Scammers Drop Your Google Rank Using Your Content!, Then commit Google AdWords fraud with it Options

[jeffostroff]

This should be an eye opener to many of you, so warn your friends.

We enjoy pretty good Google rankings with our keywords for our sites, often in the top 10, and also enjoyed excellent rank with our BridalTips consumer advocate site.

We especially had good ranking on Google for keywords related to Diamonds and engagement rings, often ranking 3,4,6, or 9 usually on the first page of Google results… that is until Google’s Jagger update, which sent nearly all of our rankings from top 10 down to about 600-1000 (we actually hunted down their exact positions!), while all the scammer web sites and DEAD LINKS remained at the top.

We knew we did nothing wrong and always used Google approved techniques: making our page human friendly, not chasing algorithms, and we don’t do link swaps. We suspect Google has erroneously punished our site for “duplicate content”, meaning our entire web site’s content appears in a cloaked fashion, on several other web sites, without our permission of course, and in violation of DMCA.

After intense research into what could have caused this plunge from glory, we discovered some unbelievable fraud going on:

In a nutshell, we found that dozens of fraudulent web sites are stealing entire web site contents from our web sites, (and yours too) and using it to spamdex Google and artificially improve their ranking, by cloaking the stolen html code and feeding it to search engine web crawlers.

This tricks the search engine into crawling the content on the scamming web site, when in fact it was stolen and fed to the crawler in a hidden manner probably using Javascipts and mini nets.

Your stolen content does not even appear anywhere on the visible pages of the scammer site. This way, the scammer sites get indexed at the top for free, using the hard work of webmasters who have already SEO'd their code.

Once you land on these scammer sites from the Google SERP, you find usually no useful content or navigation, just a stupid useless page displaying a handful of Google Adwords sponsored searches, and the only way off their page is to click on the Google Adwords advertisers on their site (or back button). Real quality traffic right? Wrong!

We made a short PowerPoint presentation about this as a resource to help other webmasters determine if the same scam is occurring to them. I hope it's ok to post it here, if not Jill can remove it, here is the link:
[Not ok. - Jill]
The PowerPoint presentation shows some good screen shots and live Google searches to demonstrate the fraud, and shows webmasters exactly how they are getting ripped off, and how Google AdWords advertisers are getting ripped
off. Once we showed some big name jewlery sites advertising on Adwords how they were victims of click fraud, they were fuming. We also immediately dropped all our PPC bids down across the board. On Google Adwords, we have not used the Content Network searches in years.

Here's what the powerpoint presentation contains:

• How fraud sites are running up phony Google AdWords pay per click
traffic, defrauding Google Adwords advertisers

• How fraud sites have stolen content from sites to rank high
on Google, and defraud other Adwords advertisers

• How to tell if your web site is a victim of these frauds

We have told Google about this numerous times in the past, but they have done nothing. In fact, since Jagger, we have noticed Google’s index has rapidly filled up with useless and fraudulent search results from spammers. Have you noticed lately it’s harder to find a good search on Google? Too many dead or off topic links? I hope they fix it soon!

Paul Bremmer from Bruce Clay, Inc. stated in Website Services magazine that pay per click fraud can be up to 40% for PPC ads. Yikes!

This post has been edited by Jill: Mar 17 2006, 10:36 PM

[Jill]

We suspect Google has erroneously punished our site for “duplicate content”,

Sorry, Jeff, but I just don't buy it.

[jehochman]

Sometimes rankings drop or disappear for no reason at all, except that SEs aren't perfect. They make mistakes, lose data, and suffer hardware failures. It's frustrating, but they'll come back sooner or later.

To me, the quality of search results seems at least as good after Jagger as before.

[jeffostroff]

Jill. you don't buy it? How do you explain the fact that we can take long unique sentences off our site and Google them, and we should be the only site with search results, but all these other sites come up in the search results, and the content is not even on their sites?

Heck, even MY OWN NAME shows up on the Google search results for these bogus sites, because they copied my entire page, even the "By JEff Ostroff" byline.

A unique sentence off my web site should never show up as a search result for another site. There should only be one search result on Google, it should be my site, not my site plus a bunch of pharmacy sites, and diamond jewelry sites, and non functioning sites.

In fact Jill, I took this sentence off your HighRankings.com home page and Googled it with quotes:

"I'll personally analyze your site and explain to you in layman's terms why it's not as search engine friendly as it could be, and what you need to do to fix it."

Your site Jill, should be the only site with search results, unless the press quoted you somewhere.

Now look at the Google results for your above search. You are #1 luckyily, for now.

But look at #2. He actually stole your sentence and it's on his web site.

Look at the rest of Google search results for your sentence Jill!

Most of the rest of the 10 search results are dead links!

Why would your content even show up as a search result for these other sites, expecially the Belize travel sites in search position #3 and 4?

