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
-
How to Get google to get to index New URL and not the OLD url
Hi Team, We are undertaking a Domain migration activity to migrate our content frrom one domain to another. 1. the Redirection of pages is handeled at Reverse proxy level. 2. We do have 301 redirects put in place. However we still see that google is indexing pages with our Old domain apart from the pages from new domain. Is there a way for us to stop google from indexing our pages from Old domain. The recommendations to have Noindex on Page mete title and disallow does not work since our redirection is setup at RP and google crawlers always discover the new pages after redirection.
Local Website Optimization | | bhaskaran0 -
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 -
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.0 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9 -
Sub-Domain Google Search Nested under main Domain?
Hello, I have a strange issue that I have not come across before:My subdomain is: michigan.dogdaycare.com. Some of the Keyword searches show our subdomain being nested under the main domain for Google searches instead of being indexed individually. Example search term: Dogtopia Bloomfield https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+bloomfield -This will show two subdomain links nested under the main domain Example search term: Dogtopia Birmingham https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+birmingham -This shows the subdomain showing correctly in searches and not nested. Any idea as to how to fix this? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | dogtopiamichigan0 -
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 -
How Best to do implement a Branch Locator for a Website with invididual location category pages
Hi All, We have an ecommerce Website with multiple locations for our stores and we currently display separate location specific pages for the different categories and sub categories. This has helped us previously to rank well for local search in each of the areas we have a store but over the last few months since humingbird, our local rankings on some things have dip a little . We want to implement a branch locator of some description to improve the user experience. From looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages. My query is should I do it so if a user comes in on a specific category location page and follows it through to product page , then to have a tab on the product page displaying the local branch from which he can come in. My thinking here is that , is that it would help confirm my local citations and help improve local rankings. Or Should the local branch be displayed on the local category pages instead or as well ?. If a user comes in from the homepage or not on a specific location page, then the branch locator will allow them to search for a specific branch. Should I also put in a branch locator as a separate page or can It be in more places. I don't want to damage anything which may have an effect on rankings due to citations and NAP on the location specific pages. Any advice or good examples to look at would be greatly appreciated thanks Sarah.
Local Website Optimization | | SarahCollins1 -
International Site Geolocation Redirection (best way to redirect and allow Google bots to index sites)
I have a client that has an international website. The website currently has IP detection and redirects you to the subdomain for your country. They have currently only launched the Australian website and are not yet open to the rest of the world: https://au.domain.com/ Google is not indexing the Australian website or pages, instead I believe that the bots are being blocked by the IP redirection every time they try to visit one of the Australian pages. Therefore only the US 'coming soon' page is being properly indexed. So, I would like to know the best way to place a geolocation redirection without creating a splash page to select location? User friendliness is most important (so we don't want cookies etc). I have seen this great Whiteboard Friday video on Where to Host and How to Target, which makes sense, but what it doesn't tell me is exactly the best method for redirection except at about 10:20 where it tells me what I'm doing is incorrect. I have also read a number of other posts on IP redirection, but none tell me the best method, and some are a little different examples... I need for US visitors to see the US coming soon page and for Google to index the Australian website. I have seen a lot about JS redirects, IP redirects and .htaccess redirects, but unfortunately my technical knowledge of how these affect Google's bots doesn't really help. Appreciate your answers. Cheers, Lincoln
Local Website Optimization | | LincolnSmith0