Recent reinclusions
I appreciate BMW’s quick response on removing JavaScript-redirecting pages from BMW properties. The webspam team at Google has been in contact with BMW, and Google has reincluded bmw.de in our index. Likewise, ricoh.de has also removed similar doorway pages and has been reincluded in Google’s index.
As I’ve discussed before, Google will be expanding its efforts on webspam in non-English languages this year. Just as a reminder, Google’s quality guidelines have been available for several years in many languages:
- Google’s German quality guidelines
- Google’s French quality guidelines
- Google’s Italian quality guidelines
- Google’s Spanish quality guidelines
- Google’s Japanese quality guidelines
- Google’s Chinese quality guidelines
- Google’s Korean quality guidelines
- Google’s Dutch quality guidelines
- Google’s Russian quality guidelines
- Google’s Polish quality guidelines
We also provide general webmaster information in many languages (from French to Russian and many languages in between), as well as specific guidelines on researching search engine optimization (SEO) companies. As always, if you see webspam in Google’s index, our spam report form is the best place to let us know.
Tony Hill Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 6:29 pm
This goes to show how quickly Google can turn a website upside down and right side up. I’m sure it’s a lesson learned and a big one for that fact. I heard about this on CNN before I even read it online.
Was this re-submitted to the index after a normal reinclusion request was sent?
Thanks for the update Matt
phil Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 6:30 pm
I’m still wondering if I put metarefreshes in my old site on .mac to point people (and googlebot) toward my new site (changed server) will this hurt me in terms of SEO?
can’t do a 301 from .mac.
thanks
Kirby Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 6:31 pm
I thought one had to wait 30 days to get back in?
Cristian Mezei Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 6:33 pm
I just submitted a report a few hours ago about this little website. (never seen something like this before, actually)
I truly hope this removel works out quick, as in did in the past, for my other reports
Thanks for sharing crucial info’s Matt.
Cristian Mezei Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 6:34 pm
Not wait 30 … It’s actually 30 until the removal is not possible anymore
(or similar)
Matt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 6:37 pm
Tony Hill, yes, we processed a reinclusion request.
phil, if you can’t do a 301 from the old site, I would go with a page that says “This site has moved here” with a link to the new location. I’ll pass the feedback on to the Sitemaps team, because some sort of functionality like that would be useful. I can’t promise how they’d prioritize it, though.
Joe Hunkins Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 6:43 pm
Matt - helpful to all would be correct procedure to follow when pages reappear in index after URL and/or robots.txt exclusion.
Vic Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:13 pm
This is an extremely interesting topic. Question: If you have a flash site for example, and since the engines do not rank them effectively enough right now, and allow the search engines to see the exact content in HTML version to be indexed better, but allow human viewes to see the flash site, would that be considered a violation of the google guidelines? Meaning, same content, different format.
Dave Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:17 pm
Matt, are mom & pop sites treated EXACTLY the same when they are dumped from Google’s index?
Why not name to ’so called’ SEO business that did this? To me, that’s FAR, FAR more important that showing us only the end result.
Matt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:19 pm
Dave, usually we haven’t “anti-recommended” specific SEO companies. I’ll pass that feedback on, though; in some situations, I think it would be helpful to do that.
Matt_Not_Cutts Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:20 pm
I think it’s great to see Google sticking to its principles (read: guns), and the speed with which spam reports are being enacted upon is commendable, but I can’t help but wonder if BMW’s profile helped them get re-included quicker than a mom and pop site who unknowingly hired a blackhat SEO.
It took less than a week for bmw.de to be removed from and then reincluded back into Google’s index - can everyone expect the same treatment, or did BMW (and Ricoh) jump the queue?
On another note, Matt, if you have a moment can you please tell someone that the wildcard function in Google’s robots.txt guidelines doesn’t seem to be working. I submitted a robots.txt with a wildcard line via the automatic removal tool and it told me there was an error with my file (I guarantee you there wasn’t, I followed the guidelines perfectly). I’ve seen people complaining about this in other forums, and I sent a note to Google myself, but haven’t heard back…
Cheers,
Matt
Marc Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:22 pm
Hi Matt,
BMW.de goes out and back into the index in less than a week, plus it gets a complete, black&white assessment of what’s wrong with the site, courtesy of the Matt Cutts no less.
Can small sites without BMW’s financial clout expect comparable treatment from Google or can we consider this as just another newsworthy case study?
All the best,
Marc
Aaron Pratt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:24 pm
blah blah blah
Dave Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:29 pm
Thanks Matt. Personally I would LOVE to see a list of black hat SEO companies.
I would also LOVE to see Google take a top down approach (target SEO companies) rather than a bottomn up (target the resulting web site).
BTW, do I take no answer on my first question as BMW has been given preferential treatment?
Kirby Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:40 pm
Looking at the cache, the date I see is 1/28/2006, prior to being removed. Did they have to be re-spidered prior to be included?
Steelbank Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
How convenient for BMW to be in touch with google. How exactly does the average webmaster get in touch with google? How often is the regular webmaster told why their site has been taken out of the google index? How quickly (or delayed) is the re-inclusion of banned sites?
While I think examples should be made of more high-profile users like BMW.de, I dont think google is sending the right message by giving preferential treatment to those major establishments when they violate TOS that everyone else MUST abide by.
If TOS are actually meant to be enforced, google should enforce them unilaterally and unequivcally not arbitrarily…
Ben Pate Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 8:15 pm
Matt,
My site has been out of the serps since the jagger update. I belive it was due to a duplicate content penaly for www and non-www version.
Accidental scew up = over 3 month sandbox
Bmw.de gets caught cloaking = deindex for 1 week
Matt, call me crazy but where is the logic???
How did BMW get this kind of service and how can everyone else get the same?
SpamHound Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 8:20 pm
Have to agree that while it is good BMW cleaned it up quickly, they should of at least been excluded for the standard 30 day minimum just out of prinicipal.
I don’t think a smaller site would of made it back in so quickly so this does show that Google favors better known sites.
Wolfie Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 8:29 pm
Some sites disappear forever without diagnosis from google. I think that this high flier sites are getting favored treatment.
artist x Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 8:43 pm
Just read the article on BBC news and decided to drop by. It’s amazing a such huge company uses this “old” misleading way of doing the business anno 2006. I understand the car companies are going through a ruff times lately, but you don’t have to be a genius to see someone destoying your company website… I wonder how could they let it come that far? If someone has a money, then it’s BMW. Let’s hope they spend it better way the next time.
gomer Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:01 pm
I think this shows how every website is not equal in Google’s eyes. There have been many webmasters who have gone unheard for many months without any response. I am confident that BMW had the privledge of two way communication with Google. Totally bogus if you ask me. I wonder when other webmasters will see Matt Cutts posting on his site that their site has been reincluded.
rlmedia Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:02 pm
While the speed and terms of the reinclusion certainly deserve proper consideration, I’ll try to get past it; will bmw.de face special filters for new content? Like a probationary period?
Matt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:12 pm
Marc, I’ve given several reviews of other sites in the growing series of concrete examples of “SEO Advice” and “SEO Mistakes”. Kirby/Spamhound, not all penalties are 30 days. For example, if site doesn’t rank well for algorithmic reasons, then if a site changes, our algorithms will change the scoring automatically when the data is computed in the next iteration.
Our main goal has to be to give the most relevant results to our users; there is currently a trade-off between taking action to remove spam from our index vs. removing sites that lots of users look for with navigational queries. In my mind, the most scalable, robust direction to move in is to provide tools like Sitemaps and the webmaster console that allow everyone to diagnose and debug as much information as possible with their site. As we introduce features like the robots.txt checker, that helps every website owner equally, whether it be a mom and pop website or Nissan, Metallica, or the California DMV (all of which have had robots.txt issues in the past).
