SEO: 4 things huge sites are allowed to do but you’re not. • Hacker News Board

Re: SEO: 4 things huge sites are allowed to do but you’re not.

#41

Post by streptomycin » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 3:41 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #9

The most egregious example of a huge site doing things that smaller sites are not allowed to do is ... GOOGLE! Recently, I've seen its "survey wall" cropping up on more and more sites. It works like this: You do a Google search. You see a link to an article you want to read. You click through. You're met with a message that tells you that if you want to actually read the page, you have to complete a survey. And the w…

A paywall and a surveywall are not "exactly the same thing". The surveys take about 5 seconds to complete. It's more like how many videos on YouTube and elsewhere show an ad before playing, except those video ads are typically much longer and more annoying.

Re: SEO: 4 things huge sites are allowed to do but you’re not.

#42

Post by DucktourDreams » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 3:50 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #5

1 thing you're allowed to do: Ignore google completely. Build your business in such a way that it works, with or without google sending you traffic. That way you don't need to lose sleep over your rankings and you don't need to panic every 6 months when google updates their algorithms in a major way. Just treat them like you would treat the weather, enjoy it when it's nice but make sure your business runs even when i…

If people want my business they'll optimize for DuckDuckGo, whatever that may entail. That's my primary search engine. I've been using it heavily since the Snowden release and it's been satisfactory for about 80-90% of my searches. In fact, it gives a wider variety of stuff sometimes, which feeds the part of my brain that seeks breadth.

Re: SEO: 4 things huge sites are allowed to do but you’re not.

#43

Post by MichaelTieso » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #20

This is clickbait. The last story they had on HackerNews was shortly after the RapGenius drama. According to someone smeared in that story they tried to blackmail him: Pay us and we won't publish. Tweets from them collaborate this: "It is a report on Expedia BH (Blackhat) SEO, check your G+ account Martin, anyone in charge can contact us back. Yes, my husband contacted you there, please keep communication with him.".…

I'm sorry but you are incredibly misinformed. As someone that has sold sponsored posts for a very long time with some of the biggest websites on the internet, I can confirm to you that it is happening at a much larger scale than you can ever imagine. For those that know, this story is not really news and has been going on for several years. Google has indeed been fighting spam and has done a decent job at it but in many cases the smaller sites are the ones affected the most and the big name sites get away with it.

"We don't know if these tactics are even working." They are working. Google is catching up but it's still FAR from being ahead in fighting these blackhat SEO practices. What you mean is that Google WON'T be saying "these guys are right, we favor big sites" but the reality is they do.

I made a fairly large comment on here with the last report. Many of the comments said "show me proof!" which then I came along and did just that. Matt Cutts reached out to me shortly after and I forwarded over emails received from Expedia. The funny thing is, a few weeks after that I STILL got emails from Expedia BUT it wasn't from Expedia.com. "Only Expedia.com was affected so we're still going to sell links for Expedia.co.uk". It amazes me sometimes how blind everyone is about this.

Re: SEO: 4 things huge sites are allowed to do but you’re not.

#44

Post by MichaelTieso » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 4:11 PM UTC

The solution to this: penalize sites for 3-6 months regardless of how big or small they are. I see far too often big sites getting a small slap on the hand then get fixed up real fast back to where they were before. They gain much more out of it by doing blackhat SEO and risking becoming penalized for a few days. Most sites I've seen get penalized go right back to selling and buying links not long after they've been fixed up.

Re: SEO: 4 things huge sites are allowed to do but you’re not.

#45

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Fri, Apr 25, 2014, 4:13 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #40

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird - I have never seen this, and I don't have an adblocker installed, javascript disabled, etc. I wonder if this is geolocation- or browser-specific?

As of last year, it only showed surveys to users from US/UK/Canada. Not sure how much things have changed by now, but it's definitely not global yet. I also heard that it didn't work in Safari, but I'm not sure if that was just a temporary thing.

Still weird: Chrome, UK, never seen. Ah, well - hopefully it stays that way!