Feedback: Webspam in 2006?
Okay, I’m most interested in hearing what people think Google should tackle in webspam. Based on your experiences, close your eyes and think about what area(s) you wish Google would work on. You probably want to think about it for a while without viewing other people’s comments, and I’m not going to mention any specific area that would bias you; I want people to independently consider what they think Google should work on to decrease webspam in the next six months to a year.
Once you’ve come up with the idea(s) that you think are most pressing, please add a constructive comment. I don’t want individual sites called out or much discussion; just chime in once with what you’d like to see Google work on in webspam.
dburdon Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 10:58 am
Matt,
I’d like to see automated links tackled. I’m aware from your previous posts that you’re tackling bought links and (non-relevant) reciprocal links. In my humble ipinion automated links are vastly more insidious.
german Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:08 am
1 Take a close look at the norm for a kind of site:
Since you are using the DMOZ description, you should analyse the average amount of pages / of links of the similar sites (using the same keyword or a related one in the description) on DMOZ.
If the average site has 50 pages and 25 links, have a look specifically at the sites having 5000 links on the link: command (probably 20 times more) and 12000 pages on a site:command.
2.Take out the directories if the user didn’t use the word directory as search term. I do not think many people are actually searching for directories and it is pushing the real sites away.
3. If a site of 2000 pages has only 1 about widget, push it behind the one with 5 pages and 1 about widget, this would avoid site taking about possibly everything just for the sake of having more pages. (of course, the site with 50 pages and 49 about wiget should be before both two)
Ryan Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:11 am
it seems that hidden text is still a problem. I can name several #1 sites for big keywords that have hidden text on their pages. 1 is a flash site with no other real text except the hidden and the adsense.
also, the domianer / affiliate sites need to stop showing up. Without using domain names, I have a buddy who runs a poster site. It’s just him re-packaging allposters.com data, and sending users to the other site when they click on something. He does well in the SERPs, but all he’s really providing the customer with is an inflated price, and a different themed search box of the original site.
Alex Henderson Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:11 am
While I know this idea goes against the theory of Mr Brin and others, the answer to webspam does not only rest with algo changes, but sometimes requires a human eye.
Take the top 100,000 searches. Hire enough staff so that first two pages for each of these searches can be manually reviewed. Use agressive and near instant tools to remove spammers, redirectors, and scammers. Don’t let them drag on until the next update or wait for an algo change. Make it so that webspam does not pay, and webspam will drop as a result.
I won’t say humans do it better (DM-Z proved otherwise, I think) but humans can help weed out the newest problems each week.
Brent Atkerson Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:12 am
Matt, I am so glad you started this thread as I am fighting something right now that in my opinion “has to go” although, of course, I don’t know how (and have reported it twice actually in the past week).
Searching for a unique text string from our main page brings up a scrape/spam site which has basically taken about 95% of our text off our main page and claim it as their own with no links to our site at all. When doing the search in Google for “synthetic fabrics have been our specialty since 1950″ our page does not even come up unless you go to the bottom of the results page and click the repeat the search with the omitted results displayed link. Then, we show up but at the sixteenth position. On MSN we are listed first and Yahoo! we are second. Now, granted, not many people will be searching for that exact phrase but other text from the page provides the similar results…
RedSheriff Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:15 am
Hi Matt
I think that Google should not use Dmoz. In Italy for example, many editors are corrupted and so, many sites are of big spammers
Reuben Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:26 am
I’d like G to be proactive in spotting and removing MFA/scraper sites from their index. They do nothing for the user except clutter up the SERPs with junk which offer little/no original content.
Marc Grobman Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:37 am
I know you’re trying, but please keep fighting those scraper and adsense farm sites. Pure garbage. Also frustrating are parked sites that basically do the same.
For purly personal reasons, I’d appreciate a little more communication and compassion on the banned sites front. I still don’t know why exactly our site was banned and if we’re on track to get reinstated. I’m waiting patiently but it is frustrating for us and people searching for our site.
Ed Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
Going forward, it seems to me that Internet searching would be a much better experience if the burden of “qualifying” a web site were shifted from the search engine to the web site owner. I would like to see an independent organization (like DMOZ) with human reviewers, that charges the site owner to promptly review, qualify and categorize the site. Sites would have to periodically meet minimum “quality” standards, much like companies who apply for, and pass periodic independent audits for ISO-9000 certification. Quality can be defined as proper coding, no spam, accessibility, ect. Sites that meet the standard would be assigned to one or more categories and be recognized by the search engines as trusted sites. Any legit ecommerce site owner would be willing to pay a reasonable fee for periodic (plus random) human audits knowing that search engines would take their certification into account. Some would argue that the Internet should not be for sale, but certification would be just one part of the search engine’s evaluation for relevance, and would place spammers at a big disadvantage.
Dean Clatworthy Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 12:13 pm
What i’d like to see is in the expanded results links (i.e. the ones where it says “Cached”, “Similar Results”, “Remove Result”). I’d like the option to mark it as spam which will send an automated report to google. For example (excuse the topic but it’s one I was sure would return this type of result):
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=viagra&btnG=Google+Search
See result:
Viagra, russian viagra, viagra hypothesis, viagra cartoons
discount viagra europe viagra price comparison viagra side affects nitric oxide
viagra free try viagra viagra attorney viagra and drinking …
b2.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?user=viagra1
What use is that to someone searching for viagra, a gateway URL that uses obviously dirty SEO tactics (putting every single keyword possible at the top of the source) to rank well.
Just an idea…and once again excuse the poor example
Tim Linden Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 12:32 pm
Not sure if Google does this, but now that there is blog search I’m sure it won’t be to hard. Make it so people using an RSS feed can’t just throw the content onto their site and call it a site. Just have some way to check if site content is in a feed somewhere, and then detirmine if the site in question is the site making the feed or not. If it isn’t, then don’t give them any benefit from taking the feed.
Liane Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 12:41 pm
Hi Matt,
I sent a spam report addressed to “GoogleGuy” earlier today about a daunting problem I have found to do with my site. I have no clue what is going on there, but if you happen to see a report from Liane, I sure would appreciate any advice! I included my e:mail address.
In regards to the other spam problems …
1) Spam reports.
I have sent in spam reports for the same website at least half a dozen times (maybe more) over the past few years. The site in question is chock-a-blok with doorway pages! The annoying part is that the doorway pages are working to a certain extent.
They take 30 identical pages, throw a different title on each page and substitute the keyword(s) to fit into the exact same spots on each page! They even have a notice on their site map which lists all the doorways and a notation saying, “Ranking and Reference Use Only”
OK, so the spam report goes in and this site eventually disappears from the top search results … only to reappear every time there is a major update!
I have a real bugaboo about this particular site because they continually steal my meta descriptions and sometimes even content such as photos! It was annoying enough when all they stole were parts of my page layout for product pages, but these doorways are directed at my company name and others in the same industry.
In keeping with your request, my constructive comment is to permanently penalize the specific doorway pages. Its not necessary to ban the whole site, just the doorway pages so spammers like this will soon realize that they do them no good and once they realize that, they’ll stop!
Its pretty tiresome doing the same reports over and over again!
Thanks for listening Matt!
SpamHound Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 1:08 pm
I think Google needs to look at sites that are abusing sub-domains.
I’ve seen sites that I’ve reported that have subs domains for every state of the exact same site and of course each site links back to the main site thus boosting the keyword anchor.
If anything, perhaps discount all links back to the main from a subdomain and to any other domain.
That would stop that practice in it’s tracks.
Jarrod Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 1:10 pm
i agree with the domainer sites that shouldn’t be coming up.
I hate searching for something and then seeing that its a parked domain with tons of ads on it…
Chris Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
1) DMOZ should be removed from Google’s consideration how to value websites. Good sites are waiting years to be added or never get added. These guys do not have any communication tools in place to verify if a site has been reviewed and dumped at all.
Google also needs to put communication tools in place about that sites that are black listed. One of my sites is now slowly showing up in Big Daddy, but was gone from normal Google since Jagger. it is not a spammy site at all and for honest webmasters it is very frustrating not even knowing why a site got kicked out.
Wolfie Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 1:37 pm
The amount of spam on the web has exploded in response to potential adsense income. Lots of people say ban those sites but banning the publisher would be more effective.
Nick Kisberg Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
Google does a great job of ridding of spam in my field….
One thing I’d like google to crack down on is the people who are opening a site on domains that have huge authority like spaces.msn.com & ezboards, with keywords in the URL and all over the pages, to get high rankings.
Michael Martinez Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
Definitely get rid of DMOZ. Their screwed up descriptions and titles hurt the Web sites that are counting on good visibility in search results. Google can clearly find other sources of information about a Web site. You need something more honest and reliable than DMOZ.
Chung Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 2:10 pm
1. Get rid of DMOZ and those stupid lazy editors that take 3 years to review a website.
2. Google penalizing people for trading links.
3. Google penalizing sitewide links.
4. Google should catch spammers faster. Indexing and Reindexing should be done quickly. The reason people spam their links is to get indexded by Google as soon as possible and sometimes we are forced to buy some PR6 or PR7 links or we end up in Sandbox.
