28 replies to this topic

[powerofeyes]

Hello Dragon lady,
Thanks for the reply. Ok coming to answer i dont want google to delete those pages or ban any site that is the worst attitude any one can have and I am not like that. But why cant they reply like this "we are in development of a new algorithm to find these kind of pages. You will have a better search experience in the future". Once I gave them all my personal details including messenger ID but they never respond for any kind of complaints".
coming to this

I don 't understand why you're spending so much time and effort puzzling through this.

If you would have told this to a country search engine i wouldnt mind it but google is something very important for many SEOs
And you know they reply about queries on adsense, adwords the very next day. Why they fail to respond to these queries and complaints on improving there search engine then what is the purpose of keeping a spam report form on their site. Where are all these reports going straight to the trash can. Let us get a solution for this google matters a lot for most of the SEOs and lets try to find out what's happening inside google.
This topic is important to me that is why I posted this here,
thanks,
VIJAY.

[qwerty]

Google replies to queries regarding AdWords and AdSense because the people making those queries are Google's cutomers. They provide a free service that a lot of people depend on, but they are a business, and they have to keep their priorities straight.

I believe they look at spam reports. It's important to them that their free search results be as free of garbage as they can reasonably make them. But I expect that the vast majority of spam reports they receive are irrelevant. They're coming from people who just want their own sites to rank higher.

Only Google can decide exactly what they consider to be spam. They give us general guidelines, but they can't spell out every practice that they don't like. And nowhere do they say that they will personally respond to a spam report.

[dragonlady7]

Most people don't claim to have much trouble with Google's results. There's spam in there, sure, but it's pretty easy to find what you're looking for, especially compared to the other search engines I occasionally attempt to use and can't.

That's who Google's concerned about pleasing.

NOT SEOs.

I don't know, Google writing back to me and saying "thank you for submitting a spam, we're using it for research" wouldn't make me feel much better. It would have to be an automated response; they don't have the personnel to deal with the sheer volume of reports they must get. (There are at least ten threads on every forum saying "spammers are ranking higher than me, i reported them and google did nothing, google doesn't care about spam, i deserve better rankings than i have" that then deteriorates into a flame war about everything ranging from Google's plot to take over the world to the actual definition of spam and whether anyone has the right to tattle on anyone else. And the original poster always says 'it's not my competitors, it's just that i'm concerned with spam', and nobody believes him, and it's just a big mess.)
I bet Google gets a lot of spam reports. I bet some of them are truly spam. But I'd rather they spent their time working on their programming solutions, and didn't take the time to write back to everyone.
Adsense and Adwords, they write back because that's a paid service.
The search isn't a paid service.
One has to keep one's paid customers happier than one has to keep one's general users. The general users have nothing invested and so don't care as much. The paid customers are business partners.
SEOs aren't business partners with Google. Not officially, and not individually. You can say what you want about Google's business being built on the backs of webmasters, but webmasters and SEOs are not precisely the same thing, and thus the relationship does not carry over directly.
That's all I'm sayin'.

[SearchRank]

But why cant they reply like this "we are in development of a new algorithm to find these kind of pages. You will have a better search experience in the future".

I would suppose the reason why they do not give a personal response to spam reports is 1.) they probably receive so many that they just don't want to spend the resources it would take to reply to all of them and 2.) to respond would open the door for the person that originally sent the request to try to enter into a dialogue with Google about it which of course would take up more valuable time.

I believe they receive the spam reports and log it to investigate as no one seems to care about the relevancy of their results more than Google but it would be impossible for them to personally respond to every report.

[Scottie]

SEO is my job and google is my money. i do have all the rights to research on google and get my solutions.

Hey vijay-

You are on dangerous ground. Google owes you nothing. You do not have a "right" to anything about another business.

They can change their algo tomorrow if they like. If your entire money is based on getting Google results, it's time to broaden your skills. Things change all the time.

Why not focus on improving sites as a goal? Increasing traffic overall? Google is a big player today but sooner or later, that will change.

[powerofeyes]

Hello Jill,Dragon lady, moderator,
Thanks for all your replies.

Most people don't claim to have much trouble with Google's results. There's spam in there, sure, but it's pretty easy to find what you're looking for, especially compared to the other search engines I occasionally attempt to use and can't.

i accept 100% of these words. This is the reason google is no 1 now and that is the reason i am sticking to google. But let me make something clear to you. My question is in no way related to this answer. You are seeing google as an end user but I see it a advanced user, search researcher you can call it anyway you like.

There are at least ten threads on every forum saying "spammers are ranking higher than me, i reported them and google did nothing, google doesn't care about spam, i deserve better rankings than i have" that then deteriorates into a flame war about everything ranging from Google's plot to take over the world to the actual definition of spam and whether anyone has the right to tattle on anyone else. And the original poster always says 'it's not my competitors, it's just that i'm concerned with spam', and nobody believes him, and it's just a big mess.)

I have never heard of this before. I only read forum answers this is the first time I am participating in a forum since I have so many new questions other than that, are answered in many forums. May be I agree your answer (google gets lot of spam reports) but what have they done to it.
If they are doing big research on it why cant they notify people who are very concerned about them(some one like me). I was notifying them for the past 1 month about more than 100 sites that are irrelavant to the topic and are only spam results.
Ok now let me get into some technical aspect. If you would have seen my examples now it is removed according to rules of the forum you can clearly see the home page is not connected to this page in anyway. Only this page is connected to the home page. Why cant they find a algorithm for this. They give an option to submit any page to google. may be they can put some filter to it strictly saying only home page should be submitted not any inner pages. I know this is technically impossible since many genuine sites needs there deep pages to be submitted separately since search engines finds it difficult to reach them. But somehow they should develop some thing for this.

