Entries from Search Engine Roundtable tagged with 'spam'

For years, email spammers have been looking for ways to encourage people to click on their links. And for years, Google has been a target. Why? Well, when someone sees a link that has google.com in it, people trust it....

Posted on November 19, 2009 8:41 AM

What appears to be a newbie, posted a thread at Google Webmaster Help asking why his site is not ranking yet. He also asked if he had something to do with the URL https://internal.google.com/spamteam/users/cutts/matt/ban_list/ showing up in his log files....

Posted on November 9, 2009 8:56 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster who noticed his site was spammed and he is anticipating his site to be penalized by Google, and the other search engines. He asked if he should start early and submit a reconsideration request...

Posted on November 3, 2009 9:23 AM

On Sunday, if you searched in Google for [Green Party] you would not find the official Green Party of United States web site, which is at gp.com. Even if you searched for gp.org, Google would not show you the site....

Posted on October 27, 2009 8:53 AM

Yesterday, I, along with hundreds (if not thousands) of others received an email that appeared to be from Google. The email's subject line read "Google Adsense Account Disabled" and the email's from to looked to be from Google Adsense ....

Posted on October 16, 2009 8:28 AM

A Google Web Search Help thread reports that Google has been the target of spammers who are trying to push their pornographic videos into Google. This is nothing new, but the terms these spammers are using now include Holocaust related...

Posted on September 30, 2009 9:11 AM

Back in the old days, referrer spam was a way to get quick rankings by spamming other site's referrer logs. Wikipedia explains it pretty well: Referrer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves...

Posted on September 23, 2009 9:28 AM

The years and years of Microsoft polluting web logs with fake referrer data, which they have 'fixed' numerous times, including a couple weeks ago. We had confirmed reports from webmasters that Bing was no longer showing up in the log...

Posted on September 10, 2009 8:08 AM

The topic of cloaking or IP deliver or useragent delivery is always a very touchy topic in the SEO industry. I am not going to get into the history, but in short, webmasters can use various methods to show GoogleBot...

Posted on September 4, 2009 8:30 AM

A Google Webmaster Help thread has one 'lurker' reporting that an ex-Googler is using spam tactics to both threaten and intentionally hurt his site. By hurt his site, the ex-Googler is allegedly using hacking and injection techniques to push the...

Posted on August 31, 2009 8:28 AM

Brett Yount from Microsoft's Bing Webmaster team has commented here and in a Bing Forum thread saying the issue with the fake referrers being generated by MSNBot has finally been fixed. By finally, I mean, an issue dating back over...

Posted on August 31, 2009 7:58 AM

I normally don't get upset when I report about bugs with search engines, it is what I do. But I am really getting upset with Microsoft and their webmaster support with Bing, really. For the umpteenth time, Microsoft said they...

Posted on August 25, 2009 8:06 AM

Last night, Microsoft Bing representative, Brett Yount, said that they have rolled out a fix for the fake referrals or single word query issues people have been noticing. Brett said: We released a fix last night that should take care...

Posted on August 20, 2009 8:31 AM

Last week, we reported on what appears to be more cloaking tests by Bing, where referrer data for websites are being spammed (by Microsoft) with fake data. There have been more and more complaints about this in the Bing forums....

Posted on August 10, 2009 8:30 AM

A recent thread from the Bing Forums reports one webmaster noticing 150 plus referrers from MSNBot with the referring search query of "donate." They always come from a search result of www.bing.com/search?q=donate. The thing is, his site doesn't rank well...

Posted on August 5, 2009 8:45 AM

Several weeks ago, we discussed the debate over if Google treats SEOs as criminals. We even polled our readers on that question and the results were split. In any event, if you believe this to be true, or even if...

Posted on July 17, 2009 8:22 AM

There is a large thread at the Bing Community on the topic of how Bing treats domain names. There are some people that feel that Bing's algorithm weighs too heavily on words in a domain name. Cleo started the thread,...

