Threadwatch Definition of Spam

[ihelpyou]

LOL Too funny:

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6200

Keep in mind the thread was started by a person who scraped the content of other websites, and showed "their" Google Adsense on the pages of other sites.

Notice all the posts in that thread. Even Danny Sullivan is waaaay off base with his definition. He says (paraphrasing) :

It's up to the search engine. Some spam does not get pulled by the engine, so it must be okay. Other spam does get pulled, so it's not okay and is spam.

Now that is ridiculous. The search engine guidelines "clearly" define what spam is according to them. It makes no difference whatsoever if spam is in the se results. Just because it is not pulled yet does not mean it isn't spam.

I would never had started this thread if that jasonD character hadn't used my name in that post and made some ridiculous statement in the process.

I see lots of jealousy in this industry. I'm sooooo happy that so many people see me as a threat. That's my goal in this industry. I will attain my goals. You can take that to the bank.

Other's out there trying to define spam are letting us all know just how naive they are. They try to confuse and obscure the issue of spam to fit in with their overall agenda in the industry. People who claim "whiteHat" but still try to lump all blackhats and whitehats together in this industry, are not whitehats at all. Sullivan's definition of spam fits that category to a tee as he and the firm he works for has no desire to separate the blackhats as he and the firm he works for make advertising monies from blackhats. Many so-called whitehats make money from blackhats via advertising. That's the biggest problem this industry has.

[nuthin]

well Doug, if i remember correctly you seem to think http://www.foundagency.com.au isn't spamming by using text link anchor text advertising through ( [www.counterdata.com ) code they put on web sites, that download there free hit counter? if i remember correctly.

so my definition of spam would be different than yours, no?

unless http://au.search.yahoo.com/search?p=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.foundagency.com.au&meta - you looked into it a bit more an agreed with me?

people won't agree because they have different agendas and i admire them for the effort.

now don't everyone rush off and start to advertise with these rogue 'hit counter' sites, as i'm sure Google will give whats coming to them and there 'advertisers' shortly. :rolleyes:

[Dan0]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Notice all the posts in that thread. Even Danny Sullivan is waaaay off base with his definition. He says (paraphrasing) :

It's up to the search engine. Some spam does not get pulled by the engine, so it must be okay. Other spam does get pulled, so it's not okay and is spam.

Now that is ridiculous. The search engine guidelines "clearly" define what spam is according to them. It makes no difference whatsoever if spam is in the se results. Just because it is not pulled yet does not mean it isn't spam.
That explains why people keep whining that the search engines are always changing the rules on them. If you think the rules are based on what the search engines catch, then you're gonna think that way.

Your paraphrasing of Danny's comment looks a bit more like your opinion of him, than his opinion as stated in that thread.
the first word's in Danny Sullivan's post:
spam is whatever a search engine decides it to be

[JohnC]

The whole issue of "Spam isn't spam till it's removed" is a total load of BS. Any one of us can go on Google right this minute and find a site with internationaly recongnized spam techniques .. hidden text, keyword stuffing etc.

But DS had to support that crap... geesh ..

DaveN actually had it right, that must mean there is no spam in any engine. <sarcasm>Right!</sarcasm> :|

Actually DanO the first words were his post title ..i'm with dominicWhich in the previous post spouted the whole "Spam isn't spam till it's removed" dribble.


<edit>to more accurately quote dominic

[Connie]

The whole issue of "Spam isn't spam till it's removed" is a total load of BS.
Agreed. Kind of like saying a thief is not a thief until he gets caught.

[ihelpyou]

nuthin; I never looked into what you mention in detail.

but you say you admire spammers and those who back them because of their efforts?

Boy; I don't admire them at all as they are what's wrong with this industry.

And Dan; That's not correct. I paraphrased Danny correctly. That's exactly how he sees things.

I find it odd and strange and frankly pathetic that no members in that place are disputing what ALL those posts are saying. That tells all of us the state of this industry. It's in a downward spiral real fast if this industry cannot do something about the bogus and crappy BS that is posted and out there.

We give kudos to scrapers and scammers and spammers. Nice job industry! And you wonder why this industry has the bad reputation it has?

[nuthin]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
nuthin; I never looked into what you mention in detail.

but you say you admire spammers and those who back them because of their efforts?

