Reporting Spam Results: Success?

[Norex_Matt]

Hey Everyone,
I have two competitors who have been hitting the #1 and #2 spots consistantly for the past few months, both have their keywords in black on black or white on white hidden in their page, I've reported them through the spam result form at google every 3 months or so and haven't seen them penalized, have and of you ever seen results from reporting spam submissions or have any better idea for getting google to take notice? Our PageRanks are equal at PR4 bordering PR5, but I can't seem to catch them yet, frustrating to say the least.

Thanks!
Matt

[cbp]

How do you know that they have not been penalised? Google may just be ignoring the hidden text and they rank well for other reasons.

I have seen a lot of sites with hidden text in Google - for almost all of them, I fail to see how they can be benefiting from doing it.

Google don't manaully remove sites as the result of spam reports (unless it something like a porn site taking over a Disney site). They use the spam reports to learn about spam techniques so that they can detect them via the algorithm and automatically penalise them; periodically recheck them to see if cleaned up; make them serve time in the 'penalty box'; then reinstate.

I guess Google get a huge number of spam reports, many of which may not be legitimate (ie S.P.A.M. = Sites Poistioned Above Mine).

CBP

[Jamie]

Matt I have seen little response from Google, this is a previous post I had on the same topic:

I reported to Google a website that had 100’s of domains pointing to one website that was cloaking my copy. In about two weeks I noticed many of the domains of this website were missing from the search and figured Google did something. But many new domains pointing to this same website had shown up. I would say it has been about 5 weeks and 3 more spam report submissions to Google and I have yet to see them do something about this obvious deception and theft. This is not a very encouraging campaign effort on their part for halting spam.

Jamie

[Norex_Matt]

How do you know that they have not been penalised? Google may just be ignoring the hidden text and they rank well for other reasons.

I have seen a lot of sites with hidden text in Google - for almost all of them, I fail to see how they can be benefiting from doing it.

Google don't manaully remove sites as the result of spam reports (unless it something like a porn site taking over a Disney site). They use the spam reports to learn about spam techniques so that they can detect them via the algorithm and automatically penalise them; periodically recheck them to see if cleaned up; make them serve time in the 'penalty box'; then reinstate.

I guess Google get a huge number of spam reports, many of which may not be legitimate (ie S.P.A.M. = Sites Poistioned Above Mine).

CBP

Hi CBP,
When I started optimizing for the keywords we are, the first thing I did was to examine the sites that are in those position, where their incoming links are coming from, their meta tag structure, looking for the keywords in their content, etc. The #1 site is actually comprised of their company logo (Flash Animation) and a link to download flash, no content,etc. followed by the hidden text, and no incoming links that would be from High PR sites, like I said they are a PR4 site, same as us. I would give thr URL but I think that would be bad taste to identify them. Do you know any more about the specifics that google actually does when it penalizes a site? I thought it would drop it to PR0, but I'm not an expert on that of course.

Matt

[cbp]

. Do you know any more about the specifics that google actually does when it penalizes a site?

I do not think anyone really knows - most get booted from the index. I have heard 30 days mentioned...

But look at it this way:
1) It is in Google best interest to have as many sites as possible in the index - the more sites, the better quality results (assuming they can rank them properly)
2) It is in Google best interest to have an index and search results that match a searchers query - I carefully did not say "Its in Google best interest to get rid of spam" ... for eg a site that uses a spam method, may actually have valuable content that the searcher is looking for (so having the spam result there may be valuable for the searcher)
3. Based on this, maybe the best way to deal with spam is NOT to boot sites from the index, but set the algorithm to ignore the spam method so the site still has a chance to rank (as they may have value).
4. This way Google ignores hidden text (rather than a penalty), it ignores doorway pages (rather than bans sites for them), it does not index 2 duplicates sites - it just indexes one (which is what it does now), multiple subdomains are ignored and the main domain is only listed (rather than ban them all) etc etc

I have no idea if the are or would ever do this (so do not quote me), but it is possible that spam sites that rank well, actually rank well for legitimate reasons as well.

