Yahoo! Updates its Spam Guidelines

bhartzer · #1 (**permalink**) 07-23-2004, 01:19 PM

Yahoo! has updated their page titled "What are your guidelines on spam?":

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearc...etions-05.html

I think they were due for an update, and I'm actually surprised to see that they don't like "Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation" and consider it to be spam.

What do you think?

JohnF · #2 (**permalink**) 07-23-2004, 06:22 PM

Regarding pop ups, I would define one as excessive.

ronniethedodger · #3 (**permalink**) 07-23-2004, 07:06 PM

First off, how do they detect pop-ups in the first place? If they can detect some forms of popups, how do they plan on detecting all forms?

Is a popup for, let's say, a link for a definition to a word or some form of help system (this is common) would that be considered a pop-up that degrades the user experience?

I read thru some more of the pages they "do not want to have". A lot of it is painted with a broad stroke. It seems to me that this is more of "wish list" than anything. Some of the techniques needed to detect these wishes probably do not exist or are down the road a piece. I am going to assume they will be relying on human intervention on all (if not most) of these.

DarrenC · #4 (**permalink**) 07-23-2004, 07:10 PM

Interesting.

It's a shame that a search engine does not mention spam results, hidden text etc in it's guidelines.

Some of the rules are very vague. How are they going to find websites with excessive popup's and badly designed websites?

What about if your not a good web designer and learning, are you not getting listed in Yahoo?

Alot to work on to be even a thousand miles near Google.

atimmins · #5 (**permalink**) 07-23-2004, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page

Is'nt every site designed to do this to a certain degree? If you have a sales oriented site, your goal is to direct the user through an actual "Sale". By providing sponspored listings before the SERP's is'nt Yahoo violating their own rule, by leading the user to paid advertizing?

The fact is every site should have a logical flow to it! I'm sure, or hope, they mean re-direct pages but as ronniethedodger pointed out their copy is very broad.

Andilinks · #6 (**permalink**) 07-23-2004, 08:44 PM

I think the guidelines are entirely reasonable and if too broad--well, it's their directory...

Quote:

Is a popup for, let's say, a link for a definition to a word or some form of help system (this is common) would that be considered a pop-up that degrades the user experience?

Certainly not. But they mean pop-ups that open a new browser window without a link being clicked, not the tool-tip type css pop-ups or actual links.

I think their last guideline is a good summary and probably could stand alone without the others.

Quote:

Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience.

Andi

Chatmag · #7 (**permalink**) 07-23-2004, 08:47 PM

I"m sure that Yahoo! (! added to avoid the Yahoo! police) means pages that redirect, not pages that have links to other sites or pages within the same site.

Recently I found one site that was spamming the results on both Yahoo! and Google, reported it as spam, and within a week both were delinked. The site in question loaded and had a 15 second time set to redirect, most likely to avoid the spiders picking it up as a redirect.

Our site consistently ranks in the top 10 results for a given search, and being a Directory, our stock in trade is linking to other sites, so we'd be in a heap of trouble if they meant directing to other sites via links, rather than redirects.

As to layout/style, we're a plain and simple site, done so to be compatible with the users worldwide that do not have a high speed connection. I've seen some horrible sites though, one person just sent me a site to check out, it was bright yellow with red lettering, and was supposed to be a debt consolidation site (the site was an obvious scam). Google is plain and simple. Sometimes K.I.S.S. is best.

DrTandem1 · #8 (**permalink**) 07-24-2004, 01:06 AM

What they mean by "Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page" are pages with the meta refresh tag that automatically redirect or with a script that does the same. So, the page could be loaded with content for "XYZ" and then actually take you to another page/site with unrelated content "ABC."

ravnic · #9 (**permalink**) 07-24-2004, 01:20 AM

I think the last three are the ones they changed

Misuse of competitor names
Multiple sites offering the same content
Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

the misuse of competitors names is the one most people are getting in trouble for.

debtfree95 · #10 (**permalink**) 07-24-2004, 03:22 AM

hmm... making guidelines are easy but how will they keep a track of this, everything is so relative.

I wish all were good and a fair market to swin and competete.

TrafficProducer · #11 (**permalink**) 07-24-2004, 05:06 AM

What do you think? ...

Yahoo email boosted the space to 100Mb, good now my account can cope with all the Spam that gets through their filters, (Tongue in cheek)

Andilinks · #12 (**permalink**) 07-25-2004, 05:05 AM

Yahoo! can make vague guidelines and use them keep some webmasters honest. Whether or not Yahoo! can track these guidelines and enforce them is irrelevant if there is some deterrent effect.

In any case if the guidelines are vague enough it will keep blackhat SEO's and other shady characters from arguing about how many Yahoo's can dance on the head of a pin...

I understand that when one's livelihood depends on results there is a desire to know exactly where the line is drawn so the greatest advantage can be taken. But Yahoo! has different priorities and will never do what webmasters want them to do.

Andi

Artyom · #13 (**permalink**) 07-26-2004, 06:00 AM

I believe a good idea for Yahoo team would be read threads like this one and summarize all precises people believe would be good to include to the guidelines.

After all sometimes it's a bit hard to come up with real accurate difinitions.

Brittany · #14 (**permalink**) 07-27-2004, 09:18 PM

We've just deleted a thread in which a member was bragging about fooling Yahoo, and we've also deleted several comments from this thread.

While it is not the responsibility of WebProWorld to make sure all 47,000 of our members are not trying to deceive the search engines, discussions in which members brag about using such techniques do make the forums look bad.

If you stumble across such a thread, you are free to criticize the techniques used - but please make sure your comments are in compliance with the forum rules. The moderators will be forced to remove any unnecessary language, name-calling, mud-slinging, etc., even though you may have only the best intentions in mind.

We do ask you to contact either a moderator or site admin privately including a link to the thread in question and we will look into the problem further.