S.E.W., to your points 1&2, the doorway pages were at the root level–there wasn’t a single subdirectory or subdomain that could be snipped to remove the doorway page. To your question 3, knowing the background/timeline of how pages outside our guidelines occurred is really helpful to help gauge the situation and whether more pages will reappear in the future.
Matt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:24 pm
gomer, you said “There have been many webmasters who have gone unheard for many months without any response.” That’s exactly why we’ve been working on programs like emailing webmasters when we find quality violations on their sites. But if you’ve got other things you think Google should be doing, I’d give the feedback in this post.
Matt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:32 pm
Vic, it’s a pretty common idiom to have a Flash site and then provide a text version of a site; I wouldn’t worry about anything like that.
Adam Senour Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:33 pm
<rant>
I normally don’t make it a point to criticize another’s posting, since for the most part the people on here, while often in disagreement, present viewpoints and original thoughts on a story or idea posed in the blog that are generally pretty helpful (sardonic or otherwise).
But I do have an objection to a lot of the bizarre and borderline evangelical rants posted by Search Engines Web. Besides being somewhat incoherent, they are often littered with accusations lacking any kind of supporting evidence or documentation (see point 2) and/or general complaints designed to incite.
I’m not for censorship, but what does allowing that on your blog really accomplish? At best, it makes you look kind of bad for allowing it. And at worst, it has the potential to hurt your employer, should anyone take it seriously.
For those who would point out that most people wouldn’t take SEW’s rantings seriously, I concede that. My problem is if someone did, and that someone then told someone else, and so on and so on…
</rant>
Now, back to the issue of the BMW.de reinclusion.
I personally would have to take the side of those who disagreed with the idea to let the site back in with relative expediency, albeit not for the same reason.
My problem with the situation is that either you or Google, and to be perfectly honest I’m not sure which party is ultimately responsble, decided to use it as public example and therefore take advantage of the BMW name. While this isn’t the first time you’ve used your blog to post an example of a spammer, I have to believe you were aware that this particular story would spread and become a hot news item. And I also have to believe you were aware of the potential publicity this would have gotten.
The good thing about selecting sites that aren’t necessarily big-business websites is that it gives webmasters of those sites, people who may not know better, the opportunity to correct what may well have been inadvertent mistakes.
By the same token, BMW certainly has the resources to hire SEO firms who [b]should[/b] know better, and the ability to audit their performances. Obviously they didn’t, but that’s something for Google and BMW to deal with.
I don’t really have a problem with the ban, or the reinstatement. My problem is with the high-profile nature of the offending website and owner of it, and the public example it was used for.
Ian McAnerin Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:38 pm
Just reading these comments, I find it interesting that many people focus on the fact that BMW got “special” treatment.
Well, they did. Google publicly identified them, called them spammers and banned the site. This made headlines worldwide.
That is WAY more harsh than what happens to “the little guy”, who just quietly gets removed and deals with the mess without being the focus of an international media frenzy.
It seems only right that by treating BMW and Ricoh more harshly due to their prominence, that the reinclusion issue is dealt with equally quickly and, lets face it, publicly as well.
Carrot and Stick.
This wasn’t so much about spam fighting on a site by site basis (which goes on quietly all the time) but about a very effective, public demonstration of the boundries to the corporate world.
Frankly, I don’t even think it’s a message to SEO’s and webmasters (they usually already know) - it’s a message to the management and executives. Those guys usually don’t respond to emails or guidelines, they only respond to something that makes them look bad to the shareholders, customers or directors.
Having said all of that, I note with some irony with BMW’s share price rose steadily during this whole thing, so I’m not exactly crying for them…
Ian
Matt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 9:43 pm
Adam, suffice it I have newfound respect for all the people who run forums and really nail the aspect of getting a community right. There’s some really interesting similarities between Search Engines Web and this fellow who keeps submitting stories to Slashdot. Something I can’t quite put my finger on..
Jab Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 10:07 pm
That was realy poor. I cannot even imagine, that you wanted such a result. Google is so big, you guys should act more honest!
Honesty is the best policy.
Google will get a lot of Newspostings like this:
http://www.jabz.biz/marketing-news.php?news=57&head=BMW%20SPAMS%20GOOGLE&action=detail
Dave Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 10:23 pm
RE: “That is WAY more harsh than what happens to “the little guy”, who just quietly gets removed and deals with the mess without being the focus of an international media frenzy.”
I don’t believe so at all. Imagine any of us mom & pop sites being given media coverage World wide! Bad publicity is still publicity.
I myself find it hard to believe that money was not invloved.
Dmitry Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 10:40 pm
I wonder how Google will treat pages that provide different content for different browsers. For example, right now I develop a site that uses ajax if browser supports it. If browser does not support ajax, plain html is used. According to Google guidelines this is bad because Google crawler (which does not support ajax) will see it differently than any other modern browser). I wonder if my new site will be punished…
Ben Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 10:40 pm
Do BMW happen to be a (large-budget) AdWords customer by any chance Matt?
Off-topic, but any word on the next toolbar pagerank update?
Olney Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:01 pm
Thanks Matt for letting us know what’s going on with Google & the international market. I would love it if you could even give a small comment on why IDN domains (multilingual domains) don’t show Google PR. They are already natively showing up in SERPS but we found only 2 old IDN sites that have PR. The newer ones that don’t have PR aren’t redirects either. They are the sites only domain with backlinks & no PR after almost more than half a year.
This would mean so much…
Matt Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:05 pm
Ben, I don’t know and it wouldn’t matter. No idea when the next toolbar PageRank update is. I’m guessing that the Bigdaddy changes might cause the PageRank update to come later.
Olney, I’m pretty sure that IDNs can have PageRank internally. My guess is that toolbar PageRank might not show, but that the urls do have PageRank in the index.
Adam Senour Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:30 pm
Adam, suffice it I have newfound respect for all the people who run forums and really nail the aspect of getting a community right.
I’ll drink to that. And if you ever make it to Toronto, I’ll buy you a round of your favourite too.
Adam Senour Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:30 pm
Whoops…meant to quote your statement. Guess it didn’t take.
Big G Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:39 pm
Matt,
you’ve said, “As always, if you see webspam in Google’s index, our spam report form is the best place to let us know”.
I’ve often sended a spam report to Google about a (I think so) real big spamnetwork, but it seems no one cares (sorry for my bad English, if something is wrong).
E.G. there is a spamnetwork with more than 20 domains, all with nearly the same content, just one site that links to the major domain and to some of the other domains. The major domain uses - like BMW did - JavaScript forwarding and keywordspam. I’ve reported it surely five times. Nothing happens, and that for months.
I begin to believe that it’s okay to build a lot of spamdomains just to push one domain.
So why should I help Google with spamreports, when no one cares ?
Harvey Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:42 pm
I would say BMW have done very nicely out of this. All the media attention would be generating at least as much traffic as google would, not entirely unlike a slashdotting for BMW Germany. Perhaps we will see lots of SEOs driving around in BMWs soon…
I just don’t see 4 days removal being a suitable penalty. Little websites have to work extra hard to compete with giants like BMW with much much less budget. It doesn’t seem reasonable that despite obvious financial advantages, the big players are operating on a different set of rules to everyone else.
I’m just not sure the right message is being sent here.
PS. If the little sites are being told exactly what the issue is with their site and re-included a few days after fixing the problem and filing a re-inclusion request then I apologise. I just assumed this isn’t the case.
Olney Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:43 pm
Thanks Matt
I guess internally you guys see more than we can.
We’ve been checking different IDN sites in various language for 4 months & only ran into 2 that clearly show Google PR the rest we can’t see it anyway we try to check, from the punycode, from the native domain, from various site tools.
Love it if you guys make them appear sometime this year when these domain go full bloom. Thanks for the reply. Just trying to keep ya guys international new school.
George Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:50 pm
Guess it was the shortest Google ban in history? I knew it won’t last with such a big boy, but such an obvious violation of Google’s own reinclusion procedure is truly disgusting. Unless, of course, I missed a “VIP reinclusion service” (constant contact with the webspam team, personal manager, free champagne etc) somewhere on Google’s site.
It would be excellent if someone of those superattentive members of the [quote]webspam team at Google[/quote] could spare few minutes of their precious time and take a look at my site, - 5 months of unexplained ban. Sorry, no transnational corps here… even no biz at all, just a “do-not-evil” free online service… nevertheless, I’m ready to paypal few bucks to anyone (at Google or elsewhere) who could point out any spam technique on my site or whatever reason G might have to ban me.
Dmitry Said,
February 7, 2006 @ 11:55 pm
I am also quite disappointed by Google. We have a site in our country (Latvia) about children, falimy and pregnancy. The most visited site in out country on this topic. The most popular. Thousands of hits daily. Many references from various pages. Valid HTML. But on each and every search Google shows various small or outdated pages that did not cover topics that we cover in much grater details.
We tried to understand why it happens but gave up. People know about our site, we get at least 50 new people dayli for last two months. It is enough for us even without Google.
Google sometimes is very disappointing when it comes to international searches.
I also speak Russian and Google is nowhere near in search relevancy to russian’s search engine named Yandex.
Sometimes I think that Google search technology really sucks.
Sorry, did not want to offend anyone.
JohnMu Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 12:07 am
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ = Google Listing for certain
Google = not evil
$$$$$$ = not evil
Sorry, this is just NOT what I would have expected from Google. By giving equal treatment to all sites (bad bad BMW to do hidden text / redirects) but not following up, you’re setting another bad example. What kind of legal letter did you guys get from BMW? I hear BMWs are popular on the Google campus?
Sorry, stuff like this really makes me mad.
And to think that the guy who you caught hiding text on a local forists site: “To the SEO that did this to a mom and pop florist site: after your site is removed from Google’s index, your reinclusion process is going to be.. difficult.” — but BMW running full doorway pages, “high quality SEO”, with probably tons of traffic gets a WEEK? HUH!?
Pico_Train Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 12:42 am
I agree with JohnMu. The playing field is not level.
Ben Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 12:45 am
Google is cleaning up spam in other places! The AdSense guys have done something about whIOs.sc (note: it’s whIOs, not whOIs) showing Google ads next to Yahoo ones on pages that are empty except ads. YPN has nothing on you guys, they haven’t even got around to a feedback button yet.
The AdSense guys also sent me a follow up email about the complaint I made about http://www.webproperty.ca/dedicatedhosting_services.html, which is the same trick as the whios site.
Mat, will you be publicly outing some of the ‘major spammers’ at any stage? The sites that you’ve focused on to date, while they’re by any definition spamming Google, are not the ones pumping truckloads of generated-by-scrapers pages into Google for the purpose of generating revenue through Google/other ad services.
It’d be much more fun to get a lame spammer dugg, slashdotted and internationally poked fun at. It’d also send a pretty clear message to the rest of them if one publicly had his AdSense account shut down & all his sites delisted.
Mistah Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 1:25 am
As someone whose completely whitehat site has been out of the Google SERPS since August, I can’t help feeling a little bit cheesed off out about BMW’s special treatment. I submitted a reinclusion request in November, but haven’t recieved a reply, even to tell me if there is something wrong with my site. I realise that Google probably get thousands of such requests every day, but it sends out the wrong signal to give special treatment to BMW. I’d give my right arm just to know what Google thinks is wrong with my site, let alone instant reinclusion.
JohnMu Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 1:27 am
How to find major spammers? Find one, query the adsense database -> presto list of all sites that spammer runs. It’s a 15 minute job (max), if you have access to the database.
Why isn’t it done? Why wait until each and every site that spammer runs is reported? The only logical reason I can think of is M O N E Y. Google could of course prove me wrong, I’d LOVE for them to prove me wrong. Make it hard for spammers / scrapers to make a big buck off of Adsense and you’ll find 90% of the web spam disappears. Adsense is one of the major driving factors for webspam, and a big money maker for Google at the same time.
Scraped content + Adsense = more money for Google than legitimate content without Adsense.
But I’m sure if we give Matt + Co. enough time, they’ll figure that one out as well. It’s easy to complain
Sim Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 1:27 am
It seems BMW france still has some doorway pages, http://www.bmw.fr/bmw-voitures-automobiles/auto-occation-bmw-serie-3.htm (disable java and scroll down, normal visitors dont see that )
Steve Johnston Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 1:42 am
Hey Matt, BMW were reincluded far too quickly, in my opinion. The pages haven’t been re-indexed in the meantime, so they are in the Google cache for all to see complete with all that spam, and presumably still benefitting from it in terms of the judgements of relevance the algorithm makes. The reinclusion should only have happened once the site had be rei-ndexed without the spam.
Stuart Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 1:50 am
Ian do you really think that being pinged for webspamming or search engine spamming led to one less sale for BMW?
Come on man - 99.9% of BMW buyers couldn’t care less if BMW was caught doing the wrong thing on Google. All those people care about is having a nice shiny BMW in their driveway.
All that’s happened here is that once again Google has proven that there’s a rule for the big guys and a rule for the rest of us.
I find that rather sad really because I was once stupid enough to think that Google was pretty cool but now they’re just another company who has rules that they enforce when it suits them.
Singer Design Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 1:58 am
Its good to see them back in - It would be also nice to have a website which listed all the websites that are banned in that way you can make sure your website is in fact banned.
Kilroy Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:05 am
BMW has been reindexed. And then what?
I doubt they will be able to rank with the pages that are still listed.
Has any of you tried to browse their website with javascript disabled?
All you get is error messages and warnings. Besides, it has frames.
The website is not search engine friendly at all, like many other car-maker websites.
This is the reason why they hire SEO companies. But these generally have no way to influence the website design (which is obviousely only handled by marketing services) and make it search engine friendly. They work with what they have and thus have no solution but to work beside their client’s website… with doorway pages.
What has happened to BMW will certainly have interesting consequences:
- SEO companies customers will look more closely to what has been done to their websites and ask them for other solutions
- Only SEO companies able to do more than mere doorway pages will be able to adapt themselves to the news situations
- Large companies will take search engines into consideration when creating new websites and SEO companies advice for website design will eventually be taken into account.
- Companies having websites totally search engine unfriendly will be obliged to have them redesigned. Companies using totally search engine unfriendly CMS will have no choice but to abandon them if they want to be listed.
This is probably a painful move, but it had to be done. It will benefit the white hat SEO companies and consultants and give work to a lot of people redesigning websites that need trafic.
Paul Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:29 am
Looking at it objectively.I guess that BMW is a major website with high volume viewing/traffic, and so it would be reasonable to reinclude it according to Google’s policy of providing the world’s information, once the problems with the site had been solved.
Looking at the bread and butter sites [UK for Mom and Pop!], ln terms of their viewing/traffic figures in comparison to that of BMW, perhaps they are not considered of the same stature, importance wise, to be reincluded quickly once a problem is solved.
In other words, the percentage of the viewing public affected by the removal of a small site would be much less than that of a major brand site.
Thu Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:36 am
It seems to me that the people who are upset at the quick reinclusion are reacting as vengeful/spiteful webmasters rather than regular users who want relevant information.
As a user, I think this was handled as well as could be. BMW.de was made a public exampe of so as to get black hat spammers shaking in their shoes. This benefits me as a user to hopefully reduce spam I encounter in the SERP.
The quick reinclusion means that I as a user would be able to find BMW.de if I were to use google.de. I wouldn’t care that BMW got special treatment because I would expect to find BMW if I’m searching for it. Google would look worse to the searcher if it did NOT show BMW. And we can’t assume that companies own their domain name since Nissan Motors does not own nissan.com, so we can’t always just enter in the address, but search just in case.