Posted on July 13, 2009 8:49 AM

A DigitalPoint Forum thread has a copy of a email sent to a webmaster for violating Google's webmaster guidelines. The email specifically shows the webmaster which guidelines they are breaking, in this case, hiding text. Here is a copy of...

Posted on July 1, 2009 7:57 AM

There has been a lot of Bing buzz on how the 'new' search engine is competing in the search landscape. But is that traffic all legit? Remember, since April 2007, Microsoft has been sending weird referrals to many webmasters. They...

Posted on June 25, 2009 8:23 AM

A Google Reader Help thread reports an increase in the number of RSS feeds being hacked into and used to redirect subscribers to spammer sites. Googler, Roger, from the Google Reader team said: Thanks for reporting this problem. Unfortunately, we've...

Posted on June 24, 2009 9:10 AM

An interesting thread at Google Web Search Help started by "anotherDad" tells the story of how a father was shocked to see a pornographic site come up in the Google search results for a search for his daughter's name. He...

Posted on June 24, 2009 8:46 AM

Google News is the life blood for many people who try to stay on top of news. It is also fairly hard to be included in the Google News index. So when Google News gets infected with spam, people take...

Posted on June 17, 2009 7:31 PM

If you take a look at the Gmail Help Forum you will notice dozens of threads with hundreds of posts about Google's spam filter failing in a major way. In addition, you can see hundreds of tweets about the issue...

Posted on June 1, 2009 8:54 AM

Back before March 2005 Google page hijacking was a serious issue. It took Google some time to tackle the issue and it was less of an issue towards the end of April. But then it sprung up again in June...

Posted on June 1, 2009 8:29 AM

I often see threads at the Google Webmasters Help discussion forum of people who have sites that were penalized for having issues with their site in the Google Webmaster guidelines. But it is not often where you see a thread...

Posted on May 21, 2009 8:51 AM

Gab Goldenberg from SEO ROI posted a thread at Google Webmasters Help discussion forums when he noticed Google began to drop his rankings for all his pages. I have been tracking the thread for about three weeks, but held off...

Posted on May 14, 2009 8:17 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread spotted an interesting paragraph in an Reuters article on AOL possibly using automated tools to create an infinite number of niche sites, targeted at driving users to the site via search and having them click on the...

Posted on April 23, 2009 8:45 AM

There are different levels of search spam. Some search spam involves creating spam on sites you control. Some spam involves injecting links into third party sites, hacking sites, infecting computers, phishing attempts and so on. Where does search spam cross...

Posted on March 5, 2009 8:32 AM

Yesterday, we reported that Google's Local Business Center was injected by escort services in the Google Maps results (by the way, it is still there). Today, I spotted a thread in Google Maps Help thread with a complaint from a...

Posted on February 12, 2009 9:37 AM

We all know, Google Maps has their share of trouble with spam, including porn and escort services. Heck, even Google admitted the problem yesterday in the Up Close With Google Maps & Local. Now a search for auto insurance los...

Posted on February 11, 2009 9:35 AM

A Webmaster posted a thread at Google Webmaster Help groups asking why his description for his site shows porn related terms in the snippet. The clear answer was that his site was hacked. The question was posed by a concern...

Posted on January 16, 2009 8:00 AM

I figured I take a different look at Matt's Give Google feedback on "noresults" pages. In short, Matt Cutts of Google wants you to submit feedback to Google on search results that lead to reviews, but those reviews don't actually...

Posted on January 14, 2009 8:01 AM

A senior member at WebmasterWorld who started posting in 2004, had his server hacked into. He realized this when Google put a temporary ban on his site from showing up in the Google search results. Google does this, because they...

Posted on January 14, 2009 7:48 AM

There is a webmaster at DigitalPoint Forums who is convinced that Google has penalized all his sites that were verified in his Google Webmaster Tools account. This webmaster claimed his sites are clean and he complies with Google's terms of...

Posted on January 12, 2009 8:17 AM

Matt Cutts has his annual post on tell him what Google's search quality team should tackle in 2009, to prevent web spam. So far, Matt's post has 90 suggestions. So if you really hate web spam, go there, comment and...

