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SpamDexing 101

by Why9999
19 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Okay, so let me get this straight: the big search engines all have spamdexing teams that review many sites link building strategies, page engine optimization and other parameters to see if they're black/grey/white hat and compliant. Furthermore, this spamdexing teams can actually whack your scores - they're kind of Google's IRS agents, eh?

Now, assuming I'm right about all of that, I have a question:

Is it common to get audited by them?
What kind of things are they looking for in blog comments?
How can you fly under their radar?

Also, my site is PR0 and I've had a number of people say they have no idea why. I have much-better-than-PRO backlinks and my traffic isn't half bad for a small site either. Could it be I got spamdexed?

The reason I ask is that the Google forum guys were VERY hostile to me when I used to ask questions there. They accused me of being an adsense site and so on, which isn't true btw. They were by far the most unhelpful, nasty group of guys I've ever met - I almost quit my web site but kept going anyway thank goodness. Could some of them have been part of a spamdexing team?
#101 #spamdexing
  • Profile picture of the author 4freedom
    My experience has been your Page Rank has nothing to do with too much of anything. I have sites that rank on the first page of Google that are PR0 against stiff competition... and I have a couple PR4 sites that simply don't rank well at all. Also, keep in mind your PR will only change as Google updates their search engine - something I see happen every 3-4 months.

    You can get de-indexed or sandboxed for spamming sites with too many links, posting too many spam-type blog comments, etc. It all boils down to too much link building too fast. Better to go low and wide. Also, GREAT content that is not scraped from the search engines or "compiled" in any way is a good thing. Adding adsense hurt a site. I've seen it. I have one site ranking #1 on google for a primary term. I added adsense and immediately fell to page three. Took it off... right back up to the #1 spot.
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    • Profile picture of the author Why9999
      Originally Posted by 4freedom View Post

      My experience has been your Page Rank has nothing to do with too much of anything. I have sites that rank on the first page of Google that are PR0 against stiff competition... and I have a couple PR4 sites that simply don't rank well at all. Also, keep in mind your PR will only change as Google updates their search engine - something I see happen every 3-4 months.

      You can get de-indexed or sandboxed for spamming sites with too many links, posting too many spam-type blog comments, etc. It all boils down to too much link building too fast. Better to go low and wide. Also, GREAT content that is not scraped from the search engines or "compiled" in any way is a good thing. Adding adsense hurt a site. I've seen it. I have one site ranking #1 on google for a primary term. I added adsense and immediately fell to page three. Took it off... right back up to the #1 spot.
      Wow! Thx for the tip on the adsense. Isn't that ironic, though, that they penalize you for their own product? What is the reasoning behind this do you think? They're just trying to purify the race?

      The Google forum boys always beat me up for adsense, so I guess now I see why...

      Also, have you seen the same thing with affiliate links?? I've got about a quarter of my pages with Amazon affiliate links, usually just one link per page however.

      Great comments - thx.
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    • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
      Originally Posted by 4freedom View Post

      Adding adsense hurt a site. I've seen it. I have one site ranking #1 on google for a primary term. I added adsense and immediately fell to page three. Took it off... right back up to the #1 spot.
      I've been making "Adsense sites" since literally the day they launched it back in 2003 and I've not ever seen this. Not one time. And I test everything. I'm OCD about testing. I cannot possibly see how the two are causally related. The drop after adding Adsense probably came from some other change or bad timing with respect to Google making internal ranking changes that were unrelated to your on-page changes.

      There is absolutely nothing wrong at all whatsoever with making a site that is monetized purely by Adsense. Google doesn't care. IN fact, they care the other way. They want more Adsense publishers, not fewer. What they don't want is content on any type of site (Adsense or otherwise) that is scraped, duplicated, or otherwise crappy.

      John
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      • Profile picture of the author adamv
        If "spamdexing" is real, somebody forgot to tell all of those viagra and cialis sites that keep ranking so highly.
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      • Profile picture of the author Troy_Phillips
        Originally Posted by Zeus66 View Post

        I've been making "Adsense sites" since literally the day they launched it back in 2003 and I've not ever seen this. Not one time. And I test everything. I'm OCD about testing. I cannot possibly see how the two are causally related. The drop after adding Adsense probably came from some other change or bad timing with respect to Google making internal ranking changes that were unrelated to your on-page changes.

        There is absolutely nothing wrong at all whatsoever with making a site that is monetized purely by Adsense. Google doesn't care. IN fact, they care the other way. They want more Adsense publishers, not fewer. What they don't want is content on any type of site (Adsense or otherwise) that is scraped, duplicated, or otherwise crappy.