As a webmaster, I can’t and don’t expect to get equal treatment as bmw. I haven’t spent decades building the reputation of my company so that millions of people will miss my site if it got penalized.
Hans Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:42 am
This re-inclusion is disgusting.
It gives a VERY bad light to Google even if i don’t wonder…
Maybe Google should write to webmasters BEFORE exclusion?
Wouldn’t that be good?
Tell the webmasters:
We found spamm techniques on your site, it will be punished for exactly 4 weeks, remove everything spam, your site will be reviewed ONCE, if still violating rules it will be the normal re-inclusion process.
This whole thing STINKS!
Hans
Peter (Brane) Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:48 am
Somebody should advice BMW to find a real SEO to do their site. What a disaster that site is now from an SEO point of view. Why do people tend to always go for difficult solutions?
JohnMu Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:55 am
Thu, I think you’re seeing it too lightly — just because it is a well-known brand does not make their content more valuable than any Mom+Pop store. Either there is a rule or there isn’t one.
If they treat them specially for reinclusion (I guess a BMW-guy called some favors with buddies that now work for Google?), what is to stop them from treating them differently when it comes to search results / ranking? Isn’t it the same already?
NetSniper Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:55 am
i was shocked thats going so fast for bmw with the reinclusion. if you have a private page, you have to wait month, years and more, but no chance.
is this okay?
i have buy a webproject in google. i woundered after 2 weeks, thats no way going, thats the domain listet in goole. a seo friend give me the information, that the domain are kicked in google and i must start a reinclusion request.
okay, i have not do anything bad in the past with this domain - i´m the new owner - but now - after 3 months - i don´t have any response from google for my mails or filled out reinclusion requests formulars.
i´m only a privat person and not bmw - i understand - google is buyable
is this okay, that users and webmaster that to believe about google? buyable?
Fred Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:56 am
So while an average webmaster whose site has been dumped can send mails to google for monthes and never get an answer, a big international company is being warned of what is wrong with their site and reincluded in a week time.
Don’ be evil… unless you have big money
Frank Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 3:03 am
Hi together,
it’s a good thing Google is demonstrating his “activity” with such a big name like BMW. Unfortunately many other webmasters (with small and medium sized websites) don’t have a partner to talk to at google when kicked out of the index. All they can do is write a stupid reinclusion request wich (my experience) doesn’t even get answered. And also my experience is that it doesn’t matter if you own the biggest site for a specific topic in your language - you won’t get any chance to find out why you got kicked and also don’t get any chance for a feedback how to get back in.
I see the importance of removing spam and i also support this. But on the other hand it would be very appreciated if google could find a way to support the webmaters a bit more.
@Matt: is there any ‘trick’ or something one must know to get feedback from google? I’m not talking about a 3-visits-a-day-page here
Vic Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 3:50 am
Hi Matt, that’s cool, but what if the site redirects google bot to the html version, and redirects users to the flash site through some backend scripts that detect user agents. Would that be considered tricking the google bot? Cheers!
Weltherrscher Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 3:54 am
Great Job..:-))
Mike Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 4:06 am
I can see BMW again into serps, but automobile.de I cant see?
Why? automobile.de has doorways also already removed
And why you dont used a algo for spam search?
Example:
“SELECT TAB WHERE CONTENT = ‘http-equiv=”refresh”‘ or CONTENT = ‘top.location.href=’”
We in Germany like hidden text for spamming. That folds perfectly.
Robert Wetzlmayr Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 4:06 am
For those of you still playing “Whodunnit”: Hints are here.
PhilC Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 4:25 am
I haven’t read all the comments, so I don’t know if this has been mentioned already, but Google MUST treat big name companies differently to other outfits. They don’t really have much choice. If people search for “bmw”, and they don’t find the BMW site listed, it’s bad for Google because the results are bad for people, and people will go to an engine that *can* produce good results. Search engines need big name companies like BMW in the index more than those companies need the search engines. The power is on the other side.
To my way of thinking, we have learned something from the BMW event - that big name companies must be treated differently by the engines. It’s something that often crops up in the form of criticisms, and this event seems to have answered it. It’s in the engines’ best interests to get big companies to stop spamming and keep them in the index, and I don’t think that we have anything to complain about with that.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if BMW started with all the spam again? Would they get a second chance? The rest of us wouldn’t. I don’t think the engines have much choice but to bend over backwards to keep them in the index, but it would be interesting to see what would happen
Armen Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 4:34 am
Thanks for clarifying some issues.
BTW, how much is this action cost to Mercedes ? Sorry, kidding.
A Brother Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 4:40 am
Hi, Matt, first of all, I’m from germany and I came across this site, because a friend of my family told me, maybe you can help with this:
Some weeks ago, my junger sister (12) have to write an essay about dessert vegatations.
She used google image search for finding some nice pictures about “kaktus” and found ranked on the first place this picture:
http://images.google.de/images?q=kaktus&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&lr=lang_de&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&sa=N&tab=wi
She was shocked and me to. My father thought about to write to his senator for “children protection questins” (?), you know this is a very important topic in germany, but i think it’s better to tell you first.
We wrote to google many times, but we never got an real response, only automeaed emails.
After all, I think it’s a good way, to keep the google index clean of junk. But please clean up the image search too.
artist x Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 5:06 am
Guys, why bashing that long on that “special threatment” thing? Someone mentioned above “about the decades of building the companies reputation”, which is NOT the case with average webmaster on this discussion board nor elsewhere… The most of us haven’t spend the decades on that reputation thing and have no millions people public either… so I agree with a part of the special threatment, not everything though.
The main issue here is this: If this can happen to BMW, it can happen to just about any site/company, having money or not! It’s not the issue for how long the site is being banned. The issue is, they made a mistake and the site got banned… The only pathetic part of the story is that this is a such old spamming method, that it surprises me that anyone is still using it, let alone BMW. I expected more from them.
Whether there was a deal in between Google and BMW, there is 0,001 % chance for us mortals to find that out some day, but is it worth knowing it? Even it is, have in mind that Caesar could have a honderds of women because he was a big guy. And if you want to be that equal, then you have a plenty of work to do.
Nico Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 5:30 am
Hi Matt,
What a fast reinclusion for BMW.de… not very fair compared to others that have been removed for less in the past few months and that are still…
Please have a look at BMW.fr (France)… it’s almost worse. Full of hidden text and SEO black hat techniques. You should have made a better deal with BMW : reinclusion for BMW.de only if the brand plays the game elsewhere as well.
Ryan Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 5:56 am
Adsense is one of the major driving factors for webspam, and a big money maker for Google at the same time.
That’s precisely why they don’t shut it down. Business2.0 reported last month that 1 spammer alone accounts for over 1% of yahoo’s ad revenue. That’s huge!
You’re right that it is a problem, Anybody can buy a pre-set up adsense site, with domain and hosting on ebay for under $50 even.
While it is a big problem, you don’t see these sites ranking in the search results, despite the fact that there are millions of them, and they make google / yahoo way too much money to be shut down.
Pervan Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 6:01 am
Websites without a big name needs many years to come back to a fair google search rank position.
Is it possible to find out, why google has set penalties to a site?
Is there a website where I can post an URL to get all the internals of google’s database to this URL?
Thanks a lot
Mirjana
Molar Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 6:08 am
Hi, bmw and ricoh has the same SEO company that made the doorways.
its Netbooster. Yes a seo company without pagerank!
this company works also for a big german provider and asp: t-online.de and you will find doorways an cloacking also by t-online:
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:jPJzs13Rs5wJ:kinoticket-shop.t-online.de/wolfsburg/index.html+kinoticket+wolfsburg&hl=de&lr=&strip=1
Stacy Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 6:30 am
I am new to all this SEO stuff. I am a little bit lost on doorway pages too. Could you tell me if this is a doorway page as Google sees it at http://www.thepurrfectnanny.com/index.htm
It redirects to our main page, but has content that shows if the redirect doesn’t work. We just don’t want to be banned! Thanks
Mac Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:19 am
I’m quite displeased to see 250 million portuguese speakers continuously ignored.