Also, look at page 2 of the Google SERP results, and why are all these Croatia travel sites showing up for a search of a sentence on Jills web site? They should not even be showing up at all!

Do you still not buy it Jill? Or are you already sending out DMCA notices?

Did you at least look at the PowerPoint presentation before you yanked the link? It clearly shows you how you can verify this is happening to your site.

You greatly under estimate the technical prowess of hackers.

[jeffostroff]

Ok, check this out dudes. I go over to Scottie Claiborne's web site. Grab this unique sentence off her front page and Google it with quotes:

"Search Engine Optimization is in high demand these days. We can get your site high rankings without using techniques that could get your site banned from the search engines or penalized. "


Looks pretty unique, like no other web site should show up for this search right?

Why then are there 4 other results, all dead links?

Now, if you click at the bottom of Google's SERP:

repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Now there's 6 more pages of search results for a unique sentence off Scottie's home page!

Grab another sentence from a page on Scottie's web site and google it with quotes:

"A Website Usability Analysis can identify issues you don't even know you have. "

Look at Google SERP results #5 and #6, some Info work company has her sentence there too!

Now, Google must decide when it sees duplicate content, which is the better one. Scottie got lucky, here as she shows up #1. But it's a matter of time with all these mini sets setup, that Scottie's site will fall victim to dilution, as that content will no longer be unique to her site.

With 100 sites to choose from, Google may choose the wrong site as #1, sending Scottie to the bottom of the heap.

Then she could drop several hundred positions below the dead links and scammer nets.

[Scottie]

I'm not quite sure why you are posting this here... are you filing DMCA violation notices or just posting your theories?

Some thoughts:

• People steal content. Every day, all day long, usually automated. I send out quite a few DMCA notices each week, but it's not something I can spend my life doing, especially not for odd sentences no one is looking for. When I find them, I report them.
  
• If your theory is correct, then why aren't these sites outranking mine? Your example simply shows that people steal content, not that they can kill my rankings because of it. I can probably come up with a quick hundred pages of mine that have been copied and reprinted, but haven't affected my rankings.

I'm with Jill, it's not simply the duplicate content thats the problem, but I'm also confused as to why you aren't doing anything about it except complaining on a forum. If your theory is true, get the site hosts to yank the duplicate content and your rankings will be restored, right?

Google is still in the middle of an update... things shift pretty frequently. I'd say start contacting the hosts of the sites that have taken your copy because you should be doing that anyway, but I imagine the rankings will fix themselves when the update is done.

[jeffostroff]

Right, not every example I can show you will result in you ranking below your stolen content.

But there is merit to our theory. Here is one example where they do rank higher than our site from our Powerpoint presentation, but Jill yanked the link to it:

Run this phrase from our site on Google with quotes:

“These fake diamonds are so good that standard diamond jeweler thermal conduction testers cannot detect them!”

You can see other sites out rank us with the same sentence, the sentence does not even show up on their page, and all that comes up is an Adwords page (3rd result on Google). We show up #5, even behind obvious keyword stuffed URLs on that SERP.

So it's not just some bum theory, I can show you many more examples of these scammer sites and mini nets sites outranking us for unique searches on our sites, and even standard keywords.

You incorrectly assumed we are doing nothing. You said "why you aren't doing anything about it"...

We are. We send out DMCA notice weekly also. But sometimes these guys are hosted by sites in China. Malaysia, Korea and India, and they NEVER respond.

You're naive if you think for one minute that web hosting companies all want to do the right thing and shut down an offender just because you send them a notice. I have personally shut down 600 sites since 2003, and have seen a wide range of cooperation from web hosts.

Also, since our stolen content is not actually displayed on the offending web site, you cannot convince web hosts to shut them down. You should have know that if you send out a lot of DMCA notices.

In fact, we found a web site weeks ago that copied every page of our other well known car buying tips site and created a new site cybersquatting our popular domain name, and they are hosted on Yahoo. We have sent Yahoo 6 perfectly formatted DMCA notices to the proper Yahoo copyright abuse assresses and they have not responded, while other web hosts did the same day.

I guess they'll have to respond once people take them to court. Our sites is copyrighted and trademarked with a CD of our content in the Library Of Congress.

We usually get about a 50% successful site shutdown rate.

Many web hosts are quite rebellious and illegally refuse properly formatted DMCA notices.

In fact, with all our investigations we have done with escrow fraud sites for which we are well known, Yahoo was always the biggest enabler of fraud web sites, despite complaints from victims, they would not shut down the sites.

So yes we are very proactive in trying to get sites shut down, and we are not just complaining here, we are trying to alert other webmasters before it happend to them.

Why did Scottie's site not fall in rank? Who knows, we never always know why Google's engine does what it does, or we'd be billionaires. But check it again in a few months, maybe it will drop below.

