How much time do you think Google employees spend reverse engineering what we do?
-
Lets face it, it's the corner stone of SEO, reverse engineering sites to guess at what big G does. It would just make sense they did the same to learn all our tactics.
-
Thats what I hear from chatter from the google employees, they are too busy working on new features to look back at how people are exploiting them. I think we'll see a big change in the future now that it got a bunch of press.
-
Well, it has been claimed that the spam team has been asleep at the wheel a little bit recently (but then again I hear SEO is dead these days as well) but I'm sure I saw something where Matt Cutts said they're going to be putting more man hours back into fighting spam and if they should have learned anything then I would guess part of their time should be looking for new ways their SERPS are being abused.
-
I am sure they have a team that looks into suspicious sites, but I doubt they crawl the web randomly looking at sites. Matt Cuts is a member of SEOmoz, so he should be well informed : )
-
None (or very little). If they did SEO research or reverse engineering they would have discovered the issues with sub-domains, affiliate links and content farms - to name just a few - before they ever became an issue. Sometimes I think Google (and others) are reacting to the markets rather than being proactive in their products.
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 fix site breadcrumbs on mobile google search
For past one month, I have been doing some research on how to fix this issue on my website but all my efforts didn't work out I really need help on this issue because I'm worried about this I was hoping that Google will cache or understand the structure of my site and correct the error the breadcrumb is working correctly on desktop but not shown on mobile. For Example take a look at : https://www.xclusivepop.com/omah-lay-bad-influence/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ericrodrigo0 -
Significant "Average Position" dips in Search Console each time I post on Google My Business
Hi everyone, Several weeks ago I noticed that each Wednesday my site's Average Position in Search Console dipped significantly. Immediately I identified that this was the day my colleague published and back-linked a blog post, and so we spent the next few weeks testing and monitoring everything we did. We discovered that it was ONLY when we created a Google My Business post that the Average Position dipped, and on the 1st July we tested it one more time. The results were the same (please see attached image). I am 100% confident that Google My Business is the cause of the issue, but can't identify why. The image I upload belongs to me, the text isn't spammy or stuffed with keywords, the Learn More links to my own website, and I never receive any warnings from Google about the content. I would love to hear the community's thoughts on this and how I can stop the issue from continuing. I should note, that my Google My Business insights are generally positive i.e. no dips in search results etc. My URL is https://www.photographybymatthewjames.com/ Thanks in advance Matthew C0000OTrpfmNWx8g
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PhotoMattJames0 -
On Page #2 of Bing But Nowhere on Google. Please Help !
Hi, community. I have a problem with the ranking of my blog and I hope anyone could help me to solve this problem. I have been trying to rank my blog post for a keyword for almost 6 months but still getting no success. My URL is: this blog post
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Airsionquin
Target keyword: best laptops for college The interesting fact is that the post has been on page #2 of BING but nowhere on google. It was on page #3 of google for about one month, but it's been 1-2 weeks gone(not ranked anymore but it's still well indexed). The post has been replaced by another post of my blog(let's say post A) which doesn't have any link. The Post A is ranking on page #4 right now.
The weird thing is my post which ranks for this keyword frequently changes. One day the Post A was on page#4 then after a few days it changed to the post B. Yesterday I searched on google for a keyword "number one on bing but nowhere on google" and then I
come across to read this article on MOZ community and one of the people here said that it was over optimization issue. I think my post has been suffering for an over optimization penalty algorithm. Just for your information, I have been building backlinks to this URL for the last 5 months(it's 1+ year old). It has backlinks only about 1,5k from 200 domains(according to ahref). I have used the exact match anchor only under +/- 2%. The rest is branded, naked URL and generic anchors.
So, in this case, I thought that I haven't done any over anchor optimization.
I have checked the keyword density and I found it was "safe". One important thing I can remember before the post has gone is I add a backlink from lifehack.org(guest post) with exact match anchor.