Posted on January 8, 2009 8:57 AM

Yesterday, I was tipped off by a reader that the number two listing on Google Trends was this form of "ASCII art" ✈ ▌▌. At first, I thought it was an airplane landing on a runway strip. By I was...

Posted on January 7, 2009 8:12 AM

Is Cuil, the new search engine that seems to have lost momentum, trying to bring brand awareness back to the forefront by adding spam comments to blogs? That's what I'd say -- after all, they spammed my blog: And that's...

Posted on December 18, 2008 9:09 AM

Google has been rolling out new Google support forums slowly. AdWords, AdSense, Google Mobile Maps, Google Analytics, Google AdManager all have been moved over. I am in the know that Google Webmaster Support is moving over soon as well. But...

Posted on December 3, 2008 8:28 AM

I so love finding these gems in the deep areas of forum discussion. That being said, let me share with you what I found. A Google Groups thread has a response from Matt Cutts of Google, basically explaining their was...

Posted on December 2, 2008 7:40 AM

Matt McGee wrote a great post on the issue of Google map spam. His whole post shows that Google isn't consistent with their storytelling; on one hand, they won't allow paid links, but on the other, they allow a fake...

Posted on November 5, 2008 9:38 AM

Tamar wrote a piece named Do Search Penalties Worry You? I had her add a poll asking SEOs if they are scared of search engine penalties. The 98 responses are back and it is about split. 56% are afraid of...

Posted on August 29, 2008 8:08 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has early discussion on the topic of what to do about a penalized site. Should the webmaster destroy the domain and start on a new one or should he/she clean up the site and wait for Google...

Posted on August 28, 2008 8:10 AM

Eric Enge interviewed Googler Maile Ohye relatively recently and provided an interesting summary of the interview on his blog. In the interview, Maile talks about the WebmasterTools API (especially with regards to extracting link data), using sitemaps for discovery, spam...

Posted on August 26, 2008 9:02 AM

A question I get quiet often is, my site has been penalized, and I want to know if I will have to start from scratch, to earn Google's trust back? I often say that I doubt you have to start...

Posted on August 22, 2008 9:01 AM

A Google Groups thread has discussion on the topic of dynamically creating pages to target localized searches. For example, this particular webmaster wants to be able to target 28 different zip codes for his client's A/C business. He summarizes what...

Posted on July 18, 2008 8:03 AM

Ever since Google launched Universal Search, SEMs have been trying to leverage it to get their site into the first position within the vertical search engine that is ranking in the top slot. So for searches like new york hotel...

Posted on July 14, 2008 7:26 AM

There is no doubt that Most SEOs Believe Competitors Can Hurt Your Google Rankings specifically with using link building tactics. But when the topic was raised recently at a Google Groups thread, Googler, JohnMu, pretty much denied it. Let me...

Posted on June 18, 2008 7:48 AM

Beu posted a Search Engine Watch Forums thread after noticing that Google has changed the definition they used for what a doorway page is. On the Google Page, it now reads: Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages...

Posted on June 2, 2008 7:28 AM

A couple weeks ago I asked if Do You Report Your Competitors as Spam in Google? Well, the results are in and most SEOs said they do not report their competitors to Google as spamming. Of the 159 responses,...

Posted on May 23, 2008 7:22 AM

At the recent Web 2.0 expo (which I totally wish I went to), Matt Cutts presented on "what Google knows about spam." I actually watched the 9+ minute video (yay me!) and found it informative. Basically, he summarizes a few...

Posted on May 13, 2008 10:09 AM

search_engine981:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017077.htmlAnn Smarty goes through the conflicts of reporting competitors as spamming Google search results. Yes, this is a topic we covered many times here, including: Reporting Spam: Is It EthicalHow Can I Report Spam to Google?Google Spam Reporting WorkingDoes Google...

Posted on May 8, 2008 7:59 AM

I'm sure you've seen those URLs -- www.domain.com/4-star-hotel-in-barcelona-spain.php. The question is: is this a tactic that we consider spammy? Not really, according to a High Rankings Forum thread. On the other hand, if it was www.domain.com/4-star-hotel-apartment-penthouse-keyword4-keyword5-keyword6-in-barcelona.php, that may raise some...

