A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques • Hacker News Board

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#21

Post by tzs » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 5:44 PM UTC

hooande wrote: post #16

tzs wrote: 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?

"Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were discussing at lunch yesterday on this great site, generalsite.com/topics/starwars".

A couple days later, Bob wants to go there to check out another Star Wars question. All Bob remembers is "starwars", and fails to find the site.

Compare to "Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were discussing at lunch yesterday on this great site, starwarsanswers.com".

A couple days later, Bob wants to go there to check out another Star Wars question. Bob has a good chance of remembering "starwarsanswers".

Separate domains for different topics is more friendly to users. That's probably why Google has no problem with it--as the Google guy said, its impact on users they care about.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#22

Post by ryanhuff » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 5:52 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #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…

What's the best way to pass a site over to Matt Cutts?

This site has GOT TO GO! http://www.codeweblog.com/ It is polluting my Google search results.

As an example, search for "android intent activity pass". The search result titled "android intent pass variable activity" looks promising, but clicking on it brings you to this site, which contains machine generated nonsense content!

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#23

Post by Aaronontheweb » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:07 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #5

moultano wrote: post #2

That isn't really fair to Matt. What he's saying is, show them ranking for a query they shouldn't be, and then he'll start to be concerned.

The essential question I ask is whether Mahalo is gettingthe same treat ment as any other site. So, if you and I launch a site that uses the same "thin affiliate" sites for crosslinking and disregards the other Google rules that Mahalo disregards, will we get a pass or will we get blacklisted? If Cutts ignore our site, then he's being consistent. However, the author of the post contends that Mahalo is getting away wi…

I don't think Google would give Mahalo preferential treatment - although sites like TechCrunch sometimes give us the impression that Jason Calcanis, Google Brass, Kevin Rose, etc... are all part of some sort of untouchable Silicon Valley illuminati, that's really not the case.

Google cares more about the quality of its search results than any personal relationship - I don't think they'd hesitate to burn some of Mahalo's domains if they thought it was negatively impacting users.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#24

Post by mvandemar » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:16 PM UTC

ryanhuff wrote: post #22

jellicle wrote: post #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…

What's the best way to pass a site over to Matt Cutts? This site has GOT TO GO! http://www.codeweblog.com/ It is polluting my Google search results. As an example, search for "android intent activity pass". The search result titled "android intent pass variable activity" looks promising, but clicking on it brings you to this site, which contains machine generated nonsense content!

Are those Markovian chains, or is someone actually writing that stuff?

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#25

Post by ddemchuk » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:18 PM UTC

mvandemar wrote: post #19

ddemchuk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reason people trust and believe the spam search results that come up and blindly make purchases on those sites is the same reason they can't realize that Google isn't some non-profit public service but is in reality an ad-littered money machine: people are stupid.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#26

Post by mvandemar » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:22 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #21

hooande wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were discussing at lunch yesterday on this great site, generalsite.com/topics/starwars". A couple days later, Bob wants to go there to check out another Star Wars question. All Bob remembers is "starwars", and fails to find the site. Compare to "Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were discussing at lunch yesterday on this great site, st…

There are 14 questions on a site with 308 indexed pages, such as:

http://www.starwarsanswers.com/travel-how-tos http://www.starwarsanswers.com/language-how-tos http://www.starwarsanswers.com/health-how-tos http://www.starwarsanswers.com/home-garden-how-tos http://www.starwarsanswers.com/wedding-how-tos http://www.starwarsanswers.com/dance-how-tos http://www.starwarsanswers.com/black-belt-test http://www.starwarsanswers.com/mahalo-profile

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#27

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:25 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #21

hooande wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were discussing at lunch yesterday on this great site, generalsite.com/topics/starwars". A couple days later, Bob wants to go there to check out another Star Wars question. All Bob remembers is "starwars", and fails to find the site. Compare to "Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were discussing at lunch yesterday on this great site, st…

[deleted]

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#28

Post by percept » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:27 PM UTC

ryanhuff wrote: post #22

jellicle wrote: post #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…

What's the best way to pass a site over to Matt Cutts? This site has GOT TO GO! http://www.codeweblog.com/ It is polluting my Google search results. As an example, search for "android intent activity pass". The search result titled "android intent pass variable activity" looks promising, but clicking on it brings you to this site, which contains machine generated nonsense content!

I've also been seeing it regularly in technical search results, and it seems to have come from nowhere as I don't remember ever seeing it before (the domain's associated with a Chinese address, created 2006).

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#29

Post by epi0Bauqu » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:57 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #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…

I do this at DuckDuckGo, that is crawl, identify and delist over 60M domains. I think it works pretty well and is certainly a value add, but it is not immediately obvious to new or even many old users.

Re: A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques

#30

Post by frossie » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 7:07 PM UTC

shadowsun7 wrote: post #14

ryanhuff wrote: post #13

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.…

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…

I wish Google will address this, and soon.

I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat.

There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it.

A lot of people switched from Altavista (remember them?) to Google overnight - because of better search results. They can do it again.