EKB Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 2:10 pm
Identify “commercial” vs. “informational” sites, and give users the power to choose — an option to specify whether they are doing a “commercial” or “informational” search.
Thanks, Matt, for taking all this feedback! I posted the rest of this under search quality, but now it also seems appropriate under webspam. Here it is:
Existing options (News, Local, Froogle, etc.) are nice, but as a user I’d love to just have those two choices right at the top of my search: “commercial” to let me find the product or service I’m looking for, and “informational” to find out about anything (product, service, or otherwise) from someone who’s not trying to sell it to me. Maybe this could be some kind of filter?
One example that comes to mind is web hosting — I recently tried using Google to find a new host, but most of the “reviews” and “directories” I came across were the bucolic fabrications of web hosting companies themselves, most of whom had bad spelling and at least 10 domains with the word “host” in the title. I was left with only my considerable spelling talents to separate out who was biased and who wasn’t.
Toivo Lainevool Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 2:12 pm
I think splog has to be the number one problem today. It is so easy for spammers to set up blogs and repost garbage to them. They make many blog searches useless. They pollute the web and are a drag on advertising programs.
Aaron L Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 2:20 pm
Hi Matt -
I would like to see more backlink spam eliminated. There are tons of things to be covered, but one thing I noticed is that webmasters make additional sites (usually using the same templates for the other sites, but different than the main site), throw up a couple of pages of content and then link into their main site. Yes, this is a ‘doorway’ domain and should have already been caught, but I still see them popping up every now and then.
I also would like to see more scraper sites banned from the index. I don’t think all adsense sites should be banned though because some actually offer good information for a user. Maybe some combination of adsense + a healthy amount of duplicate content plus some other things would be grounds to rid those sites from the index.
Thanks!
SlyOldDog Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 2:52 pm
I see the single biggest threat to link based algorithms is the plethora of link schemes like Digitalpoint.
In my sector there are dozens of these schemes popping up all the time. The number 1 site on one of my SERPs has 100,000 backlinks! And it’s just a hotel reservation site for a piddly little country for christ’s sake.
We joined one of these schemes for fun and pointed 1000’s of links at a page and it ranked amazingly well on a tough serp within days. These links are cancer for Google and are destroying the basis of the philosophy behind a link.
The problem now isn’t that top site. It’s that everyone is going to join the bandwagon. Already half the sites on page 1 are using tricks like this now. I’d really prefer not to go down that road, but I’ll have to if it’s not stopped soon.
Darren King Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 2:59 pm
Let me be the fiftieth person to say PLEASE DROP THE DMOZ FACTOR. In the particular field I work in I know for a fact that a competitor is an editor and that she won’t include certain sites as a result. To say this is a conflict of interest is a serious understatement. If Google cannot ensure the objectivity of DMOZ listings then they should drop the factor alltogether.
Wolfie Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 3:23 pm
I agree with SlyOldDog. Manufactured links must go.
Nikke Lindqvist Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 3:38 pm
After all these years, there are still sites doing quite well using cloaking. And I don’t mean just a little cloaking, but cloaking as in never actually showing a regular visitor any content at all before redirecting them. However, if you go there with a browser masquerading as google-bot you’ll see a page just stuffed with keywords and strange internal links.
Also, abuse of the noframes-tag is something I still see around a lot. This is the first choise if you want a link to the type of cloaked sites mentioned above.
As I see it, external links withing a noframes-tag should just be disregarded by the Google-bot.
Third. Others have mentioned DMOZ, and even if the organization isn’t perfect, its far better than 98% of the rest of the link cataloques. Most of these seem to be owned be SEO firms, at least where I come from.
John Vanhara Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 3:41 pm
I totally agree that DMOZ is not working anymore. It is very corrupted. Quality sites are being removed, friendly sites are being included. DMOZ is not quality directory.
I don’t see problems with back links or automated links. I don’t even feel that they influence too much anymore.
The problem is with stealing content. Blogs scrapping content on automatic basis from other blogs. Copy cat websites scrapping content from quality websites and placing Google Adsense on their sites hoping to get the revenues.
graywolf Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 3:48 pm
Apply justice equally and without prejudice. Wordpress got caught spamming with hot nacho and was back in the SERPs in a few days. Digits.com got caught doing the same thing a week later and is no where to be found almost 12 months later. Even though the offending pages have been removed.
(FYI I am not affiliated with any of those sites)
Jim Sullivan Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 3:53 pm
I agree with Wolfie and Sly.
co-op link networks need to be devauled. (not just on devalued new domains, but on OLD/ESTABLISHED domains too : you trust these far too much) (quick example: wakeboarder.com ranking for a keyword like ‘mesothelioma’ with the help of co-op power)
JohnM Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 3:54 pm
How bout guys that spam on sites like this: http://www.unesco.org/cgi-bin/webworld/portal_bib2/cgi/add.cgi ? (notice the hidden link on the image — creative link, spam or hack? discussion is here: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32552 )
Same guy here: http://www.botspot.com/ and http://allstarjobs.com/cgi-bin/links/contact.cgi and http://www.summercamps.com/cgi-bin/summercamps/search.cgi?RockClimbing=RockClimbing (etc.)
William E. Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 3:55 pm
Keep the Open Directory Project, just help make sure to inform site owners of what it is and is not. I do have to agree to get rid of the scrapers, I still get some bizarre results sometimes.
Thanks for the opportunity to voice my opinion!
Tom Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:09 pm
I think DOMZ is one of the only places to get good data as far as site go, I would think the descriptions are worth keeping, most are very generic. Hidden text and non related links (for the purpose of pr) should be addressed.
Thanks Matt
itsme Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:17 pm
Hello Matt,
I would like to see google offer a commercial filter so users looking for informational pages do not have to wade through all the listings related to spammy sites that are manipulating search engine placement.
I’d also like to see google further integrate the data they obtain from DMOZ. The human edited factor makes it a level playing field and cuts out the spam or affiliate marketing schemes that lack any real useful content, many of which ‘clog’ up the first several pages of google search results. Small business or informational websites that have not paid $$$ for search engine placement get lost in all the spam.
Low Level Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:44 pm
1) Ignore keyword stuffed texts;
2) Ignore PR coming from purchased links;
3) Ignore hidden text.
Pin Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:45 pm
Banning, penalties, new algo.. all are in the right track. However, there are only part of the equation. One of the problems with those stuff is a lot of “honest” webmasters (well.. I will see “honesty” as a continuum between white and black. Any SEO might be a little bit grey sometimes..) got banned or penalized without knowing the reasons.
It is not to say they don’t something wrong. But, sometimes they commit something wrong without knowing it. For eg. exchanging links was a common practice since Web exists. A lot of webmasters keep doing that because they don’t understand the current development in SEs. In that case, if the website is their major income source, the usual response is to create new sites with same or similiar contents or doing more link exchanges to compensate the losing traffic. In the long run, the intention of getting rid of webspam by G actually increase spamming without both sides actually want to start it from beginning.
My point is: Banning and penalizing is fine, but G has to balance it with webspam education for webmasters. This blog is going to the direction but not everyone knows and reads this blog. Even if it is read, our cognitive biases make us easier to detect problems on other sites than our own. How many times we hear the comment “I’m sure my site is clean but it got banned” ? I think in lot of cases, that is what they actually believe.
So, if G could detect the spam, would it be nice if G could also inform the webmasters about nature of the problem(s) and give them time to fix the problems before applying penalties? To avoid this feature to be used by “black hat” SEOs, G can check the domain ownership. For eg. If the domains have been alive for years with contents and still viewed/bookmarked by users (data could be gathered by G Toolbar), then the site is eligible for notification.
I believe this would help both G and webmasters and is aligned with G’s “Do no evil” philosophy.
Wayne Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
Wow where to begin..I agree with getting rid of DMOZ. To give an example, I went in to DMOZ for my region and industry and found several sites, about 18% of the listings according to DMOZ guidelines that dont meet their listing criteria, but yet I know of several sites that do and they have not been added in 3 years.
DMOZ I believe is a public relations nightmare for Google with all the speculation of corruption and some past editors indicating there is wide spread corruption issues.
Google states that DMOZ doesnt really hold a lot of weight with withs serps, but yet for several city plus real estate industries I track every single site in the top 10 holds a DMOZ listing.
Google should just create a human edited directory and charge for it as Yahoo does. I am sure all those people trying to get in to DMOZ but cant because some competitor or friend of a competitor is editing the category would gladly pay Google to have their site review. This could also be another way for Google to track certain industries for spam tactics.
Another issue I would like to see google attack is link farms. Link farms are a major issue in real estate. I think one way to discount this would be for Google to discount recipical links a great deal, let the sites earn links off their own merits, give no value to recipical links / homepage links. Whcih we all know homepage links are meant to manipulate the serps.
Remove within Googles ranking algo the age factor of a domain. I have seen a few domains with age go out and purchase links with no repercussions. I have seen however when a new site goes and buys thousands of links they get penalized very quicky, on the other hand I have seen sites that are 4 or 5 years old with very few links go out and buy thousands of links and propel up the rankings for their primary keywords. We all have seen sites that have not been updated in years but yet still rank number one. How does this benefit the consumer, as times change so does information. Changing small amounts of info on a subject matter that should change quite often with large amounts of information is no benefit to the serps or consumers. Hense give more credit to very large sites. Base this on a comparision of sites within that targeted search phrase.
