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A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

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Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#11
post #7

I'm gonna go out on a limb here: Who gives a shit? Everyone treats Google like this super police agent who's job is to keep our minds free from digital pollution. Yet 97% of Google's income comes from their ad network, which thrives on having publishers and SERP pages to serve up their advertising customer's creatives. Ultimately, I'm sure Google is fine with this Mahalo stuff, because it means they have more ad spac…

[deleted]

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#12
Google, for whatever reason, thinks that a very light touch with regard to spam sites is appropriate. (Although Cutts is right that an inurl: or site: query doesn't show anything - he's saying, "Show me a real-world query that has nothing but spammy results and then I'll do something").

I think and have thought that a Google competitor could come along and beat them by having a heavy hand against spam sites. If it's designed to attract search engines, NewGoog doesn't index it, period. Any business generating datafog for search engine consumption gets deindexed entirely and permanently.

Go ahead, type any question you want into Google. ANY question at all. You get a list of 500 search engine question spam sites, most of which are written in broken English and contain more or less nonsense strings of words thrown together. NewGoog would wipe all that shit out.

Attention Google: offer an option (like SafeSearch) that applies a HEAVY HAND to spam sites. We will love you for it.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#13
post #7

I'm gonna go out on a limb here: Who gives a shit? Everyone treats Google like this super police agent who's job is to keep our minds free from digital pollution. Yet 97% of Google's income comes from their ad network, which thrives on having publishers and SERP pages to serve up their advertising customer's creatives. Ultimately, I'm sure Google is fine with this Mahalo stuff, because it means they have more ad spac…

Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific searches to sites like Stack Overflow.

I really wish Google would address this issue.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#14
post #7

I'm gonna go out on a limb here: Who gives a shit? Everyone treats Google like this super police agent who's job is to keep our minds free from digital pollution. Yet 97% of Google's income comes from their ad network, which thrives on having publishers and SERP pages to serve up their advertising customer's creatives. Ultimately, I'm sure Google is fine with this Mahalo stuff, because it means they have more ad spac…

Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific searches to sites like Stack Overflow.…

I agree with ryanhuff. Recently I spent time searching for camera reviews - smaller, entry-level ones where there's less press. About 70% of the sites I got were these dumb contentless websites plastered with camera ads and affliate links (to stores like Amazon and Adorama). That's well and good, but after a couple of tries I began to be really pissed off at the lack of useful information.

I see the same issues while searching for certain bits of news. Earlier today I ran a search for Spain's loss to Switzerland (soccer, in the World Cup). Amongst the top results was a small section dedicated to Google News. Two of the three on display led me to ugly blogs, plastered with ads, that had essentially copied content from other news organizations and reposted them.

My point: somebody searching for actual angel cake recipes will be greatly annoyed every time they come across Mahalo's (content-less) pages. Sure, some of their pages have content, and are probably useful - but at what cost? I wish Google will address this, and soon.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#15
I am having a hard time understanding what he's complaining about. Is there supposed to be something wrong with having a general information site (mahalo) and a bunch of specialized sites (starwarsanswers.com, for example) that contain information on specific topics with links back to the general site?

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#16
post #15

I am having a hard time understanding what he's complaining about. Is there supposed to be something wrong with having a general information site (mahalo) and a bunch of specialized sites (starwarsanswers.com, for example) that contain information on specific topics with links back to the general site?

What purpose does this serve? Maybe you could explain to me why someone would do this? What is the benefit of using several different domains instead of subdomains or subfolders on the general site?

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#17
post #7

I'm gonna go out on a limb here: Who gives a shit? Everyone treats Google like this super police agent who's job is to keep our minds free from digital pollution. Yet 97% of Google's income comes from their ad network, which thrives on having publishers and SERP pages to serve up their advertising customer's creatives. Ultimately, I'm sure Google is fine with this Mahalo stuff, because it means they have more ad spac…

Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific searches to sites like Stack Overflow.…

Everyone wants high quality search results, of course. But like I said in my OP, Google is a for profit company that depends on high traffic keyword searches and high volume publishers to maintain their livelihood. It's not that far of a stretch for them to not necessarily be dying for "quality" search results as much as we are. If the lower quality results are making them money, it would be against their own business model to squelch them.

So it really is a question of who this issue is affecting. For us, it's annoying. For Google, it's a profit source.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#18
post #16
post #15

I am having a hard time understanding what he's complaining about. Is there supposed to be something wrong with having a general information site (mahalo) and a bunch of specialized sites (starwarsanswers.com, for example) that contain information on specific topics with links back to the general site?

What purpose does this serve? Maybe you could explain to me why someone would do this? What is the benefit of using several different domains instead of subdomains or subfolders on the general site?

Would HN be better or worse if it were just a category on Digg?

The specialized domain/community allows users to get into much more detailed discussions about their topics and it helps filter out contributors with just a passing interest. This increases the reliability of the information shared and the quality of the discussions.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific searches to sites like Stack Overflow.…

Everyone wants high quality search results, of course. But like I said in my OP, Google is a for profit company that depends on high traffic keyword searches and high volume publishers to maintain their livelihood. It's not that far of a stretch for them to not necessarily be dying for "quality" search results as much as we are. If the lower quality results are making them money, it would be against their own busines…

You are absolutely correct. However, at that point it becomes an ethics issue. If these are financially motivated search results without disclosure then it becomes a whole different ball of wax. If they are deliberately screwing up their relevancy algorithm in the name of a bottom line then people need to know that.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#20
post #16
post #15

I am having a hard time understanding what he's complaining about. Is there supposed to be something wrong with having a general information site (mahalo) and a bunch of specialized sites (starwarsanswers.com, for example) that contain information on specific topics with links back to the general site?

What purpose does this serve? Maybe you could explain to me why someone would do this? What is the benefit of using several different domains instead of subdomains or subfolders on the general site?

For the same reason StackExchange breaks up their Q/A sites into niches. It's a better experience for the user. It creates a community around the niche. A brand. It builds momentum faster. What if StackOverflow, MathOverflow and Startups were all part of the same general site? It would get messy. It would lose a lot of its value from being domain specific.

Also it's better for advertisers.

It's a good idea. There's nothing wrong with what Mahalo is doing here.

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