Black Hat LARGE Companies

[ihelpyou]

http://www.searchengineoptimizationsecrets.com/seo-news-121905.html

Only because of the holidays, and the plain fact I have been "real" busy the past month, this article got missed completely by "these" forums.

Someone sent me a link to the HR forums where they were discussing the article and the fact that big firms are spamming. That's the only reason I knew about this "today".

Contrary to that forums postings about how IHY is not discussing this article and the spam, I felt I needed to start discussing it. Funny how some forums "out" some things, and NOT OUT other things? hmmm.

We out everything and anyone or any website in here. Period.

Saw a post by a member over there that says maybe no one from IHY reads over at HR anymore? Guess what? You may be very right about that. I can assure you if ANYONE in this place knew about that article, someone would have started a thread about this 3 weeks ago. :)

[ihelpyou]

Funny it seems okay at some places to "out" large companies for spamming, but at the same places, it's not okay to "out" small companies for spamming? Seems to be a double standard, huh?

Speaking for these forums; I feel we are an equal opportunity "OUTER" of spam, no matter where the heck the spam is found, or what website the spam is found on, OR what SEO actually helped the website spam the search engines. We do any and all spam in here in case anyone wanted us to be more clear about this. :)

[Quadrille]

I hadn't seen it, but I can't say I'm particularly surprised. On the other hand, I doubt a little <noscript> violation will make a lot of difference to shopnbc's serps.

The article is as much about stupid SEOs as blackhearts, and I'm sure anyone with time on their hands could find plenty more. Dogs Bite Men; But We Already Knew That!

The real story - if there is one - is about what the SEs do about it, once reports are in (I'm assuming these folk report as well as celebrate?).

Remember about two years ago we had a discussion about a UK Big Store being dropped for three months by Google for spamming? Man Bites Dog - That's News!

I couldn't find the 'Slag Off IHY Discussion' - was that at HW - rhyming slang :rolleyes:

[Quadrille]

Found it. Cheese, Doug; that's one boring thread - even the IHY slagg-offs were average at best.

Leave 'em to it; keeps them off the streets ...

[Irony]

Knowing HR forum rules, I find it strange that their thread on the topic was allowed to live. I guess it's because it is started by Alan, and Alan is one of the admins.

Were a common member to do the same, the thread would have disappeared within 5 minutes... or at least edited to remove the URL of the article.... pot calling a kettle black.

As for the article itself, I should say nice find, but nothing new here: yes, big guys do spam. They are humans, too, and just like all other humans should be expected to cheat from time to time. I highly doubt they will be banned, but I hope that probably at least some of those sites will be cleaned up by their owners, as a result of this article published. Big guys should care about their reputation, shouldn't they?

[ihelpyou]

Most big guys have marketing guys with NO clue about search engines. My guess is that some SEO out there "let them" spam and really did not tell them the big risks involved. I highly doubt they did this without the help of someone else. Eventhough the spam is very 1999, big .com's live in a corporate box about things.

What should happen is that Google and other se's find out "who" the SEO is, and "OUT" that SEO as someone to avoid at all costs.

[Irony]

Looks like Robert G. Medford knows which company did this... just won't tell us. :(

I can understand why.

[ihelpyou]

Why not?

Tell Robert to email me about the "who". I'll gladly post the SEO in here. No prob.

As long as the info is "true", free speech is the law.

My guess is it's some big firm who is touted by the SEW crowd and the SES crowd. That's my guess. Could be wrong, but I highly doubt it. :D

[Irony]

You can email him yourself, as well. It's the author of the article in question :)

He even provided the "send your comment" link below the article itself.

[ihelpyou]

ah, thank you.

[JohnC]

Wow .. thanks Doug, I had not seen that either. I seem to only hit up HR a couple of times a month and during the holiday it fell off my schedule. :)

[WebSavvy]

Hadn't seen it either. I never read at HR.

I'm mostly here or over at Anthony's, and that's just when I have free time ... which these days is rare. Usually too much work and not enough time.

There are lots of big places that spam. Some have even been reported on Matt Cutts' blog and the post never appeared. Imagine that?

One that comes to mind was the one guy reporting About.com. Nothing ever happened with that and they're still spamming away. Meanwhile, sites that are committing lower levels of spam, are slapped, dropped, filtered, PR 0'd and all but tossed off the Internet.

Hardly seems fair. That's life I guess.

[ihelpyou]

icrossing.com

is the SEO who is helping "most" of those sites listed in the article. Don't ask me how I know..... I just know.

Check their site. ALL FLASH. This company is known anyway of a firm with no clue as to SEO'ing for organic listings. It's an advertising agency for the most part. It's the type of firm a large .com would go for who doesn't know the difference.

Matter of fact; They recently redesigned their entire site to make it completely of flash. Check this page of clients on the "old" design:

http://www.icrossing.com/company_we_keep/our_clients.htm

Same ones in that article? Yep.