        John
        John , I really respect your opinion concerning adsense . Is there any way that only adding adsense to a site can make it rank better?

        The reason ask is because I have had three different sites go to google one after adding adsense , with no other changes whatsoever .

        The sites were already on google one but below fold before .
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        • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
          Originally Posted by Troy_Phillips View Post

          John , I really respect your opinion concerning adsense . Is there any way that only adding adsense to a site can make it rank better?

          The reason ask is because I have had three different sites go to google one after adding adsense , with no other changes whatsoever .

          The sites were already on google one but below fold before .
          Troy, I've never seen Adsense drop a page's ranking, which is what I mentioned before. I don't know about raising its ranking, but I've not seen that happen and it makes sense that it would not be the cause for a rise or a drop. It's a piece of java script. It's not any kind of additional content, per se, in Google's estimation. I really think Google would take major precautions to guard against any kind of appearance of favoring pages with their own money-making script in the code. That would be fraught with all kinds of public relations nightmares for them, as well as probably some legal ramifications. I just can't imagine that Google gives a page with Adsense code on it any bearing whatsoever in the ranking algorithm.
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    • Profile picture of the author Why9999
      Originally Posted by 4freedom View Post

      My experience has been your Page Rank has nothing to do with too much of anything. I have sites that rank on the first page of Google that are PR0 against stiff competition... and I have a couple PR4 sites that simply don't rank well at all. Also, keep in mind your PR will only change as Google updates their search engine - something I see happen every 3-4 months.

      You can get de-indexed or sandboxed for spamming sites with too many links, posting too many spam-type blog comments, etc. It all boils down to too much link building too fast. Better to go low and wide. Also, GREAT content that is not scraped from the search engines or "compiled" in any way is a good thing. Adding adsense hurt a site. I've seen it. I have one site ranking #1 on google for a primary term. I added adsense and immediately fell to page three. Took it off... right back up to the #1 spot.
      Thx so much for this advice. I removed all adsense from my site and about three to four days later I started ranking on a variety of smaller searches. My traffic is up about 20-25% already. Furthermore, I should be able to leverage this by rewriting and reworking key pages to get better ranking.

      Thx for the tip!
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  • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
    Originally Posted by Why9999 View Post

    How can you fly under their radar?

    - snip -

    The reason I ask is that the Google forum guys were VERY hostile to me when I used to ask questions there.
    Can you see why they might have treated you this way? :rolleyes:
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    • Profile picture of the author Why9999
      Originally Posted by Jared Alberghini View Post

      Can you see why they might have treated you this way? :rolleyes:
      I understand what you're saying, but I work VERY hard on my site. My site has ten times more scientific studies than any other blog I have ever seen and I have many top level scientists actually following it and I'm not a content scraper in any way shape or form.

      I just meant that if you have an IRS agent auditing you or a cop following you, nothing good is going to come out of it...

      Or am I looking at it wrong?
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      • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
        Originally Posted by Why9999 View Post

        I just meant that if you have an IRS agent auditing you or a cop following you, nothing good is going to come out of it...

        Or am I looking at it wrong?
        If you have paid your taxes, and you are doing the speed limit,
        why on earth would anything bad come out of it?

        .jrd
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        • Profile picture of the author Why9999
          Originally Posted by Jared Alberghini View Post

          If you have paid your taxes, and you are doing the speed limit,
          why on earth would anything bad come out of it?

          .jrd
          I know you're right deep in my heart, but I've been PR0 for so long that I have become bitter and cynical. All right - it's time to let that go...
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      • Profile picture of the author MissTerraK
        Originally Posted by Why9999 View Post

        I understand what you're saying, but I work VERY hard on my site. My site has ten times more scientific studies than any other blog I have ever seen and I have many top level scientists actually following it and I'm not a content scraper in any way shape or form.

        I just meant that if you have an IRS agent auditing you or a cop following you, nothing good is going to come out of it...

        Or am I looking at it wrong?
        Well, in my opinion, stating that you want to fly under the radar, then stating nothing good comes of it if the "cops", a derogatory reference to police officers, are following you, leads me to believe that you are the type that will push the rules, laws, and morality to the limits.

        My mental picture of you is speeding down the expressway with a radar detector on your dash, looking in the rear-view mirror, seeing a police car coming up behind you, and you desperately trying to pull the detector off and hide it under your seat.

        Now, this may or may not be true, I have no way of knowing as I do not know you.

        However, the best advice I can give you, is to be careful of the words you choose when asking questions or posting comments, because whether you like it or not you are sending out messages.

        You've heard of first impressions, I presume...