Posted on May 6, 2008 9:31 AM

According to Aaron Wall, since Mahalo adds no value (if you remove the links which point to other pages on the Internet), it violates Google's spam guidelines. While many people, particularly SEOs (who have been frustrated with Jason's commentary in...

Posted on March 24, 2008 10:02 AM

Warning, clicking on the following Google search result may return an image of extreme pornographic nature. The image is of a woman's vagina and is found on a pornographic site, but the image appears to be hosted on Google's Blogger...

Posted on March 19, 2008 6:50 AM

Aaron Wall discovered a Google Spam document that he then shared with his readers. Brian Ussery archived the entire spam recognition guide for our perusal (here) and explains that while he had initial doubts about the authenticity of the document,...

Posted on March 14, 2008 10:03 AM

Ann Smarty poses an interesting question on Search Engine Journal. As blogs are communities, it's useful to comment and leave your thoughts. But what if you add your link to the comment? Is it spam? There are numerous tools that...

Posted on March 13, 2008 8:20 AM

A Google Groups thread has several smart webmasters aiding a webmaster who found links on his site via the Google cache. In short, the links are not visible when viewing the page in the browser, but they are visible when...

Posted on March 13, 2008 6:21 AM

A couple of active Google Reader users have reported at a Google Groups thread that someone or something is injecting spam into their daily reading. It is really hard to determine how this is being done at this point (i.e....

Posted on February 21, 2008 8:04 AM

Our beloved Google Groups was hit with some forum spam the other day. A Google Groups thread in the Webmaster Help section reported it back on January 30th. Duncan at TechCrunch reported it a day earlier with his Go To...

Posted on January 31, 2008 6:54 AM

As you may know, the highly popular Sphinn Internet Marketing Forum is looking for ways to get better. So they're proposing a Desphinn button which will work much like a "Bury" button that you see on other social networks. If...

Posted on January 16, 2008 10:12 AM

If you see spam in Google search results, you can report it to Google using the Report a Spam Result link. Google claims that they take these allegations seriously and investigates them to see if the results are spammy. A...

Posted on January 16, 2008 9:29 AM

Yesterday we reported that MSNBot failed some reverse DNS tests. In short, if you did a reverse DNS lookup on the IP addresses of their spiders, it would not resolve to search.live.com. The big issue with this is that Webmasters...

Posted on December 6, 2007 7:20 AM

I have been corresponding with Microsoft about the weird spam-like referrals Live Search was sending to hundreds, if not thousands, of web site log files throughout the web. On September 6th, a Microsoft representative confirmed that these were actual tests...

Posted on December 4, 2007 3:00 PM

Remember back in September we reported about Chinese-like .CN TLDs spamming the heck out of Google's search results? Well, it appears that a study was done by Sunbelt Software that showed "27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious]...

Posted on November 29, 2007 7:36 AM

What SEO doesn't like talking about spam? Now add a newly granted Google patent that talks about spam and an SEO is in heaven! Bill at created a Cre8asite Forums thread about a new granted patent named Methods and systems...

Posted on November 29, 2007 7:00 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks, can multiple hyphens in a domain name raise a red flag with a search engine? For example, if you have a domain name that is something like www.buy-shoes-now-online-for-cheap.com, would that type of domain raise a...

Posted on November 28, 2007 7:44 AM

What happens if you discover a folder on your server that has a bunch of spammy content that has no relevance to your site whatsoever? Typically, Google will deindex your site when it discovers this content. Therefore, you need to...

Posted on November 8, 2007 9:26 AM

Over at Cre8asite Forums, moderator Barry Welford has spotted an anomaly with the results of Google Blog Search when compared to Google's relevant search results. Barry asks what drives the poor quality of these search results. Perhaps it is the...

Posted on October 22, 2007 9:06 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that many of the proxy highjack pages for your domains have been removed from Google. Proxy highjack pages are basically pages that try to outrank yours for the same keyword phrases, and thus replace your pages...

