Google search and search engine spam • Hacker News Board

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#61

Post by abrahamsen » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 6:59 PM UTC

Google have two strong incentives to weed out AdSense drivel sites in the search results.

1. They diminish the value of Google Search as an advertising platform. And Google Search is likely the most valuable virtual estate on the net. I more often click on ads in Google Search than I click on ads on all other sites combined. This is because when I'm on Google Search I'm actually searching for something, so I might click on a relevant ad.

2. They diminish the value of AdWords content network ads. People pay Google to display their ads because they believe they get better return for their money there than on the alternatives (Yahoo and Microsoft). Ads on low quality sites are unlikely to be competitive, so these sites decrease the relative value of AdWords.

That is, high-ranked low quality sites with AdSense are a double threat to the main source of income for Google, and I expect Google to make it their main priority.

Why, then, aren't they more successful? My guess: Because the problem is a lot hard than any armchair designer would believe. Problems tend to be a lot simpler when you are not the one who must solve them.

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#62

Post by dcdan » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 6:59 PM UTC

What is the technical difference between Google being able to accurately measure the volume of spam, and Google removing the spam?

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#63

Post by president » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:01 PM UTC

ddemchuk wrote: post #16

It doesn't appear that Cutts & Co. are looking to address any of the more popular blackhat link building methods that all popular SEO bloggers continually say "work but you shouldn't use them yourself because they're bad". Until the keyword "buy viagra" isn't littered with forum link and comment spam and parasite pages, Google's algo is still not "fixed"

is it possible that a large number of people who 'dont know any better' are visiting these pages and making purchases and increasing the rankings for these scam sites?

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#64

Post by nolok » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:03 PM UTC

space-monkey wrote: post #57

nolok wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since google wants to do everything with algorithms rather than hard coding (some of) the offenders, the minute they give you specifics the "fix" will be circumvented in some way.

Google is probably right to not go down the hard-coding path. Hard coding the offenders doesn't work. You block a domain, they changes names. You block an IP, they switch to AWS so that your choice is to block all of AWS or not block them.

I totally agree, my post didn't intend to say the contrary

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#65

Post by mmaunder » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:05 PM UTC

As a pointer: Matt_Cutts is the head of the webspam team at Google. He's been very active on this thread. Please search below for his posts.

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#66

Post by pixelbath » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:06 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #58

SpikeGronim wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a bad example. AFAIK you can't legitimately buy Viagra online, so what results should Google be returning? Where are the awesome web pages about Viagra that you want to see? They don't exist, so the query comes back with spam.

I'm pretty sure drugstore.com is legit: http://www.drugstore.com/pharmacy/drugindex/rxsearch.asp?sea...

So should we use the "pretty sure" metric of the domain name matching the product we are searching for? What makes this site more "legit" than others?

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#67

Post by kellysutton » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:06 PM UTC

When a company needs to write a blog post in this tone, they are definitely losing ground.

What you are saying != how you are performing.

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#68

Post by dpifke » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:12 PM UTC

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #26

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #9

And yet Mahalo is still tolerated, somehow. E.g., this query -- "travel agent vermont" (which I got from this post complaining about Mahalo spamming the web and Google not enforcing its own qc standards http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2010/03/08/mahalo-com-m... ) still returns a Mahalo result in the top 10.

Google has taken action on Mahalo before and has removed plenty of pages from Mahalo that violated our guidelines in the past. Just because we tend not to discuss specific companies doesn't mean that we've given them any sort of free pass.

On a similar note, how is the expert sex change site still in your index? They very clearly are serving different content to the crawler (as evidenced by the "cached" link) than they are to people who click through on the SERPs. I though this was a big no-no?

For an example (which was submitted as search feedback a month ago), try searching for "XMPP load balancing" and look at the third organic link.

(Edit: actually, in that case it appears they're using JavaScript to hide the indexed content. Same effect, however: the cache link shows the "solution" but clicking the search result displays an ad.)

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#69

Post by jmount » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:14 PM UTC

Google AdSense for Domains ( http://www.google.com/domainpark/) really makes a lie of not wanting useless content. The designed a revenue source for parkers/squatters.

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#70

Post by jsherry » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:16 PM UTC

jonpaul wrote: post #20

You know, sometimes it really makes me mad that it's difficult to get into contact with a person at Google for support of their products. But, I've got to hand it to them. They could have issued a non-personal public statement like most companies and signed it with "Google Search Team" But instead there is a personal touch. It's public statements like these that add just a bit of personal touch that makes people love…

The reason you can't in contact with people at Google is because you're not the customer. Paying businesses are the customers. Not just trying to sound snarky - it's true.