Boy; I don't admire them at all as they are what's wrong with this industry.



i don't admire spammers, i admire there ignorance. :D

i just think that alot of people that are labeled spammers or are outed on forums and websites.. are the easy prey for people to take out there anger on.

alot of these people aren't really effecting the serp's to my knowledge in any sort of capicity... the only really one that had any sort of unwilling customer base to speak of was traffic power.

alot of people are still in the dark ages about what SEO/SEM is, heck we still get people asking crap about "search engine submission".

the problem is people in this industry are too lazy to try and educate a potential customer and they tend to get back into saying the easy stuff to a potential customer.

they just want there money & when results on Google aren't showing after "3 months" as promised, they get shitty & thats when the whole industry gets a bad name.

[ihelpyou]

alot of these people aren't really effecting the serp's to my knowledge in any sort of capicity... the only really one that had any sort of unwilling customer base to speak of was traffic power.
Sure they affect the serps. They affect this entire industry on a daily basis. They affect the entire internet on a daily basis. Spam reaches far and wide and is the biggest detriment to any search engines existence.
alot of people are still in the dark ages about what SEO/SEM is, heck we still get people asking crap about "search engine submission".
Agreed.
the problem is people in this industry are too lazy to try and educate a potential customer and they tend to get back into saying the easy stuff to a potential customer.
Agreed.

And yes, I agree that the industry over-promises and under-delivers. One reason is that anyone can jump in to this industry and claim a designer or SEO or both, and do so to simply take the money. Some of us know that you have to "understate" what you can do to help people and then over-deliver. The problem is that when understating, you might lose that site to a spammer who is over-stating..... 6 months later that person is crying in a forums about how his site was penalized.

It's some people over at threadwatch and elsewhere that make this industry the pathetic industry it's becoming.

[Connie]

Doing a little digging I agree that http://www.foundagency.com.au is using Spam techniques.

A few years ago a company in my industry suddenly dominated the SERPS for a two word phase that was only remotely related to their site.

Thanks to the detective work of Manisha she discovered that they were buying links from a company like www.counterdata.com.

After about 2 years the company was banned. I mean doing a site:domain.com produced no results found.

SE Spam is what each SE says it is. Just because they have not found it or taken action against a particular site does not mean the site is not using Spammy techniques.

[nuthin]

& when companies like foundagency are highly placed under our industries leading SEM/SEO related keywords

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=search+engine+marketing&meta=
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=search+engine+optimisation&meta=
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=pay+per+click+advertising&meta=
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=pay+per+click+&meta=
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=search+engine+optimization&meta=

it's gotta make you wonder how long they will last.
it's been a while now.

you see.. companies like this example would have expected to wait 9 months or so for all those wonderful anchor links to "be counted and weighted" by Google.

now by showing up for these industry leading keywords, they would still be reaping the rewards that would come associated with such placement on Google.

sneaky ... but very easy to find.

Google should kill the network offering such offers and all sites using them.

[ihelpyou]

Okay, I've looked. Pure spam indeed.

Google should zap them right now.

[ihelpyou]

<!-- CounterData.com Code START --><a href="http://www.foundagency.com.au" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.counterdata.com/count.php?page=49936&style=0505013&nbdigits=7" alt="weekend thalasso" border="0" ></a><br><a href="http://www.foundagency.com.au" title="" target="_blank" style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: #000000; text-decoration: none;">weekend thalasso</a><font style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: #000000; text-decoration : none;"> Counter</font><!-- CounterData.com -->

That's crap. That's spam.

http://www.exxxtremepixels.com/stats.php

That's a page the code is on. It shows a backlink in Google to foundagency.com. The code is done in such a way to make sure all search engines pick up the link easily. Scroll to the bottom of that page above to see the image displayed. It's a direct link to the front page of www.foundagency.com There is no doubt about the intentions of this.

[nuthin]

makes you cringe when you hear Google's supposed to be working on a way to know if links are natural and what not, when you find something like this.

i find it very difficult to believe why Googlebot wouldn't have picked up on a pattern for this type of anchor text spam?

i have my eyes open and can clearly see a linking pattern that you would have thought Googlebot would have flagged? even though Googlebot ain't a human. :D

by just varying the anchor and having there links on what looks to be like a pretty big network of different sites on different IP's, different themes, different authorities.. they managed to game Google, very effectively.

this isn't the only web site.. when i was looking i saw quite a few more benefiting from this.

