It’s been interesting of late in SEOland, with a lot of BIG sites getting nuked in Google because of manipulative ranking techniques – e.g. aggressive linkbuilding or content spamming or e.g. talking the p*ss.
Overstock
Overstock’s situation is interesting as this is a fairly well used linkbuilding technique that was discussed.
It’s interesting how it was outed by perhaps a comepetitor. In Webmasterworld.
It’s interesting how it was devalued. Manually.
What was wrong with it exactly? Well, the search engineer who looked at it immediately probably looked for the ‘Google Taking The P*ss Nuke Button’ when he read this:
Overstock.com is offering ABAC students and faculty 10% off of selected products using the coupon code: 121728… Link Details; please use the following hyperlinks for each keyword: “vacuum cleaners†should by the hyperlink to: http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/VacuumCleaners/2004/subcat.html
“gift baskets†should be the hyperlink to: http://www.overstock.com/Gifts-Flowers/GiftBaskets/125/dept.html… S EL
and saw this:
…and realised this site was trying to rank, it seems, for…everything! That’s a lot of competitors to p*ss off as well.
Takeaways:
- don’t get outed, and
- don’t be caught asking for links with specific anchor text – ever.
- Don’t take the p*ss and
- This seo technique works.
JCPenney
The recent JCPenney debacle as well as a clear example of talking the p*ss as well, trying to rank for everything, and using over-the-top techniques. Again, this had to be a manual change, and again, it was outed. Again it was a clear example of manipulative links. Even more damaging – paid links from obvious low quality domains – lots of them.
Takeaways:
- Don’t get greedy and
- Don’t get caught buying links on lots of crappy domains when you have tons of great positions.
- Don’t get outed by a national Newspaper.
- Don’t take the p*ss
- This seo strategy works
Content Farms
Google also took issue with massive content farms – and apparently, re-ranked them.
| # | Domain | Change | SISTRIX (before) | SISTRIX (after) | # KWs (before) | # KWs (after) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | wisegeek.com | -77% | 121,58 | 28,22 | 74.024 | 21.940 |
| 2 | ezinearticles.com | -90% | 65,08 | 6,65 | 184.508 | 54.277 |
| 3 | suite101.com | -94% | 54,04 | 3,28 | 178.373 | 36.904 |
| 4 | hubpages.com | -87% | 55,16 | 7,40 | 152.998 | 50.178 |
| 5 | buzzle.com | -85% | 43,25 | 6,55 | 86.472 | 24.423 |
| 6 | associatedcontent.com | -93% | 38,29 | 2,57 | 216.429 | 53.512 |
| 7 | freedownloadscenter.com | -90% | 30,26 | 3,01 | 42.486 | 7.992 |
| 8 | essortment.com | -91% | 25,73 | 2,32 | 27.501 | 7.459 |
| 9 | fixya.com | -80% | 28,78 | 5,83 | 62.034 | 36.167 |
| 10 | americantowns.com | -91% | 24,88 | 2,18 | 26.000 | 9.799 |
| 11 | lovetoknow.com | -83% | 25,75 | 4,28 | 49.544 | 17.833 |
| 12 | articlesbase.com | -94% | 19,96 | 1,16 | 82.274 | 31.365 |
| 13 | howtodothings.com | -84% | 21,20 | 3,39 | 33.222 | 7.601 |
| 14 | mahalo.com | -84% | 20,49 | 3,23 | 33.875 | 9.740 |
| 15 | business.com | -93% | 17,24 | 1,13 | 21.556 | 4.813 |
| 16 | doityourself.com | -77% | 20,89 | 4,90 | 23.256 | 6.870 |
| 17 | merchantcircle.com | -85% | 18,43 | 2,67 | 93.347 | 34.681 |
| 18 | thefind.com | -83% | 18,95 | 3,27 | 74.506 | 45.495 |
| 19 | findarticles.com | -90% | 16,98 | 1,74 | 64.810 | 20.189 |
| 20 | faqs.org | -91% | 16,52 | 1,46 | 33.648 | 11.142 |
| 21 | tradekey.com | -89% | 16,83 | 1,79 | 37.364 | 16.268 |
| 22 | answerbag.com | -91% | 12,93 | 1,11 | 67.314 | 26.054 |
| 23 | trails.com | -87% | 12,05 | 1,62 | 38.346 | 8.511 |
| 24 | examiner.com | -79% | 10,54 | 2,19 | 70.781 | 31.272 |
| 25 | allbusiness.com | -88% | 8,86 | 1,08 | 16.457 | 6.034 |
Content farms are at the other end of the scale – massive, low quality content farming sites, who apparently don’t care about the quality of the content, as long as it ranks in Google and people click on adverts. Most of these sites are authority domains and have decent links because of good and bad PR – and the way Google ranks authority sites, it benefits them just to pump oodles of content into Google, as Google doesn’t really know the difference between good content and bad – only what’s ‘relevant’..
Takeaways
- This SEO strategy works
- Don’t take the p*ss
Somewhere in the middle of all that above are similar strategies that work to dominate search engines. Crap links work sometimes. Paid links work (of course). Content spamming works if you have a smidgeon of domain authority.
Hardly inspiring seo but the techniques outlined above beat the algorithms of every search engine out there and it’s the way of the world and it’s not illegal.
No wonder lots of people out there do it.
Shaun, awesome post as ever. Especially like the fact you have bothered to actually show exactly why Overstock got nuked. They were taking a legitimate technique and moulding it into something sinister. Idiots. If you are at ThinkVis this weekend a Jagerbomb will be waiting at the after party :P Oh and did you see my Usual Suspects poster on seofilms.tv. SEOMalc
i am always available for drinks…. :)
great post but I had to turn to wikipedia to find out what taking the p*ss means! And although it’s funny how you use it I am still not entirely sure I am understanding you. Like this : “In colloquial usage, ‘taking the piss’ is also used to refer to someone or something that makes a claim which is not in line with a recognised agreement e.g. an invoice that is double the quoted price with no explanation for the added charge could be said to ‘take the piss’, or likewise if something consistently misses a deadline. ” ? seems a British thing. Any other American readers puzzled by this one?
It works, you see it everyday and Google do nothing unless its a massive high profile site outed very publically. It’s depressing when you try to go about things the right way and put in a ton of work only to be beaten by these sort of techniques.
Fantastic post as always, and very candid. The JC penny issues was great to read about – I think the NY times did something like a 5 page (online) report on the story. Big stuff. @zylonne taking the p*ss means essentially being massively cheeky and taking advantage of a situation/opportunity without much thought for others or the consequences.
[...] sites with quality content and penalise content farms and sites of that ilk, as the excellent HoboSEO seem to confirm. However, there seem to be quite a few cases where genuine, quality sites have been penalised. [...]
@zylonne It is definitely a British thing, and probabaly more Scottish at that :) It can mean to either take things to the extremes (as in the examples above) or it can mean to wind someone up or jest them.
[...] quality content and penalise content farms and sites of that ilk (good article about this over at HoboSEO). However, there seem to be quite a few cases where genuine, quality sites have been penalised. [...]
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Hey Rimi {Do you really want to be known, or outed, for spamming a fellow search marketers blog with such embarrassing low quality, automated dofollow link building techniques? OK There you go….. :)