        MissTerraK
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        • Profile picture of the author Why9999
          Originally Posted by MissTerraK View Post

          Well, in my opinion, stating that you want to fly under the radar, then stating nothing good comes of it if the "cops", a derogatory reference to police officers, are following you, leads me to believe that you are the type that will push the rules, laws, and morality to the limits.

          My mental picture of you is speeding down the expressway with a radar detector on your dash, looking in the rear-view mirror, seeing a police car coming up behind you, and you desperately trying to pull the detector off and hide it under your seat.

          Now, this may or may not be true, I have no way of knowing as I do not know you.

          However, the best advice I can give you, is to be careful of the words you choose when asking questions or posting comments, because whether you like it or not you are sending out messages.

          You've heard of first impressions, I presume...

          MissTerraK
          Actually, I really don't want to push the rules. What I love to do is to write and write good content. Unfortunately, after writing and writing and writing and getting thank you letters from my readers and getting a PR6 Twitter site, etc., I have become very jaded and cynical toward Google. To be honest I feel that no matter how hard how I try, they penalize me and, for better or worse, it comes across sometimes in my posts.

          I have spent 100's and 100's of hours producing great material, researching, reading studies, honing my writing skills, etc. and all Google has given me is three pages. That's right - almost all my Google traffic comes in on three pages.

          My Twitter followers love many, many of my pages based on the retweets I get, but Google will have nothing to do with all of them but three.

          Anyway, that's how I feel and I'm sorry if it comes across in my posts - I didn't even realize it actually. I kind of thought everybody thought the same way...
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          • Profile picture of the author MissTerraK
            Originally Posted by Why9999 View Post

            Actually, I really don't want to push the rules. What I love to do is to write and write good content. Unfortunately, after writing and writing and writing and getting thank you letters from my readers and getting a PR6 Twitter site, etc., I have become very jaded and cynical toward Google. To be honest I feel that no matter how hard how I try, they penalize me and, for better or worse, it comes across sometimes in my posts.

            I have spent 100's and 100's of hours producing great material, researching, reading studies, honing my writing skills, etc. and all Google has given me is three pages. That's right - almost all my Google traffic comes in on three pages.

            My Twitter followers love many, many of my pages based on the retweets I get, but Google will have nothing to do with all of them but three.

            Anyway, that's how I feel and I'm sorry if it comes across in my posts - I didn't even realize it actually. I kind of thought everybody thought the same way...
            Thank you for your honesty! I really appreciate it and am elated to discover that writing is what you really love to do!

            As that is the thing I really love to do also...well, right up there with talking, having fun, and laughing...even at myself!

            I know that things can become frustrating in this industry as well, and I can understand your pain, yes, I said pain, because I feel that your anger and frustration are coming from pain, the pain that's been caused by, shall we say, rejection of your love...writing.

            Will you do a personal favor for me? I'm asking because I honestly can relate to your pain, and want to offer you the only help that I can in this situation.

            Will you please take a big breath? Hold it, hold it, slowly exhale...now smile!

            Don't you just feel a little better?

            MissTerraK
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        • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
          Originally Posted by MissTerraK View Post

          then stating nothing good comes of it if the "cops", a derogatory reference to police officers
          That's their own fault for working with a hit TV show called COPS....
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    Google doesn't penalize sites for its incoming links because webmasters have no control over who links to them. That's a paraphrase from Google's Matt Cutts. If they suspect link spamming, they may not give a site full credit for the questionable links, but that's different from being penalized.

    Too many people think they need gimmicks to trick the search engines into giving a site a better ranking than it deserves. The best way to get high rankings is to give the search engines what they want. I've proved this to myself and others over and over.
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    Just when you think you've got it all figured out, someone changes the rules.

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  • Profile picture of the author Kurt
    My guess is that Google and the other engines don't care too much about sites in their index. What they most likely care about is the actual SERPs for given keywords.

    I base this on having built my own search engines over the years. I really don't care too much about what I have in my databases as much as I care about the actual search results.

    And even then, I follow the 80/20 rule and spend my attention on the results produced by the top searches made by visitors. If I do this well, then 98% of my users get top qualtiy results, and that's really all I care about.

    Not saying they do, but I see no reason why the major engines wouldn't work the same way...

    Let me add, these comments only apply to having actual humans review results. Using algos to value links and content can be applied to all sites in the index.
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    • Profile picture of the author Why9999
      I heard that Matt Cutt was head of a spamdexing team and these guys oversee much of the net. Some other people have said that some large corporate sites that should be PR8 are PR5 because they got downgraded, etc., etc.

      Sound right?
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    Why9999 - pm me your web address so I can have a look at it for you.
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    Just when you think you've got it all figured out, someone changes the rules.

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