When is Google going to sort their act out?
-
I work with a couple of clients in the finance and debt area. I've been doing loads of work examining the link profiles of the commercial sites at the top of the rankings and 70% of the links I am seeing are low value directories and sites obviously built for links with multiple outgoing links to completely unrelated sources! When I examine the other links their isn't enough value in them to outweigh what looks to me like very obvious and spammy low quality link building.
Why can't Google see what I'm seeing - it's so obvious? I know there are multiple factors at play but links like these should offer no value or get a site penalised (isn't that what Google tell us) but these sites still seem to be ranking because of them rather than despite them!
-
OK. Thanks for your time.
-
Above my pay grade I think.
-
Yes I agree. They certainly have a size issue. Balancing the value of things across that many web pages is only going to throw up more issues than solutions. So are they facing a losing battle with the growing size and complexity of the web and with balancing commercialness and neutrality in a way that makes it impossible to implement changes that will clean the results but jeopardise relationships with paying customers?
-
I think Google has an almost impossible task, that being to determine the quality of over a trillion web pages (and of course growing) using technology to do it, which is the only possible tactic they could use.
Looking at their recent moves, I think they are trying to get the user communities to help determine the quality of sites through the 1 + button, and the move to recognize social media signals ( and the Chrome browser changes).
I think that Google would like to reflect a non capitalistic, democratic ranking system, with safe guards for the new and smaller pages. Like our government was set up to do. And I think they are moving that direction.
The problems with this goes to the human condition. There are many who will always try and take advantage of a system (because we are capitalists at heart and that brings out the best and the worst in entities) and that Google is trying to find the balance between a capitalistic approach and a democratic approach. I don't think they can.
Ultimately the rankings are, in general today, controlled by money. Those entities that have money to spend on SEO and Internet Marketing are rewarded based on how wisely they spend that money. The results are not all that different than the old world Yellow page model. Big money, big advertisement,. first page. Limited budget,and you better find other ways to promote your service/product.
Even with the new changes, the 1+ and all that, lots of smart people will still be looking for ways to take advantage of them, and will undoubtedly find a few ways.
So all we can do, is decide what we are individually, and what tactics we will use to
to represent the side of the fence we choose to stand on.
( Bring in theme music here)
-
Thanks for your response.
I know there are multiple factors at play and for these clients we are doing social media work, PPC and email campaigns.
I'm really just surprised at often I'm seeing sites with spammy link profiles appear in the top ten when better quality sites with better (but maybe fewer) links appear further down. I starting to suspect that Google are finding it impossible to write in parameters to the algorithm which deal with sites like these without devaluing legitimate sites.
What do you think?
-
We all get to "deal" with these type situations from time to time. Your question is of course impossible to answer, but I would say you are putting all your eggs in the back link basket. If you are faced with a competitor who has a zillion low quality links, you may need to look for other traffic opportunities. SEO is ultimately about getting quality traffic to your clients site. If your client see's it as nothing more than a rankings competition, you are in deep trouble.
Using the new opportunities in Social media , as well as searching out and finding the best quality links, and building highly creative on site content ( Tips, Calculators, Cartoons, Educational video, Forums , contests) may go alot further than building links 24 hours a day.
I feel your frustration, we all do.
-
We all get to "deal" with these type situations from time to time. Your question is of course impossible to answer, but I would say you are putting all your eggs in the back link basket. If you are faced with a competitor who has a zillion low quality links, you may need to look for other traffic opportunities. SEO is ultimately about getting quality traffic to your clients site. If your client see's it as nothing more than a rankings competition, you are in deep trouble.
Using the new opportunities in Social media , as well as searching out and finding the best quality links, and building highly creative on site content ( Tips, Calculators, Cartoons, Educational video, Forums , contests) may go alot further than building links 24 hours a day.
I feel your frustration, we all do.
-
Google definitely has opportunities for improvement. They acknowledge their weaknesses and adjust their algorithms on a regular basis.
Often the sites we see at the top are only there for a short time period. The majority of the spam sites I have been looking at lately disappear in 4-6 weeks.
Also, there are widely varying definitions as to what is spam, and what sites should rank. Earlier today another member felt a site should not rank as #1 and was spam. When I reviewed the site it seems to me the page earned it's ranking and it appropriately placed in SERP based on the competition. http://www.seomoz.org/q/fishy-rank-1-google-algorithm-bug
The best we can do is learn as much as possible about how Google works, then use that knowledge to improve rankings for our sites and those of our clients. We can also report spam sites, but be careful about reporting sites as spam which are not. Matt Cutts shared the reporting account is given a sort of credit rating when they report spam. Those accounts which make false spam reports are discounted on future reports.
-
I know. Finance and debt are really difficult areas to compete.