But I can tell you that many searches from our site rank below even dead links.

How can a good site rank below dead links on Google?

With all the hand waving explanations people are giving here, no one has yet answered that question.

I can almost understand another site ranking above us with our content, but these guys are leaving tons of dead links behind that are out ranking good sites.

Also, our drop from glory ranking on our bridal tips site has been there long before the recent Google reshuffling. Everyone keeps trying to blame it on this recent Google re-shuffle.

I keep trying to explain this has nothing to do with it. These sites that targeted us were created in 2004 and early 2005. We noticed things going south last May and June. You can't write that one off on February-March Google re-shuffling.

This post has been edited by jeffostroff: Mar 18 2006, 10:45 AM

[Jill]

Jeff, you've proved MY point not yours.

My site and Scottie's site have been stolen a million times yet we rank highly. So what makes you think your site is so special that it got penalized for some fictional duplicate content penalty.

If it were true, my site and Scottie's site would be gone.

Look to your own site and what you've done with it to figure out why Google no longer likes it. I know it's much easier to blame others, but it's more productive to figure out what's wrong and fix it, dontcha think?

If the (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/cry_smile.gif) makes you feel better then have at it, but it's not gonna fix your site.

[jeffostroff]

We changed hardly anything to the site, so we cannot determine what we may or may not have done to cause the huge drop in ranking.

We took your seminar in Tampa in November 2003, and used your tips and Scottie's tips to bolster what we already have done well for years.

We were #1 one many wedding related keywords.

We know what we are doing, because we show up #1 on Google for "Extended Warranties" on our car buying site. You don't get to #1 on Google with a holy grail keyword like that without knowing what you're doing.

But the strange thing is every single important keyword we use dropped on the bridal tips site, even the seldom competed keywords.

Everything dropped. No major site changes, nothing illegal, our sites are written for people to read not to usurp the search engines.

Yet we cannot explain it. But one thing we know, is our site has content duplicated all over the place, we cannot get half of them shut down, and the other half are cloaking it.

[Jill]

Yet we cannot explain it. But one thing we know, is our site has content duplicated all over the place, we cannot get half of them shut down, and the other half are cloaking it.

Just because that's the only thing you can see happening, doesn't mean that's the cause. You're completely mixing up cause and effect.

Are you going to tell me that your car site isn't copied all over the net? How come it didn't lose rankings.

(IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_images/poo.gif) happens.

[jeffostroff]

The difference with our car site duplicated content, and our bridal tips web site, is that we are far more successful at getting most of the sites who copy our car site content shut down, AND we have not found too many of the cloaked sites using our car content.

Sites will stieal a few paragrpahs, we find it, we have them shut down. Also, the guys stealing code from our car buying sites are Americans, some of whom we have gone to court againt, who just try to get traffic to their site to click on the same affiliate programs we are members of. Pretty easy to shut down a site when your content is visible on their site on an American web host.

But the guys copying our bridaltips web site are foreiners who don't care about any afifliate programs we have in our content, they just want to get people to land on their Google Adwords link pages. It's infinitely harder to get their foreign based web sites shut down from foroeign web hosts, so there is more of our duplicated content out there on Bridal site than on the car site. See the difference?

That is why it's not a problem on the car site... yet.

We also suspect that our car site is white listed by Google, as we do have have a healthy ranking on many keywords, and a number of government and EDU sites who link to us, as well as numerous newspapers. I could be wrong there too. I am definitely correct when I say our bridal tips site is not white listed by Google! In fact, we are probably on their (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_Flush.gif) list!

Who knows, we could be wrong about the duplicate content, but we have no other contending argument that is strong enough. Maybe Google saw that our bridal site content is cloaked in numerous web sites, so they gave much less weight to our site.

But you see the crucial difference here, we do not have our content from the car site cloaked all over the internet, but the bridal site is....for now. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_Flush.gif) (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_Flush.gif)

This post has been edited by jeffostroff: Mar 18 2006, 01:04 PM

[Jill]

Yeah, but the content from my site is cloaked all over the internet, and it hasn't hurt it.

[maleman]

howdy Jeff,
When you do a link:yoursite, do any other of those scammers show up in the result?

[jspope]

Hi!

If I search using Google and it serves me junk results (as it sometimes does), I ignore the junk. I also use other search engines to find better results.

I'm not knocking Google. My point is that if a search engine displays irrelevant results, people are going to be frustrated. They may look to other sources for information. Horrors! They may actually go to the library or other non-web source. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It is in Google's best interests to keep their search results relevant. I know that Google takes their search engine business seriously and is constantly initiating measures to combat such nonsense.

Regards,

Stephen :-)

[Jill]

They may actually go to the library or other non-web source.

(IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/omg.gif) you're cruisin' for a bruisin with that kinda talk, Stephen! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)