How Efficient is Googlebot and the Algorithm?

BallochBD · #1 (**permalink**) 03-03-2004, 04:56 AM

Does anyone know how good the GoogleBot/Algorithm really is at doing its job?

I have been trying to find out how efficient the GoogleBot really is. My site (an information resource) was penalised because of a link I had to a site that was in a bad neighbourhood. So far the other site is still in the index. Naturally I am p***** off about this and I have been more attentive to sites that are blatantly spamming and appear to go unpunished.

One site I found that was "professionally" optimised uses hidden text but still ranks highly for its keywords. The company who do the optimisation for the offending site are obviously chuffed about the techniques that they use. They even provide a link to their own site. I would have thought that the Google bot would have been capable of detecting techniques as blatant as this?

I had a look at the source code and they have actually placed the hidden text before the <html> tag. Does this mean that the GoogleBot cannot recognise this? If so what would its value be as keyword text?

Mel · #2 (**permalink**) 03-03-2004, 09:30 PM

How high is up or how long is a piece of string might be easier to answer, but...

All search engines strive towards the elusive goal of absolute relevancy so in an ideal situation when you typed in a query the very best page for your use would come up. But they have not come close to reaching that goal for many reasons including:

Inability to interpret users request corectly

Multiple pages offering mostly the same content

Artificial techniques used to make irrelevant pages appear relevant = SPAM

So when google says(for example) don't use hidden text or we will penalize you for it, and you still see top ranking pages month after month which contain hidden text its not that google doesn't mean what it said or that the technology to detect hidden text is not avialalbe, but more likely that in the trade off of speed for accuracy thats a bit of that has not been automated yet. Its also why you have to take Public statements by SE reps with a grain of salt. When a google rep says "Yes we have the ability to detect hidden text" you have to think a bit and realize that having an ability and using it are often different things.

Now that doesn't mean that if you use hidden text you won't be penalixed for it, Google often runs a special campaign to root out one type of spam or another, and there are many webmasters who will find and report spam to google.

Bottom line the objective and desire to rid the index of spam is there, but the resources to do so may not yet be available.

More importantly you don't have to resort to such techniques to rank well.

cbp · #3 (**permalink**) 03-03-2004, 09:43 PM

Quote:

My site (an information resource) was penalised because of a link I had to a site that was in a bad neighbourhood. So far the other site is still in the index

How do you know that you were penalised for that link? Did Google tell you?
If the 'other site' is still in the index, its unlikely to be a 'bad neighborhood'.

CBP

Mel · #4 (**permalink**) 03-04-2004, 12:24 AM

Hi Cbp
unfortunately, Brandy brought back some of the hard core spammers who Florida had booted.

If you do a search for engagement rings in Google and click on the url that starts with e-....... you will find an example of a ring of perhaps twenty sites set up to interlink using anchor text links to each other from each page of every site, and which further have great gobs of hidden text (positioned off screen with css) on the home page of each site. This ring has been reported to Google as spam, dropped completely out of the rankings in Florida and came back in Brandy. There are a few hundred spam pages there and they all rank very well.

The point is that there are lots of spammy pages that google knows about but does nothing about.

cbp · #5 (**permalink**) 03-04-2004, 12:32 AM

BallochBD

I just had a look at the site in your profile - is that the site you are talking about?

If it is, is that not spammy keyword stuffing going on at the bottom of your page?

CBP

smakyyy · #6 (**permalink**) 03-04-2004, 04:38 AM

Definitely looks like spam at the bottom of the page-- well0-- i have some too on my sites-- but thaqt doesnt mean a thing-- as was mentioned above== technology is there-- but it is not always used...
stop worrying about other people- also i am still waiting for a reply to the question above -- how do you know that you were penalized because of a bad link? -- all the best!

Dave Hawley · #7 (**permalink**) 03-04-2004, 05:46 AM

How do we know that Google is not using their technology to discount hidden text? I know full well that many pages use this underhanded method, but have no idea if Google simply ignore it.

It is quite possible, the pages with hidden text, would be ranking just as well without it. let's face it, just because a page uses underhanded methods does not mean it is not the most relavent page to return.

cbp · #8 (**permalink**) 03-04-2004, 05:58 AM

Quote:

It is quite possible, the pages with hidden text, would be ranking just as well without it. let's face it, just because a page uses underhanded methods does not mean it is not the most relavent page to return.

I agree. Almost every page I have seen with hidden text that ranks well, is probably ranking well for reasons other than the hidden text. It would make sense for Google just to ignore it rather than penalise for it (as the site may have valuable content).

BTW - there is not a lot of difference between the keyword spamming that is hidden at the bottom of the page vs the keyword spamming at the bottom of the page that is not hidden (eg the site mentioned above :-)

CBP

BallochBD · #9 (**permalink**) 03-04-2004, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smakyyy

Definitely looks like spam at the bottom of the page-- well0-- i have some too on my sites-- but thaqt doesnt mean a thing-- as was mentioned above== technology is there-- but it is not always used...
stop worrying about other people- also i am still waiting for a reply to the question above -- how do you know that you were penalized because of a bad link? -- all the best!

This is not the site in question. I do web design more as a hobby and the site that was in my profile was not the one to which I was referring. This one is my real business www.pemms.co.uk.

<i am still waiting for a reply to the question above -- how do you know that you were penalized because of a bad link?>

Regarding the penalty, let's just say that I have information that I was penalised - for sure.

cbp · #10 (**permalink**) 03-04-2004, 04:18 PM

Quote:

This one is my real business www.pemms.co.uk.

Dosen't look penalised to me. What makes you think it is?

BTW ... Spam = something done for the search engines and not the user. They keyword stuffing in the site in your profile = spam.

CBP

Dave Hawley · #11 (**permalink**) 03-05-2004, 12:19 AM

Your site: www.pemms.co.uk is not penalized.

Mel · #12 (**permalink**) 03-05-2004, 09:03 AM

I think that there are problems with your site and Googles spidering of it, since out of 81 of your pages in the google index only two have been spidered, with the others listing as a link only. This will be having an effect on our rankings also.

The fact that you have more than 150 inbound links, many from PR5 and higher pages, yet google shows no inbound links makes me think that perhaps you might have been penalized despite the fact that you still show a TPR5 on your home page. Especially if you know that you linked to a bad page.

To get back to your original question, Google has lots of pages in its index that violate their guidelines, despite the fact that they are aware of these pages and their transgressions. I personally think its a matter of trying to eliminate spam with the algo and not having the resources to do it. I also believe that a page has to commit a very severe transgression (so long as search results that return that page are relevant) before Google takes manual action against it. I have seen instances of pages being penalized for linking to bad neighborhoods, but am not at all certain that the penalties were done by the normal algo or by one of their periodic "spam Sweeps"

BallochBD · #13 (**permalink**) 03-05-2004, 12:45 PM

I agree Mel. It seems to me that the Googlebot is not capable of half of what it is supposed to be. Let's face it, it can't just be lazy. We are talking about an algorithm here. If it can do the business on some sites it should be able to do it on them all?

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