31–40 of 48 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other side of this coin is that spammers can buy pagerank by purchasing a reputable domain and then using it for spam. That, it turns out, it what happened here (according to a Google engineer who explained after I published this): http://lee-phillips.org/hitchYellowPages/
Good post but I wish it had a date on it -- hard to know if recent or 5 years ago. Am I just not seeing the date?
You didn't do your research. Your domain had a spam history. Also, a simple backlink analysis from any SEO would have turned up these issues and then you could have promptly disavowed them and be done with it. It's not Google's fault that you didn't dot you i's and cross your t's as a webmaster.
It is Google's fault that their pagerank algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to handle understanding that internet domain ownership isn't static, and for not understanding that spam sites pointing to 404s on another site are a prime indication that a change has happened.
This is what happens when Google actively penalizes sites for something that is totally out of their control (links pointing to their site). Granted, a large chunk of spammers know exactly what they are doing when they blast 1000s of links into a site, but what about the average webmaster? Or the small business owner who knows nothing about SEO and relies on a cheap "SEO firm"? Or somebody who isn't an SEO expert buy…
There was a cheesy TV show several years back about a group of con artists, I don't remember the name but they had a sort of motto that applies here: "you can't con an honest man."
What exactly is our poor innocent small business owner trying to do by hiring a cheap SEO firm? He's trying to manipulate the google rankings in his favor, and away from what's objectively best for the searchers. Maybe he doesn't know google has rules about or how exactly the SEO firm is going to go about, but he's not an innocent victim.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other side of this coin is that spammers can buy pagerank by purchasing a reputable domain and then using it for spam. That, it turns out, it what happened here (according to a Google engineer who explained after I published this): http://lee-phillips.org/hitchYellowPages/
Good post but I wish it had a date on it -- hard to know if recent or 5 years ago. Am I just not seeing the date?
I had a similar thing happen on my personal site, also due to phpBB2. The bad guys used an exploit in phpBB2 to upload a bunch of images of ads for cheap drugs and male enhancement products, and then they spammed links to those images to websites and in email. I have no idea if Google noticed or cared, because I had nothing on my site that I expected people to find via search. I did have one page, some analysis I wro…
This is what happens when Google actively penalizes sites for something that is totally out of their control (links pointing to their site). Granted, a large chunk of spammers know exactly what they are doing when they blast 1000s of links into a site, but what about the average webmaster? Or the small business owner who knows nothing about SEO and relies on a cheap "SEO firm"? Or somebody who isn't an SEO expert buy…
> Granted, a large chunk of spammers know exactly what they are doing when they blast 1000s of links into a site, but what about the average webmaster? Or the small business owner who knows nothing about SEO and relies on a cheap "SEO firm"? There was a cheesy TV show several years back about a group of con artists, I don't remember the name but they had a sort of motto that applies here: "you can't con an honest man…
I had a site that was hacked. Over 250k links were built. They were pointing to a new page on the site. We found out about the hack via Google Webmaster Tools. They sent a notice it was a malware issue. We cleaned up the hack and 404 the page. To this day, there are still over 100k links that Google says is out there. The nice part is, there is no indication of any negative action taken by Google.
I think you'd call that a high-risk strategy however.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is Google's fault that their pagerank algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to handle understanding that internet domain ownership isn't static, and for not understanding that spam sites pointing to 404s on another site are a prime indication that a change has happened.
Spammers are certainly able to have the whois data on a domain changed. It's simply a catch 22 for Google.
Want to make a better competitor to w3schools? Good luck. It takes just one screw up and all the hard work and money you put into it go down the drain. Practically anybody who makes web sites for profit today has to look at it the way a black hat does because you're going to get treated like a black hat.
You didn't do your research. Your domain had a spam history. Also, a simple backlink analysis from any SEO would have turned up these issues and then you could have promptly disavowed them and be done with it. It's not Google's fault that you didn't dot you i's and cross your t's as a webmaster.
It is Google's fault that their pagerank algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to handle understanding that internet domain ownership isn't static, and for not understanding that spam sites pointing to 404s on another site are a prime indication that a change has happened.