[nuthin]

why would they want to rank under weekend thalasso?
thats just a weird one. :D

oh trust me, these sort of sites are not short of any "advertisers" ready to abuse there system for Google gain.

http://www.amazingcounters.com/advertise.php

get a code from them, you will see some of there advertisers too. :)

[nuthin]

here's an example for you lazy ppl.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.amazingcounters.com"><img border="0" src="http://c5.amazingcounters.com/counter.php?i=1096844&c=3290845" alt="Counter"></a><br><small><a href="http://www.allonlinecoupons.com/st/radio-shack/"><font color="#999999">Radio Shack</font></a></small></div>

now let's see the benefit for the advertiser...

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=radio+shack&meta=

do we see that site ranking now for that term ?

there not going to be happy with me for letting people know about this.

i better go into hiding.8)

[ihelpyou]

Pathetic stuff.

[nuthin]

i just hope by releasing this public i haven't opened up a bigger can of worms for Google.

hopefully they will find a way to combat this sort of stuff and fast.. especially if they feel these web sites are unfairly manipulating there results.

[Connie]

Google should zap them right now.
Agreed but that does not seem to be the way it works. It looks to me like banning is done on a site by site basis most of the time.

[nuthin]

they should do it the easy way.
ZAP all the sites which have those particular hit counters on em'

do a public message on Matt Cutt's blog and refer to linking to 'bad neighborhoods' in there guidelines and go on a rant about some crap.

and watch all the law suits center around the hit counters for getting a whole bunch of sites that use there counter, banned from Google. :P they probably covered themselves though.

i'm a big meanie.. i know. :p

but people need to get more serious with what they let people put on there site.

[JohnC]

How long has this program been going on? There is a chance that some of these sites just wanted a counter on their page and had the misfortune of picking the wrong one.

That said, maybe instead of banning all these sites using the counter, how about just discounting any links in those counters. We know the major engines can segment a page and selectively apply weight or remove weight to sections. So why not just make the links worthless or even a slight penalty in relevancy? Do we really need to ban all the sites who were duped by this page counter linking crap? Let the engines go after the program itself not the users.

Its like attacking the drug problems by arresting all the addicts, what really needs to be done is to remove the dealers. No dealers, no "New" addicts, cleaner streets over time.. :)

[nuthin]

i would have thought if Google's algorithm was advanced enough.. that it would already have devalued most of those links?

but it looks like they haven't. :)

if they can find all the sites that are advertising via this method that are benefiting from the anchor text and decide to devalue those links, thus... likely making the sites drop in there positions at Google.. well now that would just be the ideal scenario. :)

the problem is when you have an advertising network which is diverse like this one in nature, i don't quite think Googlebot can cut it? or am i wrong?

Google could ask the hit counters to toe the line and make there advertising network comply with there guidelines.

The way the hit counters would possibly get away with still running there 'advertising network' in compliance with Google is to only match there advertiser with similar themed sites in there network.

that's the only way I would hope Google would allow this to continue..

but who am i to say what Google should do. :)

i hope to see what Google would do, if anything actually.
otherwise do you know how many blackhat's have read this thread and in about 9 months time, how many more sites would be benefiting from such a method?

the balls in there corner now.

[ihelpyou]

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6172

This Colgate thing is crazy stuff. Members over there don't seem to have one clue about what's really going on with those links and text.

Colgate is spamming the se's. Period.

http://www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/US/HomePage.cvsp

A javascript link at the bottom tells a "browser" to click it to find more info and other products/sites.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Chv3YKAJNGAJ:www.colgate.com/edgescape/colgate.html+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Google's cache shows the exact same thing.

But hold on; View the source of the Google cache. Scroll to the bottom of the code. You see text and links with h3 tags that lead to other websites that Colgate does not want a browser to see "unless they click" that javascript link. But guess what? Spiders see that html code the first time they crawl that page, and they don't have to click the javascript link to index those extra links and extra text, etc.

It's PURE spam. There isn't even an argument to be made of it not being spam. First off; the intent is VERY clear of Colgate. Second; all spiders see the FULL html of that page when crawling the first time. ALL browsers don't see the extra links and text at all, unless the browser clicks the javascript link.

PURE spam. This is NOT gray at all. Not even close to being gray. It's very much black and white.