You could combine all italians, polish and korean and wouldn’t get that many people.
Isn’t bad enough that google works somewhat “flawish” in portuguese language?
When are we (250 million portuguese speakers) getting better attention from google?
Sorry to barge in Matt, but there’s no “reclamations book” on google.
JohnMu Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:19 am
If BMW merits special treatment, why don’t they get a quiet mail from Da Boss asking them to withdraw their redirects? Why act like Matt + co. caught the big name company doing little spammer tricks and act like they were going to ban them just like any other spammy site owner? It doesn’t fit.
Push them out front like any company and treat them that way.
Keep it quiet and solve the whole issue privately if they’re special.
Oh well :-). Matt has better things to do than to explain their strategy to us. At least we can see that reinclusions can work fast, if you do it right
(perhaps BMW is going to run Adsense on their site, ha ha).
Sorry. *putting on straight face*
Hurti Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:36 am
What is with http://www.automobile.de?
They used the same spammethods and are still banned (the mentioned sites are deleted…since weeks)!
For me this is embarrassing. If you have enough money, you don´t need to send a spamreport. They have a new money detection algo. Mom and pop sites are banned for months and the bigplayers must wait until the we is over.
Don´t be evil ?!?
Peter (Brane) Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:37 am
“Adsense is one of the major driving factors for webspam, and a big money maker for Google at the same time.”
That´s nonsense. That´s not caused by Adsense it self but by the fact that you can make money with spamming. What kind of system is used for it is irrelevant.
Google does hit spam sites whether or not they use Adsense is also irelevant. (At least that´s the impression I have, but I am sure Matt will agree)
Kirby Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:42 am
I agree with PhilC, it would be even more laughable to not have BMW in your index.
The issue that many may be missing is the effectiveness of the spam technique. If it is removed, yet BMW regains its position, then the spam didnt do much good then did it? So if it didnt manipulate the results to any great degree, why the fuss and the removal from the index in the first place.
I know of one site Google removed for hidden text. It ranked #2 for it target query. The site was taken out, he was emailed about the problem, the problem disappeared and the site came back to #2 30 days later.
Why all the effort to attack a problem that wasnt really a problem if it didnt ever impact the integrity of the results in the first place?
till Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:43 am
Hey Matt!
So who do I have to talk to if my site gets kicked from your index?
Thanks,
Till
Adam Senour Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:55 am
Forgive me, Matt, for posting a link to the competition, but in this case at least part of the answer reveals itself:
http://ca.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Apix2fone.com&ei=UTF-8&meta=vc%3D&fl=0&pstart=1&fr=slv1-&b=21
Looks like you’re guilty of doorway page spamming, and Big G may well have caught it (although the pages in question appear to have been removed since.)
So how do I get my Paypal money?
Adam Senour Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:57 am
The same reason we arrest people for attempted murders if the bullets missed their intended targets.
Matt Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 8:37 am
Olney, I probably need to ask someone to take an IDN domain and run it through our entire system and make sure that it works; thanks for the suggestion.
“It’d be much more fun to get a lame spammer dugg, slashdotted and internationally poked fun at.” Ben, I’ll check on that for you.
In the mean time, I will continue to point out tactics that people should be aware of.
Vic, I would avoid doing one behavior for search engines and another for users. The best way to do it (in my opinion) would be to present the Flash page, but to also have a link on that page to the text version. Plenty of regular users would prefer to skip the Flash as well.
Mike, when I checked recently it looked like the content was gone, but the JS redirects might still be happening with automobile.de. I’m going to check on this again though.
Ryan, I didn’t see that article. Pointer?
Mike Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 8:51 am
Hi Matt,
Sorry, but although this has been a very good PR (and I don’t mean PageRank) excersise, the fact that BMW is back within 2 days with full PageRank and ranking again with the Javascript pages
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bmw+neuwagen%22&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official
is somehow an insult to all those small-time so-called blackhats out there that get a lifetime ban for their domain, no feedback and they don’t go on the BBC saying: However, if Google says all doorway pages are illegal we have to take this into consideration.
Please Matt, this is an insult to all of us that know what that means
teddie Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 8:58 am
Matt, this reinclusion has definitely upset…no not upset…dissapointed a lot of people by demonstrating inconsistencies in Googles treatment of different businesses.
Why not update Sitemaps to include:
1) Notification of what penalties a site/page has
2) When the penalty ends
3) ‘Fixed it’ feedback option with an offer of reduced penalty for good behaviour, and so your spam team knows when and which sites/pages to recheck
Mike Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:00 am
Apologies for the rant, I know that you are here to help, but noone likes double-standards
Tony Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:00 am
Why do you treat BMW special?
Other websites which hardly rely on beeing in the Google index
for their income have to wait many month for reinclusion …
Kirby Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:12 am
>The same reason we arrest people for attempted murders if the bullets missed their intended targets.
You missed the point, Adam. These are not bullets, they are blanks. One doesnt get arrested for shooting someone with a water pistol.
Those tactics clearly had no impact on the results otherwise these sites would’ve been lower in the serps after being reincluded. That surely is one of the justifications for the quick reinclusion of BMW. They belonged there with or without the spam.
So why the cat and mouse game if the results were ultimately going to be the same? If BMW had taken a Google-like stand and refused to make the changes, would Google really have left one of the world’s major companies out of their index? Would Google sacrifice relevance that would have been undeniably noticeable to the public, just to fight a spam tactic that, to the user, was both unkown and not harmful?
Pico_Train Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:15 am
Ay ya yay! We are going to go around in circles on this one.
Yes BMW did wrong.
Yes they provide extremely important content given the brand they created.
Yes everyone should be treated the same.
Yes they got special treatment.
Yes I love Matt Cutts for his blog and keeping me, little me, up to date with a world of technology that is beyond me.
Thanks Matt for taking time out of your busy schedule and life to provide us with info.
You are doing a great job.
Take care.
I think you should get yourself another cat. Train it to give the paw. Mine do. I even have a video. Want to see it, let me know and I’ll post it somewhere nice and easy for you.
Cheers!!
Bill Kelm Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:36 am
I have the greatest respect for Matt Cutts as I believe that as much as he represents Google, he is also a great intermediary to the Search Marketing Industry. This “ham in the sandwich” role is very difficult for anyone, especially when he is trying his best, IMHO, to help both Google and SEO-SEM’s, while helping the advertisers and search users.
That said, I really wish the “appearance of” or the reality of actual favoritism to BMW and Ricoh did not happen. This indeed sends the wrong message to SEO’s, and even more importantly to the big brand client-advertisers. These may now say that since I probably will get preferential treatment, why not do “Black Hat” techniques and get as much “distance” out of it as I can. After all, Google thinks my web site to be so important to the search users, that they don’t want it banned for the usual longer time it takes to get reinstated. So “Big Brand” has got everything to gain and little or nothing to lose!
I personally have seen what “favoritism” can do within a company, or to a company. It is a “cancer”, IMO, that is as bad as a parent who picks one of his children to be his “favorite” while his other children suffer. Therefore, I feel that Google should treat everyone one the same for the exact, specific violation(s) of their guidelines. I also believe that Google should publish a list of SEO companies that have been caught getting their client’s web sites banned (as “Dave” in these comments said). But, have a notation of all the dates that each banning occured, so that these SEO companies can be given a chance to change their strategies. SEO prospects can at least be able to see if it has been a long time since the “Black Hat” tactics were used, or since they were caught.
As far as Matt saying “Our main goal has to be to give the most relevant results to our users; there is currently a trade-off between
taking action to remove spam from our index vs. removing sites that lots of users look for with navigational queries.”, my suggestion is for Google to put up an “explanation page” when a site is banned explaining to the search users that the “banning” will hopefully be temporary, and that it was done for the search user’s long term benefit. Giving “tools” to webmasters, SEO’s and mom & pop web site owners is good, but doing that alone is handing over too much of the responsibility away from Google, IMO.