To point out another issues is the creation of similar sites for the same industry keywords only to manipulate the serps. More and more Realtors are creating multiple sites in order to create nothing more than backlinks. Most of these sites offer the same information …just reworded or create junk adsense sites to create relevance for linking to their primary site / sites. Why create other sites for the same Realtor? If there is new information that needs to be offered why is it not added to the already existing site.
Webmasters are guilty of this for the most part, they create forums to use for linking schemes, blogs and other sites to use for nothing more than to manipulate Googles serps and create backlinks.
The top site in our market has over 150 homepage links on their site. This is part of a very large link farm for real estate. Yahoo has addressed this issue by penalizing sites that have homepage links, as most of these top 10 sites on google who use homepage links dont rank in Yahoo or MSN. These links on the homepage only increase the relevancy factor for real estate on these websites, with no real benefit for the website visitor, and only is used to manipulate Googles serps.
Being in Real Estate, I can tell you placing those homepage links to other real estate sites have no value for the consumer, those are only meant to manipulate Google serps. I have links to other agents in other states we have done business with but they are placed on interior pages in the appropriate category. Consumers do have a need for real estate agents in other states but they have no value on your homepage. When a consumer hits your homepage they are looking for information about that subject matter in your area not that subject in another state.
Disallow the use of framed pages in your index. Most sites that use frames use these to hide duplicate content. The pages are indexed with unique metas and title tags and get indexed. One certain real estate website company uses framed pages for most interior pages cause they all have the same content, but yet most of these sites rank very well in Google with huge indexes shown by Google.
I guess this is a long enough book. I surely hope Google addresses these issues. The reason my viewpoints are so narrow is because I only deal with real estate nothing else so these are the only things I can speak of and give some examples of problems I have noticed pertaining to this industry.
John Andrews Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:58 pm
Hey Matt, thanks for asking.
I can suggest a few things to improve the SE spam issue:
1. Add a filter so any site with less than 100 or so links from the same industry never shows up in the SERPs. Let’s face it, less than 100 quality on-topic backlinks demonstrates very little effort to reward with a top ranking.
2. Add a time-delay filter so new websites don’t get a shot at the first few (10?) pages of serps for something like 2 years. That should eliminate alot of the pressure for rankings. Most of the new website owners will forget about high-pressure SEO-style tactics if they know for sure they have no shot of ranking for that long. Those that are still good after the delay deserve to rank well.
3. Only count visible, on-page text for relevance. No tags at all, no scripts at all, no code, no images nor their tags, just good old text. Start from there and impose your algos. SERPs should be much better even as design/styles vary and technology “advances”.
4. Stop valuing backlinks by PR. The cascading relevance thing is dead, and rewards spam networks and scammers. Why not just kill it? Eliminate all that nepotistic link love and watch the SERPs improve.
5. Require the Google toolbar of everyone who wants to use Google.com. Why not? It helps you keep Google.com clean, so it can be required. Then you can track all activity, and really know relevance. (Granted this won’t work until you own the entire web, but that’s just a little while from now so better get crackin on the toolbar insertion, no?)
6. Require AdSense on all web pages in Google. Again, why not? The Internet hasn’t been non-commercial since the mid 90’s. Offer a profit share as an option. Google’s revenue will go up, and you will eliminate much of the one-sided economic appeal of AdSense spamming, because every bit of content in Google.com will already have ads on it. No need to scrape sites to put ads on at another domain. Right?
7. Change the Google indexing algorithms randomly every 5 months or so, on schedule. By my read, each big change in Google leads to about 4 1/2 months of whining in the spammer forums. Also, in my experience most users don’t know a good SERP from a bad one… they just click the first few results no matter what. Those two facts support a plan to just whack the index, and then whackit again as soon as the SEO spammers stop whining and start scheming again. Whack, whine, scheme, and Whack! again. Spam problem solved.
I have alot more of excellent suggestions if you are interested. Have a great day!
dmozguy Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 5:25 pm
Buy dmoz.org from AOL. A big problem with the ODP is that AOL neglects it in terms of hardware and staff. I’m sure Google can spare some computers and can manage it better. The ODP has more spam-fighting know-how than most people imagine, so a closer collaboration with Google would be mutually beneficial.
Rychar Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 5:33 pm
Matt … just a little of my favorite rant.
Google should hold webmasters responsible for the sites they link out to. If YOU endorse a site YOU are accountable … that is the way link reputation is supposed to work!
If Google wants to get rid of “unnatural links” this makes sense.
Go ahead, add 10,000 outgoing links to your site … you just increase your exposure to getting banned.
Go ahead, sell links to shady sites … you will pay for it dearly and lose all your PR.
Go ahead, build doorway sites and route traffic to your site … all will be penalized.
Spam sites would not even be a be a factor without links from upstanding web sites. This would also be the end for paid links, auto link software, and FFA directories!
Liz Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 5:41 pm
Bring back ODP to more prominence. There are problems with some commercial, spam and cheat prone areas but overall it is really useful for good edited selections of sites. With more prominence they might get more editors again. Perhaps just drop, or downrank, the spam and cheat prone areas.
Use more brain power over sites that list every known location on databases and add the words hotels, offices, massage parlours, dating etc. My location has 15 houses but according to Google we have the full range of spam services.
Provide an affordable Google consultancy service. Totally fair, totally white hat consultancy to sort out problems genuine sites might be having in getting listed correctly. Don’t make it so that only major companies or highly profitable sites can afford to pay.
Dave Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 6:09 pm
Matt, I would like to see Google taking a top down stance and target the ’so called’ SEOs that employ (even promote) spammy tactics. Perhaps a friendly email from Google to state they are being watched.
Lucky Balaraman Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
Matt, we keep hearing that if websites don’t “grow naturally” there will be the smell of spam. Internet buzz says that “naturally” means one or two pages a week.
In my opinion this is not reasonable. What if a site owner has a team of researchers putting together 10 original, “citation-worthy” pages a day, just to provide more information to visitors?
I suggest that you raise the spam threshold to a growth of about 50 pages per day.
Thanks
Lucky
————
Angela Olson Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 6:46 pm
Hi! I’m an editor at dmoz and I know that our editors try very hard to get rid of mass submits from a single SEO. They type of spammy submitters can be banned from dmoz or ODP for behaving in such a way.
I’m not saying that dmoz is perfect. But we do try our best to make dmoz.org one of the best directories with unique content. I think that it would make Google even worse than it has been, lately, to not use dmoz.org.
Have a nice day,
Angela
RosieS Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 6:53 pm
Rid results of the colossal collections of directory-style city-specific affiliate doorway pages.
Bring back the DMOZ category links to help users quickly understand the overall content of a site regardless of where it appears in seach.
VJ Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 7:13 pm
Matt,
I would love to see all those domains that get incidental traffic due to the domain name exactly matching a search term gone from the listings. I am not talking about legitimate site, but the parked domains which only have a bunch of advertiser links on them.
TearingHairOut Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 7:45 pm
As far as spam is concerned, AdSense and Google News are the key. The most obvious spam blogs are the ones which publish snippets from G News and plant AdSense squares above and below the snippets, with no other content.
Result for spammer: frequently updating content with AdSense revenue coming in. They even have a giveaway signal - the AdSense headline always has ‘6 hours ago’ or whatever directly after it.
Find the blogs that use these two things together. Cancel the AdSense accounts. Spam problem solved.
HaHa Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 9:56 pm
I am sorry.I posted this in the wrong thread before.
I would like to see Google tackle expired domains again.The registrars are one step a head by not allowing expiring domains to drop.They also keep the old whois info on them.
I let a domain slip expire unwittingly and when I disovered it, I found that it still had my exact whois info except for the admin email and the creation date was not reset.It was being used to spam porn links.
Matt, what is being dome about expired domains?
I see that 80% of adult serps are all expired domains.
Marshall Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 11:15 pm
1/6/06
I know a lot of people will hate this comment. But after reading a dozen or so comments, it appears a lot of people have forgotten that we have a First Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees Freedom of Speech.
Now that does not guarantee the right to use fraudlent practices to get a higher ranking. If Google wants to kick a site out for fraudlent pracitces, I have no problem with that.
But for a bunch of self appointed spam cops to be able to black list a site is not right. If Google eventually allows this practice and legitimate sites are put out of business, then Google could be sued in a massive class action lawsuit. Now that I have said that.
I have seen one practice being used for legitimate ecommerce that increases the links back to the main site. That practice is where a site uses the services of a huge shop cart management system to produce backlink pages for each product in the database. As an ecommerce practice to sell products, there is nothing wrong with this. But for Google to count those backlinks toward page rank and SERP, well that is another story.
I have a particular site in mind that uses this practice to help maintain top ten or top twenty positions for some dozen keywords. So maybe Google can look at this and say oh. It is ok for selling products but not for SERP or PR. And not drop them from the index or penalize them for selling products using a database approach.
