Google Better Be Getting Rid Of This Spam

[morestar]

So lots and lots of talk of the so called (non-existant) over-optimization penalty can be found all over the web and in the mean time, I'm sure someone's making a lot of money because of all this new content that is being produced related to the so-called algorithm change - the change that SEOs everywhere were expecting and even some today believe has already taken place.

So look at this! Yesterday Google released some information about rewarding high-quality sites. What great timing! Now that's not at all the important nor the funny part of that article - but what is, is the two images that are used at the bottom of the post as an indication of the types of sites that will be affected.

Here's a little quote for you, just so you know this is what Google is saying about the images you'll see. And ask yourself, were these kind of examples below not tripping filters already? Were the search results that terrible? (rhetorical question I guess)

Here’s an example of a webspam tactic like keyword stuffing taken from a site that will be affected by this change:

keyword-stuffing.jpg

Then:

Of course, most sites affected by this change aren’t so blatant. Here’s an example of a site with unusual linking patterns that is also affected by this change. Notice that if you try to read the text aloud you’ll discover that the outgoing links are completely unrelated to the actual content, and in fact the page text has been “spun” beyond recognition:

link-spam.jpg

Now all I really have to say is, are you kidding me? This is the update everyone's talking about? As we know Matt tweeted about this yesterday and frankly, I believe this entire fiasco is, well, humorous to say the least.

If your website is spammy like the example above, or the content is spun like the article below it, you've got problems and probably aren't even making yourself known to the public - the rest of the world of SEOs really have nothing in the slightest to worry about.

Really...

Lastly, from the article on the quality rewarding update, I find this statement:

The change will go live for all languages at the same time. For context, the initial Panda change affected about 12% of queries to a significant degree; this algorithm affects about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice.

Now I won't jump the gun and try to decipher how these percentages can be known so I'd appreciate any of those more skilled in mathematics let us know how viable this information really is.

In closing I'd like to thanks HTMLBasicTutor for this link and so I must quote it again for us all.

SEOs ♥ Drama: Why Our Industry Thrives on Gossip and How the Over-Optimization Issue - Bruce Clay Blog

Kind of long but read the whole thing.

Thanks!

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Hey morestar,
I started a thread yesterday when Matt Cutts announced this on Twitter: Google just pushed an algorithmic ranking change - Per Matt Cutts.

[morestar]

Hey morestar,
I started a thread yesterday when Matt Cutts announced this on Twitter: Google just pushed an algorithmic ranking change - Per Matt Cutts.

Yes dear, I saw that and even linked to it from my other post - this one is just a break down of two aspects - 1 being the type of spam they are targeting in comparison to what we as developers and decent SEOs do (so there's nothing to worry about) and b that 3% number...it makes little sense to me as to how that number could have been calculated...

[morestar]

As Danny Sullivan said about the winners and losers of the new webspam update.

Really, however, this is a good reminder that lists like this aren’t perfect. This update was aimed at webspam. Some of the sites I’ve named above almost certainly were not doing any type of spamming. They may have had drops for other reasons; less visibility this week because last week they were visible for different news stories, for example. Or the update might have changes beyond spam that made them drop in overall visibility.

It's all speculation and at the moment I'm not buying it because a lot of the news and talk about it doesn't fully come together for me.

[MelanieUp]

Has anybody starting feeling the affects of the latest update?

[watto]

Has anybody starting feeling the affects of the latest update?

Yes! After 9 years of business, slowly evolving as a website, using pure white hat techniques, reaching the #1 position for all major terms in my niche (for over 3 years), yesterday my site tanked! Not de-indexed, but blasted out of Google!

I get that Google is targeting 'webspam', but my site does not fall it into that category. Period! In fact, I challenge anyone to find anything that could warrent this harsh results from Google.

What makes it worse, is that my competitors are clearly spammy the index and keyword stuffing like crazy, not to mention hidden text links, inorganic links, etc. ie www. business2sell.com.au/businesses/nsw/sydney/. This page ranks #1 in Google for 'business for sale sydney'........Is Google serious?

Towards the end of December 2011, my site received an influx of 'inorganic' links and on Jan 6th 2012, my site took a hit in the rankings for all main terms.

I received the 'unnatural' links email from Google around 4 weeks ago, which said the following:

"Once you have updated your site, reply to this email noting the specific changes you made. Only after there has been a significant decrease in unnatural linking will we consider reviewing your reconsideration request again. If there are still links that you could not remove, we will look for an explanation of why you were unable to do so."

So for the past 4 weeks I have been locating and requesting my links be removed from the offending urls in question, which Google kindly gave me 2 examples of. And then yesterday, BANG! After following their instructions I am rewarded with a swift kick in the ass!

At Googles request, I have been sending them updates on my progress and have managed to have a few links removed, but obviously it is not possible to be 100% successful with this challenge (welcome negative seo).

If things do not return to normal in the coming weeks, its all over for me.

I still can't believe it and looks like I'm not the only one either http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blo...=1335433345649.

[SteveGerencser]

Then you have search results like this ranking #1

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclien...python+hosting

Google is broken. They know it's broken, and like most academics, they make changes based on an 'ideal' perfect world that doesn't actually exist. Then they are shocked, surprised even, that the world isn't what they thought it was.

[watto]

With the negative responses far out weighing the positive with this update, surely something is not right. I think the word 'broken' sums it up nicely.

[ozsubasi]

Having reviewed my site since the update, I tweaked the content on the home page a little and changed a few image alt tags and submitted for reconsideration. I don't feel there was anything that warranted the hit it took and requesting that it be looked at is the only course of action I could really think of. If there are changes to the update in the meantime and my site recovers, that's all well and good but I feel better for doing something.

[Shaun.p]

Till time I have not noticed anything un-natural . But one thing I can definitely say (from the various instances) that EMD websites have affected a lot due to this Penguin, which according to me will improve the search quality.