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Google search and search engine spam

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Re: Google search and search engine spam

#211

Post by npaquin »

bmastenbrook wrote: post #131
seunpy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with eHow?

This is HN, so I'll give an example related to my startup. We make a wireless (802.11g) flash drive called the AirStash, which works like an ordinary USB SD card reader on a PC and uses HTML5 for the interface on wireless devices. Here's an example of spam content from eHow that talks about our product: http://www.ehow.com/how_6861903_install-wireless-flash-drive... "Wireless flash drives communicate with wireless de…

What OS does that thing run?

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#212

Post by dori »

darksaga wrote: post #127

This is just lip service - Google's quality has dropped off and its really obvious. Recently, I've been regularly comparing the results I get from Google and the ones I get from Bing. Needless to say, Bing's far more relevant. The biggest point people have made are on the money searches like "MP3 Player" but the results I've been comparing have been local searches and programming things like: "show/hide text boxes in…

Consider that possibly the problem isn't Google; perhaps it's you.

For instance, http://www.javascriptworld.com (which I run) is NOT a link farm. Rather, it's there to support the book "JavaScript & Ajax for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, 7th edition" (by Tom Negrino and myself).

Numerous colleges & universities courses use our book as a required textbook. Consequently, many teachers & professors link to it from course websites to let their students know where to download the book's code examples. Yes, that probably helps the site's Google rank, but that was never one of our goals.

As a result, when you search for certain JavaScript examples, you may run across my site. And in your particular case, my site doesn't help because you don't own our book. But just because it doesn't solve your particular problem doesn't mean that the site isn't useful for other people.

I'm not sure why you thought it was a link farm. Perhaps you should have taken a closer look at the site before using it as a bad example?

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#213

Post by oseymour »

nuttakorn wrote: post #204
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that wouldn't solve the problem for clones of other sites, or clones in other languages. And the Stack Overflow cloners could just make other websites. That's why a primary instinct in search quality is to look for an algorithmic solution that goes to the root of the problem. That approach works across different languages, sites, and if someone makes new sites. To be clear: the webspam team does reserve the r…

Do you think if Google educates to publishers and web masters to use Rel="Original" , the contents which are similar will be put it as considering set, use this tag as the best practice as similar to Rel Canonical tag that will help Google to identify the original content and make the search quality better?

What would stop the site that is scraping content from using the rel="original" tag too

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#214

Post by tristanperry »

elsewhen wrote: post #208
tristanperry wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be interesting to see whether Google will take on some of the bigger sites. Add BizRate to the list too (its pages have a 'Related Searches' keyword stuffing section, and 99% of the site is auto-generated), along with WiseGeek: possibly the worst and most spammy content farm I've seen, IMO. I personally am always baffled how some of the really large, spammy sites with low quality content are rewarded with premi…

It is easy to bash sites, but what is Google to do when these sites have even been found useful by users of news.ycombinator.com : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1454569 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=615832 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795278 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592295 the link given in the first example above got 6 upvotes, and there is little info in the post other than the link. a…

If people find them useful then that's good to know :) I guess the possibility of Google allowing individuals to have a domain/site blacklist would be a good idea since you're right that I find some sites unhelpful whilst others find them useful.

>> I have a sneaking suspicion that you are a webmaster who sometimes finds that your site(s) rank below the sites that you bash.

Honestly isn't the case :) I'm not a fan of monitoring the SERPs for a bunch of keywords and seeing where I rank. I sometimes do it for a few choice keywords and I've never seen WiseGeek, About, eHow rank above me (or have pages written on the searched-for topics). So that's not the case.

I pointed out BizRate since their site is mainly auto-generated and they have a keyword stuffing section, neither of which seem to provide much/any value to users.

As for WiseGeek, they might have some useful content, but I've seen plently of pages with almost as many words of adverts as text, which clearly isn't desirable. And some of its (no doubt quickly written) content is either unhelpful or in some cases wrong.

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#215

Post by dshah »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #210
elsewhen wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think you mean hubpages instead of hubspot which is a company that makes internet marketing software for small businesses.

Arg! You're right, my mistake. I really like Hubspot, too :(

Thanks for clearing that up. I was beginning to wonder if we had done something tasteful. We're the polar opposite of search engine spam. We believe passionately in great, original content!

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#216

Post by ryanwaggoner »

dshah wrote: post #215
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arg! You're right, my mistake. I really like Hubspot, too :(

Thanks for clearing that up. I was beginning to wonder if we had done something tasteful. We're the polar opposite of search engine spam. We believe passionately in great, original content!

No, just my bad...it was too late to delete the comment. You guys are doing great, keep up the good work :)

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#217

Post by richcollins »

omaranto wrote: post #183
richcollins wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A perfect search would show the pages that the ad points to as the first organic results if they were, in fact, the most relevant.

Are you seriously claiming that the ideal search engine when given "Philly events" should guess which event in Philly you actually want tickets for and send you to that event's webpage?

I didn't say that you'd enter a text search. I was speaking to the goals of the search not the specific modality. If Google were able to fulfill the goals of the searcher (as they claim to want to) then ads would be unnecessary.

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#218

Post by dennisgorelik »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #101
huhtenberg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just downrank the results from the SO clones?

Because that wouldn't solve the problem for clones of other sites, or clones in other languages. And the Stack Overflow cloners could just make other websites. That's why a primary instinct in search quality is to look for an algorithmic solution that goes to the root of the problem. That approach works across different languages, sites, and if someone makes new sites. To be clear: the webspam team does reserve the r…

Matt, would it make more sense to put more weight on number of web page visitors (recorded by Google Toolbar) as opposing to number of incoming links?

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#219

Post by kyle6884 »

tristanperry wrote: post #126
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can make tens of thousands of dollars a month if they rank highly for certain phrases, so tons of SEOs (and spammers) are trying to rank for phrases like that. Other search engines might hard-code the results for [buy viagra], but Google's first instinct is to use algorithms in these cases, and if you pay attention, the results for queries like that can fluctuate a lot. With a billion searches a day, I won't c…

How about the more general case of gray and black hat link building techniques? Especially in internet marketing and certain SEO communities, everything from forum profile backlinking to blog comments and mass article submissions are done daily to rank sites in all niches, not just the really spammy viagra-type sites. There's a growing concern/consensus that in loads of non-spammy niches, the only way to get decent r…

Not to mention link building via satellite site networks. A competitor of ours has hundreds of keyword-niche sites that link back to their URL but also link to several other legitimate domains on each page. How could Google penalize the domain responsible without penalizing sites that have nothing to do with it?

Re: Google search and search engine spam

#220

Post by Matt_Cutts »

paul9290 wrote: post #191
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to know where the Walmart is and what searches you tried.

Jan. 15th I was curious if the walmart was going to be a supercenter so I searched, "fallston md walmart," & "will fallston md walmart be a supercenter." As you can see either result does not show the most relevant and recent info about my query, rather it's littered by prominent job sites. Though on a search for "will fallston md walmart be a supercenter," i see the six result to be http://www.belairnewsandviews.com…

We love stuff like this--thanks for the specifics!
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