« At the Intersection of Language and Creativity is Search | Main | Revisiting 404 Error Pages That Show 200 Codes »
Truth and Consequences in Spam Reporting
February 21, 2006
When it comes to spam reporting, I'm like the annoying art student cliché: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.
Last week, I was doing a manual check for a pretty competitive phrase, for which my client has worked its way up to anywhere from the third to the fifth spot at Google. I noticed a site I'd never seen before, sitting in the top three. The description looked valid, but the URL was a red flag - a .cz (Czech) country code. The Czech Republic represents a strong, beautiful people, but let's just say that it's not particularly known for the query terms I typed.
I clicked through the link, and after a bit of address dancing, my browser settled down at a URL whose very name proclaimed its expertise in "meds." There, the left column treated me to numerous options for curing what ailed me, from Levitra to Viagra to Lipitor and Phentermine. The right column offered me ads relating to my original query, scraped from several third-tier PPC engines.
But this wasn't what Google saw. I went back to the original Google SERP, disabled JavaScript (thanks PrefBar), and clicked the result again. Now I saw it. A plain vanilla page of about 1000 words, about 530 of which were terms from my two-word query. That's what Google saw, and that's what made the page rank in the top three.
I hate scrapers. They're the shifty kids who leach onto smart kids and copy their homework right before class starts. The thing about scrapers is, the searcher almost never ends up seeing content that she's searching for. To me, that's the line in the sand. Hyper-aggressive SEO - whether it's IP-based cloaking, JavaScript doorways, or old-school keyword stuffing - is something I generally don't report - as long as the query intent is eventually satisfied with real content. (And I don't even report scrapers unless they're beating a client, because I don't have the time.)
Some SEOs would criticize me for reporting any sites at all. Some would criticize me for my lax attitude and not reporting enough. NPR's Daniel Schorr says that when you anger people evenly on both sides of the issue, you're probably on the right track.
I reported the site within a couple hours of finding it. A few days after I made the spam report, the Czech domain had disappeared, receding into the cold Prague night. I would love to take full credit for its exit, but I can't. I'll never know whether it was my reporting, or if Google's algorithm caught the site on its own.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at February 21, 2006 11:27 PM
Intrapromote: [ Case studies | SEO services | Bios ]
Trackback Pings
To TrackBack this entry, use the following URL:
http://seoblog.intrapromote.com/mt-tb.cgi/166
Comments
Aloha,
I just surfed in from the Stuntdubl blog. Todd recommended you and I thought that with a name like SEO speedwagon it must be a winner. ;^)
But anyway… I once reported a Spam website to Google every week for a few months just to see how long it would take to be removed. I gave up after about three months and it is still there about a year later. I’m glad you had success.
Posted by: Hawaii Seo at February 27, 2006 09:25 PM
Dave,
Thanks for coming over! I actually need to write a follow-up post to the spam post, because just a day or two ago, the spammy site was back - same domain, different page. So the streamers and confetti were a bit premature.
BTW, your site pretty much sold me on Hawaii.
Posted by: erik at February 28, 2006 03:45 AM
Your site has very much liked me. I shall necessarily tell about him to the friends.
Posted by: gambling-n-online.xevb2.com at June 23, 2006 04:23 PM
Very good reading. Peace until next time.
WaltDe
Posted by: WaltDe at August 31, 2006 02:10 PM