Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is there any way to report a website that is not complying with webmaster guidelines to Google?
-
Like how we can "suggest an edit" in Google Business Listings, is there any way to report Google about the webmaster guidelines violation?
-
Google is probably not going to take any manual action based upon your complaint. Keyword stuffing and hidden keywords have been around since the beginning of Google and they have algorithms that look for it. These algorithms sometimes find it, sometimes don't find it, sometimes demote it and sometimes don't demote it.
I would not spend time trying to report this type of action. I would spend that time instead working on my website.
-
In my experience it varies greatly and depends upon what else the spam team is dealing with. Sometimes it's been dealt with in a few days, other times... never!
There are two kinds of infractions when it comes to Google's guidelines being broken. There are the infractions that are against Google's policies and which may game their ranking system, then there are more serious infractions that may cause Google to break the law by linking to certain content
Guess which one is more important to them? Fighting spam is important to Google, but the sites which get flagged for posting illegal content are more likely to be dealt with more quickly. Just my 2pence
-
I'm not sure, I suspect they get a large number of reports and I don't know whether the process is automated. I've used it a few times but never heard anything back, so I'm not sure if you'll get any feedback either way.
-
Thanks, I did it. How long do you think it will take for Google to take action against the web spammers? Any Idea!
-
In that case, you need to report it as webspam. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreportform?hl=en
-
Keyword stuffing, particularly hidden keywords (1116 keywords) in all pages and unfortunately the website ranks 1-5 position in the first page of google
-
Hi,
It depends what you want to report. One of the most common violations (in my opinion) is link buying, and you can report that by following the links here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en
Many other types of violation are automatically picked up (and I suspect generally link buying is picked up eventually). What specifically do you need/want to report?
Alex
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
-
Google-selected canonical: the homepage?
Hi guys,
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
I checked the product pages on our website with Google Search Console (URL Inspection), and the majority appear as
"URL is not on Google"
Coverage: "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical", and
Google-selected canonical: the homepage of the website (for all product pages) Our product pages are not identical to the homepage (content-wise), besides the top menu, header and footer, so how could I use the canonical tag in this case? I wouldn't want that the product pages to be seen as duplicates of the homepage. Thanks!0 -
How does Google read multiple Geo Shape Schema Mark Up?
Hi Guys, I posted a question recently about "Can I have multiple areaServed mark up on one domain?" and the responses I got was no. My client work predominantly in the South East of England in specific towns, so I wanted to be able to list all the areas they service. However, after being told no, I went ahead anyway and put in multiple areaServed markup on the page to see if this generates any errors and it isn't when I run it through the Structured Data Testing Tool. I don't get any errors by doing this, so hurray! But... What I want to understand (which I can't find the answer anywhere), is if this is okay, and how will Google read my markup? Will Google see that we are in multiple areas across the SE of England and push my content up before other sites, or is this just going to confused Google? By putting in all these areas into the website as multiple locations, will Google identify that person X in area Y fits the areaServed mark up I've added and push my content to them? Overall... has anyone else used multiple areaServed markup and can validate that this works? hHpEyQf
Local Website Optimization | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
Google for Jobs: how to deal with third-party sites that appear instead of your own?
We have shared our company's job postings on several third-party websites, including The Muse, as well as putting the job postings on our own website. Our site and The Muse have about the same schema markup except for these differences: The Muse...
Local Website Optimization | | Kevin_P
• Lists Experience Requirements
• Uses HTML in the description with tags and other markup (our website just has plain text)
• Has a Name in JobPosting
• URL is specific to the position (our website's URL just goes to the homepage)
• Has a logo URL for Organization When you type the exact job posting's title into Google, The Muse posting shows up in Google for Jobs--not our website's duplicate copy. The only way to see our website's job posting is to type in the exact job title plus "site:http://www.oursite.com". What is a good approach for getting our website's posting to be the priority in Google for Jobs? Do we need to remove postings from third-party sites? Structure them differently? Do organic factors affect which version of the job posting is shown, and if so, can I assume that our site will face challenges outranking a big third-party site?1 -
I have a client in Australia that is going to set up a website that is in Chinese to service their Asian customer base (Indonesia, Singapore, HK, China). What domain should they use?
They're website is hosted on a .com.au domain. Should they host their Chinese language pages under their current domain (.com.au) using a subdirectory (i.e. /asia) or should they use another separate domain that they own that is a regular .com? Or does it really not matter?
Local Website Optimization | | 100yards1 -
How to correctly move subdomain to subfolder (google webmaster)?
Hello, This is my first post in here 🙂 I just wondered what is the correct way to move a subdomain to subfolder? I've moved it, re-done sitemap, so that main website would include a subfolder, as they are part of one big website now (it was something like a blog on a subdomain). Subdomain now does correct 301 redirects. Submitted new sitemap to google, asked google to re-fetch the whole domain (thus subfolder should be re-fetched too, as it's part of main nav). The areas i'm in doubt: I can tell google that the domain got moved, however it is moved to the one that is already approved in the same account, but is in a subfolder, so should i do this? Or should i simply somehow erase it on webmaster? The blog was launched about a month ago, and it isn't perfectly optimized yet, it wasn't on google SERPs pretty much at all, excluding googling it straightly, and there are pretty much 0 traffic from google, almost all of it is either direct either referral, mostly social, Thanks, Pavel
Local Website Optimization | | PavelGro920 -
Should I open a new domain and website for a new location under one company?
Hi my name is Gina and I wanted to ask for some advice. I'm thinking opening a diff location and was thinking if its a good idea to open up a new domain and new website? And why that may be a good idea and why or a bad idea and why?
Local Website Optimization | | LittleDog0 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0