CBP

[toasty]

I'm curious though how text cloaking (e.g., black on black) is defined. Would you consider it spamming to cloak the functionality of anchor text? For example, on a site I'm working on, I would like to use anchors around keywords to promote better internal linking, but the site owners would like the paragraphs to have a more uniform appearance. So, I'm considering using CSS to make linked-text look like regular text to the user. Could that be considered a more subtle form of text cloaking? The text is visible, it's just that it's functionality isn't apparent.

Paul

[minstrel]

on a site I'm working on, I would like to use anchors around keywords to promote better internal linking, but the site owners would like the paragraphs to have a more uniform appearance. So, I'm considering using CSS to make linked-text look like regular text to the user. Could that be considered a more subtle form of text cloaking? The text is visible, it's just that it's functionality isn't apparent.

No... there's nothing devious about that. Spiders only see the url - they don't care what color it is or whether it's underlined, etc.

[toasty]

Mentioned earlier by CBP, "Doorway" pages are a no-no. Do you think it's possible for Google to have different standards depending on the PR of a site? For instance, would a low-ranking site get booted for using doorway pages, whereas such an infridgement would be ignored on "highly-valued" sites?

Case-in-point:

I work in the internet QA department for a very prominent, national marketing company (my day job). There is a Web Developer here who recommended I use "Dummy pages" to increase traffic when I asked him a question about SEO for a site I'm working on: www.gpitech.org.

He admitted using the following technique on our company's website:

The content of each dummy page would be informative and focused on a specific keyword, while containing several links from the dummy page to the homepage, but not the other way around. A link to the Dummy page would only appear on the sitemap (among dozens of other links) and this way, he claims, it could not be considered spamming. He also claims that because the dummy page would have links to the homepage, both the dummy page AND the homepage would show up in search results on the targeted keywords.

Would you agree that this is not spamming? Do you see this technique as being any different from the "Doorway" page mentioned above? Although it is relevant content to the site, the "dummy page" is designed specifically for better search engine rankings.

I'm having trouble optimizing a site because the authors are reticent to change the wording to accomodate the use of keywords I have recommended. But, the wording of their pages now is not SEO-friendly.

This dummy-page idea would give me an out: I could write some keyword-friendly pages on my own that are informative AND designed to attract traffic to the site, which I'm sure users would find very informative once they find it. The advantage is that the content would not need to be scrutinized to the same degree as the main pages of the site, they would be relevant to the content, but they would not appear in the site's main navigation, so they would not be highly visible pages.

This also raises the issue, if this is in fact spamming, that a large company can get away with it because my co-worker says that Google rankings jumped directly as a result of implementing this strategy.

I greatly appreciate any suggestions you might have.

Thank you & have a great day!
Paul.

[Markll]

I use text cloaking with my Flash sites to make them search engine friendly.

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[minstrel]

There is a Web Developer here who recommended I use "Dummy pages" to increase traffic when I asked him a question about SEO for a site I'm working on: www.gpitech.org. He admitted using the following technique on our company's website:

The content of each dummy page would be informative and focused on a specific keyword, while containing several links from the dummy page to the homepage, but not the other way around. A link to the Dummy page would only appear on the sitemap (among dozens of other links) and this way, he claims, it could not be considered spamming. He also claims that because the dummy page would have links to the homepage, both the dummy page AND the homepage would show up in search results on the targeted keywords.

Would you agree that this is not spamming? Do you see this technique as being any different from the "Doorway" page mentioned above? Although it is relevant content to the site, the "dummy page" is designed specifically for better search engine rankings.

Hi, Paul:

It's been a long day and I may be missing something here but what you describe doesn't sound like a "doorway page" or "spamming" the way most people would define those terms. You are just adding pages with unique content to your website. As long as the content is relevant (i.e., not just a long list of keywords without relevance to what the page is about), this is no different that adding pages on different topics related to whatever product or service your company is offering. The fact that you may be doing this with the intent of increasing search engine visibility and PR isn't an issue as long as you are adding something of value to the site.

However, I would suggest two changes:

1. having a regular "home" link in a menu system and perhaps a text link to the home page at the bottom of the page - don't overdue the number of links back to the home page because (a) that might be considered spamming, and (b) it won't help any more than one link in terms of spidering and indexing

2. I don't see any reason to hide these pages - in other words, if the added content is relevant to the site, feel free to link to it in your main menu system and from your site map