New Spam Technique Overwhelms Google
In 2009 I wrote about “Percolation Theory and the Web”, in which I noted that “Percolation Theory holds that in every system there must be a threshold point, a value Pc where things change.” I believe we have just crossed such a threshold point with a fairly common news Website tactic that is now being abused by people in the search marketing community. I began to notice old articles appearing in Search Engine Land’s daily “SearchCap” articles some time ago. A few days ago they ran an article mentioning the problem has begun to boil over on Google News. The Perpetual Update Spam Trick News Web sites have to deal with the challenge of keeping information fresh while making their articles searchable. The compromise they have settled upon for years is to add update blocks to their articles. This practice has spread to non-news sites (you can even find articles on SEO Theory where I have added date-stamped updates). This is, in my opinion, a fine practice and one I hope will continue (at least until we have a new mix of content publishing and search-indexing technologies to work with). But lately it seems like people have struck upon the […]
How to Drop a Search Sledge Penalty on Your Foot
I continue to run across SEO bloggers who purport to tell everyone “how to guest post the right way”, as if there is indeed a “right way” to do anything that has become so popular as to have all but burned out its initial good value. Every hint, tip, and “how to” article that presents you with queries to use to find blogs that are inviting, soliciting, open to, or somehow dependent upon or connected to guest posting is moving you one step closer to your next search penalty and/or downgrade. Seeking out blogs that are intentionally rubbing the search engines the wrong way is anything but the “right” way to develop relationships with bloggers. In fact, if your link building strategy is still bound up with getting as many guest posts on as many blogs as possible, you don’t know enough to be building links. Let’s take a look at the problems in a little more detail and then consider some possible alternatives that may be less painful than playing Russian Roulette with loaded search engines on your money-making Websites. These Aren’t The Blogs You’re Looking For Any blogger who thinks he can pump up his authority by inviting […]
Why Google Cannot Stop You From Spamming Search Engines
As the Web marketing world braces for the onslaught of new Google anti-spam measures newly published research into economics has provided some interesting insights into why the arms race between search engines and Web marketers will never end. We will begin with a report from Alpha Galileo. Digital Piracy is More Widespread Than Previously Believed According to the study, millions of machines scattered across the world are involved in widespread digital piracy on a scale previously unimagined. The authors chose to focus only on downloadable computer games, as that market is large but still fairly easy to monitor. The only good news coming out of the study for intellectual property owners can be boiled down to three points: Fewer stolen copies of the copyrighted materials being monitored were made than industry analysts suggested Virtually every type of game has been pirated, even the “not-so-cool” family-style games Most of the piracy was concentrated around a very small percentage of available games The digital pirates come from every corner of the world to participate in the underground economy of exchanging stolen content for stolen content. I noticed a few power laws at work in the report’s data summary; power laws are ubiquitous […]
Can Robots Click on Ads?
Yes, robots can click on ads. Crawlers have been fetching Javascript files at least as far back as 2004, possibly earlier. I first documented a crawler fetching Javascript from one of my servers in 2004. Google and Bing and other crawler operators have been working to fully render Web pages for years; this research and development entails the necessary execution of Javascript. As recently (or as long ago) as April 25, 2012 Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that Google has the ability to “actually process some of the Javascript…especially people use Javascript to help with navigation ….” In March 2012, Matt specifically asked people to stop blocking Googlebot from Javascript (and this was not the first time he made the request): Back when people were using Yahoo! Site Explorer to review backlink profiles, many if not most SEOs seemed unaware (despite my numerous attempts to point this out) that many of the links reported by that tool were transient links embedded in Javascrpit (for example, I found many AdSense links in Yahoo! Site Explorer link reports). Rogue crawlers coming out of the Amazon Web Services network sometimes also execute Javascript. You can easily determine this for yourself (if you receive many […]
SEO ‘Content Marketing’ Opens the Flood-gates to a New Generation of Spam
White Hat SEO experts can’t seem to get their heads out of the spam philosophies. If they are not out there publishing thousands of unnatural links across the Web they are sending out emails asking other people to create the links for them. Welcome to the world of “Content Marketing”, which is just another delusional name for “manipulative linking strategies”. Real content marketing is built on distributing branded content to the masses. That has nothing to do with “guest posts”, infographics, and chasing keywords with machinated blog schedules. You are spamming the search engines with your faux content marketing practices. Here are some problems with your “content marketing”: Start With A Content Strategy Any content that needs a strategy is clearly not serving a consumer-oriented purpose. To be consumer-oriented there is no direct, measurable payback in the content marketing process. Real content marketing builds a market. Fake content marketing seeks links, conversions, visitors, traffic, etc. What’s the difference? Is it a subtle difference? Actually, there is no subtle distinction here: a market building campaign CREATES DEMAND. You’re not creating demand with your SEO fakery. You’re measuring links, conversions, visitors, traffic, etc. Which of those types of metrics measures demand? Your […]