How to deal with google spammers !

radu · #1 (**permalink**) 06-09-2004, 07:29 PM

Hi everybody !

Ok, I know this has been discussed in many other topics, but there were different contexts. Now it's only about this.
I recently did some research on my competitors' sites (ranked above the site I have to promote) and I found one that is blattantly spamming google:
hidden text, with the keyword repeated two or three times, just in front of the page:
<html>

the same keyword repeated three times in meta keyword and in meta Classification tag.
the site is ranked well on the first page.

another site has a lot of hidden text, but not as annoying a this one.

My question is : how to deal with this ? I have nothing against the spammer itself,just I want my site beeing ranked higher. :)
What would you do ?
- would you spam like this one ?
- would you report spam (like I did today) and wait...about half an year for google to came up with something....
- another ideeas ?

Best regards to fair-playing people,
Radu

bhartzer · #2 (**permalink**) 06-09-2004, 07:36 PM

Deciding to report the spam is an ethical decision that only you can make.

You can, though, just outrank them. Get more on-topic links, get higher PageRank, have a slightly higher keyword density, etc.

cbp · #3 (**permalink**) 06-09-2004, 07:38 PM

Repeating keywords in the meta tags will have nothing to do with the sites ranking.

CBP

radu · #4 (**permalink**) 06-09-2004, 08:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Deciding to report the spam is an ethical decision that only you can make.

What do you usually do ? ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhartzer

You can, though, just outrank them. Get more on-topic links, get higher PageRank, have a slightly higher keyword density, etc.

Are you refering at outgoing liks also ? I've noticed a lot of sites ranked higher are in fact topic directories. It's true they have a lot of outgoing links, but i don't think this is giving all the high ranking. (ok, this is subject to another topic, maybe it has been discussed, i didn't search for the "directories ranking pb")

Ok,I'll always trying to outrank them, but this take a little more time, as spammers get results at the next google-update :(

ChrisBowd · #5 (**permalink**) 06-09-2004, 10:19 PM

If you are in business and depend on the Web for your living then you report the spammed site because in a certain sense they are stealing business from you and your duty is to your business and feeding your family not theirs.

It may not do you any good because Google do not typically react to individual reports unless they are totally extreme (like a child pornography site disguising itself as an educational site for example). Google's typical response is to ask you to submit a report at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. They then use those reports as input for their future algorithm research.

If you want to moralize about whether blabbing on spammers is cheap then consider this: if Google et al did nothing about spammers then within weeks the Web would be like the average email Inbox, full of supposed bona-fide dites that when you click on them (or worse yet your kids or granny click on them) takes you to some den of perversion. So if you can't justify reporting spam to protect your business then please do it anyway to protect my 7 kids and everyone elses!

Chris

Martin Smith · #6 (**permalink**) 06-10-2004, 06:48 AM

IMHO, your competitors are in violation of the Google TOS, so why shouldn't you spam report them?

The bigger issue is will the spam report make any difference? G's stance is that they prefer to use spam reports to improve their algo in order to better detect spam at a later date rather than dealing with individual cases. This seems to be to be a slow process!

There are some spam techniques that I believe are undetectable (blocking robots from the stylesheet.....I've said too much), so I find it hard to accept G's stance.

Something that somebody on another forum suggested to me, which I haven't tried, but it seems like a good idea is to contact the site owner and explain the possible implications of having spam on their domain.

seozest · #7 (**permalink**) 06-10-2004, 10:50 AM

Hi,

I suggest to report such spammer immediately to google and other search engines. For Google, Either thro' Spam URL already posted here or sending e-mail to

"Praise and complaints: comments@google.com
Not satisfied with search results? search-quality@google.com"

Regards,

radu · #8 (**permalink**) 06-11-2004, 01:40 PM

I have just sent the mail to google and hope they'll take the necessary measures.
In fact my questions was not either it si ethical to report spammer or not (for me it is, as i leave by promoting an web-site and if it didn't reach better ranking will be bad for me). But my question was : how to be better than the spammer ? having google removing the spammer seems like a less probable situation, and if it happens, it'll be in weeks or months. If I spam more than the spammer there is the risk that I got my page dropped (while he still rests :) ).

Best regards,
Radu