Comments on: Calling for link spam reports

By: Philip Curtis

Philip Curtis — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:48:55 +0000

Matt, I really question Google’s efforts to deal with link spam. I’ve been operating some online business since about 2007. When we started I didn’t even know what SEO was but I did some reading, taught myself as much as I could and have done much of the search marketing for our company sense then. When I started I was taught by my partner that content was really all that matter–if we created great content we would get links and would rank well. This turned out to be true and we ranked very well for a while. However, we were slowly beat down in the SERPS by competitors whose link profiles made me feel dirty to just look at. We altered our strategy a bit and did some things that I think helped us in the short term but we took a hit for in the long term. We’ve changed that and gone back to the basics now and are just trying to create great content. Unfortunately, every day I watch competitors creep up and (in some cases) take us over by doing nothing more than posting a bunch of spam comments on shitty blogs and buying links on questionable sites. I don’t get it. Why is it so hard for Google to filter out sites that are doing this? If I can take a 5 second look at a site’s link profile and see that it’s nothing but a bunch of spam links why can’t Google’s algo pick this up? Frustrated.

By: Ed Clarke

Ed Clarke — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:13:36 +0000

Link spamming gets abused beyond belief. I use wordpress for all mu sites now and the plugin akismet deals with it for me. It got to the point where I switched off making comments on my site which is annoying as it does help for rankings etc.

By: Mohsin

Mohsin — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:44:12 +0000

Why google not notice spam report now a days? I report a spam website again ans again and again but google spam team not action or even notice.if you enter keyword current events in health in google serch box you will see the top first result site micro evolution . Com if you visit this site you will see a lot of keyword stuffing in the footer of this site like heathnewsheathnewsheathnews ts a black hat seo tactics and voilation of google term but google spam team not a bit action against this site since oneonth,spam team sleeping or ggoogle alowing keyword stuffing f?or for anyone webmaster

By: Glen S

Glen S — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:54:05 +0000

Hi Matt,

I have been competing against a company who is dominating the search results for Steam Showers.

The company is BPS – they have managed to get 5 websites ranked in the top 10 under the same keywords which I thought was against Google?

Although they have called the websites under different names some clearly have the same address and products such as shower-cubicle.co.uk & burnleyplumbingsupplies.co.uk.

On top of this they have a lot of spammy link pages such as burnleyplumbingsupplies.co.uk/partners/Partners.htm

Is this not regarded as Spam?

By: Joe Blow

Joe Blow — Tue, 31 May 2011 09:08:38 +0000

Sites I reported last year still have their top rankings unaffected. It seems that this spam reporting isn’t used for anything but algorithmic tweaking. It appears that reporting spam to the New York Times is much more effective.

By: David H.

David H. — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:42:51 +0000

Hey Matt:

In the end, reporting spam sites is useless. And now another aloe vera site out of China, who didn’t even appear before, has rocketed above mine in two days (LOTS of chinese languages spam links). What’s the point? The rating should be simple – forget back links and focus on how long the website has been online (per domain registration) and content value.

Best wishes, David

By: David H.

David H. — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:30:50 +0000

Hey there Matt:

This is a great page on reporting spam. I have a question, there is a website that has paid links on a bunch (some 20 now – it grows every week) of sites such as: affi2009-brest.com

I reported it on the “paid links” form for Google a couple of times now over the last few months. I am not interested in removing the spammer’s website (type: link:aloe-vera-studies.org) as I relish competition. But I it would certainly benefit Google and Google’s users to remove all of the spam paid links websites such as the one above, that point to his (and a few dozen more) website, falsely boosting it in PR and ranking on the Google search engine.

Thanks, David H. (Phoenix, Arizona, USA)

By: Bob Bibleski

Bob Bibleski — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:14:18 +0000

I think Google are really stupid, sorry Matt. You now dictate SEM strategy, you tell sites that inbound links and the quality of these links are hugely important, you (inadvertently or otherwise) create a huge industry in selling and buying links (every SEM agency and every middle size/big/huge publisher I have ever come across does this) and then you say call for people to tattle tale each other for doing it. I’ve worked for companies that spend £50K per month on paid links.

You then change your rules on penalising sites & publishers for taking revenue from these companies and agencies buying links, but don’t penalise the advertisers – as they are probably spending loads with you on PPC.

Come on Google, this is bull. You are turning into some weird nazi SS style company that thinks it can dictate laws for the web to your own advantage, make changes on policy and penalties without justification or warning, penalise sites / businesses / livelihoods without even a warning, and encourage people to tell on their competitors – even though everyone knows exactly what is going on.

Raise your game Google, this isnt working, its unfair and and its misguided. Back to your drawing board.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 09:19:38 +0000

Hi all,

If there’s any sort type of link spam that I think Google should be focused on devaluing/preventing it’s forum profile link spam. I have noticed literally hundreds of sites ranking incredibly well with these types of links, and the amount of them seems to be increasing very quickly. Some of the (horrible, spammy looking) sites I’ve seen even outrank brand domains. In fact for one brand in particular, 70% of the first page results are taken by one of these types of sites.

What worries me is that if Google doesn’t do something about this soon, more and more people will use these techniques out of necessity. Seeing this sort of thing happening is really disheartening for people (like me) who work hard creating top quality content and invest in ethical SEO techniques to get that content seen.

Please guys, stop letting these spammers get away with it.

By: Dave Keys

Dave Keys — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:33:04 +0000

I keep citing the worthlessness of link-spam and paid links as “web inflation”, since the more link-spam is relied upon to build PR, the more everyone is forced to accrue more of the “link currency” Google has done a good job of dealing with counterfeit currency, but inflation is another issue altogether, and more difficult to deal with. Just how many article websites with instructions on “how to find the best hotel discounts” are really necessary?