119 replies to this topic

[Jill]

As an FYI, the guy who "outed" the sites in question, Robert Medford, emailed me and thanked us for discussing this. He mentioned that other forums seemed to have "shunned" the article for whatever reason.

That surprised me!

I know that we have a 'no outing' policy here, but since this seemed to be news that was out in the general public, we certainly had no problem discussing the original article.

It does look like that the stuff Robert uncovered is indeed spam, as it is all deceptive in nature. Had he uncovered stuff that really wasn't spam at all, we probably would not be discussing it here.

Has anyone seen any other discussion of this elsewhere? That really surprises me if not!

[Randy]

I've not seen it cross any of the RSS feeds I normally watch Jill. However there were several days over the past few weeks where I've just not been able to monitor those headlines as closely as I normally would.

I've certainly not seen any big stink about it though.

[qwerty]

This is the only place I've seen it too, and I've never heard of the site or the author before. Maybe it just came in under the radar. You'd think Matt Cutts would have used it for one of his stupid SEO errors posts.

[Jill]

And speaking of Matt Cutts...

Mr. Medford believes he knows who's been naughty or nice.

The gist of it is he posted a comment on Matt's blog mentioning the spam of the big companies, and his comments seem to only show up for him.

I think he's being slightly paranoid and the problem is more likely that the comments just need to be approved first, but he's seeing a cached copy.

Still, at least we know that MC has been informed of the spam on the sites at this time. We'll see if anything happens to those sites. It may very well be that Google just doesn't consider what they're doing to be spam for some reason.

[torka]

It will be interesting to see if the comments ever get approved, though. Apparently he wrote them yesterday, and they're still not visible (granted, it is a holiday weekend and all, but still, as of this moment a lot more recently-posted comments do appear). What's up with that?

Ya know, I'm also still wondering why some of the self-professed spam-outing crusaders at some other boards haven't picked up on this story and run with it themselves. Why are we the only ones talking about this?

If Matt doesn't eventually approve Robert's comments, does this mean that Google is deliberately covering up the fact that they let Fortune 500 companies and their SEO consultants get away with crap that could exile a "lesser" company's site to the nether reaches of the SERPs? Or does it just mean that they had somehow overlooked this, and Matt's too embarrassed to admit it?

Okay, okay, I guess I should just get out my tinfoil hat and go join the conspiracy theorists over there in the corner...

--Torka

[Jill]

Well, according to Robert, to him, his comments STILL show...with the new ones all coming after it. He even sent me the saved html file. In fact, I think I'll post it here, because it sure does look fishy to me.

It's hard to imagine that there's anything sinister going on, but on the other hand, how else do you explain it?

Ya know, I'm also still wondering why some of the self-professed spam-outing crusaders at some other boards haven't picked up on this story and run with it themselves. Why are we the only ones talking about this?

I don't get it either! Nothing even at the spam haters club of america! (IHY)

And on Robert's Medord's latest blog post about this, he claims that everyone seems to be scared to post about it. He didn't even want to mention our forum here as the only place that would post it, because he said it could be a problem for us. (Or something like that, I forget his exact wording.)

It certainly doesn't bother me if we're mentioned. Spam is spam, and it is interesting that big companies are allowed to do it.

Definitely makes me just figure it simply isn't considered spam by the engines anymore (if it ever was).

Attached Files

•  wwwmattcuttscom_123105.html   80.88K   47 downloads

[Randy]

Who knows. Maybe Matt is saving it to do a blog about after the first of the year. Or maybe he's just tyring to convince the folks on the Ad Revenue side of things that the boys and girls on the Search side of things really need to issue all of those F500's a warning letter.

Okay, so both of those are doubtful. But a guy can dream...

[Jill]

But, Randy, can you explain why Robert can see his comment in Matt's blog, but no one else can?

I've posted about all these issues at TW too, but apparently new threads have to get approved first, and I suppose they're all out having a life celebrating New Year's eve about now!

[Randy]

It's just a cookie thang.

Matt uses WordPress for his blog I'd be willing to bet. If memory serves, that's the default action for WP unapproved comments when the original poster comes back. No extra plug-ins required.

The original poster always sees their comment unless it's been deleted. I thought WP used to at least give them an message to the original poster stating that the comment had not yet been approved, but that would be easy enough to get rid of.

Tell Robert to go to Matt's blog from another computer that hasn't been used to post to MC's blog, or if he wants to risk not being able to get back to the disappearing comment again to delete the cookie the blog sets on his main computer.

