Mega-Site Garbage! - The Latest Google Target?

[greeneagle]

Justify it!

I have seen many Mega-Sites fall in this last update, while smaller Sites gained PR.

Many Sites have taken advantage of replication technologies and list in directory pages for every City in the US, with a lust for "conquering" every city in the world.... Get Real! The Sites using these proliferation technologies seem to be getting hit pretty hard for duplicity of content this time around.

ie... Doing a search on "Dobbin Texas": Hey we live in a town populated with less than 100 residents. We have 2 country stores, railroads tracks, a greasy spoon cafe, clean air and no terrorist threats and we damn sure don't need a "cherry picking" web design and SEO company out of Chicago playing local.

We don't have Dentists
We don't have Lawyers
We don't have Doctors

Hell, many days we don't even have local news.

Veterinarians might be another story, as long as they are in a 20 mile radius and/or pay house/ranch calls!

Are Sites subscribing to these pseudo directory page proliferation technologies the target now? Aren't these "bad neighborhoods" by the strictest definition? Are these not "Gateway Pages"?

We don't have hotels, resteraunts, etc. here either!

Guess what, they are all turning up "Goose Eggs" now, as in PR0.

Do I hear a cleaning for regional or local searches whisping in the latest "house-cleaning" winds?

700-5000 pages - My "bleep"! Why do you have that many pages? Very Few International Conglomerate Corporations create that many products and/or services.

We have a client that markets to 20 Industries with 110 pages having more top 10 SERPS for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, keyword phrases than I can count, many in the 5 and 6 digit highly competitive SERP return numbers.

Imagine that!

Ken

[sfowler]

Ken, I can't answer your question about local search. I would have thought you could operate an SEO company anywhere there is a phone line.
I live in the biggest village in he area, so we do have all of those things.

I run an info site, where I tend to put up a new page for every question I receive that is not adequately answered by the others. There is some internal linking for common topics, buta lot of things have to be treated on their own.

A lot of the stuff floating around the net is garbage for 99% of the population, but there may well be a reason for it. I guess one of hte problems is that many people do not remove old pages, but simply add new ones.

[greeneagle]

Simon,

Checking "Housing Units" for Vienna.... Less than 6000 in the last governmental census!

How does that merit 5 Million web pages on topic?

We are bloated to the gills, everywhere!

Cut, Clip, Crop - Go Google!

Ken

[sfowler]

I don't really know what they call a housing unit. Vienna has about 1.6 million inhabitants. I can't see much reason for it either! there is a Vienna in Georgia as well, and probably a few others as well.

[greeneagle]

Simon,

How about over 21 million returns for Austria?

Ken

[greeneagle]

Simon,

I had 2 returns for Internet Web Design & Seo companies listed for my town on a PR0 directory, one of them being an associate of a frequent poster on these forums.

That firm most likely subscribed to that directory service and they have provided a different URL and page for every single city in the US.

Tell me that is not garbage. Do you want to hazard a guess at how many duplicate pages that is?

PR is not an issue here (they have a PR0) as much as
having a separate page for every US city using this proliferation technology.

The next obvious question we have to ask then is... Are there ways to garner traffic beyond what the SEs can provide? Can I sacrafice my PR for much more traffic? (Probably not since this particular find was not in GOOGLE's top 30 SERP positions), but then, they only know.

Ohhhh... and if I go there , How long will the party last?

Show me Sites engaging in these duplicate web page proliferation technologies that kept a mid point ranking in the last update.

The last time I checked PR0s did not qualify for "Trusted Site Status".

Ken

[sfowler]

Ken,
I'll agree with you on that one. If they are using different URls, then that is spamming. If they stick to one address and get themselves included everywhere, that is only good business practice. There are enough duplicate pages out there already.

[pne]

Ken,

At last someone has said this. The "Mega- bulls**t-site" is, in many, many cases spam. You're also completely, 100% correct on the subject of gateway pages. I'd love them all to rot in hell. When I hear people on this forum talking about their "need" to have 10,000 pages I think "not".

Well said.

pne

[sfowler]

I honestly kind see any good reason to have 10000 pages, but if I can think of one, I will let you know. I guess if you supply a high definition version of every picture on a separate page to save loading time on the main page and that sort of thing, you can quickly get them adding up. Still, I do think some people exaggerate just slightly. Doorway pages are what we all think they are, spam.

By the way Ken, I tried "housing" and "Vienna" on sites from Austria adn just got 17700 results. I guess the bulk must be Vienna, Georgia.

[greeneagle]

There are many huge Sites that are well organized and provide good service, run intelligently. One I was particularly impressed with recently are those under the JupiterMedia umbrella:
http://www.jupitermedia.com

But living in a small town, I know which town I need to go to for different services and I am not going to drive 100 miles to see a Dentist and I am not likely to stay 80 miles away from someone I visit for a few days.

Many Sites are running as fast as they can to buy their positions in "local" searches.

Here is what I am talking about; Google; "Dobbin Texas" without the quotations:

SERP#3
http://w ww.roses-nationwide.com/Texas/Dobbin/Dobbin_TX.htm

(link broken at primary domain level on purpose because breaking it at any subsequent level is ineffective. A near same page resides at all folder levels for every City in the US) Spend a little time there go to any state and scroll down...There's plenty of dissimilar content in multiple location listings) In fact the primary domain has a PR8! Have they achieved trusted Site status and are the SE's allowing that level of spam? If so, maybe we should all do it. 10 million web development companies in every town! Where are we going with local searches?

Read that intro paragraph:
…. “We offer nothing but the freshest and best quality flowers with a 100% satisfaction guarantee direct from a Dobbin flower shop.”

There are no flower shops in most 1 traffic-light rural towns, this one included! In fact, the guys out here are more likely to send their wife a chainsaw instead of flowers, so they can clear the woods together.

Look how many times “Dobbin” was used in the header, introductory paragraph and even the URL - very intelligently mass regurgitated from an SEO perspective! The page is beautiful, very appealing and….. they have a PR0 at this level, all the way down from an "8".

Is anyone really going to search for “Dobbin Texas” or any other “BFE” to send flowers? Hell no… They are going to search for “send flowers”, “send roses” or something along those lines.

Where does mass advertising and Spam diverge?
IMO - This is what Google is now targeting!

I could cite many more examples of the same regional and local "gateway page" practice for, lawyers, real estate agents etc… etc…, check out your own local area SERPS.

This webpage proliferation practice is not going to fly any more with Google. In fact, I have been monitoring MSN in several categories for total SERP counts and I have been watching a trend to trim most of those SERP’s Total Returns by quite a margin for 3 consecutive months. Will MSN beat Google in "trimming the fat" to gain an edge on search relevance? It will be interesting.

Dealing with this mess is an important aspect of SE relevance and will continue to be. The problem is much larger and more difficult than one might want to imagine. The Traffic-Power scandal was just a "warm-up" practice session.

I hear that garbage truck coming down the street again!

All rights reserved, Mountain Eagle Marketing.

Ken