I believe that last part, since my premise is that the more all SEO people use, or are forced to use (by their client’s competitiveness), programming and analytics directed at the search engines only (”Black Hat”) vs. “Doing everything necessary to improve a website’s performance for it’s target audience.” (Stony deGeyter’s quote from: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com…17&postcount=16 ), the chances of the overall online search user’s experience being good most of the time gets reduced, IMO.” By that I mean that if what Stoney says is true: “White: Honor SE guidelines; Black: “trick” search engines” and “White: Site marketability is important; Black: Top rankings at any cost”, and finally “White: Content driven; Black: Technology driven”, then the sometimes “forgotten”, but most important part of the whole Search Marketing equation (the online search user) MAY (not necessarily) be served something other than the best quality content on the top of the 1st SERP because of programming and analytic techniques.”
Lastly, Google needs to communicate more clearly, conspicuously, comprehensively, and comprehendably in their “Webmaster Guidelines”, in my opinion, without giving away too much detail of the specifics of their algorithm. For example, this forum thread explains many “White Hat” search engine optimizer’s frustrations = http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=9765 .
Shoemoney Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:42 am
I can tell you first hand I do not think BMW has gotten any special treatment. I have seen results within 48 hours of filing a re-inclusion request
George Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:44 am
You are correct Adam, the pages in question (the sort of picture metasearch my human visitors used heavily) have been actually removed, - in October 2005, to be exact. Could you please shed some light on some guidelines violations the site has at present time? Once you find any, feel free to contact me directly to request your prize.
Ric Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:49 am
So why should BMW get the special treatment? They were using blatent black-hat SEO so they should be punished. They were lucky to have someone at Google to discuss this with!
At the other end of the food chain we have to guess what the problem is and then fix it and then wait to see if it makes any difference.
At least with BMW it was so blatent that they knew what to fix. Our site suddenly picked up a #30-40 site wide penalty. As we thought we were playing by the rules it was not easy to determine what the problem was. So we made a few changes and waited but still no joy.
So we tried to contact Google no response. We filed a request for reinclusion- still no reply.
Whilst I am not prepared to exchange body parts for information out of Google I would be mighty pleased/relieved if someone from Google gave me a clue as to what the problems are.
I guess I need to change the company name to make it sound more important to the Google Gods..
loki Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:01 am
Matt, i really don’t get your strategy.
How come you have waited that long to finally DO something.
How come you have waited that an non Google blog published something about bmw.de to actually DO something.
How come you have ignored multiple internal escalations of this site since summer ?
Why ? Do you trust more external sources than your own googlers ?
Or is it just because you’re searching for fame and only thinking about PRs ? Do they have to wait for your blogging power ?
And what about all the webmasters that are doing an honest job and still can’t rank properly because the top positions in EU are SPAMMED by big companies for YEARS now ?
You know what ? You should remove the “escalate” checkbox on EWOK, and replace it by “Submit to Matt’s blog”. I guess that would be way more efficient and fair.
Peter Dillon Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:08 am
Hello
I was wondering if you know does the google API run on a seperate/its own datacentre or server?
Im retrieving wildly different results from using the api for a search on serp or all in title, and doing the same manually in a browser. The difference is big enough to make the api useless.
Any comments or suggestions/ ideas on getting api results to approx the ‘real’ deal?
Peter Dillon
Ryan Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:12 am
Kirby, obviously they do have some sort of impact, or google wouldn’t be working so hard to eliminate spam, and Matt would be out of a job.
In this case, they didn’t matter because BMW.de would be considered a “vital” site for a german searching for bmw. It wouldn’t matter what was on the page.. as long as it’s the offical BMW homepage, one can assume that a searcher of just “BMW” would be intending to find a BMW site.
There are many other factors involved in ranking other than keywords on page. Example: Miserable Failure. It doesn’t appear on the page, but he still ranks number one. If Bush added hidden keywords to his biography, he’d still be #1.. remove them, he’d still be #1.
But the problem is, hidden keywords etc, DO work in many cases. (or people wouldn’t do it, and google wouldn’t try to fight it)
PhilC Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:13 am
Mike. The results from the Google search URL that you showed, lists the BMW site in the first 2 positions, but the BMW pages that you go to from there are clean - no redirects.
Maybe you’ve been looking at the cache pages, which are still the spam pages, but the cache system lags behind other parts of the indexing system. It’s too soon for everything to be up to date.
JohnMu Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:14 am
If Google can spot these pages, why can’t it just ignore the tactics? Ignoring them would do a lot better than pointing out that they’re spotted, letting BMW find a new way of “cheating” its way into the serps.
The main gripe I have with these “public bannings” is
*) that they show how Google can’t handle these things automatically,
*) that they must work (or have some influence at least, otherwise Google wouldn’t care), and
*) that Google can only handle them manually.
How many million 100% spam domains? How many millions more legitimate sites with spam-tricks? The only way to save manual work would be to create a sense of fear in the black-hat community (or grey hats in these cases) to talk them into cleaning up by themselves.
Matt, spend more time on algorithms and less on playing pirate
Once you have kids, Matt, you’ll see that this kind of “training” does not work in the long run.
Pico_Train Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:19 am
Come on, who wants to see the cats??!!
Fred Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:21 am
What upsets me the most is this : why do BMW had their diagnostic while others will never ?
Luis Alberto Barandiaran Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:37 am
Hey Matt,
I’ve heard this suggestion somewhere in your blog before, and I’m sure it could help you guys a lot. The addition of a new search operator: status
say for example a search while bmw was out of comission:
status:bmw.de
Result:
Currently in violation of Google’s quality guidelines. Site’s pages won’t appear in search results.
Violations detected:
- Doorway pages (linked to an explanation)
- Keyword stuffing (linked to an explanation)
(etc…)
Reinclusion request:
Problems must be addressed in full. Click here for reinclusion form. (linked to a reinclusion form)
Actually, now that I think a little more on this, it could become a part of the Sitemaps interface. That would make it far, FAR more interesting and useful than it currently is…
Regards,
Luis Alberto
Kirby Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 11:24 am
Looks like the SEO that did this site, or at least the one that took credit, is now either PR0 or grey barred and the .com version is out of the index.
Perhaps we are missing the big picture here. The targets are not the websites, but the SEOs. How would you like to be the guy who has to explain to BMW why they were just made to look like fools?
WilliamC Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 12:05 pm
I would have to say that Luis Alberto’s post here is a definate win-win proposition for google. It would give full disclosure to all webmasters, not just ones who are seo savvy enough to read this blog and other forums on the subject.
It is an easy way to let webmasters of any type know there is a problem, quickly, easily, and would not take that much code being added to the engine I would think.
Kevin Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 12:08 pm
“I don’t know and it wouldn’t matter. No idea when the next toolbar PageRank update is. I’m guessing that the Bigdaddy changes might cause the PageRank update to come later.”
Matt,
I know (at least I think I do) that the index is driven by a multitude of factors that are exclusive of PR. That being said, do I read this correctly that PR has little or no effect on the SERPs? Any clarification you can give would be greatly appreciated…
Thanks,
Kevin
Pico_Train Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
Luis Alberto’s way is interesting but at the same time is like coughing up too much information. How many webmasters would push it until they got the boot to find out what triggered the exclusion. Undo the trigger and wa-bam, back in the index as good as can be.
When your mom has a recipe that is the talk of the town, she doesn’t go around telling everyone, neither does Google.
Jon Wright Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
God only knows why an SEO felt the need to do such a thing for a brand name such as BMW. I mean he’s virtually there.
Google Brownnose Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
The webspam team at Google has been in contact with BMW. Yeah, the webspam team calls me immediately whenever I accidentally violate Google’s TOS. They even bought me lunch the other day.