[Jill]

Randy, or someone, could you please go to Matt's blog and see if you see my comment there? (It's towards the end.) It showed up right away for me, and appears to still be there, but with what you're saying...who knows!

[Randy]

Yours is in the same SEO Mistakes entry Jill?

If so, nope I don't see it.

The last several I see, working backwards are PhilC (9:25pm); PhilC (9:21pm); Aaron Pratt (3:01pm); Lee (2:33pm); What a Maroon (12:49pm); gwen (9:23am); Stephen (9:01am); Harith (8:40am); gwen (8:24am); Stephen (8:18am); Stephen (8:17am) and David W (7:53am). All from today's date of course.

<edit to add>

hehheh Try this one to see if what you see changes Jill.

When you get to the page where you see your comment normally, on which you should probably see the little New Comment boxes pre-filled with your info at the very bottom of the page, go back up into the address bar of your browser. Take out the "www." part of the domain, but leave the rest of the domain and page info there exactly as before. Then hit Enter to go to the non-www version of the same page.

Having just looked at my MC/blog cookie it appears he's setting it as the full www address. But Matt doesn't have a 301 in place to automatically take you to the www version if you enter the non-www version by hand. That should keep the the site from recognizing that you already have a cookie.

Edited by Randy, 01 January 2006 - 01:30 AM.

[torka]

Matt uses WordPress for his blog I'd be willing to bet.

You are correct, sir! (insert Ed-McMahon-style laughter here)

Jill, as of this writing, I don't see your comment either. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what shows up once the holiday weekend winds down, eh?

--Torka

[Brian Turner]

The blog thing - may see the words "Your comment is awaiting moderation" above it on the poster PC - not in public view.

As for the spam outing - I only had a look at a couple of examples, but I think the use of <noscript> is one of those grey areas - yes, it can be abused, but yes, it can serve a very legitimate purpose. Possibly naive, but is there really no argument of accessibility issues applied for its use in at least some instances?

[qwerty]

Absolutely. <noscript> should be used so that anyone with JS disabled can see what they would have been able to see if they had JS, but if you use it to hide content that isn't within the scripted text, it's the same thing as hidden text.

[torka]

Only if the <noscript> is serving identical content to text/images/links that are otherwise only accessible through <script> tags. So, for instance, if for some reason somebody is generating certain content using JavaScript document.write statements, anyone arriving with a non-JS browser (which would include many adaptive technologies as well as SE bots) would be prevented from seeing/using that content.

In that case, it would be perfectly appropriate to use <noscript> to serve the identical content to that which is served through the document.write statements. It would not be appropriate to use that <noscript> tag to include additional text that is not visible to JS-compliant browsers.

Most of the companies are using the <noscript> tag to include additional key phrases that are not included in the visible text of the page.

The first one listed in Robert's "dirty dozen" is using opaque layers/divs to conceal <noscript> content that doesn't appear anywhere else on the page from visual browsers even when they have JavaScript turned off. If this were being done for accessibility reasons, the content should be identical to what's served through JavaScript and it should be visible to any browser that arrives with scripting disabled.

The second doesn't conceal the <noscript> content behind anything, so it's pretty easy to see it simply by disabling JavaScript. But the content is clearly different from what's on the "normally visible" page, including a hidden link to a "shopping listing" page (containing nothing but bare links) that starts off with links to 22 "Googlefiles". Take a look at that page and then try to tell me it wasn't intended to only be seen by SEs.

And so it goes on down the line...

The company that forced Robert to remove their name from his press release are using their style sheet to format text thusly:

CODE

.wbxHomeStyle {visibility:hidden; font:2px;}

(I copy/pasted that line of code from their own style sheet just this morning.) If you look at their home page source, it's easy to find the block of text using this style, and to verify that it doesn't appear in any visible fashion on their page. There is absolutely no way this has anything to do with accessibility in any way, shape or form.

Do these companies believe themselves to be "untouchable"? Or have they simply been misled by some very bad and/or incompetent advisors to believe that this isn't spam?

Text formatted to 2px and hidden is not an accessibility issue. <noscript> tags that include keyword-laden text and hidden links that aren't available through "regular" browsers is not an accessibility issue.

The sad part is, it isn't even really crafty spam. As I said earlier, this is just plain old garden-variety hidden text, and not very cleverly hidden at that. This is kindergarten-level spam, pure and simple.

--Torka