I suspect this is really the cause because 2-3 days after doing that then the post is gone(dropped) and replaced by another post of my blog(as I've mentioned before). But it's very strange because the amount of the anchor keyword(including the long tail) is only about 10(from 200 domains) or only 5% which mean it should be safe. I'm so Sorry. It's a long story 🙂 So, What is actually happening to my post? and How to fix this problem... Please..please help me... Any hep is appreciated. By the way, Sorry for my poor english.. 🙂0 -
Why does Google recommend schema for local business/ organizations?
Why does Google recommend schema for local business/ organizations? The reason I ask is I was in Structed Data Testing Tool, and I was running some businesses and organizations through it. Yet every time, it says this "information will not appear as a rich snippet in search results, because it seems to describe an organization. Google does not currently display organization information in rich snippets". Additionally, many of times when you do search the restaurant or a related query it will still show telephone number and reviews and location. Would it be better to list it as a place, since I want to have its reviews and location show up thanks? I would be interested to hear what everyone else opinions are on this thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PeterRota0 -
What do you think are some of the least talked about topics of SEO?
What do you think are some of the least talked about topics of SEO? Do you think these topics need to be given more attention? Why do you think they've been ignored?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheOceanAgency0 -
Google turned me down, don't know why...
Hello, I'm experiencing decreasing on some of my keywords. I'm aware of some things which could be responsible for it. So I'd like to asi you, if my thoughts are right, and what to do with it. 1. I put backlinks leading onto my website. Those backlinks are on website I also own (they are on the same server). But nothing happened. Than I put other backlikns on this webiste. Those links also led to webistes I own. So could Google "punnished" those websites I'm linking to? 2. I offered my content to another website, which has a higher authority. This content had been published on my website weeks ago, I put it on this (another site). Co could Google punnished me for "duplicate" content? 3. In the past, we outsorced our SEO, and the company which was responsible for our SEO put backlinks leading to our website almost everywhere, I mean, those websites, they put links leading to our webistes fos focused on almost everything but our field (finance). But everything seemed to be fine, till now 4. Couple of days ago, I put our RSS on many RSS agregators and put our webiste on many catalogs. My website URL is www.penizenavic.cz Could you help me out? 🙂 Thanks a lot Petr
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | petr.rozkosny0 -
Why is this ranking first in Google Places for this term....?
"Best Bar In Chicago" - http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=best+bar+in+chicago They have only 5 Google reviews, and their local directory reviews are suspect. One of them goes to rateclubs.com and it's not even a page for their business, while one of them doesn't have user reviews, it's just an editorial review. The other one at superpages.com doesn't even link back to their site, it links to their restaurants.com profile. What is going on here? I've been trying to figure this out for a while as their first place ranking has been solidified for quite some time now. I can also tell you that a few of the bars listed below them have a MUCH higher profile and are better known. You can see that just by the reviews.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Why Proved Spammers are on 1st Google SERP's Results
This question is related exclusively to few proved spammers who have gained 1st Google search results for specific terms in the Greek market, targeting Greek audience. Why he looks spammer and very suspicious? For instance, the site epipla-sofa.gr, sofa.gr, fasthosting.gr and greekinternetmarketing.com look suspicious regarding their building link activities: 1. suspicious spiky link growth 2. several links from unrelated content (unrelated blog posts forom other markets, paid links, hidden links) 3. excessive amount of suspicious link placements (forum profiles, blog posts, footer and sidebar links) 4. Greek anchor text with the keyword within articles written in foreign languages (total spam) 5. Unnatural anchor text distribution (too many repetitions) So the main question is: Why Google is unable to recognize/trace some of these (or even all) obvious spamming tactics and still these spammy sites as shwon below reside on the 1st Google.gr SERPs. Examples of spam sites according to their link building history: www.greekinternetmarketing.com www.epipla-sofa.gr www.fasthosting.gr www.sofa.gr All their links look very similar. They use probably software to build links, or even hack authority sites and leave hidden links (really dont know how they could do that). Could you please explain or share similar issues? Have you ever found any similar cases in your industry, and how did you tackle it? We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter. Regards, George
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Clickwisegr0