I would try to attack it with content that professors and university departments would be willing to link to.... but the problem with that is that they don't want to link to a site with an obvious commercial purpose.
-
Hi EGOL
Yes I agree and you would think that is the case but they are ranking at the top for reasonably competitive terms and better sites are already finding it hard to compete with them.
I'm totally up for the challenge but that's not really my point. This is not an isolated example I see sites using these practices ranking high for a range of keywords in Google. I can't write algorithms but I know the things I would be looking for if I did and these sites would be obvious to me. I can't believe that Google don't know and can't do anything - so what's happening then?
Thanks.
-
If these sites have such spammy link profiles then they should be really easy to beat!
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
-
Does google will see this has a 301 permanent redirect and will penalized my website?
Hi, I got a website that have a lot of information on job posting. The domain name will be new but i just want to redirect all of the old single job pages (around 300 pages). To the new domain pages but keep the old domain because it's already been indexed by google. The design will change but the content will kinda be the same. Is this a good approach? Does google will see this has a 301 permanent redirect and will penalized my website? Thanks alot
Link Building | | bigrat950 -
Getting free search engine traffic and monetize it with google adsense
Hello moz comunity, I have a couple of websites with 10-30 articles on each, 700+ words, images and so on.Which steps I need to take in order to see a faster free search engine traffic?All of these articles I optimized with seopressor and all in one seo pack.I want to know how much time and money I need to put in the traffic process for each site.I mean, how much it takes to see 500 visitors/day in my analytics for each website. I want to monetize that traffic with Google Adsense and amazon links+skimliks.Thank you !
Link Building | | Sebastyan220 -
Unable to build google local listings, are citations still useful?
Hello Google seems to be unhappy about letting us build google local profiles around our 'virtual locations, for each of which we have a dedicated page. We have approximately 100 'virtual locations' with addresses. I was wondering if, despite not being able to build google local profiles, it would still be worth it to build yahoo, bing, and utilize citation building services to each of those virtual locations. Would these citations in any way help bing or yahoo rank higher locally? Would the locally optimized city page rank higher as a result of all these citations? This is a service-industry based website btw.
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Google still allows massive link building in my country.
This is really messed up! I've been investigating this issue for almost a year now. I had discussion about this in SEOMoz before and people told me that my site was not optimized for SEO. However, I've finally come to conclusion that massive back link building is still the best way to rank in Google Turkey. Many high PR content websites do not seem to get their unique content ranked here because some shitty website can be ranked on the top by using back links with targeted anchors for the keyword they want. I've spent a lot of money for content but no it does not get listed unless I provide back links for each article. This does not happen in the US anymore. Google catches you for massive back link building and penalize you. SEOMoz authors suggest using social media more but it seems to have no effect whatsoever in Google Turkey. I really want to open a ticket for this in Google but don't know how to do it. Think about searching "urology" keyword in the US, would you see an informative website about urology or a site that contains a small article and wants to sell a bullshit product to you? If anyone knows how I can contact Google regarding to this, please let me know. Thanks.
Link Building | | mertsevinc0 -
When's Linkscape update going to go live?
I've been keeping an eye on the Linkscape update calendar and am a bit confused! There was meant to be an update yesterday, but Open Site Explorer is still showing "Last index update: 8/14/12". When will the new data reach OSE? Been doing lots of link building and want to know if my efforts have been worth it! Any info greatly appreciated. Thanks! Alex
Link Building | | reddogmusic1 -
Google Penalty
Hey there, I am working with a site who recently received an email from Google that they have been penalized. Since I have only been working with this site for a couple of weeks I know it's from past SEO work. I tried to pull back links for them and they have 1.5 million of them and every one I look at is a good quality site. I did notice one thing that stood out and I need your opinion. They have a blog in which they run about 3 ad banners and about 4 other links site wide creating several thousand links with the same anchor text and seems to be a bit spammy on the page. However, the blog is owned by them... and the amount of same anchor text links is a very small percentage of their 1.5 million links. Can you offer a different way for me to attempt to find these bad links? Could their blog by itself cause the issue? Please share your thoughts with me about this.
Link Building | | PageOnePowerGang0 -
Is backlinkbuild.com considered against Google policy?
I guess it IS buying links, but I have read many reviews saying they are ok (Which might just be part of thier network of sites :)) It seems like cheating, but they say they do the leg work, that it's not just automatic junk links. Any experience with them? Thank you!
Link Building | | Eladla0 -
Do http:// links to a http://www. site count the same to Google?
In terms of links to one's site helping your position on Google, if your site defaults to http://www.example.com (automatically adds "www." even if it isn't typed), does Google count links that appear as http://example.com (without the www.) with the same "weight"? Thanks.
Link Building | | celife0