Checks to curb latest SEO tricks

Kevin Kwang ZDNet Asia | January 29, 2010 4:16 AM PST

Summary

Unethical tactics employed by companies utilizing SEO tactics such as link farms and loading Web pages filled with irrelevant keywords, are not welcomed by search engine operators.

Topics

Search Engine Optimization, Tactic, Search Engine, Marketing Research, Marketing, SEO, search, Kevin Kwang ZDNet Asia

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Unethical tactics employed by companies utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) tactics such as link farms and loading Web pages filled with irrelevant keywords, are not welcomed by search engine operators. This declaration was issued by Microsoft and Google.

Asked if organizations such as content farms are outsmarting its system by flooding the Web with low-quality content to earn high-click rates, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company "prefers quality over quantity" to manage its Bing search engine.

"Backlinks, also known as 'inbound links', should be relevant to the page being linked to, or relevant to an SEO's domain if they are being linked to the homepage," he told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview. He pointed out that backlinks from sites considered to be authoritative in their field are rated to be of higher value than those from "junk sites".

Bing does prevent Web sites from appearing in its search results if they use techniques such as using hidden text or links within their Web page or create link farms to artificially increase the number of links, the Microsoft spokesman added. However, he did not elaborate on how the checks were implemented and executed.

Google adopts a similar stance. A Google spokesman explained that a site's ranking in its search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms that incorporate hundreds of parameters. "Our algorithms are effectively designed to prevent people from manipulating the rankings of competitors in our search results," he added.

For more on this story, read "Checks to curb latest SEO tricks" on ZDNet Asia.

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How about end user feedback

How about end user feedback by adding a user checkbox to flag bad pages so a human at google can look at it and blacklist the site if its bogus.

I found Bing useless searching for how to change the drive letter on Windows 7! I figured Bing would rock for Win 7 info. FAIL!

Google quickly got me an answer, but the three highest ranked pages were all garbage.

I pretty much ignore the first two or three "results" from Google as they are usually SEO or paid placement junk.
wkulecz
29th Jan 2010
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RE: How about end user feedback

Totally agree. The first search engine to effectively implement ebay's feedback mechanism will dominate the market. It's the only way I can imagine someone toppling google as the #1 search engine.

gary
gdstark13
29th Jan 2010
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Search Engines are Smarter Than That

I am not sure why this article was even written. Must be a slow news day. Google and (as I understand it) Bing's search algorithm's are designed to give pages like the ones listed in the article a very low rank. In the case of Google specifically, the quality score of a page of this sort would be very low and/or they may either place it in the secondary directory listings or ban it completely.

Latent Semantic Indexing (see this article for Google patents related to LSI: http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=536) has been around for several years. Pages and link farms as described in the article are easy for Search Engine operators to identify. All the old black-hat tricks (like hidden text, keyword arbitrage, domain redirection, etc.) are quickly detected by the big Search operators.

If you really want to learn about search quality (though it is with a Google tilt) see Matt Cutts blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/). He is the head of the Google Web Spam team and handles Googles search results quality. You can learn a lot about what Google does to make their results as good as they are (IMHO).

Bottom Line: If big search operators don't provide the results you are looking for, you will go elsewhere. That translates to lower bottom line returns. Bing and Google aren't going to lay down to black-hat tricks!

Flame away Google haters!
pparks_2000
29th Jan 2010
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Bing/Microsoft could add this (or Chrome/Google)

What could make your idea happen is that a web browser could implement a like/don't like click feedback (and use cookies or a database to limit the click inputs to just one per user?) but it would take one of the search engine/browser maker companies, so Google or Microsoft, to implement.
Hey Google or Microsoft, I could do this for you! Call me.
sysop-dr
29th Jan 2010
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RE: Bing/Microsoft could add this (or Chrome/Google)

Yes, but like the ebay feedback, you need a mechanism that establishes a reputation (good or bad) for the reviewers. That might be more than just a cookie thing.

gary
gdstark13
29th Jan 2010
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Good Ideas

I agree that user feedback could improve searches.

