Low quality websites with spammy EMDs still ranking higher than genuine websites?
-
Hey guys,
I've just been doing some searching and couldn't quite contemplate how heavily low-quality and spammy EMDs are still running some Google searches.
Just take "cheap kitchens", for instance.
Here are a list of URLs that appeared;
http://kitchenunitsdoors.co.uk/
http://www.kitchenunits9.co.uk/
http://www.aboutkitchenunits.co.uk/
http://www.cheapkitchenunits1.co.uk/
http://www.cheapkitchensonline.com/
http://www.buycheapkitchens.com/
http://www.cheapkitchenscheapkitchen.co.uk/
http://www.cheapkitchensforsale1.co.uk/
http://cheapkitchensaberdeen.co.uk/
http://www.kitchensderby1.co.uk/
http://www.cheapcheapkitchens.co.uk/
http://www.cheapestkitchensinbritain.co.uk/
http://www.cheapkitchenss.co.uk/
http://www.cheaperthanmfi.com/
As you can see, none of them appear to be genuine retailers and are setup purely to influence Google rankings. I'm amazed that Google is still giving so much weight to these types of sites - especially considering how search is meant to be better than it ever was before!
Any insights into why this is?
-
Backed by quite a bit of real-life experience on EGOL's part.
-
Hi Matthew,
If there are so many problems and so obvious, why don't you submit a report to Google. They clearly state this in their quality guidelines for webmasters:
If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please let us know by filing a spam report. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. While we may not take manual action in response to every report, spam reports are prioritized based on user impact, and in some cases may lead to complete removal of a spammy site from Google's search results. Not all manual actions result in removal, however. Even in cases where we take action on a reported site, the effects of these actions may not be obvious.
More details here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769
Why not do it? You got nothing to loose!
-
No offence but that is a proper generic answer.
-
From what I have seen, these types of website are only successful when competition is really easy. So working to boost the strength of your site will usually get you above these bottom fishers.
-
I agree matthew, but the intention with these sites is not just to rank for that one keyword.
Many black hats will bombard them with 100's if not 1000's of backlinks with varied anchor texts covering all the long tail words \ phrases which helps rank those sites for a whole range of things.
In fact there are tools out there that will find all the longtails, and even though adwords may show zero search volume, collectively they will bring in alot of long tail traffic that no-one has optimised for.
-
No, I definitely wouldn't say that. If I wanted a kitchen and I wanted it cheap then I'd say there's a good chance I'd be searching "cheap kitchens".
-
It's as though Google's saying "Let's leave the low quality queries to be filled by the low quality sites." I mean really... the only people who take a search like that seriously are the marketers who are trying to get their sites to rank for them-- people actually looking for kitchen remodeling contractors are searching with other terms. Wouldn't you say?
-
Just found this...
-
After a bit of research I've discovered that all but four of those domains are owned by the same person.
Incredible.
-
Yep, no. 1 in one of my niche is a one page EMD with 7000 backlinks (low quality comment spam), of which 98% are nofollow.
Its stupid.
-
I see the same pattern in Google. Are these sites scraping RSS feeds and publishing another person's content?
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
-
What would be the best course of action to nullify negative effects of our website's content being duplicated (Negative SEO)
Hello, everyone About 3 months ago I joined a company that deals in manufacturing of transportation and packaging items. Once I started digging into the website, I noticed that a lot of their content was "plagiarized". I use quotes as it really was not, but they seemed to have been hit with a negative SEO campaign last year where their content was taken and being posted across at least 15 different websites. Literally every page on their website had the same problem - and some content was even company specific (going as far as using the company's very unique name). In all my years of working in SEO and marketing I have never seen something at the scale of this. Sure, there are always spammy links here and there, but this seems very deliberate. In fact, some of the duplicate content was posted on legitimate websites that may have been hacked/compromised (some examples include charity websites. I am wondering if there is anything that I can do besides contacting the webmasters of these websites and nicely asking for a removal of the content? Or does this duplicate content not hold as much weight anymore as it used to. Especially since our content was posted years before the duplicate content started popping up. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hasanovic0 -
Too many links pointing to our privacy policy page: Hurting our ranking efforts of main pages?
Hi community, As per the "Links" report from GSC, there are millions of pages pointing to our privacy policy page. We can expect high number of links to this page being ours an open source product. But these links are overtaking the count of links pointing to our homepage which are very artificial from few spammy or low quality sites. "Privacy policy" anchor text is also been the top anchor text. Our homepage ranking dropped and I suspect this is the culprit. Google might be considering this is the important page being linked on top with anchor text. Shall I Disavow these sites and will this makes Google stop counting links, and the anchor text coming from these sites as well? Suggestions please. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Increase in spammy links from image gallery websites i.e. myimagecollection.net
Hi there I've recently noticed a lot of spammy links coming from image gallery sites that all look the same, i.e.: http://mypixlibrary.co/ http://hdimagegallery.net/ http://myimagecollection.net/ http://pixhder.com/ Has anyone else seen links from these? They have no contact details, not sure if they are some form of negative SEO or site spam. Any ideas how to get rid? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kerry_Jones0 -
Why would a blank page rank? What am I missing about this page?
In terms of content, this page is blank. Yes, there's a sidebar and footer, but no content. I've seen a page like this rank before. I'm curious if they're implementing something on the back-end I don't realize or if this is just a fluke? Etc. Also, the DA of the site is only a 15, so I don't think that's the reason. http://www.thenurselawyer.com/component/tags/tag/20-pasco-county-personal-injury-lawyers.html Thanks, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Ranking without SEO?
We have a client that we've been doing white-hat SEO for for over 3 years and they've always been number 1 in Google for all their targeted keywords. This year, their competition has been ranking above them and our client has been pushed towards the bottom of the first page. After thorough research, we discovered that this competitor is doing no SEO at all, just regular PR which our client is also doing. Our client is even spending money in Adwords and their competition isn't. Can anyone explain how a website that does zero SEO can magically be ranked at the top now and above our competitor who we're doing everything possible for?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOhughesm0 -
I have deleted a couple of posts from my blog, im using wordpress but still showing in the search how to delete?
Hey Guys, So I deleted a couple of pages from my blog, and when I search the keyword it is still showing do you guys have any idea how I can completed delete this from the search? Here is the page http://bit.ly/1cRR4qJ
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Low Quality Highly Relevant backlinks, should we get them?
I see a lot of opportunity to get lower quality, but highly relevant backlinks, should we try to get these? I'll give you an example, lets say we have an asphalt paving company ( not a lot of authority blogs out there, that we can find yet) We found this one http://www.wolfpaving.com/blog/ - DA of 27 and PA 29 should we go after links like this. I would actually like to know about sites with less authority than this one, I would probably go for this one without question. So Should we go after worse DA and PA but still legitimate looking sites and highly relevant?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
I have some clients that recently got hit by "Penguin" they have several less than desireable backlinks that could be the issue? Does anyone have any suggestions on getting these removed? What are the odds that a webmaster on these spammy sites are going to remove them, and is it worth the time and effort?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin3