Comments on: Webspam in 2009?

By: David Etherington

David Etherington — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:27:40 +0000

Ok so its a bit late as there are only a few days of 2009 left. My 2009 webspam concern was the same as many others “local”. But I have to say it has vastly improved over the last few months. The city I live in was getting spammed by national call centres who were just picking random addresses in the city centre. At the moment it seems to be working well with only genuine local companies showing in the seach for the business i’m in.

By: Warrer

Warrer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:34:27 +0000

Hi Matt,

Didn´t see any info on you taking action on the input you got?

By: John Nagle

John Nagle — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:32:56 +0000

Asking Google to stop web spammers is futile. Google’s business model requires web spam.

Basic truth: when Google organic search takes you directly to the site that sells what you’re looking for, Google makes no money. But if the organic search results send you to a page crammed with AdWords ads, the cash register rings in Mountain View. Google’s results can’t be “too good”, or users won’t click on ads.

This is the paradox of Google’s business model. Almost all of Google’s revenue comes from ads. Google, as a business, is an ad agency. Think of Adwords-heavy pages with high rankings as Google’s form of “interstitial advertising”, like those pages you have to go through to get into many sites.

That’s why this problem doesn’t get solved at Google.

By: Anders Holm

Anders Holm — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:34:04 +0000

In my opinion:

1. Paid links

2. The possibility that you could buy a domain that already have good pagerank because it have existed before. I know this could be hard to fight because of the preexisting backlinks but in my opinion this should not be possible! Of course you shold be able to move the domain to another (ex. if you sell your bussiness) but if the domain cease to exist the good pagerank ect. should be neutralized an the preexiting backlinks should not be counted forwardedly.

By: lee

lee — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:24:51 +0000

Matt,

Add another to your tally of demote ripoffreport.com. It’s a shame that they are able to take advantage of SEO tactics that get around the spirit of Google’s algorithms. I find it odd that their so-called reports by consumers all seem to be written by an SEO copywriter, that knows how to both complain about a company and do so in a way that increases SEO. They’re a lucky bunch to find so many legitimate complainers that also happen to be SEO copywriters don’t you think?

Anyone else think that Matt’s talley’s of complaints about RipoffReport.com should be a little higher than two? If so, please speak up!

By: Abby

Abby — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:24:49 +0000

Kill the duplicate sites.

Currently I have found that few companies are taking the whole contents (and in few cases the design also) of other competitor’s site which is at top 10 in the SERP for the most competitive keywords.

By: Fiona

Fiona — Sat, 23 May 2009 03:18:06 +0000

1. Kill duplicate sites. If someone uploads the same site under multiple domains, they should be killed from the index. Happens in Google Australia a fair bit. If you don’t penalise this behaviour, more people will do it thinking they can get away with it. There is one large Australian web developer who is running 100s of sites in duplicate in Google. You can email me if you’re interested in more info about it.

2. I also agree with some of the comments regarding product review sites. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve typed in a search query, got a search match, opened the page and there is a totally different product on display.

3. Also, I don’t like affiliate sites. They add no value when you are looking for something. They should be resigned to the bottom of the rank, appearing on page 57 in the results for instance. (Just a number I’ve plucked from the air, LOL, make it page 157 what the heck!)

4. Off topic, but fix the launch of PDFs in Chrome. Every time I try to open a PDF page in Chrome it shuts the program down. I have already submitted this problem to Google (about a week after Chrome’s launch), but still no fix yet. It means I don’t want to use Chrome even though I love it – it causes too much PDF grief.

I love Google in every other way. Cheers Matt and have a great day.

By: Aaron Newton

Aaron Newton — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:46:33 +0000

Also, there should be cash rewards for sucessfully reporting spam!

Adwords credit would also be acceptible Just a thought.

By: Aaron Newton

Aaron Newton — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:42:50 +0000

Things that really bug me as an SEO (and are bad for Google) -

1) Proxied numbers listed with regular numbers in Google Local Business results. Background: I have seen some companies set up several local businesses setup ‘proxied’ phone numbers, e.g. 1300 FOO BAA which redirect to their actual phone line. In one case I saw one company listed 5 times in the SERP mini-map using proxied numbers which all went back to the same phone number.

2) Ecommerce sites posing as informational sites. What I mean by this is ecommerce pages which pretend to be impartial ‘buying guides’ but are actually just sales landing pages with product listings. It is fine when people do this on seperate pages, but when they do it on the same page it gets really annoying. I have been doing some SEO work in the diamond industry lately – this would be a good place to start.

By: Bert

Bert — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:36:44 +0000

Stop Google Translate Spam

http://www.google.com/search?hl=nl&rlz=1T4GZHZ_nlNL224NL225&q=site%3Atranslate.google.com+inurl%3Atext&lr=