I see discussion a few other places about the links, etc, but only the stuff after the javascript link is clicked by a browser. Oh yeah, the intent for that is clear in that Colgate does not want visitors to be lead out of their site unless the link is clicked. But the funny thing is that a spider sees ALL the code when FIRST going to that page. A real user does NOT see the full stuff a spider sees when first going to the page. The heck with what the actual text says, and the heck with the underline/not underline stuff, ... the fact is that spiders are being shown the complete html code when first going to that page. This is what is commonly called:

search engine spam

There is nothing else it could be.

[chrishirst]

Utter BS!!!!!


If colgate are spamming, Then so am I and so is every DHTML menu around.

[WebSavvy]

ermmm ... don't mean to spoil the "let's kick a spammer" party ... but I've used a DHTML menu like that before too.

On one of my sites I had the DHTML menu there which had all the Q & A for the "FAQs" there. From a design standpoint it made the page look much better.

The onclick event triggers the menu to open. It's also easily spidered by SEs. I wouldn't think using a DHTML menu like this would be frowned upon because it is "search engine friendly" and that's what "organic SEO" is supposed to be about, right?
Or ... am I missing something here?

However, the way they're actually linking, is a bit on the dodgy side.

I mean, who does this:

Palmolive (http://www.palmolive.com/app/Palmolive/US/Home.cvsp) <a href="http://www.palmolive.com/app/Palmolive/US/Home.cvsp">dishwashing</a> products

The first word "Palmolive" is an underlined link, but the second keyword next to it that's also linked to the same URL isn't underlined: dishwashing

Is it cloaking? Nope. 'fraid not.
Is it spam? Nope. Just stupidity.

Not underlining some links while underlining others, is not a sin. Lots of website designers do it.

I have sub-category links listed on my directory that are not underlined but yet all the links to sub-categories on the index page, are underlined.

Does this mean I'm a spammer too? No, it doesn't. It just means I designed the site to be easy on the eyes and easy to use.

There's no confusion that the sub-category links that are not underlined, are indeed links. People know they're links.

[ihelpyou]

Of course Chris and Deb;.... but the entire technique is not where it is on the page for the heck of it. You have to take the whole thing in it's entirety. Why are they doing it that way if it's not strictly for the search engines? Of course it is.

Of course menus are most times in a navigation menu on the top, left, or right, and are for "interior" site pages,.... but this one happens to be below the fold and is not meant to be clicked on at all, and happens to be for "exterior" domains. Even when you do click, it's got many links that don't have to be there and links that are hidden as to not appear to be links.

It's the whole thing I'm looking at. The intent is to spam. It's no kind of navigation menu at all for REAL users, and we all know it.

[chrishirst]

But it's not "below the fold"

The home page is designed for a 1024x768 viewport and at that the show/hide link is 3/4 down the page.
At 800x600 it is, but as 1024 and above is now the dominant resolution that is what the designers have chosen.

[ihelpyou]

Will they be penalized? I doubt it.

The bad thing about this is that we might see a whole bunch of menus like this in footers of websites. The links will lead to 'other' websites the owner has, or to partners, etc.

In a case like this, I do feel it's the "intent" that we have to look at. Is there an argument that it's all visible to a browser? Oh sure.... if a user clicks.

In this particular case it's spam imo because of the obvious intent.

[WebSavvy]

Exactly. That's the dividing line right there. The technique in itself (using a DHTML menu) is not "spam" nor is not underlining some links. However, the "intent" behind it becomes obvious when there are links to the same URL within the same line using links that are both underlined and not underlined.

The "intent" makes it spam.

Is it enough for them to be penalized over it? I sincerely doubt it.

It's not like they're using z-index off screen content for search engine purposes and then calling it "testing a theory" ... yep, and a whole lot of us were born yesterday too! :rolleyes:

[Connie]

I have to go with Chris on this. I do not see what Colgate is doing as Spam. They clearly label the anchor text for the expanding menu "Click Here To View Other Colgate-Palmolive Products".

Those same links are on the site map. I think those links are there for the user, while trying not to display a lot of links that would clutter up the home page.

I have a navigation menu I would use on my site if I could get it to display the same in all browsers. It's (what I call) a slide out menu. So most of the navigation would be hidden until someone moused over the link.

I think Colgate has been very open. "Click Here To View Other Colgate-Palmolive Products"

I suppose some of this comes down to intent but I would not have a problem telling a Google Engineer why I was using that on my home page.

[Dan0]

My "intent scanner" isn't working right now, but I'm not seeing anything that's really hidden here.

