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Google is Breaking the Internet

jeremypalmer.com

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Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#181

Post by buro9 »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #84
buro9 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, if you run a forum and it's trivially easy for blackhat SEOs to register for your forum and drop a link on the user profile page, then that's a loophole that you probably want to close. It isn't, and never has been. We operate a nursery period ( https://www.lfgss.com/thread9350.html ) in which the actions of new members are both severely restricted and observed by existing members, and all initial cont…

buro9, this is a great example of a well-maintained forum, and as such I agree that you're doing the right thing by ignoring link removal requests. Unfortunately, if you look at wider area of forums as a whole, a very large fraction of them are unmaintained, unpatched, or otherwise not kept safe from drive-by spamming. There are entire forum spamming software packages that will register spam users for dozens of diffe…

Also... what happens when, as a consequence of us ignoring requests, Google decide that a site with a high number of disavowed links is a spammy site?

I figure already that you'll eventually consider that a valid signal, but I'm sure you could already check my site and that there must already be some disavowed links, yet you personally admit this is a well-maintained forum.

There is a fear that we are being caught in the crossfire, and it's hard not to believe that quite a few of us are going to get hit by that crossfire.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#182

Post by tomp »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #92
unfunco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt, what's to stop people creating a website (or multiple websites) filled with spammy links pointing to their competitors websites, thereby reducing the weighting of a competitor in Google's pagerank algorithm. Is there protection against that sort of activity?

Yes, we work to avoid this sort of attack when designing our ranking algorithms.

Can you give any specifics? Unless I'm too stupid to figure it out, mathematically, the only possible way to do that is simply ignoring (potentially) spammy links, instead of considering them negatively. I mean, SEO linkfarm --> publisher site looks the same as Competitor's linkfarm --> publisher site.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#184

Post by RealGeek »

rjzzleep wrote: post #171
RealGeek wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in this scenario, my competitors can spam links for my website and put me into trouble. Google will notice that my website has some spammy links (which my competitor created), and then penalize me for it. Then I have to contact every website that links to me to ask them to remove links to my website... else their website would get penalized too. I get such emails every week. Rather than these fear mongering tactic…

I didn't really like matts answers, some of them are not answers at all. But! You may have hit the nail on the head. if i had to guess i would say that storing exceptions means that suddenly the algorithm had to check part of the corpus for these exceptions. at the scale at which google operates this could probably lead to rather big size and speed implications. But maybe i'm just fantasizing.

Google's algorithm already analyze if a link is useful or spam. They can simply ignore the links that are spam and count only good links. But, Google decides to punish the websites caught in the fire. If your website has a link Google does not like, Google can penalize your website along with all the websites that link to you or you link to them.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#185

Post by mixologic »

lingben wrote: post #22
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #5

I talked about this phenomenon recently on This Week in Google with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani: http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-google/248 Skip to 4:15 in to listen to the discussion. Note that there are two different things to keep in mind when someone writes in and says "Hey, can you remove this link from your site?" Situation #1 is by far the most common. If a site gets dinged for linkspam and works to clean up…

Matt, this does not address whatsoever the point being brought up. And in case you missed it, I will try to cite it as clearly as possible here: This is a case where google wants people to mold the internet according to what their current incarnation of their algorithm says the way it should be. Rather than google trying to mold its algorithm to understand the internet, natural links vs. spams, and their respective a…

"This is a case where google wants people to mold the internet according to what their current incarnation of their algorithm says the way it should be"

You do realize, of course, that Google is part and parcel of the internet, and that much of the way the internet works "in reality" is in response to external perceptions of how googles algorithms work?

Google's early dominance in search was a result of their algorithm's ability to surface relevance. If they had never staked out that Site A linking to Site B means site B has more relevance, then the internet would be an entirely different beast, and SEO would take entirely other forms that do not amount to linkstuffing.

The internet hasn't existed 'naturally' since search engines first came around.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#187

Post by 205guy »

ZenPro wrote: post #133
guiambros wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The letter from the company asking to remove the links reveal they used a shady SEO company to generate artificial inbound links. Not a surprise that Google got some false positives -- particularly coming from a SEO blog. Not really "breaking the internet".

It pretty much is if organic hyperlinks become feared entities. No hyperlinks = no internet.

Really? It often seems like the original PageRank algorithm was using links as a measure of content quality and relevance, and now everyone claims they are. But thanks to SEO, we saw that was false (homework question: would it still be true in an Internet where all actors are committed to creating "good" content?). I think links are independent of content quality (or rather search result ranking, because quality is subjective), and we need better AI based solely on page content.

Re: Google is Breaking the Internet

#189

Post by scholia »

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #143
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put the pitchfork down; he's just giving non-specific answers in response to non-specific situations. For all we know, the two domains in question are `bestquickdietfatloss.com` and `levitracialisfreedietpillscanadamexicoblog.com`, in which case it would be correct of Google to indicate that the author's link is linkspam.

Except that I and it seems many commenters here have seen similar things occurring with non-spam sites. Regardless of the specific domains referred to in this post, a general pattern is being talked about - the fundamental criticism is that we are getting a google-shaped web rather than a web-shaped google, due to google's de facto monopoly position. If this wasn't the case, it wouldn't be a talking point here.

"we are getting a google-shaped web rather than a web-shaped google"

Very well put.

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