pay attention to them, and I certainly had nothing to do with any links to the site. "Pure Spam If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected that some of your pages may be using techniques that are outside our Webmaster Guidelines. The site appears to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or other repeated or egregious violations of Google’s quality guidelines." My reconsideration request was usually, "You're idiots."
- CodeWriter23 12y ago
  A wise person once said to me, "If you don't like eating shit, why did you order the shit sandwich?".
  - 12y ago

whocalledus 12y ago

Do they even have official widgets or affiliate programs? I linked to them because I wanted to share the link with people.