Is This Situation Considered Spam?

[Sharon & Roy]

With the recent addition of Google adding a Web Form (http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html) and Buttons on their Toolbar (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/t1117/s.html) for reporting "SPAM" ... we would like to get your opinions on the following (real) situation.

While reading one of our newsletters we came across a rather thought provoking article which contained the following quote ...

I operate several Web sites. Among the many search strings bringing visitors in, of no use to either the searcher or me, are:

• Victor mousetraps (we don't sell mousetraps, Victor or otherwise)

• Charles Ponzi (there's a superb bio on the Net; why come here for two lines?)

• Hannibal (we are not an info site on Hannibal)

• Matteo Ricci (he's listed in a bibliography; there is no info to speak of)

• Smalltalk (we have tech info on only one Smalltalk application)

I am faintly embarrassed by drawing in these searchers, when I have no useful information for them. Their time was wasted – needlessly. Furthermore, they hog my bandwidth, and clog my log files with useless data. (With better search skills, they might never have arrived at my pages. But I'm not a member of the "they're so stoopid" school of thought. Anyway there are plenty of genius-level people who just aren't wired correctly for search.)

Then there are the searchers I would just as soon not know about at all, like the ones looking for:

• stalking on the Internet

The phrase that was bringing them in was "Marketing Myths Stalking the Internet". Potentially even a Google exact-phrase search would have led a searcher to that page, since Google treats "on" and "the" as stopwords, generally ignoring them even if they are within quote marks.

Now then, this situation raises the following questions ...

1.) If I do a search for ... Victor mousetraps ... and the page belonging to the person we just quoted is listed at #1 (or anywhere in the top SERPs) and I click on that page to learn more about or buy the product and then don't find any such relevant information, is that considered SPAM? (When you define SPAM as a page that ranks high in the SERPs for a keyword term that does not have relevant information about that term.)

2.) Would I be "justified" in reporting that page as SPAM using Google's Web Form or Toolbar?

3.) Would a "Newbie" be able to discern that this page is the result of "intentional" or "accidental" SPAMMING or not, or would they not see it as SPAMMING at all? Would someone "Experienced" be able to?

4.) Is there such a thing as "accidental" SPAMMING? If there is, is it still SPAM?

[markymark]

This is a situation that pretty much happens to us all and it is clearly not spam. Would anyone think it was ? I would doubt it very much.

Indeed, it wouldn't matter whether someone thought it was spam and reported it or not as even a cursory glance at the site would tell you otherwise. I know some SEOs who point out these kind of happenings on their own sites to search engines as flaws in the SE's algo. I know I have been in contact with Excite several times over hits for terms like uk university ranking. Unfortunately, I seem to have more staff than Excite and there are only two of us at 1 Design 4 Life.

[Mel]

As Mark mentions this is a common situation and IMO is because there are not enough quality pages in the Search Engines index to present the searcher with better information and it thus fetches results from lesser pages.

The fault here is the search engines' for not finding the pages the searcher needs and cannot be considered spamming by the owner of the site.

[MsSearch]

I don't think it's a spamming issue but an algo/relevancy problem on behalf of the search engines.

[ihelpyou]

I agree with all the above.

When you do the search, and if the results all look bad in the top ten, you simply click on the frowny face on the Google toolbar to let Google know you were not satisfied with the search results page.

[Advisor]

We all understand that the page in question is not spam, but I think what S&R are asking is whether or not Google will think that you're saying it's spam if you push the little sad face on the toolbar. This is a very good question. What types of sites do they want you to report to them? Sites you just don't like? Sites that are spamming the engines? Or as in this case, sites that come up for the wrong search terms?

I think only Google can answer this for sure and it would be a good one to ask them.

Jill

[Advisor]

Interestingly enough, I was just looking at my logs and apparently in Lycos, my site ranks number 10 for wallaby desultory exclude whiz thou

:green:

How's that for great SEO!!! Think of all the hits I'll get.

Jill

[MazY]

Originally posted by webwhiz
Interestingly enough, I was just looking at my logs and apparently in Lycos, my site ranks number 10 for wallaby desultory exclude whiz thou
Jill

You steal all of my best phrases!

[ihelpyou]

What Google wants is this,..... When doing a search, if you see a site in the results that is using spammy techniques, either go to the site and then click the frown face, OR fill out their spam form with all the info.

When doing a search, if you see the results page as not relevant, they want you to click on the frowny face at that point. This is the way they want it. Very simple. You are voting for the bad search results or voting for the good search results.

If your concern is with a particular site, you go to that site and then click either frowny or smiley.

[Sharon & Roy]

Originally posted by webwhiz

I think what S&R are asking is whether or not Google will think that you're saying it's spam if you push the little sad face on the toolbar. This is a very good question.

Yes indeed, Jill, that is EXACTLY what we were asking.

When we bring up topics for discussion, we will more than likely have the End User or Newbie in mind and the answers we seek will be best answered from that perspective.

We all understand that the page in question is not spam

Jill, if you mean, "WE" as in all of us "Experienced" SEOs, then YES, we all understand that the page in question is not SPAM.

But, if you mean, "WE" as in "ALL of us" (End Users and Newbies included), then NO, we do NOT all understand that the page in question is not SPAM ... And therein lies the dilemma.

And that was the focus of our questions.

You see, of course "we" can tell that if we are looking for a page about "spears" (asparagus) and we get nothing but pages about (Britney Spears) mixed with a few about (A weapon consisting of a long shaft with a sharply pointed end) that they are not SPAM pages by OUR definition.

But what about by the definition that an End User or Newbie has adopted? We suggest that they will NOT "initially" know any better, so they will click the sad face and report it as SPAM simply because they expected the results to be relevant to THEIR search term.

Now the whole situation becomes quite confusing, but before we go further, would you agree with this definition of a SPAM page?


"A page that ranks high in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for a keyword term that does not have relevant information about that term."


And would you also agree, that since the average End User (Newbie or not) would NOT know and/or be aware of the current SPAM Techniques used by unethical Web Masters/SEOs that they will most likely have the aforementioned definition of SPAM as their only (or #1) definition of SPAM?

Well then, if you do agree with both those statements, then is the likelihood that the aforementioned (non-relevant to asparagus) pages will recieve SPAM reports against it? Wouldn't the "sad face" get clicked a bunch of times, and how will Google determine that the End User was not satisfied that the #1 page (or the first few pages for that matter) for spears was NOT at all relevant to what THEY were searching for, which was asparagus?

Would you think that it would be "fair" that the "Britney Spears" pages get "sad face" clicks in that manner? We are not saying that they will get lots and lots of clicks this way, we are just asking if it is fair? Plus, this is just one example of such "accidental SPAM" (so chosen for a lack of knowing what else to call it or by what term to refer to this situation as) and we are sure you can envision many other similar instances where sad face clicks may not be favorable for the pages in question.

[ihelpyou]

Believe me, Google knows all the downsides to this and have already considered all the concerns. They are experimenting. That is all.

Besides, please read my post above again. If you vote on the results, you are voting for the whole ten results. If you vote for the site or against, you are clicking thru to the site and then voting. There is a big difference.

[markymark]

I haven't used this facility at Google myself, but I presume as they are trying to improve the relevancy of search results, then they will record what search term was entered. As I said before even a cursory glance would tell you that there was no attempt to spam.

This is a non issue as far as I'm concerned.

Furthermore, if someone types in spears when looking for asparagus spears, then you would expect to see results for both Britney and for weapons. After all, they are relevant to the search.

[Mel]

Google has two ways to notify them about pages you don't like:

1. The spam report link at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
and
2. The smiley faces on the google Toolbar.

The first option is definitely for reporting spam but as I understand the second it is for voting your likes and dislikes about a particular site, page, search or even the new toolbar feature. This being the case clicking on the smiley face is NOT the same as reporting a spam page.

I would suggest that if you want to report spam use the spam reporting feature, but if you are happy or unhappy with the results of a search or anyhting else use the feedback buttons.

I for one am not going to wonder about how newbies are going to use the smiley faces since if they're that new I doubt if they will know about the toolbar let alone the the unpublished beta version with smiley faces.

[Advisor]

Originally posted by Mel
I for one am not going to wonder about how newbies are going to use the smiley faces since if they're that new I doubt if they will know about the toolbar let alone the the unpublished beta version with smiley faces. Yes, I was going to say exactly the same thing. The toolbar (especially the one with the smileys) is not something newbies will have.

And the "we" that I was referring to in my post meant we SEO's in this forum and others that might use the toolbar.

I think Doug summed it up pretty well, also. It's simply a beta thing that Google is trying out. They're not gonna go banning pages that come up wrong in the SERPS through no fault of their own. They (hopefully) will use the info to tweak their algo, that's all. Of course this will spoil our fun of seeing all the kooky phrases we rank high for (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1213)...but I guess that's okay!

Jill

[MazY]

I'm with me ol' mucker MarkyMark (Is there a way I can start all my posts off with that without having to keep typing it in?:) )

Anyone who enters just spears when looking for information about asparagus spears should expect to see a very mixed bag of results, all relevant to some type of spears.

It is for this very reason that I enter "UK" after most search terms. The term "web designers" alone can bring a whole array of results (Mainly US based) but still relevant to the term "web designers".

For the guy who wanted to count how many pages there are in Google's index that contain the word spears, then it is even more relevant and gave him exactly what he needed!

Methinks you're concentrating on a non-issue.

[Alan Perkins]

Hi Sharon & Roy

People can choose to use Google's feedback how they like - it's up to Google how they untangle the mess. [Personally, I agree with Mel's analysis]

The root of your question is "What is spam?" That's what this whole forum is about! But here's my tuppence-worth.

Spam occurs when somebody/something is delivered something that they/it did not solicit.

In the context of search engines, I think there are two kinds of spam: search engine spam (which webmasters deliver to search engines) and search engine user spam (which search engines deliver to users).

Search engine spam: occurs when a search engine spider is fed content designed only for that spider to see. The spider "solicits" human-readable content. (The details are a lot more involved, but not necessary to go into here). Search engine spam occurs when the spider is crawling, once per spam page

Search engine user spam: is when a user receives a result they were not expecting in response to their query. This can occur many times, each time the same page is fed in response to a search for which it was not relevant. The user "solicits" relevant information.

I believe the nub of your question, Sharon & Roy, centres on search engine user spam. There are three fundamental reasons this might occur:

1) Search engine spam was used to mislead the search engine spider
2) The search engine's interface, algorithm or freshness was not up to the job of requesting or executing the search
3) The user simply did not enter a good enough (i.e. refined) query

These three reasons correspond to the three parties in a search: web site, search engine and user. As responsible webmasters/designers, our role is to avoid making reason 1 a reason that our site(s) are offered inappropriately. By allowing search engines to focus less on search engine spam and more on improving their algorithms, the chances of reason 2 will be lessened. That just leaves reason 3...