Edited by powerofeyes, 29 September 2003 - 10:45 AM.

[dragonlady7]

> And google results are my business. I am an SEO who googlize all my clients pages and i have all the rights to comment on google.

I think maybe that's what she was referring to. Sure, you've got a right to comment on Google. But you don't have a right to expect any action from Google in return.

> I would like google to take off the spam report page if they do it only for research. As a search engine user i need good searching experience and i am not worried about what google researches.>

If they use the results for research, it's in their best interests to leave the spam report up. Why on earth should they remove a source of research data for themselves, just because it bothers you that they don't use it for something other than research?

I think you're going about this from the wrong angle, and you're expecting Google to care about what you want more than it cares about what it needs. That's not really very reasonable. And that's why we're being less than kind in our responses, because we really don't understand why you seem to expect Google to care about what you want.

[qwerty]

You are seeing google as an end user but I see it a advanced user, search researcher you can call it anyway you like.

I think that was pretty much Dragonlady's point, Vijay. Google has to be more concerned with the opinion of the normal user than that of the search engine researcher, the webmaster, or the SEO. What's important to Google, in my opinion, is that the general public is satisfied with the results they get from the free search. If those people are happy, they'll continue to use Google, which will lead advertisers to choose to pay Google money.

The concerns of people in our field are less important to Google's bottom line.

And I believe that when Scottie said that you were on "dangerous ground" she meant that it's a bad idea to rely on a single search engine for your livelihood. So many things can change without notice.

[dragonlady7]

Oh, my response that's after VIJAY's was posted before I read his response.

I'm not being very clear because I'm distracted by other things.
The important thing is that we're not mad at you, Vijay, we just disagree with you. (I say "we" but can't really speak for everyone else. But it seems pretty clear to me.)
So this is nothing personal. It's just that most of us disagree, and we think that Google's perfectly right to treat spam reports as it does.
It is a business, and has to stay in business.
It has millions of users.
Perhaps a couple of thousand of those are SEOs.
Who should they be more worried about, the millions of people or the thousands of people?

Maybe I'm crazy, but I think the millions are more important to their business.

[powerofeyes]

hello qwerty & dragonlady,
Thanks for your reply I accept your words. I know I cant expect anything more than a end user but just very much eager to know what those spam reports are doing in google.
My best results are from google and I know they are the best. I just want to point them out some small holes which is being exploited by certain SEOs. Its all because of my feelings and concerns for google.
If I get an answer how they are going to get rid of this exploit ill be very happy. I know they got rid of many things like repeated keywords, hidden text etc,
thanks,
VIJAY

[mcanerin]

I do routinely report spam sites that are above my clients in the SERPS, but I make certain that they fall into what Google considers to be spam (or is likely too), not what I consider to be spam.

An example - a crappy site with no useful content that is ranked high is MY definition of spam - but it's not (necessarily) Googles. What I judge to be "useful" and "crappy" may be different from what someone else would - after all, SOMEONE posted that site - presumably they looked at it and judged it post-worthy before doing so.

I don't report these. As a professional SEO, I simply beat them by providing great content and design, and then because of that I am able to get more links, which knocks them off (or down on) the SERPS organically, without any assistance from G other than their current algos.

On the other hand, if a site comes up that shouldn't, and I check the cache that G has and it's obvious they are feeding G a cloaked page - I report them and, no surprise, they get taken off within a day or so, everytime.

As a purely practical matter, in my experience Google defines spam as someone "messing with their algos". By "messing", meaning providing a result that was not intended or anticipated by Google during coding.

If they decided to write an algo that said "all text in purple is now ranked higher than everything else", then an SEO would not be a spammer by putting all their keywords in purple by Googles standards.

They might be by my standards, however, and the internet community as well, which is why Google has 80 PhDs on staff making sure the algos are realistic and effective.

In the above scenario, if you wrote a program that showed visitors a nicely laid out page with pleasing colors, and then used CSS or redirected Google to a page all typed in purple, that would be spam to Google. It might not be to visitors, since they are getting a nice looking site instead of the ugly one.

Google defines it's niche by using algorithyms to index and rank the net, NOT by providing a hand edited directory of results. When Google started out, Yahoo was doing that. We can see where that led. Yahoo now uses Googles results in preference to it's own!

Basically, Googles doing it's business it's way, just like everyone else does. If you choose a career that relies on the business practices of a company you do not control, then you must get accustomed to not being in control.

By all means, provide feedback and input. No one here will argue that Google is perfect. They ARE currently the best, which is why results and policies are measured against them. But "the best" does not mean perfect. It doesn't even mean "the best at everything" - just overall. That may change at anytime.

Finally, don't always assume that yours or anyone's complaint is the be all and end all of Googles day. They may not get around to it. They may decide to hand it over to a guy who types it into a database for analysis. They may decide to ignore it because it was written incorrectly or didn't meet some internal guideline. There are many things they may do, or not do. It's up to them.

Basically, I'm saying that if you find a spammer, report them. But don't expect a parade in your honor, a simple thank you, or even any action taken at all. But it's better than not reporting them.

Yours,

Ian

Edited by mcanerin, 29 September 2003 - 01:52 PM.

[mcanerin]

Hmm, looks like a couple of posts got in while I was typing. Please ignore if you don't find the above post helpful or on topic anymore.

Ian

[powerofeyes]

Hello Moderator ian,
Thanks for the update, That was a valuble information,
VIJAY.

[torka]

In the above scenario, if you wrote a program that showed visitors a nicely laid out page with pleasing colors, and then used CSS or redirected Google to a page all typed in purple, that would be spam to Google. It might not be to visitors, since they are getting a nice looking site instead of the ugly one.

HEY! What have you got against purple text?

--Torka

(Let's see how this post ranks with the new Google algo giving preference to purple... )