Ugo Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 1:20 am
I think you should ignore hidden text, it’s the worst problem I can see from Google with spam….
Plus, this problem doesn’t need any human attention and can be totally automatized….
I don’t mean to blacklist every site that uses hidden text, for example I do use hidden text to hide “pipe” separators from my site menu, so that text-only client like Links can have a better presentation since they don’t have any CSS support.
I mean to simply doesn’t take into account the websites that stuff many keywords in hidden text.
The easiest way to be sure nobody is gonna be hurt between legit hidden and keywords hidden, is to simply ignore the hidden part.
Layman Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:45 am
Hi Matt,
This is my first post, and perhaps also the first post from Turkey!
I observed that sites seemingly banned by Google run adsense on their pages. Is it still permissible? I used to think that people at Google always checks carefully sites applying for Adsense.
You may delete the url from my message before posting, but please have a quick check at this spammer:
http://www.dailysoftware.net/download-dvd-free-platinum-ultimate.htm
which has a link to my site, as if a directory entry, but the description contained therein has nothing to do with my site, or any of the sites on this page, or on any pages of the said site.
It links to some sites well performing in Google SERPs with descriptions of its own choice. And all descriptions are simply the variations of the same thing. I am sure you will find it interesting.
Thank you for maintaining an open channel for webmasters, professionals or novinces alike.
Paul Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 3:17 am
The main complaints I read here and at many forums are by people who are frustrated by the fact that their site isn’t showing in the top 10 or 20 of searchresults. They forget the fact that only 10 sites can be listed in the top 10 and they blame everybody else for their misfortune.
The main problems I see a searcher (and not as a websiteowner) are
- directories showing in the top positions, I did not search for a directory and don’t wan’t to click to that directory to find the real sites I’m looking for
- many listings for the same content (same site or mirrors) showing in the top posistions
- hijacked sites still showing in the serp’s
- irrelevant sites showing in the serps ; some kind of sites (like real estate) should only be shown if searched by locality or region
Solutions
- sites with large amounts of backlinks are most probably using unwanted techniques
- start a more close relation with DMOZ, human screening of sites is IMO a much better way to validate sites [the current DMOZ is not optimal but is the best there is on the net at this moment]
- offer extra search options (exclude commercial sites, use geo-information)
Peter (Brane) Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 3:40 am
I definitely agree with the comment in the beginning about the use of dmoz. There is too much corruption going on in dmoz to make it in any way a trustable source. I know there are still many trustable editors in dmoz, but I am sure there are too many that make a very good living out of adding sites to dmoz.
I wonder what is worse, the on-page spam, the on-server spam techniques, or the link spamming? Seems to me that cloaking is easy to detect, just set up an office somewhere under a different name and get a huge internet connection to it. Then start crawling the net from there as a normal user, and compare with cached pages. (Perhaps a simple way of looking at it but shouldn’t be too complicated to recognize cloaking)
On-page spamming, you already know how to recognize that. I just wonder how much algoritmic detection is done and how many people Google has working to do manual detection.
Link spamming seems to be easier to detect too now.
Leaves me with one worry,… the historical data algorithms. Now that the spammers have had almost 2 years to have aged domains, are they still as effective?
Giacomo Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 5:20 am
I think there’s still room for improvement in the detection of doorway pages with hidden content and sneaky JavaScript redirects: 90% of the spam I see in Google’s index is just like that.
Jan Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 5:24 am
One problem that seems not to be able to be found easily is when people have one or two real websites that are supported by literally hundreds of small doorway sites. Unlike some other opinions, I think having a few multiple sites when you’re a real estate agent for a large area is very called for. For instance, one of my clients is a developer/marketer and about half of the resort projects have to have their own website to please the owners. Any agent that deals with a big city probably needs several sites dedicated to important neighborhoods or housing projects too. But purchasing hundreds of domain names, or even 20 or so is usually just spam.
Homepage links are a blessing in that they are much easier to check.
Since we are held responsible for linking to sites that that are “bad neighborhoods” then we feel it necessary to check the links periodically to see how the sites look. I would much rather see a site that has a bunch of links at the bottom of the homepage than all these sites that make 50 page directories and put up links like they are DMOZ or something. Most of the SEO companies and even the well known real estate website companies are now making a small fortune charging these hapless agents by the month to email and beg for links from every other agent that has a good site. At least those of us who do our own (homepage or not) KNOW the other agents we are dealing with.
And DMOZ should be eliminated, amen. I’d love to see Google have their own great human run directory, and what better way to monitor site quality than you all looking at every site to verifiy its validity?
Charge us for the priviledge, and if we make the grade, then it should give us a boost in the SERPS cause you now know the site is a good one.
You may get ragged on by the ones that can’t make a decent site, but it would be great for those of us who work our butts off!
Jan
Myrtle Beach
Ne1home Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 5:30 am
Here’s two Matt:
1) Please stop allowing hacker sites to fill up G with duplicates of legitimate pages using their tools like nph-proxy, go.php etc.
You say that because these redirects go supplemental they don’t harm the listings of the legitimate pages. But my experience proves the opposite.
I had 30 pages targetted in this way and each one plummeted in the BigDaddy serps.
I’ve filed spamreports about the offending sites (3 times pre and post Jagger) but the illegal redirecting urls are still in G, and our pages still penalised because of them.
Please do what you can to stop this happening Mate.
Ta!
2) As a website owner I’m infuriated to find illegal copies of pages from my site in Google. Filing DMCAs is time consuming, both Goggle Staff’s and mine.
It would be great if you could initiate some form of Google tag that copyright owners could give to those who they grant legitiamte usage.
So webpages lacking the tag will be spotted by Gbot as illegal and removed from the index automatically. This will save your DMCA Staff a lot of work.
Henry Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 5:45 am
Well I’d like Google to tackle Google Bowling.
We are ‘officially’ releasing a website and magazine version in about a months time (it’s been online 2 months) and we have become a target of Google Bowling even before we have started! Obviously this is the plan of whoever is doing this.
Looking at the stats all links are coming from pharma and other spam sites.
Is this going to be the end of our website? Do we have any hope or do we just roll over and die?
Is there any protection against this sort of attack?
There has to be a way for Google to combat this.
Danny Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 6:05 am
Matt,
despite all your good work and good intentions here, i sometimes get the impression spam is not always taken seriously.
What did Jagger 1 , 2 and 3 really do ? Many sites that got banned after they were reported using the jagger keyword in it, got relisted after only 3 weeks while the cloaking is still in place.
Sites i’ve never seen before that carry hidden text and/or links suddenly pop up in top positions.
There’s just too many sites that are getting away with it and what’s the risk if they get caught ? Some rebuild other sites and use the very same deception again and again and if that doesn’t work, then there’s always Adwords to get found again.
A banned site should be banned, remained banned and dissallowed in Adwords. Send a warning to the site owner and/or SEO if applicable that the very same thing will happen to ALL of their sites if Google finds more spam on their other sites.
Set the exemples and show them to the world. Tell about it on Google’s homepage so all people will know about it (i think there’s only a small percentage of people who have ever read the guidelines) and see how clean the Web will become in a while.
Just MHO
Lee Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 6:08 am
Where do I start?
1. I’m tired of seeing search engine results, shopping / comparison engine results and eBay results in the natural search engine results. This muddies your results. I know of noone who wants to see those results. If they do they certainly know how to go to those sites directly and use them.
2. Page rank needs to go away. Or at least not be considered in the algo. If you removed PR as a value in the algo, the results will naturally improve because people would not be able to purchase or sell links based upon a perceived PR increase. As long as you have this, you’ll have people like Massa, TLB and others trying to game your system.
3. Anchor text should be required to more closely match the title of the Web page the link points to. This would eliminate the Google Bombing we’ve seen with “miserable failure” and others. Links created for the purpose of hurting someone’s site or reputation would simply not work. Getting tons of varying anchor text links to the home page for the purpose of increase PR to the home page and thereby the internal pages would be eliminated. This would then cause those links to be more evenly distributed throughout the Web site which was the initial intention of the Google founders.
4. Can’t emphasize more the demise of DMOZ and their poor quality. Dump them.
5. Start a paid review directory. If a site meets more than one category add it automatically to those categories, once it qualifies. Then your paid reviewers can have quality control measures. If the site is not listed in the paid directory then it has no right to be in the organic results competing with the other honest site owners. Honest being defined as those who legitimately qualified to be in the paid directory.
6. Dump sites using doorway created for the sole purpose of mirroring dynamic content. Google’s able to index dynamic content fairly easily these days and the use of doorway pages only muddies the results.
7. Devalue sites whose domain registration information is not visible. Domain registrars should be masking email addresses not the entire registrant, administrator or technical contact information. This can aid Google in determining if a domain network has been setup to game the SERPs. Obviously if a company has multiple domain names and they link to each other on every page, that is a link scheme and against the quality guidelines. Owning such a network should be grounds for immediate devaluation. But currently, they can hide behind annonymous registration information.
8. Hire me as a quality evaluator.
Luis Alberto Barandiaran Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 6:28 am
I see you’ve got a lot of opinions and suggestions, some good, some terribly selfish, some just plain bad.
