Who's still being outranked by spam?
-
Over the past few months, through Google Alerts, I've been watching one of our competitors kick out crap press releases, and links to their site have been popping up all over blog networks with exact match anchor text.
They now outrank us for that anchor text. Why is this still happening? Three Penguin updates later and this still happens. I'm trying so hard to do #RCS and acquire links that will ensure our site's long-term health in the SERPs.
Is anyone else still struggling with this crap?
-
This is nothing new .. this is like playing Russian roulette .. they are taking the risk and they are enjoying the benefits while the sun shines. I do not think we can do anything to change this situation.. hope Google is listening and will come up with something and believe me this tool will not make any difference -
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en
I have tried this many times and of course no result so far.
-
Ah. Well, at least you got a reply!
-
I 100% agree with this, and I am working on long term strategies in the hopes that our competitors will face consequences soon enough--two of our biggest competitors were completely destroyed by the first Penguin. It's a little hard when you have higher ups demanding answers as to why we went from number #1 to #4 over the past three months.
-
Yes, I did that yesterday, but unfortunately, a few weeks ago I got an email from Google saying they received a spam report I sent them for a different site over eight months ago, so I'm not expecting any kind of expedient action on Google's part.
-
I'm seeing it less and less in the travel space. But when it does happen I agree that it's hugely frustrating. You simply have to keep on doing the right thing in the firm belief that Google will reward you in the end. Don't be tempted to copy spammy techniques because (a) you'll probably suffer in the long run, and (b) it might not actually be those that are causing your competitors to outrank you.
-
Have you tried a webspam report?
-
The recent algo updates to catch this sort of stuff seem to be a bit hit and miss at the moment. But it does give us reason to believe that Googs are actively working on removing the trash, but it is still just an algo, it's not perfect. Hopefully they'll continue getting even better at identifying and removing spam.
-
Everyday I keep seeing spam website ranking at the top, frustrating to see that they are up there.
Example 1, we are trying to #1 for a educational course name for a client that is a training school. They are currently being outranked by a website that has about 90% exact match Japanese blog comments, simply because those blog have a high DA.
Example 2, we have a regional client trying to rank for [keyword] + [city name], they are being outranked by an EMD who has 1 link, which is a directory. Whereas we keep pushing new content on the client's site and building their social networks. Sure, the number 1 website isn't doing any shading spam techniques, but they are simply ranking because of their domain names which I thought Google's latest update would of fixed that..
-
Yes - I am struggling with exactly the same issues. I actually sent a private question to SEOMoz last month asking for advice because I was so frustrated. One of our competitors has set up hundreds of fake blog networks with exact match anchor text all over the place linking back to their ecommerce site (to the tune of 300,000+ links)....I know their tactics, because I used to work for them (and it's obvious when looking at their inbound links in ahrefs.com). I disagreed with their SEO approach and frequently voiced my opinions. Fortunately, I was hired away by one of their competitors
Now I work for a great, honest, hard-working company that does great #RCS every day. Still my former company, even after Penguin and Panda and more Penguin and Panda, consistently makes Page 1 while my current company is lucky to make Page 2 for some really important keywords. It is very very frustrating!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to find Spam Website?
Hi guys, I'm seo newbie and really want to find websites that hurt seo ranking to avoid get link. Which tools or trick can help me to find those site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | denakalami0 -
How/Why do I have so many Spam backlinks?
I was looking in GWT yesterday and found we have several thousand "spam" backlinks...I am curious why this happens and how this happens? There are some links from websites/domains that are not mine that appear to be spam. However, we own a large group of domains and have noticed some of the links are coming from 2 of those sites/domains we own to my main site. The sites/domains are not active, we just own them. I am wondering how someone could access these domains that are not active and create spammy backlinks to my main website? (They created about 20,000 links). Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Outranked by link farm
Hello Mozzers, I got a questions about some rankings. Some of my sites always had no. 1 rankings for most of the competitive terms per niche. I recently made the change to a full responsive design for more mobile friendliness. No all of the sudden I see different competitors that are not mobile friendly outranking me for some of my most important keywords but also I see some link farm sites (like: camping.startpagina.nl) outranking me for some terms. I was under the impression that Google doesn't like link farm sites? Also I provide a lot of good unique content on my pages and my competitor does no such thing. Still for some terms he outranks me. I understand that it can't be just 1 thing and that there are a lot of factors playing a rol in the big picture but still, you must understand that this is pretty frustrating. I obey the rules of the search engines and see competitors do no such thing and still being outranked by them. Further details of this matter can be send to you in PM if you need it. Looking forward for your thoughts on this. regards Jarno
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Massive Google Search Spam
We have come to know that one of competitors of our client is spamming Google search results on massive scale. If we search with keywords like "iphone spy apps" , "text messages spy " etc then most of results from 3rd or 4th page onwards show totally irrelevant sites but when we click on those results/pages then all redirect to either http://topspysoft.com/ OR http://www.mspy.com/ . They have been doing it on massive scale for last few months against hundreds of queries and populating hundreds of search results. If use some country specific Google site then again hundreds of results come from totally irrelevant country specific domains (au,nz,uk etc) and they all redirect to topspysoft.com or mspy.com. Can you please tell how they are doing it and how they are able to do it on such a massive scale without getting noticed by Google ? Is there any way to report this issue to Google as the current only allows one link ? Following are some of the spam urls to give you an idea www.crcincva.com/doc/20-best-iphone-spy-apps/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shaz_lhr
chefitupkids.com/top-10-spy-apps-for-iphone/
jarestaurant.com/text-spying-apps-iphone/
www.lisamishler.com/qn/phone-spy-apps-uk
tigerdenus.com/spy-apps-for-iphone-no-jailbreak
palmhousestl.org/templates/phone-location/iphone-spy-apps-uk.html I'm also attaching couple of images which show that almost 80% of results on those pages are actually spam pages WlpJshL qtuLdHp0 -
Local Map Pack: What's the best way to handle twin cities?