Let's not misunderstand things; I'm not saying this firm is who is responsible for the spam on those client sites, as it could be anyone responsible, including the actual sites. But let's not kid ourselves either..................... isn't it the responsibility of the "Professional" SEO firm to make damn sure their client does not spam?

[JohnC]

I agree it does not seem fair.

However, I have been doing some thinking about this. Since we know most everything at Google is algorithmic and manual intervention is rare, maybe other positive factors override the spam of the big sites to allow for their listings.

Possibly, a top tier site would have so many positive listing credentials and the negative ones produced by the spam would not be enough to get it de-listed. The smaller sites would not have as much positive influence to their rankings to counteract the negative influence.

Just a though, if that made any sense at all. . hehe..

[maninderwalia]

Hi!
Which HR forums are you talking about?

Mani

[WebSavvy]

highrankings.com -> (IHY member Advisor)

[Danny]

I agree that it's most likely the work of an SEO who didn't tell them about the risks involved.
Big companies are just that. There's often so many departments involved with the sites and the content that the people responsable for the site promotion prefer not to touch the visible part of the site.
The responsable has to explain the need for changes to several departments/people involved. This varies from managers, copywriters, designers, financial dept and may even expand to plants abbroad ... some of them won't understand it, some of them will point at some SERP's where sites with blatant spam can be found at top spots.
The whole process for changing one little paragraph may take weeks or months to complete.

And then when some BH SEO comes along who has the solution for all their problems, "hidden text, hidden links, hidden anything" sounds like music from heaven in the ears of the persons or dept responsable for the visitor numbers.

Is it right ? no
Is it understandable ? yes
Do large companies spam more than small companies ? i don't think so. (I just spotted a garden architect at #3 who used his main phrase dozens of times... white text on white background)

I was very amused reading the thread at HR, especially the posts with the conspiracy theories. Some even believed IHY is part of the cover up process :) lol

Somehow i think Google is to blame too.
John could have a point that the positive listing credentials are so much higher than the negative ones to get de-listed or maybe the hidden text simply gets discounted.
Anyway, sites with spam should not be on top. Too often people look at the top ranking sites to see how the did "it" and use them as an exemple for their own "seo techniques".
If you read the entire HR thread you'll notice that even some (experienced ?) seo's start to think that hidden text can't get a site banned anymore.

I'd say to Google :
ban the SEO permanently,
warn the affected companies (both large and small) and ban them if the spam continues,
be more severe when it comes to spam (zero tolerance),
link to the guidelines from the homepage,
list the banned sites and set exemples,
and watch the Web become clean in a while.

[ihelpyou]

Alan pointed out with research that the hidden text "was" indexed and "was" used in one case with one phrase. That tells me that the text is used by Google.

That can also tell me that just because a site in listed at the top, does not mean it will stay listed at the top. Google just may not have got to that listing as of yet. There could be many reasons.

I agree. I do think "any" SEO proven to be the culprit of should be penalized and/or banned. It's truly up to the SEO to make sure no spam occurs. Most websites do not have a clue. A true Professional should reveal all risks involved, and should be able to explain very clearly exactly what is at risk, and the risks involved in totality. It does not matter how many departments or who might get offended at that large corp. In the end, it's the entire industry who gets hurt, along with the actual client, as who does that client blame in the end if their site is penalized? They blame their SEO and they also blame this industry. Why does that hurt this industry? Because that client talks down about the industry which gives further ferver to others about this industry. Spam hurts all of us. Allowing sites to spam hurts all of us as well. SEO's who spam hurts all of us as well. Anyone who thinks it doesn't matter as it's "someone" else's problem is living in a world I'm not familiar with.

[Connie]

Although I don't agree with it I think it is a fact of life that big sites get some preferential treatment by Google.

There are 1000s of sites using hidden text that have not been banned at this point.

It would be great if Google banned a site like GM for using hidden text at least for a few days. Reality is it probably won't happen.

In fact Matt Cutts linked to a site today from his blog Matt Cutts Blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-earth-for-macs/) to a page at Apple (http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/). For me at least most of the text on the page is difficult to read. There is one section of text that I can tell is there but can't read at all.

Scroll down the page until you see this link www.spec.org. Tell me if you can read the text above or below the link. I can't. The only way I could read it was to highlight the page.

To me that is hidden text. Yet Matt Cutts is linking to that page which I believe has hidden text on it.

I guess this brings up another question.
When is hidden text hidden text. When the text is not readable but you can tell it is there, or if the text matches the back ground color exactly.

Is legitimate text in <noscript> tags that could be legitimate but hidden behind a graphic so that a viewer can only see part of it hidden?

Though they should I don't think we are going to see Google treating large websites like GM or Apple the same way they treat me. At least if hidden text is the only issue.

Do I think that preferential treatment to be wrong? YES. Do I expect anything to be done? NO.

Will I stop following the Guidelines in defiance? NO.
I do think "any" SEO proven to be the culprit of should be penalized and/or banned.
I agree but not sure how you would ban a SEO and not sure how A SE would prove that the work was the result of the SEO.