Here are some of my webspam recommendations:
1 - DMOZ Scrappers
There are hundreds or thousands of sites that are scrapping the DMOZ directory itself to create their “own”. As a result, once you get listed in DMOZ, links to your site begins popping up all over the web. They are easy to spot, they should be easy to be algo removed.
2 - Ban AND Cancel
If you ban a domain which is using AdSense, you should also Cancel their AdSense account, or at the very least suspend it. When it’s owner logs in to their account, they’ll find out what’s happened and be able to either:
a) Correct their misbehavior or
b) Cancel that account
3 - Subdomain Spam
I really, really get spam annoyed when I do a search and get “thesearch.site.com” - Subdomains should be entirely 100% independent from the main site. Why would someone openning an account with, say blogger.com and his account is now spammer.blogger.com have a better shot at SERPS that someone opening an account with another site with much less PR? It should only account for what that subdomain actually contains and what links point to it, NOT because it belongs to a high PR site.
4 - AdSense Quality Control
It took me nearly 4 months to amount enough earnings in AdSense to pass the $100 mark. A spammer probably does it in a couple of weeks after starting up. I would do here something very nifty:
- Search your AdSense accounts for duplicates. Don’t make the match against names and emails (the usual), make it against:
a) Physical addresses - It would be highly unusual to have 2 different persons in the same house earning AdSense - 30 different people… hmm
b) Password match - 50 AdSense accounts with the password “california” is quite usual. 50 AdSense accounts with a password combination of characters and numbers is not. It is my experience that spammers in general have a very good sense of security, therefore, they create longer and more complicated passwords so that no one hacks their account and steals their earnings. However, having 50 AdSense accounts with the password “006zHE27klj” is an obvious indication that they belong to the same person or group of.
c) Bank account match - very easily spotted…
- Have a manual review quality control team - aided with strong tools at their disposal - flag sites that need to be checked or verified. New sites with thousands of pages or links overnight. I’m sure you can come up with other means of adding flags and placing thresholds, so that their work is as productive as possible.
5 - Expired / Parked pages
I should ONLY encounter this if I search for an specific site, and it no longer exists, or it’s under indefinite “under construction”. I really, REALLY don’t want to see them when I run a search…
6 - Update & Clear Google’s Cache
I haven’t seen it mentioned very much, but it happens based on my observations. A not so familiar method of spamming the site consists of leaving orphan pages in the index. Say you link to page1.htm and page2.htm on your site. After a month or 2 of being indexed, you no longer link to them from ANYWHERE, but they still exist nonetheless. It will get to a point where GoogleBot doesn’t visit the page anymore. That way, you’ve actually spammed the index, left the bait or doorway page in, and then, you’ve cleaned up your act. No penalties, no nothing, and you still got some of the old methods working for you (even if you actually truly cleaned up or not). Easy fix: Update GoogleBot to revisit any page it hasn’t updated in at least 9 or 12 months, and reindex it. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Discard the 404’s, update those with 301’s, 302’s and other forms of redirects, and update the cache of the page. If the page still exists fine, let it be. If not, remove it. I really don’t want to see any more 404’s in my SERPS for this year…
Hope you got to read this, and let’s get G’s engineers to work!
Giacomo Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 6:34 am
Not sure whether this qualifies as “spam” or “low search quality”, but it really disappoints me when I click on a search result only to find a page filled with Overture sponsored listings (no useful content at all, just ads).
Jean Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 7:17 am
Matt: some of the posts above are libellous and I’m surprised at your giving them houseroom. Claims that there is widespread corruption in Dmoz is all too common on SEO forum, but it is an urban myth. The idea is propagated by those who cannot get their sites listed and/or have been removed for abusive editing.
Time and time again a frustrated submitter will suspect foul play when in fact their site does not meet Dmoz guidelines and has been rejected by an editor who has no connection with the submitter’s field. People add two and two and get 15.
The Dmoz top brass will remove abusive editors as soon as they are reported/spotted. The percentage is actually fairly small. Most editing is done by a few hundred dedicated senior editors.
However I have been delighted to see many useless Dmoz clones vanishing from Google. The Google Directory adds value by ordering listings by PR. Many other clones add nothing except advertising and/or links for the link popularity effect.
Bike_Builder Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 7:37 am
Hey Matt,
Take out that sword and find some way of cutting all those MFA Made for Adsense sites from the index. MFA Pollution.
Google has created it’s own nightmare, by not having some sort of quality check before allowing webmasters to create sites that only exist for the purpose of serving up ads, and add nothing of value to the searcher. Scrapers, Content Thieves, Information sites that provide no information, and on, and on. These webmasters are polluting the internet with garbage created just to make money off PPC, and are doing so with Googles stamp of approval, by allowing the ads to be displayed on their sites.
Come On Matt, you showed off your sword, are you prepared to use it?
Google needs to add a team to its Adsense group that does nothing but approve and disapprove of sites, to provide some sort of quality to the program. If a MFA site is found, the site should be sliced from the index, and the Adsense account that is using the site to display ads, the account should be sliced from the program. This may seem kinda harsh, but it is the only way I can see to curb the rampant abuse of the adsense program, and the unbelieveable number of MFA sites already created, and being created every day.
Bike_Builder
Big Daddy Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 8:28 am
Matt,
I agree about about nuKing DMOZ.
I disagree about having homepage links to other real estate sites. I do not really have any on my site, but do have many agents across the country linking to my site for their users from their homepages. I am not linking to them from my home page or others. That is not my understanding of a link farm.
They link to mine because it is one of the only sites that has a MLS search of all islands in hawaii on one site. Plus it is easier to use.
If RE agents provide more information for their users they will come back to their sites. Selling real estate here in Hawaii, I have people coming from all over the country. U.S. service men and women, people retiring, just to live here or buy second homes. I have several sites that I am on their home page that send allot of traffic. Last month: http://www.tampa4u.com - 9,611 visitors, http://www.northorangecountyrealestate.com - 3,223 visitors, http://www.denverrealestateonline.com - 2,150 visitors, http://www.larryhotz.com 1,201 visitors, http://www.prescottazhomesearch.com - 1,100 visitors, http://www.vahud.com - 1,125. There are more too.
I had over a 140 sales last year and 80% of the clients come from the mainland from sites like these sending referrals.
It is no different than a shoe site having links to shoe lace sites and shoe repair from their home page.
People buying and selling real estate are on the move all over the country and if real estate agents want to link to other qaulity sites for the users they should be able to. That is what the internet is for. Helping people find information.
Have a great weekend!! Every one try to relax a bit.
Aloha,
Big Daddy!
ClickyB Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 8:56 am
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the opportunity to have a real voice in Google’s future, very PC… Here’s my 2cents:
Sub-Domains: Why is it that my site can have 2 pages listed in any serps result, but if I use sub-domains instead of folders I can have unlimited listings? IMO if the limit of 2 places was expanded to include sub-domain pages, the legitimate use of sub-domains would still be worthwhile but the benefit to spammers would be gone.
DMOZ: Yes it’s biased, but ANY “people powered directory” is going to be biased to a certain extent; even a “neutral” directory run by Google would be subject to bias depending on a reviewer’s personal preferences. Oh - and I don’t want to have to start paying Google $300.00 for each of my sites to get ranked; some people just can’t afford this sort of outlay - does that make their sites less relevant? Obviously not! The answer? Stick with DMOZ but “encourage” them (perhaps even lend them a hand) to clean up their act.
Adult: PR Capping for adult sites gives rise to a whole series of other problems; targetting non-adult terms isn’t always done to fool surfers, more often it’s done to fool SE’s. Adult webmasters are no more BH than non-adult, anyone who says different is just ignorant & jumping on a popular bandwagon! The fact is that PR capping has encouraged adult WM’s to create “stealth sites” in order to try to “level the playing field”. The historical reasons for the PR capping are fairly obvious and - to some extent - reasonable (based on the state of the www in 1995) - now they’re just creating problems of their own. Don’t wait for the “xxx” TLD, why not just use a metatag (content rating for example), instruct the industry to use them by “X date”; mark adult sites in your serps - so those which bypass the adult filter are still obvious - (rate them as “X” - may contain adult content; “XX” - does contain adult content; “XXX” - 100 adult content); ask surfers to report adult sites which weren’t marked up in the serps (and remove them from your index until they have added the tags and requested reinclusion).
That will stop the “stealth” adult sites without penalising people for selling lingerie alongside other clothing and without penalising people trying to offer legal products to people of legal age who want to buy them!
Penalties: I see some people asking for stronger penalties / permanent bans etc etc… The death penalty is uncivilised and immoral. No matter how careful, you will always end up killing an innocent person (ignorance isn’t a crime) and people must ALWAYS have the opportunity to “go straight” once they’ve grown up; giving them no alternative just encourages them to start again under another false name and be more clever next time!
The approach I would prefer is this: IF a site is being subjected to a cap/ban/filter for ANY reason, why not make that information freely available to the webmaster in the info:www.mysite.com results?
That would stop the endless guessing games, conjecture, rumour spreading, wasted time, ignorance, frustration and “google bashing”, whilst simultaneously educating webmasters and would gradually “encourage” the entire SEO world to follow google quality guidelines… what could be better than that?
