Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

searchenginewatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 172 posts

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#21

Post by pfortuny »

larrys wrote: post #17
arbuge wrote: post #6

The PageRank algorithm seems broken to me. If spam links count for negative value you get competitors doing negative seo by buying cheap bad links to competing websites in bulk via places like fiverr. If they count for zero value then you get webmasters trying their luck by buying the same stuff themselves - who knows, there could be a good link amongst all the bad stuff and no harm in trying... Something other than…

"The PageRank algorithm seems broken to me." Imagine thinking that the "honor system" would actually not be gamed! Pagerank was designed a long time ago and suffers from a way of thinking that academics such as Page and Brin have. The same thing happened with email once the cat got out of the bag on that. Or on craigslist.org - Bottom line is not anticipating what would happen when widespread use of a product occurs…

It looks like it was devised without security in mind. This is something we are starting to learn not to do.

In that sense, TCP, the routing protocols, DNS &c were all designed that way (without malicious users in mind).

Which for some time was very good and then BANG!

I guess software engineering has to start dealing with this issue in a scientific way as well. And so academics will start thinking 'correctly', if this is possible.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#22

Post by ambiate »

ramayac wrote: post #14
arbuge wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when a competitor could buy 1000s of these links for $20 on a place like fiverr. Are we supposed to spend the rest of our lives disavowing this stuff? Edit: the 1000s figure is not an exaggeration. Go to fiverr and search on "back link" to see.

Really?, wow... I had no idea about that. I bought some followers for a client once, but "1000's of links" for $20 sounds surreal (at least for me!)

You would be really shocked at what $20 can get you in some communities. You might have inspired me to do some writing on the subject.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#23

Post by adorable »

shawnz wrote: post #15

It's not Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a "fair shot" at rankings. It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something. In Google's eyes, having false negatives is worth not having false positives, and that's just the reality of the web. Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the t…

> Besides, it seems to me like these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the title of their blog.

or by all the people who have a site with traffic coming from Google

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#24

Post by benbeltran »

pfortuny wrote: post #13

"It is impossible". "It is quite difficult". "We work hard to prevent it". It is exactly the same as behaviour security companies had in the past until they learned that, to quote Adidas, 'impossible is nothing' and that 'quite difficult' is nonsense due to automation. It used to be quite difficult to stage a DOS (anyone remembers the first one Yahoo! suffered in 2000?, ah, those were the days when we were surprised…

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - (attributed to John Maynard Kaynes)

The algorithm has changed. The web has changed. Naturally, google has changed.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#25

Post by damoncali »

shawnz wrote: post #15

It's not Google's job to make sure every webmaster has a "fair shot" at rankings. It's their job to make sure the best results appear when I search for something. In Google's eyes, having false negatives is worth not having false positives, and that's just the reality of the web. Besides, it seems to me that these "problems" are only really thought of as problems by the type of people who put "search engine" in the t…

The government may some day think otherwise. Google's monopoly on search is substantial enough that they risk much by eschewing fairness in favor of quality. I would tread very lightly if I were in Google's shoes.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#26

Post by hellweaver666 »

ramayac wrote: post #14
arbuge wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when a competitor could buy 1000s of these links for $20 on a place like fiverr. Are we supposed to spend the rest of our lives disavowing this stuff? Edit: the 1000s figure is not an exaggeration. Go to fiverr and search on "back link" to see.

Really?, wow... I had no idea about that. I bought some followers for a client once, but "1000's of links" for $20 sounds surreal (at least for me!)

it's mostly automated comment spam, forum spam and the like.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#27

Post by skyraider »

adorable wrote: post #18
skyraider wrote: post #12

Does anyone know if it's always the case that you can find spammy links to your site by using Google (e.g. link:mysite.com)? My link count in webmaster tools is an order of magnitude higher than the inbound links that I can find by using the search engine.

As far as I've seen, the links you'll find through the search engine are a limited set of links from "important" pages (i.e. not the spammy ones). To find your spammy backlinks you'd have to use webmaster tools.

Right now, it seems GWT only shows a "sample" of links, and that sample is chosen from the 100 domains that link most frequency. GWT's "total links" count for my site is about 75x larger than the number of links they'll give me. I'm wondering if it's a spammer registering a whole bunch of spammy domains.

GWT doesn't seem to allow me to discover what all of these links are, so I couldn't disavow them even if I wanted to.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#28

Post by dbla »

Why does google need to penalize sites for spammy inbound links? Couldn't they instead just make those links not contribute at all (not penalize the ranking but not boost it at all either)? I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but I'm curious.

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#29

Post by pfortuny »

benbeltran wrote: post #24
pfortuny wrote: post #13

"It is impossible". "It is quite difficult". "We work hard to prevent it". It is exactly the same as behaviour security companies had in the past until they learned that, to quote Adidas, 'impossible is nothing' and that 'quite difficult' is nonsense due to automation. It used to be quite difficult to stage a DOS (anyone remembers the first one Yahoo! suffered in 2000?, ah, those were the days when we were surprised…

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - (attributed to John Maynard Kaynes) The algorithm has changed. The web has changed. Naturally, google has changed.

It is not a problem of a change in reality. It is a problem of wrong statements:

'It is impossible' is certainly false on the internet for almost anything you can think.

'It is very difficult': See the sysjail fiasco [1]. Once something is deemed possible, it is not very difficult, on computer systems.

So, it is not the facts that have changed, it is their perception by Google.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysjail

Re: Negative SEO: Looking for Answers from Google

#30

Post by disinterest »

adorable wrote: post #8

How can Google detect if a spammy link has been created by the site's owner or by a competitor? I don't see any way to detect that - apart from asking webmasters to report spammy backlinks. But that really isn't sustainable.

This is Google for you. They can use an army of automatons to achieve their goals and the rest of us have to use human power to clean up their mess.
Post reply on HN