5 ms·

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 h

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.
- compbio 12y ago
  This used to be the "solution" to spammy links: Drop their value to zero. This caused an entire eco-system of spammers with the mentality: "I'll just generate 1000 links without the prospect of a penalty in the hope that 10 links stick. I then bill my client for a 1000 links, since there is no way to see which links are devalued". Google's creative solution was to make sure to webmasters that: yes, these links do hurt your rankings. Instead of linkbuilding and diluting the precious link-signal, these spammers now offered link-profile-cleaning services (Mission. F-cking. Accomplished. http://xkcd.com/810/ http://xkcd.com/810/ ).
  - adventured 12y ago
    Yes, and the solution is to penalize the sites guilty of sending out the spam links, not to penalize the receiving sites. To penalize Good Site A, because Bad Sites B/C/D/E are sending spammy links to it, is an inherently morally bankrupt premise.
  - csense 12y ago
    So wait, if you want to take somebody else's website off Google, all you have to do is make a bunch of spammy links to it? This is insane. Spammers should now be linking to a site and then telling the site owners, "If you want to get your Google rank back, pay us $1000 to take our links down."
    - arenaninja 12y ago
escape_goat 12y ago
I admit my complete ignorance in this matter. I do not understand why this would induce them to remove their links. They do not seem to have anything to gain, and actually, it sounds like it might be highly gameable as a form of negative SEO. At best, it seems to me that there would be an inverse ratio between the likelihood of the link being removed and the spamminess of the linking site. If someone could explain this, I would be grateful. [alternately, I'll delete to reduce clutter if I get bumped down some more.]

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.

compbio 12y ago
This used to be the "solution" to spammy links: Drop their value to zero. This caused an entire eco-system of spammers with the mentality: "I'll just generate 1000 links without the prospect of a penalty in the hope that 10 links stick. I then bill my client for a 1000 links, since there is no way to see which links are devalued". Google's creative solution was to make sure to webmasters that: yes, these links do hurt your rankings. Instead of linkbuilding and diluting the precious link-signal, these spammers now offered link-profile-cleaning services (Mission. F-cking. Accomplished. http://xkcd.com/810/ http://xkcd.com/810/ ).
- adventured 12y ago
  Yes, and the solution is to penalize the sites guilty of sending out the spam links, not to penalize the receiving sites. To penalize Good Site A, because Bad Sites B/C/D/E are sending spammy links to it, is an inherently morally bankrupt premise.
- csense 12y ago
  So wait, if you want to take somebody else's website off Google, all you have to do is make a bunch of spammy links to it? This is insane. Spammers should now be linking to a site and then telling the site owners, "If you want to get your Google rank back, pay us $1000 to take our links down."
  - arenaninja 12y ago

escape_goat 12y ago

I admit my complete ignorance in this matter. I do not understand why this would induce them to remove their links. They do not seem to have anything to gain, and actually, it sounds like it might be highly gameable as a form of negative SEO. At best, it seems to me that there would be an inverse ratio between the likelihood of the link being removed and the spamminess of the linking site. If someone could explain this, I would be grateful. [alternately, I'll delete to reduce clutter if I get bumped down some more.]