Thanks again for the voice :o)
lots0 Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 9:29 am
RELEVANCE
Maybe 2006 is the time for google to start doing much more human review of the google SERP.
When I search for a free game online, that is what I want, a free game, what I don’t want is a bunch of sites in the SERP that link to free online games and/or show me google ads about free games…
When I search for specific information on any subject, I would like to find information on that subject, not just a bunch of google ads wanting to sell me the information that I can get for free… on another search engine.
From where I sit Matt, all your spam fighting efforts have hurt the RELEVANCE of the google SERP. Ya, your getting rid of some of the search engine SPAM, but google’s relevance has been hurt badly along the way.
Of course, google does not need to be as relevant as other search engines right now, google is the current darling of the main stream media. One of these days the media spotlight will fade from google and it will come back down to what search engine has the most relevant SERP and best user experience and that aint good for google, at least right now.
FYI - In the very limited tests we have just ran, users prefer a list of human reviewed sites over a list of (google) algo generated sites 8 to 1 (in the double blind tests users did not know where the lists came from). Not looking too good for google’s current algo…
Cbin Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 12:09 pm
Matt - I think feedback 06 is great.
What if -
The Spam Report was better staffed so that nearly every site reported could actually get looked at by a human. Then take the data of all those sites whether they were banned, pushed back or cleared to create the new algo’s.
Maybe this is already happening to some extent, and if it is then maybe a better communication solution can be put inplace. Both to notify the web site owners they have been reported of spam, and some sort of feedback to the one reporting it.
I think one of the problems is webmasters feel like they are in the dark. If their site gets banned they don’t know why, and if they report a site that is a head of them that is clearly spamming they don’t know why the site in question never gets removed or pushed back. They feel like a review never even takes place and they continue seeing a site a head of them that clearly should not be there.
What if a letter of spam nitification is sent out. I have seen in the smaller sectors that a lot of sites have spam techniques placed by the web/seo firm that was hired not by the business owner. There are millions of oblivious online business owners especially in GEO Targeted sectors that have no clue what spam is. Maybe if they were notified and asked who did their site, or you could look at their links out bound or in bound and probably find the site taking recognition for it. Then watch them as well. I just don’t want to see a Mom and Pop that is trying their hardest get spanked. A solution to pursue and watch the firms would be much more effective in the long run.
I would be willing to give my email or google username in order to report a spammer.
Also I think a human edited - paid directory instituted by Google is an awesome idea. If a site doesn’t make it they get a long list of why’s. However they don’t get their money back requiring site owners to try and make their site clean prior to submission. And if a listing occurs some sort of ranking increase happens as well. Except I don’t know about increasing rankings too dramatically on a site that is included because there are sites that might not know about the directory that are the most relevant.
Maybe the Google Directory can help new sites get released from the sand box in a more timley fashion.
It seems highly relevant good practicing sites get no love if they are brand new, and that older domains can get away with a lot more spam.
Thanks,
Chris
Lee Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 1:14 pm
Problems with DMOZ, as viewed by someone whose sites are listed in DMOZ.
1. Lack of real quality control.
2. Continual linking to dis-continued or dead sites. People don’t surf DMOZ to find sites any longer so noone knows about the problem unless an editor applicant points out the problem.
3. Failure to communicate with the people whom they deny. By having the editors fill in a form by simply checking the failed points, submitters will know their site was reviewed. To DMOZ this is simply too much for the editor to do.
So, again dump DMOZ simply because Google and Yahoo can do it better. I would think it would be more beneficial for Google to start their own paid directory than to recommend people sign up for Yahoo’s.
Gary Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:00 pm
I thought this discussion was how to eliminate spam in Google? “I’m most interested in hearing what people think Google should tackle in webspam”. It seems to have turned into a SEO bashing of Dmoz. What purpose is this bashing in this discussion - other then to prove the need for the ODP.
I agree that Google needs to work with, say the ODP, to scan sites/listings for validity. Many searches turn up non-related sites. It seems like the googlebots are tricked by hidden text, spammy keywords, and descriptions.
Peter Munteanu Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:11 pm
If Google ever needed any evidence that they should keep using DMOZ, its all provided above in the comments. As long as webmasters and SEO’s are unhappy that DMOZ is not meeting their SEO needs and can not be manipulated by SEO’s for there needs, then that is all the information Google needs to keep using it!!!
The extent of corruption in DMOZ is a myth made up in SEO forums (the very people who are unhappy they can’t use DMOZ for their SEO puproses!!). All I see is a chorus of people repeating after each other (and saying it above) “DMOZ is corrupt” …. but none of them provide any evidence… duh?
If Google wants less SERP’s manipulation by SEO’s, then the only way they are going to get it is throught the use of directories like DMOZ.
DMOZ is not perfect, but it is the best there is.
minstrel Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:12 pm
Definitely dump DMOZ. Stop propping it up and you’ll make everybody happy - DMOZ because there would be no reason for webmaster to keep submitting sites they apparently don’t want to know about and they could then get on with whatever theheck it is they do in peace - the rest of the world because no one would have to care about the whims of DMOZ editors influencing site ranking.
Peter Munteanu Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:14 pm
I should have also added, that spam could be better defeated by giving more weight to a DMOZ listing. If, what is argued above and DMOZ is given less or no weight, then the spam will get worse!!!
For eg, if I search for “Hotel name” “City name”, I want that hotel in that city… not a pile of SEO’d affiliate spam booking sites. - giving extra weight to DMOZ regional listings will move these sites up.
Richard Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:28 pm
Reported a good couple of sites with hidden content full of nice and juicy keywords and they were after a month removed from googles results (I was well impressed, honestly thought no-one ever done anything about the spam reports) but to my dismay they have all now re-appeared a month or two later back at their usual spot.
Just makes me think whats the point!! why bother reporting this obvious black hat technique, heck I might as well fill our site with hidden content to aid in our search results knowing if I get found out the site will be back in the resuts in about 2 months time like the rest.
Still impressed with the speed of the reaction to my spam report but was it worth me even bothering?
Love the blog Matt, definate favourite of mine, so keep on with the good work!
Richard Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:55 pm
SEE ABOVE POST ^
Forgot to mention that these sites have re-appeared in the results and still have hidden text, fair enough if they had removed the hidden text then I’d have nothing to complain about and good for them, but unfortunately the text is still there nice and hidden from the normal web user.
Diann Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 2:58 pm
Wayne Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
“To point out another issues is the creation of similar sites for the same industry keywords only to manipulate the serps. More and more Realtors are creating multiple sites in order to create nothing more than backlinks. Most of these sites offer the same information …just reworded or create junk adsense sites to create relevance for linking to their primary site / sites. Why create other sites for the same Realtor? If there is new information that needs to be offered why is it not added to the already existing site.”
Is this a rhetorical question you are asking yourself? You seem to have at least five Las Vegas sites of your own (your cell number is the contact phone number on almost all of these), and only one of these sites seems to be a specialty site covering a specific neighborhood while the rest do contain much the same information: http://www.lasvegashomesguideonline.com, http://www.las-vegas-homefinder.com, http://www.wayneandfriends.com, http://www.mygorealty.net and http://www.wesellsevenhillshomes.com. All but one of these seems to be linked to each other on their homepages as well as to your other sites at http://www.atlanta-real-estate-homefinder.com, http://www.clearwaterhomesguide.com, http://www.mygorealty.com and http://www.tampahomestore.com.
Wayne Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
“Being in Real Estate, I can tell you placing those homepage links to other real estate sites have no value for the consumer, those are only meant to manipulate Google serps. I have links to other agents in other states we have done business with but they are placed on interior pages in the appropriate category. Consumers do have a need for real estate agents in other states but they have no value on your homepage. When a consumer hits your homepage they are looking for information about that subject matter in your area not that subject in another state.”
Are you saying that the homepage links on these sites are only meant to manipulate Google serps? http://www.lasvegashomesguideonline.com, http://www.las-vegas-homefinder.com, http://www.wayneandfriends.com, http://www.wesellsevenhillshomes.com, http://www.atlanta-real-estate-homefinder.com, http://www.clearwaterhomesguide.com and http://www.tampahomestore.com
Wayne Said,
January 6, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
“Remove within Googles ranking algo the age factor of a domain.”
Is this because most of the above sites that have not been banned are newer?
My own feeling is that having specialty sites and neighborhood specific sites in real estate is certainly valid as they can address certain segments of the market much more thoroughly and consumers do not have to scroll through lots of extraneous information to get to what they are really looking for. High rise condos are certainly quite different than golf course homes or vacant land or regular residential real estate. It is also provable that home page links do play a valuable roll in referring clients directly to a specific agent in an area and are meant as a means of deriving income from cities not covered. I have personally closed more than 30 transactions this year just from my referring agents - to me this is a VERY valuable resource (most real estate agents do not even close 30 transactions in a whole year). And while there are many good newer sites out there, definitely a site that has been around a while has proved its value and should reap the benefit and newer sites must pay their dues. All sites were new at one point in time.