Posted on October 11, 2007 7:46 AM

Over at the Google Groups forum, yet another Googler said that bad links to your site cannot hurt you, at least for the most part. Wysz, a Googler, said in response to someone being worried that a spammy site is...

Posted on October 3, 2007 8:21 AM

There are several reports across multiple forums about a large update at Google. It appears people are noticing large search results shifts at Google Web Search. Some are obviously happy with the changes, such as one user at Search Engine...

Posted on September 19, 2007 6:58 AM

There is a DigitalPoint Forums thread that is taking note that Yahoo Answers questions and answers have a tendency to rank well in Google and other search engines. Yahoo Answers has been ranking well in the search results for a...

Posted on September 7, 2007 7:09 AM

Every Google Adsense ad -- including ads on splogs -- can be reported to Google if it is in violation of any particular AdSense guideline. How is this done? Let's walk through an example from a splog. First, you click...

Posted on August 30, 2007 9:32 AM

Oops. InfoWorld reports that Google has accidentally mistaken its own Custom Search Blog as spam and gave it to another user. The issue was noticed by Philipp Lenssen who saw a rather strange post on the blog with some grammatical...

Posted on August 9, 2007 9:45 AM

Mike Blumenthal has been vigilant about uncovering and reporting abuse of Google Maps's Local business submissions. In fact, in the past week or so, he has reported a couple of cases of Google Local abuse, where companies submitted hundreds or...

Posted on August 7, 2007 7:54 AM

In the Seattle Conference on Scalability, Google's Marissa Mayer was asked a question where she revealed that Google has 10,000 human evaluators that manually go through the search results and rate them. You can find coverage of this keynote at...

Posted on July 10, 2007 7:44 AM

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has discussion about a service one member was offered. In short, the service is composed of two offerings: (1) Damage your competitor's search engine rankings (2) Protect your own search engine rankings They use...

Posted on June 27, 2007 6:57 AM

Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land site has been caught hiding text and performing "poor man cloaking" techniques. A WebProWorld thread called attention to the fact that Search Engine Land was hiding text in a CSS file: text-indent: -9000px; But Danny...

Posted on June 1, 2007 11:44 AM

There is a unique thread at Search Engine Watch Forums where a person describes a case of an in-house SEO that has gone bad. He said that before he came on to work for a company, they had an in-house...

Posted on May 9, 2007 7:02 AM

The Yahoo! Search Blog has announced that Yahoo! Site Explorer is out of beta. Yahoo has also announced that Site Explorer has added functionality for users to submit sitemaps for their mobile device-friendly websites through the control panel. WebmasterWorld has...

Posted on April 16, 2007 12:20 PM

On a recurring theme of Internet spam, a study discussed in WebmasterWorld indicates that three out of four blogs -- or 75% -- are spam. According to the study (PDF link): ...14 of the top-15 doorway domains have a spam...

Posted on March 20, 2007 9:43 AM

A user on WebmasterWorld mentions that his page rankings have dropped considerably after what appears to be a hack attempt on his server. According to the user, a vulnerability on his web host was exploited, and 50,000 new pages on...

Posted on March 20, 2007 9:11 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread links to a December 2006 paper at Yahoo! Research named A Reference Collection for Web Spam. The paper can be downloaded as a PDF file, it is not brand new, but relatively new. Here is the abstract:...

Posted on March 16, 2007 7:41 AM

A WebmasterWorld sparked this post from me. At SES Chicago '06, during a session named CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines the search engine representatives were asked about how they handle CSS. It is currently easy to hide text...

Posted on December 18, 2006 7:42 AM

Matt Cutts of Google is known as a spam fighter, he is part of Google's Search Quality team and has a inner moral spirit to prevent web spam from creeping up in the Google search results. Watching Matt Cutts in...

Posted on November 30, 2006 7:53 AM

The tenth edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. This is the first week in a while where we only had one weeks worth of topics. Makes it much easier to manage, and more relaxing. The topics we...