[WebSavvy]

It's not what I'd really call a "spam" problem.

None of the links are hidden.
None of the content has been moved off page using z-index.
They're not cloaking or using redirects or doorway pages.

The only thing borderline that they are doing is, they've elected to link twice to the same URLs in the same line using both underlined and non-underlined links.

So what?

Does that mean they should go to spammer prison? Or, should their site be sent to SERP hell?

Please, let's get real. That's very mild spam.

The search engines have much bigger fish to fry that are actually doing things that are SPAM.

I think this whole thing is much-to-do-about-nothing. It's funny that the one starting this whole finger pointing campaign, is an actual (admitted) bonafide spammer himself.

Go figure. Guess it's a case of the spammer screaming:
"Look they're spamming too! It's not just me!"

[ihelpyou]

The only thing borderline that they are doing is, they've elected to link twice to the same URLs in the same line using both underlined and non-underlined links.

So what?
Yes, it isn't a big deal, but they do use different words in the links, and those links go to the same page. In other words, they are using different anchor text to give the linked to site different weights for different phrases. It's clear what they are doing.

And again; will it get penalized? I doubt it, but think about this:

If you are not a "Colgate" and you actually do/did the same thing in the exact same way? Don't be surprised if something happens. I can just see all these same type menus being displayed in footers on many websites now, and all for the purpose of linking to pages on "other" sites using different words in the links.

The se's should just ignore ALL content/links that become visible when a real user clicks the link when going to that front page. Ignoring all of that solves the problem.

In my mind, this would be the same thing as having a javascript menu, then using a <noscript> tag, but showing much more content in that tag other than one link per page. In other words, stuffing the noscript tag for the search engines. It "does" boil down to "intent" in a case like this.

[WebSavvy]

Yep, it's risky business and I sure wouldn't do it on any site I own, either.

However, some people just don't care and will do anything with their sites ... even their business sites of all things. Oh yeah, it's called "testing a theory" when you're caught spamming. :rolleyes:

[ihelpyou]

I've never cared where my competitors ranked in the serps or how they got there. But when automated bots looking to generate link love start putting me out of business by pounding my hosting account like a DNS attack it becomes something I care about.
That's a latest quote from a member at threadwatch.

Well duh? Of course we all care about automated shite that pounds the server our sites are on, but to claim that is the "only" thing that spam should be, and to claim that NO ONE is concerned about how or why another site seems to do real well in the serps, it's frankly truly ridiculous and a BS and bogus and "false" statement in it's entirety. If you are SEO/designer and have clients, don't you think those clients "care" about why a competitor is above them? Of course they do. To think and post otherwise, all because it suits what YOU do, and because you want to blur the line between whitehats and blackhats, and you want to make sure OUR industry includes YOU in our industry, well then, you can get lost and also "please" leave OUR industry. You are doing nothing but harm our industry with your twaddle and crap.

This goes for the majority of spammers in threadwatch. I'm sick of the bs over there.

You don't care about cheaters? You don't care that your neighbor gets taken by a con artist as long as it didn't happen to you? What kind of selfishness is that? The mentality of MOST spammers seems to be that which only gives a hoot about their site or their client's site, and does not care one bit about the integrity of OUR industry or the harm their client and themselves is doing to it. As long as YOU are looking after yourself and your client, nothing else matters, right?

That's crap.

[JohnC]

Honestly, I am not sure what to think about the Colgate issue. I have worked with many designers that have said "Text!? What? That will ruin the design I worked so hard to create!" so I can easily see the intent being to maintain a clean design on the page unless the surfers looks for more by clicking. Then one the marketers got hold of the page and decided that those links could serve as multiple inbound phrases if they spread the links across different words.

It is very possible that the intent was different in different departments. We have to remember that these larger organizations don’t always have different departments with the same goals. I know you don’t like the idea Doug, but this is exactly the type of situation that an in-house SEO would be there to prevent. Who knows if they would have even consulted their SEO firm on something like this, or maybe they did, before marketing decided to split the links.

Either way, I don’t think the hidden text was done specifically to fool the engines, though the split links are borderline.

[ihelpyou]

The intent is there no matter who in the org did what they did.

I was referring to that other place and the quote in that some out there think our industry only exists to serve "them" and "their" client. Nothing else matters. "If people cheat, so what?" "I'll just cheat better", seems to be the saying that fits them.