Matt, your thoughts on all of this? Because no matter what we all think, yours is the voice that counts!
ODP.Ed Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 4:30 pm
Hmm, let me look back at, say, the last 100 new submissions that I looked at over at the ODP.
About 30 were for sites that were 404/gone; the newest was only 2 months old, the oldest about 18 months. So, who the hell do you feedback here? There is no site, so there is no-one to feedback.
Another 7 or 8 were parked domains, or hijacked content. You really want us to tell the hijacker that we noticed the hijacking? Do you think that the hijacker ISN’T aware of what he has done? As for parked domains, why waste time talking to a registrar or host, delete the listing and move on: the original content is NOT going to be restored on the site.
About 15 submissions were made to the wrong category, and so they were forwarded to a better one. They might be rviewd by an editor there tomorrow or may sit for months or years. I have no idea who edits that category, so I am not going to send any feedback to a submiter promising anything at all.
Only 11 or 12 submissions were listable, so they are listed. I have no idea if the owner, an employee, a friend, an SEO, a customer, or some random surfer submitted the site; and it doesn’t matter. The site is listed. No point in any feedback. All that will do is open a channel where someone wants the title or description changed. No time for that conversation, I want to look at other sites for review.
The rest of the 100 sites were all deceptive spam, including deeplinks, mirror sites, duplicates, redirects, vanity domains, and so on. No way am I telling the spammer that I am on to his multiple domain scheme. That would be a complete waste of my time. The spammers already know that they were spamming. They can be left guessing for eternity as to what has been discovered and what has been left for later review, and the more they submit, the more evidence I collect that gets all of their submissions pushed into the bit-bucket.
There was not one rejection where the site owner would have a legitimate reason for being told that the submission was rejected; I think that the 10 000 threads at Resource Zone (all archived for your edification) amply demonstrated that such feedback could only help spammers to spam better. It won’t happen again.
RK Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 5:08 pm
I would like to see Google taking some actions agains the spammers who create 20-30 sites, selling exactly the same products, just to get more and more backlinks.
Look at these:
http://www.cram4exams.net
http://www.true-exams.com
http://www.exam-sheets.com
http://www.examcrams.com
http://www.certificationheaven.com
http://www.certificationsuccess.com
http://www.certification-portal.com
http://www.certlibrary.com
http://www.comptiatoday.com
http://www.cram4exams.com
http://www.greatbraindumps.com
http://www.mcsebraindumps.com
http://www.networkdesigner.net
http://www.real-exams.com
http://www.exactquestions.com
http://www.mcse-certification-braindumps.com
http://www.ccnatoday.com
—— (there are about 35 of these) —–
http://www.certyourself.com
All of these sites are selling exactly the same products. They are all interlinked together and all pointing to the main site, http://www.testking.com.
All of these sites are using the same CMS with slightly different templates.
Diann Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 6:49 pm
Private Message and Apology to Matt - Sorry Matt, after six different people emailed and/or called me to let me know “Wayne” was sniping at me again, I got irked and submitted my previous comment in this thread without even reading your original post about just sending in constructive ideas and not mentioning specific web sites. I usually just ignore Wayne, but every once in a while he gets to me.
In this case I figured he could only look like an idiot after what he wrote and I was only hoping to shut him up for a while! LOL
Marketing Guy Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 7:49 pm
My suggestion for 2006 would be to take a good hard look at key information industries and start adjusting top 10 or 20 results based purely on quality. The SEO industry is becoming so grey, there are a load of really crap sites out there ranking past offical, authoritative sites.
While in some industries this isn’t a huge deal, there are areas where random made-for-SEO sites are offering poor information to searchers (whereas authoritative sites could offer a much higher quality of information).
I’d suggest soliciting the services of industry professionals to review the results for their own industries. For example, student loan advice shouldn’t be given by some guy churning out websites from his bedroom - it should be provided by academic, government and financial institutions, and search results should reflect that.
Kill the ability for low quality sites to rank on high traffic terms (there are many other keyword markets that could be targeted fairly) and at least that will raise the perceived quality of the SERPs and / or encourage webmasters to put quality ahead of SEO.
Adam Senour Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 8:18 pm
In the interest of being fair and giving you unbiased feedback, Matt, I have intentionally not read any other comment on here.
So…if someone else has said these things already, forgive me (both Matt and the original poster).
First and foremost, what I’d like to see tackled is what I call “Bicycle Wheel Link Spam”. That’s where you have one or two sites in the middle and the rest of the sites, like spokes, link to one or two of the other spokes and also to the middle sites.
I’ve sent you a private post in this regard with a specific example (in the Text Link Followup Post, near the end) that I won’t bring up here.
Second, sites that use the noframes tag to spam. I haven’t put a private post in, but I could. (Also, I plan on reporting it from the BigDaddy update spam report thing.)
That’s about all I have right now.
Adam Senour Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 8:39 pm
One other thing: there should be a way to report spammy sites that have a PR of some sort that we may not necessarily be able to find quickly under a search engine.
Take these idiots for example:
http://www.kitinc.com/
Hover over the “SEO Services” link on the left side of the page (about halfway down).
Granted, right now it’s not too likely they’ll get found. But enough IBLs and some aggressive SEO (which they’ve clearly shown they’re not afraid to use) and guess what? You’ve got an entrenched spammer that’s screwed with your SERPs and gotten away with it.
Nail them early and often and they’re less of a problem (if any) down the road.
Adam Senour Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 8:42 pm
I’ll save you some time.
If it’s IIS-based hosting you want, Sectorlink. Linux-based, HostGator. I’ve used the former for almost 4 years now, and the latter for a few months (well, my GF’s dad has). Top-notch support on both ends, and Sectorlink hasn’t gone down a second since July 2003.
The only problem with Sectorlink is that every other employee (including the owner, I think) is named Jason. But I look at that as being better than some kid in his folks’ basement.
Before you ask, I don’t have anything to do with them other than as a customer. I’m not even in their country. I just think these guys are the best of the best, and having been ripped off and having seen customers ripped off too many times by subpar hosts, this is my little way to fight back against it.
tallis Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
I’d like to see some more feedback from google when reporting spam sites.
When reporting that a site has scraped all content from your site, the response is “Yes, we can see that, but it’s not our problem”, this is hardly encouraging.
If people can’t get a reasonable response for spam sites scraping their own content, then why should they report sites who violate the T&C in other ways?
I appreciate that google must get a lot of email, but if you’re asking us to report spam sites, then at least indicate that it’s worth us doing so.
Adam Senour Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 8:50 pm
Any time I’ve had a site submitted to DMOZ, it’s been listed, eventually. So this is not from someone who can’t get his sites listed. I’ve even had a couple listed that I never submitted.
The problem with DMOZ is that it simply isn’t maintained properly. The search doesn’t work, the layout is difficult for the average user to navigate, regionalized content is buried so deeply that no one wants to dig down and find it, and there are dead links everywhere. Not to mention the fact that the layout hasn’t been updated since Noah climbed up on a mountaintop and started reading 10 different rules off that we’re all supposed to follow.
Meanwhile, DMOZ editors are busy defending it with ad hoc remarks such as “DMOZ isn’t a service for webmasters” and “DMOZ doesn’t have corrupt editors” and things like that, with a level of elitism normally reserved for social gatherings where old women with big hair and bigger dresses sit beside their bald-headed pompous husbands and eat rare birds that none of us have even heard of for about $500 a plate.
That’s the problem with DMOZ.
Gwen Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 9:12 pm
I miss the way Google used to display the (DMOZ? Google dir version? can’t remember which it was) category under sites that were listed in the directory. It was helpful when searching for this that are/were highly spammed like hotel sites or entertainment information (info about a movie, say, or an actor), areas where low content, high crap sites tend to swamp the search results. Having the categories show up allowed people to go directly to those categories instead of having to weed through poor search results to find related sites. For much of the geographic categories and things like Arts and Health, the categories in DMOZ are usually pretty decent on any given subject.
Mark Wade Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 9:19 pm
Matt,
To say I would appreciate it if you would check this out would be a gross understatement.
I’ve found someone who is all over Google and Blogger. With 400,000 Blogs! He claims he can create them faster than you can delete them! 5,000/day! Claims to be able to change your No Follow to Follow with no difficulty at all! Eliminates the flag on a Blogger site. Oh heck, he’s got 22 points that all explain exactly how to make Blogger about useless. Please, please check this out!
http://bloggergenerator.com/blog/?p=2
Mark
George Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 10:16 pm
For a start I would say that Google are the best at handling spam but lately things have started to fail just a little.
I’ve noticed duplicate sites, ie: http://www.mysite.com and http://www.mysite.net appearing on the same page of search results. This is not something I would expect from Google and there seems no reponse from the spam reports that go in about this problem.
As far as the ODP is concerned, don’t even think about severing ties with this unique and valuable link to credible content. What Google should do if anything is take it over and try to improve on it.
Alex Henderson Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 10:48 pm
Just a comment on the blogger / spam thing:
Foremost for me is that third level domains should not in any way gain or any PR (or whatever the internal measure system is) from being part of a domain. A third level domain is, effectively, just another domain. Each blogger page should be treated as a new domain. It should be forced to fend for itself and gain it’s own relevance and score, not just getting a gift.