Good ideas (wkulecz, gdstark13, sysop-dr).

lehnerus2000
lehnerus2000
29th Jan 2010
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That happened (albeit briefly) with Google

I think it was only when logged in as a google user that you had it, but for a short time I had an up arrow, down arrow and an X button. This was to promote or demote a link or get rid of it completely. I believe it only affected you and not the search results of all users, instead used to further tailor your search results to sites that you find of interest. This can surely be implemented on a wider scale.
nphilipc
1st Feb 2010
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Paid trashers

The problem with "end-users" is that we in the industrialized countries forget that in the developing countries it is easy to get people to work for pennies per hour. The same companies that "break" captchas and engage in click fraud to wipe out a competitor's pay-per-click advertising budget would repeatedly submit a site as junk until it wound up with a low rank.
Rick_R
29th Jan 2010
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Spam by any other name....

... is just as slimy ....
happyharry_z
29th Jan 2010
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Differentiation

I agree that paid trashers would be employed within
days of the launch of such a service. However, if done
well, differentiating between paid trashers and "real"
users is considerably easier than doing so for pages,
sites, blog commenters, etc.

If a system:

1) Only counted rankings when a user is "logged in" (or
at least weighs them many fold higher when "logged
in").

2) Selected 1,000 or more "real" users (screened by
humans at Bing or Google) to detect "normal" behavior
(e.g., most people, most of the time wont rank search
results and when they do it will be in clustered non-
random and more importantly non-uniform manners).

3) Randomly re-selected new "real" users over time.

3) Discarded those who do not behave like "real" users
(these algorithms are adaptive and considerably harder
to fool).

Assuming that 99.99% of real users are "discarded"
(only 1 in 10,000 kept) by mistake, assuming that
spammers represent 10% (a huge number) of attempted
rankers, and even assuming that these spammers are just
2-5 times more likely to be discarded as real users (a
horrible hit-rate), I am certain that our collective
searches would be MUCH less cluttered and more
fruitful.

This, of course assumes that searchers do not start
using similarity-ranking to present customized search
results - this would have the nice effect of having
spammers see more searches ranked like other spammers
and the rest of us see more searches ranked like our
friends and colleagues.

It won't get rid of spam sites, bit it will make them
rarer and more expensive.
GabeFree
29th Jan 2010
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But how ...

Using this type of user feedback, what would stop a hacker using a bot to turn a perfectly legitimate site into a blacklisted site ... or a spyware infested site into a whitelisted site?
hipyskipy
29th Jan 2010
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But how ...

Same challenge exists for ebay. Generally the solution is that you build a history of the user's feedback. Another mechanism is to look for conflicting feedback...that can result in one side being "found out" and all their feedback discarded.

gary
gdstark13
29th Jan 2010
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Search Who are s ....

Is this really about end user feedback? Surely, if I have a problem with a product and I type in the manufactures name I should get that manufacturers website first - shouldn't I?
Of course I won't, and in many cases (3rd party windows software in particular) the site may be 10 pages down - if it shows up at all.
These aren't search sites they are "who paid the most to be on top sights". Google and Bing are basically the w*h*r*s of the Searching World!
stillgolfing
29th Jan 2010
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RE: Checks to curb latest SEO tricks

What I found interesting is the next "story" is a "Recommended" SEO Ad. Maybe I'm the only one who got that combo but I don't think so.
Me_too
31st Jan 2010
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So unethical tactics ARE welcomed by Yahoo! ??????

Maybe they have an unethical SEO tactics unit that can help you SEO for a fee......

When is search engine optimisation not unethical?

Well...

I think, if you write a Web page that is the answer to someone's question (which is how I use a search engine, but not by writing a question but by choosing words which I expect to find in the answer on some web page... this sounds circular but it isn't), then choosing words carefully to increase the chance that someone who wants to find a web page like yours, will find yours with a search engine - that's reasonable.

On the other hand, when you want to find a review of the Acme Pneumatic Can Opener ($99), and what you find is 1000 online merchants all going, "Acme Pneumatic Can Opener ($99). Buy Now. Write the first review of Acme Pneumatic Can Opener ($99)" - oh, that's annoying.

Sometimes there are technology magazine sites online where you can read independent reviews of Acme Pneumatic Can Opener ($99), and sometimes there aren't. Particularly for a nothing brand name like "Assembled China, May Endanger".

Maybe those no-names are the products not to buy in any case. But sometimes you get a genuine useful bargain.
Robert Carnegie 2009
1st Feb 2010
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