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Garbage In, Garbage Not Out? 
By: Chris Richardson 2006-06-01 One of the biggest complaints facing the search engine industry concerns the amount of spam sites (sites developed for the sole reason of gaining favorable search engine results) that show up in today's SERPs.
Often, these spam sites contain very little content of note, save keyword mining junk, AdSense ads directing hapless visitors to more relevant sites, and usually an RSS feed of content stolen from another legitimate site. These types of sites are a serious thorn in the sides of all engines, not just Google. Although, Google engineer Matt Cutts is very outspoken on this matter. His blog has a number of posts addressing search engine spam and how Google deals with such sites. Dialogue from the search engines themselves is usually very well received on the SEO-er end and it's nice to see that the issue is being attacked. But that doesn't mean search engine spam has gone away. Take this post from the newly designed WebProWorld forum as an example. Poster datajam wrote a very frustrated post about being outranked by sites that fit the search spam description, while wondering why more isn't being done to eliminate this problem. The following snippet reveals this: So I have to ask . . . how do these "garbage" pages rank higher in Search Engine results than sites that actually provide content? I mean, I just DO NOT get it! And, am I the only one that believes the persons responsible for such pages should be prosecuted for every "click-through" they collect payment for? Oops! Wait a minute. Are these pages the result of some Search Engine marketing strategy? Is this another plot by "Google" to rule the world? I wonder how many web site owners are paying for the "click-throughs" generated by these pages, or paying multiple "click-throughs" for PPC campaigns. As you can see, datajam is not just calling for more action; it's actually to the point where the idea of the search engines being complicit in this is being considered. (It should be noted that if datajam is targeting web promotion, his site needs some more SEO work on it...) Of course, like the parenthetical indicated, ranking well in search engines is not just dependent on content spam. Links are still golden, no matter how many times on-page content is mentioned. That aside, the responses on the thread mimic the message put forth by datajam. In fact, quite a few posters take the opportunity to blame everything on Google, when the other search engines use pretty much the same methods for ranking sites, but I digress. Two posts in particular help capture the mood of this thread: dburdon - The garbage is piling up for Google. Everywhere I'm seeing these automated content sites. They've even got links to my site that I know nothing about. I've even had clients thnking me for gaining them links I've had nothing to do with. Google needs to clean this one up. Fast. Or the service loses credibility. And, janeth - Google has caused people to build 1000's and 1000's of junk sites. When building that many sites there is no way to put good content on every page. But the problem falls back on Google not the webmaster. However, Peter (IMC) disagrees with the whole "Google being complicit" and "Google doesn't care about these sites being in their index" with an insightful comment: Seriously, does anyone think that those crappy sites actually make a significant difference in the revenues of Google? They don't! For a giant like Google, they're just an annoyance. Nothing more. Of course they have to make sure this doesn't start to take over the SERPs. But you can be sure it won't because it would hurt the search results and that would hurt their revenues. Always those conspiracy theories about Google forcing AdSense to show up more often in the SERPs. It's ridiculous. How stupid do you think Google is? They're fully aware that these things are bad for business. So they do everything they can to keep their SERPs clean. What do you think? What should and can be done about these types of sites? Is Google, et al, resting on their laurels when it comes to spam sites by letting them exist solely for the purpose of collecting the revenue sites like this can produce? Let us know what you think at WebProWorld. While you are at, check out the new design as well. Search Engine Spam | Google | Search Engine Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo My Web About the Author: Chris is a staff writer for iEntry, focusing on the search industry. |
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