As a bonus, this would eliminate much of the PR stealing spam that comes from picking up a PR4 or PR5 domain, maintaining the main page, and creating thousands of third level domains full of spam, which all seem to profit from the root domains’ ranking.
I also think that google might want to get tougher on places like blogger… if you know that a domain is being infested with spam, why not just stop giving SERPs to those sites for a while? Blogger might work harder to clean up it’s act if the bloggers on their sites were a little more upset.
Alex
Ne1home Said,
January 8, 2006 @ 5:12 am
I too would NOT like to see DMOZ listing parameters removed from the algo.
Each of our DMOZ listing was earned on merit, and valued.
Better to simply remove the DMOZ cats where corruption has been proven and not yet corrected.
Baby and bathwater… whoops where’s Junior?
Wayne Said,
January 8, 2006 @ 5:16 am
Diann Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 6:49 pm
QUOTE:I usually just ignore Wayne, but every once in a while he gets to me. In this case I figured he could only look like an idiot after what he wrote and I was only hoping to shut him up for a while! LOL: QUOTE
Diann or your friend Jan in Myrtle Beach, I will try to keep this on thread theme but yet answer your questions. Please allow me Matt as it will prove a point of something Google should address so please be patient.
Please a couple of questions though, explain the criteria for becoming a member of your link farm? How did you all come to link with eachother, be careful, remember the value of old emails. How well do most of you rank in Google..all of you in top 10 for most of your primary keywords?
Now if these homepage links have income and consumer value as you state, why keyword stuff the links? Why not use the Agents Name and City, instead of city plus real estate, or city plus homes or city plus condos but mostly city plus real estate. Such as this from your homepage greatlasvegashomes.com and you can find links to the same people with the same or different anchor text on multiple pages of your domains at greathendersonhomes.com greatlasvegascondos.com lasvegasgolfhomes.info. lasvegasrealtor.info as well as the same link structure and keyword stuffing from their sites. Lets not also forget that several sites in Myrtle Beach, Sarasota, Hawaii, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, California and a few others all belong to the same agent / webmaster. So why multiple links from your Sites / Directories if they go to the same agent?
Here is a sampling from your main domain Greatlasvegashomes.com
Preferred Agents from around the Country!
Myrtle Beach Real Estate
Myrtle Beach Condos for Rent
Myrtle Beach Preconstruction Condos
Myrtle Beach Golf Vacations
Myrtle Beach Golf Packages
Myrtle Beach Condos-Houses
Preconstruction Real Estate
New Myrtle Beach Condos
Preconstruction Real Estate
Real Estate Web Design
Myrtle Beach Hotels
SoldByDesign.com
Relo Experts
RE Guide USA
Cobb and Fulton County Ga Real Estate
Tucson Real Estate
Myrtle Beach Vacation
Miami Real Estate
Boca Raton Real Estate
Holden Beach Realty
Ocean Isle NC Real Estate
Sunset Beach NC Real Estate
Oyster Harbour at Holden Beach
River Bluff Estates at Holden Beach
The Regency at Sunset Beach
Calabash NC Real Estate
Carolina Shores Real Estate
Shallotte NC Real Estate
Oak Island Realty
Sunset Harbor Real Estate
Oak Island NC Real Estate
Caswell Beach Homesites
Southport NC Real Estate
Boiling Springs Lakes Real Estate
Leland NC Real Estate
St James Plantation Real Estate
Bald Head Island Real Estate
Brunswick County NC Real Estate
Saskatoon Real Estate
Orange County Real Estate
Nantucket Real Estate
Pensacola Real Estate
Indianapolis Real Estate
Maine and New Hampshire Real Estate
Scottsdale Real Estate
Sarasota Real Estate
Sarasota Homes for Sale
Sarasota-Siesta Homes and Condos
Sarasota Florida Real Estate
Phoenix Real Estate
Sacramento Homes
Oahu Hawaii Real Estate
Maui Kauai Oahu Real Estate
Vacation Home Mall
Southern California Real Estate
Orlando Real Estate
Miami Beach Real Estate
Calgary Canada Real Estate
Austin Real Estate
Pflugerville Real Estate
San Jose Real Estate
Nashville Real Estate
Luxury Denver Real Estate
Boca Raton Real Estate
Boca Raton Homes for Sale
Palm Beach Florida Real Estate
Boca Raton Waterfront Real Estate
Boca Raton Real Estate Agent
Ocean Isle, Sunset, & Holden Beach Real Estate
Houston Real Estate
Utah County Real Estate
Temecula Real Estate
San Diego Homes
Clearwater Florida Real Estate
Minneapolis Real Estate
Las Vegas Real Estate
Canadian Real Estate
Mortgage Rates
Why Keyword Stuff all those links from your sites and theirs to the same agents/webmasters?
When Google decides to give no weight to homepage links which offers nothing more than keyword stuffing, PR value, Relevancy Value and Anchor and Text Value whether yours, mine or anyone elses then search engines and consumers win because of the true relevancy factor.
Homepage Recip linking is not a vote for a site. Recip links are on homepages because of the PR value, keyword stuffing and anchor text values are meant to manipulate search engines results. We all are guilty of acquiring recip links in order to try and boost our rankings. I too am guilty of doing this based off the advice of webmasters I have hired in the past before I lost a ton of money and decided to educate myself. This however is a flaw within the search engines as any site owner with $200 per month can acquire several hundred homepage links per month.
A link is meant as a vote for a site according to the way I understand Googles patent. Link farms are nothing more than an attempt to manipulate rankings. Yahoo I believe has understood this and is attempting to correct this type of manipulation. Most of us know that links from a homepage offer greater PR values, keyword stuffing, text and relevancy values. All these are believe to be factors in ranking high in Google.
Diann Said,
January 7, 2006 @ 6:49 pm
QUOTE:High rise condos are certainly quite different than golf course homes or vacant land or regular residential real estate. .QUOTE
They are quite different, however it is all part of the same real estate market for the same agent. When Mortorola created their website, they didnt create a domain for every product they offered…NO, why should it be any different for real estate? Why would any real estate agent need to create several domains with the same information.
An example: Greatlasvegashomes offers info on condos, golf homes and Henderson, so why do you need sites like lasvegasgolfhomes.info greatlasvegascondos.com and greathendersonhomes.com unless there is some underlying reason such as the creation of more links for your link partners / farm
When a consumer hits a certain type of site they want all information pertaining to that type of search. Not a little bit on this site and a little bit on that site and having to click links back and forth between two, three, four or fifty different domains for the same agent with the same type info.
This leads me to suggest that Google should place no value on links, relevancy or anyother seo benefit between domains that link to eachother from their homepage or Google should create a mapping tool that prevents the same person from creating multiple sites targeting the same information for the sole purpose of creating more backlinks.
If Google told me to place nofollow tags or use an image banner with no keyword stuffing value, link value or relevancy value on any homepage links I would. Diann since you state links to other real estate agents in other cities have income value and are representing they are not there for any Seo benefit would you?
QUOTE:It is also provable that home page links do play a valuable roll in referring clients directly to a specific agent in an area and are meant as a means of deriving income from cities not covered. QUOTE
If it is for the income and valuable for the consumer why not place nofollow tags or an image banner or Maybe the Agents name and state they Practice in, instead of spiderable links that gives the homepage value for PR, Relevancy, Keyword Stuffing and Density?
Until Google gives no weight to homepage links they will always be a means of trying to manipulate serps. I personally believe that because of the age of a site certain filters are overlooked by Google when it comes to an old site.
As for the age of a site, older does not mean better. To many old sites as my collegue stated feel they have earn the right to sit at the top, yet most dont offer updated information other than a few sniplets here and there. I believe or hope that if Google puts in place their patent factors into the algo this will correct its self.
The best way in my opinion Google can combat this is by giving more weight to large sites that regularly updated with more than a few minor changes per month from a blog post, footer change, Meta tag change or anything along that line and discounts the age factor of its algo.
Raven Said,
January 8, 2006 @ 7:20 am
Just change the motto to “Don’t be evil” to “Google is Evil” and everything will be alright, at least your motto won’t be a lie!!!
Any company making more than 100 million profit cannot do so without being evil, as long as the following equation is true….
Profit = selling price - buying price.
High profit can be achieved only by deceiving/misleading customers on the perceived value of products/services.
Only mom&pop shops selling goods at fixed margin pass as honest business!
kevin Said,
January 8, 2006 @ 7:55 am
Matt, this is a very good topic. My ideas:
1. Regarding DMOZ: either use DMOZ, but then please use at the same level other human edited directories (even human edited link schemes), too; or give to DMOZ the same place that you give to other human edited directories and link schemes.
There are thousands of good directories out there. DMOZ is just one of them, and in 99% - is the worst of them. The are a lot of on-topic directories, with much more accurate and good data than DMOZ. There are webmasters that are cooperating in link schemes between them like ants - not allowing “intruders”, such as p*** or crap sites to enter the scheme. Why then a link from DMOZ should be “smarter” than other?!
2. “Cemented” pages on