Posts About ‘spam’

Google Aren’t Just Fighting Spam, They’re Fighting the Perception of Spam

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I can’t quite pin-point the date, but Google have changed the way they fight spam. It’s a dramatic shift that can only have come from a change in policy internally. This schism from their own way of thinking is dramatic and perhaps an end of innocence from the Webspam team.

For me the first indication of this shift was when Google started naming their updates again. Vince and Panda (and Caffeine, even though it wasn’t technically a algo change) this was a change from the ever-flux where changes were being made constantly in small iterations, why did they make this change? Perhaps it was just because they were big cohesive changes, or partly it was because Google want to talk more publicly about what they considered good and bad content and they wanted to show that they were taking action.

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Saw A Rank Drop This Week? It Could Be Google’s Fault Says Matt Cutts

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If you keep a close eye on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ when it comes to developments around Google and SEO you might have noticed this week that there was a lot of talk about rankings and updates. People were suggesting there was another Panda Update coming up or even taking place at that specific moment or that this was the effect of the “over optimization” penalties that have been discussed a lot lately.

They came to that conclusion based on the sudden drop in rankings they saw for their websites. The “Is there a Panda Update going on?” type of tweets therefore were quite massive the past few days. It turns out that there was no Panda Update, no ”over optimization” Update or anything in that matter. It turns out Google made a mistake: some sites were marked as parked when they were not. (more…)

Google Giving Anti-Spam Tips To Free Web Hosting Services

free-hosting

Google is constantly trying to get a grip on spam, both on the organic as on the paid side of search. They have entire spam teams dedicated to finding and getting rid of those trying to falsely manipulate not just the results, but also the users.

One of the main areas in which spammers are active is free web hosting. Many spammers try to get cheap and easy ways to create hundreds of sites all aimed at spam. That means that those who think they have a nice site for cheap money might just be part of a network which is not considered to be ‘clean’ by Google. Potentially that could hurt also the ‘innocent’ ones.

Google therefore is now trying to protect these users and is giving hints and tips to those free or low cost web hosting services to make sure spammers will not abuse them. (more…)

Social Spamming Is Coming to A Social Network Near You

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Spam, its everywhere. It started off in our mailboxes, then went on the Search Result Pages and is now coming to a Social Network near you.

Impermium decided to take a look at social spam, where is it coming from, what is it about and why is it spreading so “rampantly” and how can you beat it. And in line with Halloween they made an appropriate infographic with that. (more…)

An Imminent Revolution in Search

Revolution

This is going to be a slightly incoherent rant about the changing world of search, as I’m currently quite jetlagged and doped up to my eyeballs with drugs to fight a chest infection. I’m not complaining though as all this is the result of a rather magnificent three-week honeymoon in New Zealand (yes we did plan it around the Rugby World Cup) (no it was her idea) (why do you think I married her?!), it’s just an explanation for my somewhat unhinged output.

I think everyone who works in search understands on some level that we’re living in truly interesting times. There’s a sense of anticipation, a mood of imminent revolutionary change. (more…)

Google Plus is a Honeytrap

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Many people seem to believe that Google+ is meant as a valid alternative to Facebook, that Google is serious about competing with Zuckerberg’s brainchild, and that Larry and Sergei are devoted to gaining a solid foothold in the social media world.

But I believe all that is just a happy side-effect of Google’s real goal: to eventually replace the link graph with the social graph in its search ranking algorithm.

Google’s web search was built upon the premise that the amount and quality of links pointing to a website was a sign of its value and importance. This premise has since been so mauled and mangled by spammers and, yes, SEOs, that it is no longer true. Links are no longer an entirely trustworthy metric. (more…)

Clean Up Your Twitter Account: Spammers and Scammers are after You

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a huge increase in spam messages on Twitter in the past week. And the sad thing is, that it is not just bots doing it, but genuine accounts are being hacked. Twitter is mainstream now, which means that that is where the hackers go. I’ve had several spam messages from people I know in the past few days.

All I can tell people is to clean up their Twitter accounts, see who you follow, change your password if necessary and be sure to check the applications connected to your account. If there is one you don’t recognize or don’t trust: revoke the access!

Twitter spam is nothing new, but as said, things have increased very much. Impermium found that the percentage of social networking accounts which are fraudulent ranges from 5 percent to 40 percent. So they made this infographic which shows that scammers are becoming more sophisticated every day. (more…)

Google’s War on Spam (infographic)

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Google’s biggest problem is not Facebook. It is not Microsoft or it is not Social. Google’s biggest problem is spam. And they have been fighting it for years, with Matt Cutts leading the way. Their ‘War on Spam’ is a fierce battle and sees a lot of obstacles, which are shown very nicely in this infographic by SEO.com. (more…)

Google now showing +1 Counts and ads the local aspect: ready for spam?

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Searchenginewatch reports that Google is making another step in integrating social into their search results. Again it has to do with the +1 button. Searchenginewatch editor Danny Goodwin noticed that Google has started to put number of +1′s sites have received in their search results.

I haven’t seen then myself, but Danny reports he saw it “Safari on a Mac and IE7 on a PC, not logged in to Google.” Which seems kind of surprising since until now you have to be signed in to Google to actually see the results. (more…)

A Local SEO scam

This is a bit of a rant against a certain type of SEO spam that I’ve recently come across. A big client of mine had a whole subsite full of the sort of spam I’ll be describing below, and I had to fight hard to get it removed. It was sold to my client by a third party company under the pretence of “locally relevant search engine worthy content”.

According to this third party company’s website they are “helping businesses find local customers through targeted online advertising.” Nothing wrong with that, at first glance… (more…)

State of Search radioshow – episode 2 – Live without Google & Mahalo spam

The second episode of the State of Search radioshow featured ‘just’ the two hosts Bas and Roy. Which gave them the change to really get into some subjects.

Triggered by an event which Bas moderated that day they first discussed the difficulties companies face to get started using the web and the fact that they need to first see the ROI of search and social before they start investing in it. After that several topics came by, from a week without Google, to a spammy Mahalo.

The shownotes are below, all the links can also be found in the special delicious feed. (more…)

The real time danger: Google opens up for spam and scam

This post was originally posted by Bas van den Beld on Searchcowboys.

Real time search is there. And it looks great. And it works great. It’s really great and I love it. This really is the new step in search. But are we ready for it? Is Google ready for it? Looking at what a couple of SEOs at SES Chicago found not. But spammers might be ready. Real time search could be a great spamming tool.

At SES Chicago Outspoken Media blogger Rae Hoffman, aka Sugarrae noted the new real time search feature and immediately started testing. She was surprised in what she saw and pulled Dave Naylor, Michael Gray and Frank Watson into a room and the four hard core search experts found some troubling results. (more…)