Give me a break.
Martin Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:18 pm
Overall, I find this a sad day. Very disappointing.
> As a user, I think this was handled as well as could be. BMW.de was
> made a public exampe of so as to get black hat spammers shaking
> in their shoes.
Why should they be afraid, if it just takes a week to get back on the index?
The chances of being caught are minimal anyway, as the algorithms are not good enough to even catch the low-tech keyword spamming BMW did, and Google doesn’t employ enough people to process submitted complains adequatly. Example: [ site:mdm.de ] gives 52.000 hits to the VERY SAME content under different URL. Now if that is not duplicate content the guidelines talk about, I don’t know what is.
Oh, and BMW being victim to a bad SEO?
Here is their statement:
We don’t see how it is supposed to be manipulation. We see the redirection through these pages as a service to our visitors. We only get 0.4% of our visitors from Google anyway. So it is not a big deal. So we are quite calm on this matter. But if google wants the pages removed, we will do so.
Yeah, this really sends a message to the Spamers…
And given the 0.4%, the “Google cannot afford to not list BMW” argument does not hold water. We do the website for a major German city, and we get > 70% of our visitors through Google. Just persons entering our URL into Google’s search field are about 3%.
(BTW: I do not buy the 0.4% figure. Either this is a very creative interpretation of the numbers, or they are bluntly lying. And given their history of denying problems they very well know about…)
Let’s take a look at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/
How long do you have to wait now? That depends on when Google reviews the request and on the type of spam penalty you have. In the days of monthly index updates it could take 6-8 weeks for a site to be reincluded after a site was approved, and the severest spam penalties can take that long to clear out after an approval. For less severe stuff like hidden text, it may only take 2-3 weeks, depending on when someone looks at the request and if the request is approved.
Unless you are dandy with the right folks and can give them a call that is.
Matt, I have hold you in high respect and was in awe that you did not hasitate to kick BMW. But this express treatement when everyone else gets a “we might reinclude you eventually when we have time for this” as per your own statement (and BMW does not even show any signs of remorse), just rode your integrity down to the ground.
I am deepy disappointed.
Jon Wright Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:37 pm
I half agree. I mean BMW is older than Google anyway and the 5th biggest brand in Europe, so what they say tends to hold water. But what they say and what they do are two entirely different things. I mean they sharp put it right didn’t they? Brand protection is the key here.
Its ok BMW saying they don’t need Google and they are not panicking, but isn’t this true of a lot of big brands like Apple, AOL etc..all older than Google, but all paying the dollar when they probably don’t need to. But nevertheless they still do.
This is the genius that is Google isn’t it! A free search engine that makes billions of $$$$$$’s. whoohahaha!
Marc Grobman Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:37 pm
Vic, be careful with your Flash site. Do not hide any text in any way. We had been using an industry standard Javascript Refresh page to detect for Flash. We put some of our Flash content on it and got banned. It looked like a doorway page. Matts comment that it is ok to set up a non-flash version of your site with identical content is perhaps a little different from what you were asking. Be careful that your text is out in the open and does not look in any way like cloaking.
And, yea, we certainly did not get the BMW treatment. We got banned in November, fixed it immediately and just got reinstated today…. A high profile website (understandably) gets different treatment.
Valentine Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
Shoemoney,
Think about it. It may be the money. You make a shed load of money with Google which in turn means they do too. It makes commercial sense to get you back in quickly.
Sadly, money talks!
Nicky Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
I realise this is slightly OT from the BMW site info, but talking about Google/reinclusion request and Spam deterants, I was wondering if any improvements on how Google deals with expired domain names were being worked on?
I just got caught out buying a domain which a found out after I bought it and put the hours into developing it was an expired domain name *weep*. I dont really want to weep about it, because I havn’t done anything wrong, but am now faced with a problem getting the site indexed.
Is it just acceptable common knowledge that Google don’t index expired domains because of spammers buying them and cloggin up the index with rubbish, or is there something that can determine a genuine purchase from a..well, spammer?
Please say there is, please say there is…..
Adam Senour Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 3:19 pm
You’ve got a problem with your redirect for those removed pages. They’re returning a 302 code first, and then a 404 code as they redirect to your custom 404 page.
#1 Server Response: http://www.pix2fone.com/free-phone-wallpapers/Jennifer-Sky.html
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 23:12:19 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.34 (Unix) mod_log_bytes/1.2 Resin/2.0.5 PHP/5.0.5 mod_ssl/2.8.25 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
Location: http://www.pix2fone.com/notfound.php
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Redirect Target: http://www.pix2fone.com/notfound.php
#2 Server Response: http://www.pix2fone.com/notfound.php
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 23:12:19 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.34 (Unix) mod_log_bytes/1.2 Resin/2.0.5 PHP/5.0.5 mod_ssl/2.8.25 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.0.5
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
So, what you appear to be telling a search engine spider is “okay, the page has been temporarily moved, but it may come back, so don’t go away.” It SHOULD present the 404 code (personally, I’d be a tad paranoid and use the 410 code) just to be sure.
In other words, you’ve removed the pages, but you appear to be suggesting the possibility that they’ll return.
Ronald R Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 3:45 pm
Slightly off topic here, but I hope you answer this.
Why is it, that despite the fact that I’ve reported some sites for spamming and hidden text, after they had spammed my blog, nothing was done about any of them?
How about allowing those who report spam, to leave an e-mail address, with Google giving commitment to e-mail back their findings?
It makes me wonder if highlighting the re-directs used by BMW.de, is just used as a deterrent, with many of the spam reports just ignored.
Ne0h Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 3:45 pm
Normally, I’m the one bashing Google. But here, I can’t believe you guys are so clueless.
If BMW goes down for a week, how many cars did they miss selling, how many people did they piss off that tried to email them but couldn’t find their site, how much egg appeared on the prideful German CEO’s Face (They’re big into losing face over there, believe me). Alternatively, how much revenue would a Mom and Pop lose in a week? a month? how about in the next five years compared to BMW’s lost week?
Google is a business guys. Right now Europe is knda tricky. France and Germany are developing their own Google killing search engine, and they’re a hair’s breath away from going on their own dark fiber and creating their own AOL proprietary network kissing Google and the world goodbye (you didn’t hear that from me).
It would not do well for all you guys with Google stock to be prodding Google on making waves in Europe right now. They handled it in the only way they could have which gave all the other major players using the same technique the time to yank their doorway pages down quickly.
You gotta understand that this is going on here as well.
http://www.searchengineoptimizationsecrets.com/seo-news-121905.html
Basically, if you know you have a heavy season coming up, you have to do your risk assessment. Is it worth selling x amount over Christmas and go down a week afterwards when the SEO cops squeal you out.
It’s business guys, nothing personal.
ilmari suolijoki Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 4:42 pm
Matt Cutts has never been a webmaster of a commercial website. He doesn’t know what it feels like to spend long hours on building a white hat website and trying to make a living with it and then all of a sudden one day (September 22, 2005 or December 27th, 2005) the site loses all Google traffic. No idea what might have caused it. No response from Google. Removing pages that might have cause a near-duplicate content penalty doesn’t help. Besides, those pages are relevant to the user.
I just finished 3 more WH sites but since I might loose them any day to some stupid Google filter or sandbox why bother? I can generate thousands of doorway pages in a second if I want to and use them to redirect traffic to my main sites. (Note: keyword pages don’t need any redirects so they don’t break Google guidelines)
If Matt wants us to clean our sites and SEO habits then we need more information like the status: command.
At this moment - when Google indexes each page individually making it necessary to stuff pages with keywords - BMW style doorway pages are a must have. If it weren’t for doorway pages you wouldn’t find BMW.de when searching for “bmw 5er neuwagen”.
