Yahoo! Talks BlackHat Optimization And Search As Media

[Garrett]

I had lunch with Tim Mayer of Yahoo yesterday. I'd heard he was "looking for me," at PubCon one night in the hotel bar, and figured it was because we broke news on the SiteMatch product a little earlier than Yahoo would have liked. So I kind of avoided him after that :)

But he caught up with me in New York and we sat down for a "little chat."

Once we cleared the air we had an interesting half an hour of conversation ranging from blackhat seo techniques to the future of AltaVista and AllTheWeb.

In certain forums, he said, where veteran members discuss blackhat seo techniques freely, newer members use these techniques on their own sites and then get banned. I asked Tim about somehow warning webmasters that they're using blackhat techniques, thereby protecting those who inadvertently cross the line.

He said, "we do warn them. We ban them."

He pointed out first how difficult notifying offenders would be, given that webmasters often falsify their whois data. Secondly, he said that every blackhat technique has an arguably legitimate use, even cloaking. (Though 95% of the time he sees such techniques it's spam.)

Also, issuing warnings would notify optimizers where the "spam lines" are, meaning that if he told BobsTravelWorld.com that they have too many links on a page, Bob would be able to bring that link count to just under the maximum amount Yahoo allows. (Not that the number of links on the page is or isn't something Yahoo's bot uses to flag spam - just an example Tim used.)

Tim also mentioned that alltheweb and AltaVista could soon have their own distinct algorithms and indices. The results will still be relevant, he said, but different.

This reminded me of Greg Jarboe's "search as media" concept that rocked my world last December. The concept was obviously not new to Tim - he said Fast, one of the many search engines he's worked on, originally started as a search engine for women.

Though he didn't touch on timeline or any other specifics, he did make it clear that alltheweb and AltaVista will eventually have different results.

I think that's smart, especially in light of Bob Davis's remarks (Bob Davis sold Lycos for 12.5 billion in '99 and now funds companies through Highland Capital) in an earlier session that the future of search is in verticals. I'm excited to see how Yahoo positions their less prominent engines, and what search products they develop around them.

To show my appreciation to Tim for chatting with me (without pr around even), today is officially my all Yahoo search day. I'll let you know if I decide to change my homepage.

[bergy]

Garret,

Just wondering, what is the shift Yahoo! is planning on doing in April.

Bergy

[cyberious]

Speaking of "somehow warning webmasters".... what in tarnation is that? Blackhat SEO techniques... Never heard of it, hope I don't wake up with it one morning, and hope it didn't spread to others.

Really. I am unaware of it. How do I find out more about these 007 techniques and how to make sure I'm not breaking the rules?

[cbp]

what in tarnation is that? Blackhat SEO techniques... Never heard of it

Blackhat SEO = spam

CBP

[announce]

It seems that the word Spam is just plain over spammed and has to many "one size fits all" uses.

Search Engine Spam is something totally different.
1.> Hyper-theading hundreds of pages that Hyper-thead to hundreds of generated pages inside of an invisble layer hidden within the desired page, and all of the topics, body and links are tuned your targeted product.

2.> Pretending to be a search engine and relevent to the search subject, yet all pages eventually lead to your target.

3.> Content overload, beating the relevance requirement, the link requirement, the keyword to relevance requirement and so on then cross-linking similar pages.

That should give you a picture . . . . .

[ritaperdue]

Can you tell me what the blackhat techniques are? Thanks.

[announce]

Can you tell me what the blackhat techniques are?

Yes, "blackhat techniques" are underhanded and sneeky ways that are used to gain better position than a standard optimized page would be ranked.

The Blackhat's are the Bad Guys and they get busted and de-listed, blackhole and without warning either.

Not a good practice.

<G>

[Mel]

Can you tell me what the blackhat techniques are?

Yes, "blackhat techniques" are underhanded and sneeky ways that are used to gain better position than a standard optimized page would be ranked.

The Blackhat's are the Bad Guys and they get busted and de-listed, blackhole and without warning either.

Not a good practice.

<G>

well..... thats what the search engines would like you to believe but if you look at the SERPs of almost any engine, you will find lots of topranking pages using techniques which could be considered black hat.

[myvasco]

Am a newbie to this forum (not to the seo-world, though ;-) - you would light up my day, if i could get some hints what this sentence means:

"This reminded me of Greg Jarboe's "search as media" concept that rocked my world last December. The concept was obviously not new to Tim - he said Fast, one of the many search engines he's worked on, originally started as a search engine for women."

Where can I find further information on Greg Jarboe's article / talk?
And is there more information on that FAST was developed as search engine for women. What implication had this gendering on the technology, design, output (less porn-sites?)???

Cheers,

reg

[Slurp]

FAST was not created as a search engine for women. It was actually Looksmart that was originally targetted at Women. Garrett and I were eating lunch so it was hard for him to take notes I think.