Posted on November 29, 2006 1:41 AM

I often hate reporting on threads that do not have any direct link to examples but sometimes you have to trust certain members. A thread at WebmasterWorld has senior member crobb305 claiming that for many searches he is finding "loads...

Posted on November 28, 2006 7:45 AM

AussieWebmaster posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums with a link to a blog post named How to remove your competitors from MSN Live! In short, the "hack" is to generate enough duplicate content on your competitors site, so...

Posted on November 10, 2006 7:12 AM

We all know about PPC fraud and that some of the fraud is caused by bots (robots) that click on the ads and drive up your bill and unwanted traffic. But it gets more serious than that. Bot are also...

Posted on November 8, 2006 6:56 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread asks, Can any SEO company be black hat free from google view? Well, we know from a Yahoo! employee's view, what makes for a Luminescent pearly white SEO. Tim Converse from Yahoo! explains; Luminescent pearly white: This...

Posted on November 2, 2006 7:24 AM

Reports via WebmasterWorld that Microsoft's Live Web Search is ranking blogspot blogs that have redirects to adult sites for some popular debt keyword phrases. At WebmasterWorld you are not allowed to list examples, so I tried to dig some up....

Posted on October 31, 2006 8:25 AM

Well that was fast! After I resubmitted the site October 25th at 7am and I checked again this morning at it is back in the index. This is after Jennifer Convertibles Web Site Hacked & Delisted In Google.com, I decided...

Posted on October 27, 2006 7:23 AM

You ever go to Google.com, conduct a search, and think, wow those results are bad. Or maybe there was just one result you didn't like? Or maybe, you feel that your competitor should not be in the top spot, but...

Posted on October 20, 2006 7:19 AM

An interesting thread has been started on the SEW Forums regarding a paragraph in the Wikipedia External Linking Guide. It discusses the possibility of sharing link spam data with Google (and presumably other interested parties) in order to monitor and...

Posted by evilgreenmonkey on October 11, 2006 5:53 PM

In a WebmasterWorld thread, Adam Lasnik of Google can be quoted on what types of outbound links can and cannot hurt you. Let me first quote Adam; It's unlikely that your outbound linking is causing your pages to be listed...

Posted on October 2, 2006 7:54 AM

Last week, Ben spotted, and I reported on a Google OneBox Q&A Adult Spam. Matt Cutts confirmed the issue and said it has been fixed, which it appears to have been done. Matt said: I checked into this, and it...

Posted on September 25, 2006 7:12 AM

The third edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. In this show we covered the Live.com launch, AdWords tests, Yahoo!'s marketing blitz, Google & Intuit's partnership, Google's supplemental command, the Belgian court ruling, OneBox spam, Adam Lasnik on...

Posted on September 20, 2006 1:19 AM

Ben Pfeiffer spotted possibly the first OneBox Q&A adult spam in the Google results, that I have personally seen. Ben posted the details in a Search Engine Watch Forums thread, describing the result set one gets for a search on...

Posted on September 19, 2006 6:56 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread points out an issue at MSN Search, where subdomains that are excessively linking between each other, tend to rank well in MSN Search. Well, MSN is aware of it, according to MSNdude; It bothers us too, and...

Posted on August 17, 2006 8:10 AM

Brian White, part of Matt Cutts webspam team, has joined Search Engine Watch Forums to continue the outstanding Google to Webmaster communication we have seen recently. Brian adds some more detail to our post yesterday on Web Hosts Found Cloaking...

Posted on August 15, 2006 7:11 AM

Web hosts are typically in a very powerful position. One such example is discussed at a Search Engine Watch Forums thread showing how one Webmaster was finding "strange results" in the Google search results pages. The results contained pornographic terms...

Posted on August 14, 2006 7:09 AM

A thread at WebmasterWorld has MSNdude, MSN's official search rep, trashing on some Webmaster's sites. Check out this quote: I'm not sure why so many people seem to think the "spam look" is in this year (maybe it's a fashion...

Posted on August 11, 2006 7:58 AM