Markus Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 4:43 pm
hy matt,
in some short words from my side:
google earn much respect for the politic like they do with BMW-bann. Many other banned users will wait a life long to get back in, by changed site, BMW did it within a hand full days and they are back included dw`s, wonderfull!
automobile.de still waits for reinclusen much time longer. I think automobile.de will be back soon in the index. but a normal user waits how i said before a life for that fast service.
respect and it sounds as a good promotion
Tim_Myth Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 5:39 pm
All you whiners need to shut the heck up. Google’s mantra is the philosophic high-brow: “Do no evil”. It’s not “Play fair”, “Be nice”, “Treat other’s like you want to be treated”, or any of the other platitudes you learned in Kindergarten.
ELIAS KAI Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 5:46 pm
HEJ MATTS,
SEO Scandinavian companies need those GUIDELINES ASAP in their respective languages since no one is following and controling their spamming… and Black hat Techniques
I do believe it is a must for Google to follow this road in Sweden Norway Denmark Finland and Iceland.
Thanks,.
KAI
walkman Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 6:21 pm
To people claiming BMW got preferential treatment:
So what if they did? Let’s face it, not all sites are created equal. Plus, Google made their point, and the offending pages were removed.
Schugo Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
So Google, when you believe your pages are clean enough
to be reincluded in my Bookmarks send me a request.
Google is tracking your clicks!(activated in the mousedown event that
fires just before clicking in the link)
> http://www.searchlores.org/ritz_google_anti_snoop.htm
Orkut (googles social networking service) now forces every user to
associate he account with an Google Mail account.
> http://frank.geekheim.de/?p=149
Google Patent for User Targeted Search Results
> http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/11/06/1626245.shtml?tid=217&tid=17
Stephen Munday Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 6:57 pm
Even if no one can find BMW in the Google index, they still know the company name and can easily figure out the URL on their own. If they failed in that, a search on “BMW” would quickly bring up hundreds of sites that would have the link to http://www.bmw.de. Furthermore, most people who are seriously considering getting a BMW already know that they want it and where to get it (the local dealer)
So BMW gets 1 week in the sin bin, and then rapid reinclusion probably without almost any loss of revenue, although a slight bit of negative publicity (and even that was unrelated to their actual product.) Contrast that with a small business that does most of their business activities online and has to wait at least 30 days to be reincluded.
Spam should be removed, but reinclusion should be on an equal basis and more rapid for all webmasters.
Markus Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:12 pm
Google isn`t a “Kindergarten”, no playground or something else like that. But play fair in my minds mean: same rules for everyone. But its allways the same “shit”, doesent matter if we talk about religion, politic or like that thread here, people TRY to MAKE POLITIC but they loose with that kind the face.
I`m not BMW 1`s more, most of us are not BMW, some of us are automobile.de and much more webmasters are never play in that traffics from google.
It is not only on us to stop spam, google forwards that to the user. why google or matt sends reports like BMW to get some publicity for the reason “spam”? It looks for me that google cant handle that kind of dw`s and spam and thats a warning for so many other webmaster to stop the spam. But have a look if ur a BMW or a FAX from RICOH, works fine if do so
Showcase
John Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 7:24 pm
Web Guerrilla has a great post to this topic. I personally feel they are right on the mark. http://general.webguerrilla.com/why-big-brands-should-spam-search-engines/
N.P Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 8:27 pm
I was an avid Google fan, recommended them to everyone I knew, our friends, family & users. They were so great years ago. But it all changed when a site we had listed on Google for over 5 years providing free software to the community was delisted last year in May and ever since we don’t even rank for our name. It seems Google favors BIG companies with BIG $$$ over companies that provide free software that help out fellow buddies who can’t afford to buy software.
If you’re rich and powerful and something happens, you’ll get contacted by Google but if make free software that helps people who like free software/poor students, etc Google won’t even bother to respond to your requests.
..It’s as if its like the poor kid who turns rich and turns snooby. Won’t talk to any one except people in his league.
Ben Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
Nicky I had that problem and filed a reinclusion request, a few days later it was being spidered.
Dave Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 9:02 pm
Oh no, now there’s whining about the whining.
My concern by the speed of their re-inclusion (after being reported as banned World wide) is that the message being sent to all that would/do spam. They will now think, “It’s worth the risk. If we get banned we will be back in Google within a few days.”
Robert Wetzlmayr Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:21 pm
re: 0.4% of bmw.de traffic stemming from Google searches: Statistics of traffic to bmw.de from search engines is here. Paints a rather different picture, definitely more than 4,400 visitors via Google in January …
ShaolinTiger Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 10:25 pm
Ah..now if only the rest of us small timers could get such prompt responses from Google as to what the hell is happening with our sites, why we have been dropped/penalised/etc.
I’ve been seeing loads of weird results lately.
I have one site that fluctuates between 41 Google spiders pages and 11,300 spiders pages day by day.
I have another site with 80 spidered pages, that gets loads of Google referals, for a few days, then none..
Adam Senour Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 11:07 pm
And now you’re whining about the whining about the whining.
Rich Hodge Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 11:15 pm
As one who has been banned without disregarding the TOS and waiting several months for reinclusion or some hint as to why, I find this preferential treatment very frustrating.
Dave Said,
February 8, 2006 @ 11:31 pm
Hey, no fair whining
JohnMu Said,
February 9, 2006 @ 12:29 am
Lesson learned:
Who’s (whios) afraid of spamming a search engine now? They have to find it manually, you’ll be back within a week, big deal. Play all the tricks, cloak, redirect, hidden text, etc — they must all work and Google lets you back in the blink of an eye. Just make sure you put someone elses SEO-signature on the pages
*looking for a black hat to buy*
Claudio Ancillotti Said,
February 9, 2006 @ 12:53 am
I’am very happy for BMW Reinclusion!!!
I am waiting for my Site Reinclusion after many requests (12 months) without any answer. But above all without understand Why Google Banned My Site … Please don’t tell me that Google don’t give explanations. - The Answer is: I am not BMW ?!?!
Sorry for my polemic
CLAUDIO ANCILLOTTI
James Said,
February 9, 2006 @ 1:14 am
BMW was wrong … they should not have done a second site for the search engine. That’s in substance what BMW.de was doing wrong.
Now, can anyone explain me how you are supposed to have 100% AJAX site indexed WITHOUT doing a second site ? There is no links in a 100% AJAX. Only one page.
What we’re doing today is building another site (only for search
engines) that has _exactly_ the same text/image than the AJAX site. The
only difference is that you find links to pages which you do not in the
AJAX site and that in the plain html site you got a javascript that
redirects the user to the AJAX site.
Is this wrong? It is certainly not unethical.
I would like to have some directions on Google’s part on how to have a
AJAX site properly indexed and not delisted given that I am not trying
to boost my page rank. I just want to be (fairly) indexed.
W.B. Said,
February 9, 2006 @ 1:24 am
so, then tell to the google webspam team please to put also the other (now good) private Sites back in the index, not only the big company.
The german Photoshop Portal is still banned from the index
Alex Said,
February 9, 2006 @ 1:52 am
There is one thing here that seems to have been missed out. Now large corporations no longer have any deterrent in the use of unethical SEO techniques.
I understand that for the user searching for car related terms, yes BMW should be in the SERPS. However I strongly feel that they should have been de-indexed for a longer period.
This seems to me that for any large corporation they can use unethical techniques to get their site in the top positions. If and when they get caught out, all they have to do is put their hands up and say sorry. One week later they are indexed in Google again.
Are there or will there be any measures of punishment to BMW, or will any measures be put in place should this happen again?
Harvey Said,
February 9, 2006 @ 2:31 am
I don’t get the argument “BMW has to be in the index”. There must be plenty of BMW distributors and fan sites that have the same or better content than the official BMW site. In fact, most fan sites are better than the official sites because they offer unbiased information and are more in tune with the target audience.
And does anyone here *honestly* believe the 0.4% visitors from Google??? If any site has that few hits from Goo