illegal SEO

scubajared · #1 (**permalink**) 09-18-2004, 09:02 PM

I am doing SEO for a customer who was banned from google and yahoo because of previous illegal SEO practices. I corrected all of the illegal SEO that the former company used and got him back in Google after being banned. I noticed that for one of the search terms I was going after Aventura real estate, the number one listing was using illegal SEO tech. I reported them to Google but google wrote this back to me. Any suggestions?

Thank you for your note. We understand your frustration and are constantly working to improve the quality of our search results. We've devoted a section of our site to helping webmasters understand some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index. Please visit our Webmaster Guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html for information on creating and maintaining a 'Google-friendly' website.

If you encounter sites that are trying to deceive our web crawlers, please submit a report at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. We use these reports to collect data that our engineers use to devise scalable solutions to fight spam in our search results. While we do not always take action on individual sites as a result of these reports, please be assured that we are using the information to make large-scale improvements to our system.

We appreciate your assistance in maintaining the quality of our search results.

Regards,
The Google Team

cbp · #2 (**permalink**) 09-18-2004, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Any suggestions?

Forget about them and focus on your customers site.

CBP

flood6 · #3 (**permalink**) 09-18-2004, 09:57 PM

If the competitor is truly doing something illegal, advise your client to contact an attorney experienced in internet law. If they are just breaking Google's guidelines, submit the spam report and move on.

I've seen action taken about two weeks after I submitted a spam report on a competing site on more than one occasion. I have no idea if it was removed due to the spam report, it could have been any number of things that caused them to drop out of the SERPs I watched, but it can't hurt. I've also submitted spam reports and seen no evidence of any action taken up to a year later.

You can easily waste time and effort with the competitor's site, or you can direct that energy to doing the best you can with that key phrase and move on to the next.

Good luck.

Kenai Alaska · #4 (**permalink**) 09-20-2004, 06:25 AM

This past summer has been a time of brassy seo tactics and they are paying off very well. Many of our competitors are using a new mouse over that is getting top placement for them. We have lost multiple clients to these folks and are getting our clocks cleaned. Repeated spam reports to Google and Yahoo achieved nothing as those sites using these tactics are dominating in there searches.
Has anyone ever seen this type of redirect

<body onMouseOver="eval(unescape('%6C%6F%63%61%74%69%6F% 6E%2E%68%72%65%66%3D%27%68%74%74%70%3A%2F%2F%77%77 %77%2E%65%64%77%61%72%64%73%6F%75%74%66%69%74%74%6 9%6E%67%2E%63%6F%6D%2F%27%3B'));"
bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#000000" vlink="#000000"><p align="center">

Try to view this page,
edwardsoutfitting.com/outfitted_elk_hunts_f.html

We see more and more of these everyday. some sites have as many as 80 pages in their root directory of these pages.

Where this is all leading for the future of the web is very uncertain. Do we or do we not live within the rules is up to Google, Yahoo and MSN in the results within their serps.

Mel · #5 (**permalink**) 09-20-2004, 07:16 AM

Whil this is the same type of redirect that TP was using I see nothing illegal, immoral or fattening, there is nothing on that page to increase rankings which you cannot put on any page. The only thing this is doing is preventing some individuals from seeing the page which is ranking.

If you optimize your page as well as this page you should rank just as well.

ReviewGolf.com · #6 (**permalink**) 09-20-2004, 03:29 PM

There's no problem with encoding URLs. They probably tried to hide it from some link harvesting scripts.