Google is increasing cracking down on bad local results. However, in many regions of the US there are twin cities or cities that reside next to each other, like Minneapolis-Saint Paul or Kansas City. According to Google guidelines your business should only be listed in the city in which your business is physically located. However, we've noticed that results just outside of the local map pack will still rank, especially for businesses that service the home. For example, let's say you have a ACME Plumbing in Saint Paul, MN. If you were to perform a search for "Plumbing Minneapolis" you typically see local Minneapolis plumbers, then Saint Paul outliers. Usually the outliers are in the next city or just outside of the Google map centroid. Are there any successful strategies to increase rank on these "Saint Paul outliers" that compete with local Minneapolis results or are the results always going lag behind in lieu of perceived accuracy? We're having to compete against some local competitors that are using some very blackhat techniques to rank multiple sites locally (in the map results). They rank multiple sites for the same company, under different company names and UPS store addresses. Its pretty obvious, especially when you see a UPS store on the street view of the address! We're not looking to bend the rules, but rather compete safely. Can anything be done in this service based scenario?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AaronHenry0 -
Authorship Photo Not showing. Done all checks still photo not coming
Can someone suggest - authorship photo not showing - have asked this earlier too but did not get much response on it Site URL http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=entry&id=93&Itemid=91 http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=detail&n_id=479&Itemid=10 Google + https://plus.google.com/109551624336693902828/posts Have done checks :- ?rel=author at end of profile url on site - Yes Profile discovery option on in Google+ - yes Contributor link in Google+ - yes Email validation done - yes Photo fitted in size - yes Rich snippet showing authorship established with photo - yes still the photo not coming in for last 6 months now. Any suggestion pls Even on searching name 'Gagan Modi' - the photo do show in Search result of google plus profile. But rich snippet as author photo do not show in for the site.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Website Vulnerability Leading to Doorway Page Spam. Need Help.
Keywords he is ranking for , houston dwi lawyer, houston dwi attorney and etc.. Client was acquired in June and since then we have done nothing but build high quality links to the website. None of our clients were dropped/dinged or impacted by the panda/penguin updates in 2012 or updates previously published via Google. Which proves we do quality SEO work. We went ahead and started duplicating links which worked for other legal clients and 5 months later this client is either dropping or staying in local maps results and we are performing very badly in organic results. Some more history..... When he first engaged our company we switched his website from a CMS called plone to word press. During our move I ran some searches to figure out which pages we needed to 301 and we came across many profile pages or member pages created on the clients CMS (PLONE). These pages were very spammy and linked to other plone sites using car model,make,year type keywords (ex:jeep cherokee dealerships). I went through these sites to see if they were linking back and could not find any back links to my clients website. Obviously nobody authorized these pages, they all looked very hackish and it seemed as though there was a vulnerability on his plone CMS installation which nobody caught. Fast forward 5 months and the newest OSE update is showing me a good 50+ back links with unrelated anchor text back links. These anchor text links are the same color as the background and can only be found if you hover your mouse over certain areas of the site. All of these sites are built on Plone and allot of them are linked to other businesses or community websites. These websites obviously have no clue they have been hacked or are being used for black hat purposes. There are dozens of unrelated anchor text links being used on external websites which are pointing back to our clients website. Examples: <a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">autex Isuzu, </a><a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">Toyota service department ratings, </a><a class="clickable title link-pivot" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">die cast BMW and etc..</a> Obviously the first step is to use the disavow link tool, which will be completed this week. The second step is to take some feedback from the SEO community. It seems like these pages are automatically created using some type of bot. It will be very tedious if we have to continually remove these links. I hope there is a way to notify Google that these websites are all plone and have a vulnerability, which black hats are using to harm the innocent... If i cannot get Google to handle this, then the only other option is to start fresh with a new domain name. What would you do in this situation. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | waqid0 -
Have I created link spam.....
Howdy fellow Mozzers.... Since Googles Penguin Update I am overly cautious when reviewing our link profile. I spotted 2 domains linking to us yesterday, 80+ links from each domain to our homepage. This looked superstitious, site wide links effectively. At first inspection I couldn't spot the links....they turned out to be two individual comments, but as the site had a plugin with "most recent comments", 1 link became 80. The link is an exact match of the individuals name who made the comment. And is a result of filling out the comment form. Name: Website: Comment: By filling out the name and website the name becomes the anchor text for the link to the website. Long story short...do you think this is penguin esq. link spam? Is it not? Or is it just not worth the risk and remove them anyway???
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0