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Interesting Penguin info – blog comment spam to be hit hard by Penguin 2.0?
Interesting Penguin info – blog comment spam to be hit hard by Penguin 2.0?
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This post was first made on the Richard Hearne Google+ profile.
As bucketloads go, this YouTube clip is a pretty good bucketload.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 12:19 pm
Great youtube video explaining everything!
Comment by Andy Wigglesworth — May 13, 2013 @ 1:17 pm
I see a lot of people complaining about stuff like this. It's hard to argue against the point that it still works, because it still works.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 1:45 pm
check the backlinks of googlemapsguru dot com dot au on opensiteexplorer for anchor text "seo" for a classic example, Rob. Open each page and marvel at the "quality" holding up this top-ranking site.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 1:53 pm
Interesting stuff. When I search they are ranked in the 3rd spot. Those are examples of links that I would recommend they have removed.
That's the problem, it's been 6 or 7 months that we last seen an update. The crappy links have been working for longer than that. So what do you tell a customer? I understand that there is a time delay that could be in place, but that long of a delay is too long.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 2:10 pm
Exactly. Not a single good link. They are all clumsy self-created spam but they make the target site top-ranking for one of the most contested keywords.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 2:16 pm
Maybe we should take a leaf out of +Steve Wiideman 's book and record more clips?
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 2:17 pm
Oh and the "verified" "local" listings in each state look like fakes except for "Melbourne"
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 2:19 pm
Yep, so in the last 6 or 7 months how many clients have they gotten from ranking in that position? What kind of links have they built for their clients? It's not a branded name, so do they care about reputation? They can get a lot of business, overcharge for their services, and if they get burned just walk away.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 2:23 pm
I don't know Jim, maybe ask the group how they feel about outing an SEO company.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 2:26 pm
That's another thing. The SEO's using methods they don't want used are those that are ranked most highly. It seems counter-intuitive.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 2:26 pm
I would say that it's a sales organization not an SEO company. So they probably have a simple SEO template that they use for every site and don't care if what they do helps or hurts a site. They have another customer just a phone call away. SOCal is packed full of companies just like this one.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 2:34 pm
If we were to do one, we should do them all.
I don't think that anybody we know has anything to be concerned about.
Thing is, it's not an easy concept to convey and it would take more than a 4 hour clip to dissect them all. We could spend a lot of time on clips with virtually no potential audience.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 2:35 pm
I don't think I know anyone that takes this approach. I personally don't care who is outed, but this could be all taken care of in the next few weeks anyways.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 2:39 pm
I've taken the liberty of recording some sites and rankings just in case.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 2:42 pm
Outing is not a positive activity IMO. Doing anything in a 4-hour long video also wont get any attention in Google sadly.
Comment by Richard Hearne — May 13, 2013 @ 2:43 pm
I didn't consider anyone in Google would be in the potential audience.
…and I'd prefer to call it "benchmarking" after an announced update to measure it's effectiveness or otherwise.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 2:45 pm
But sadly Jim our measure of benchmark is dismal compared to how they look at things.
As much as we complain none of us can look in aggregate, so none of us is really qualified to benchmark how they are doing.
All IMHO of course.
Comment by Richard Hearne — May 13, 2013 @ 2:53 pm
You may alienate some people from asking questions in fear that they will be call out.
Benchmarking some websites would be a good idea.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 2:54 pm
You can record what happens with a particular site, how an update has changed the rankings. Sure it's just a snap shot but you can extrapolate some signals from it.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 2:57 pm
I am a simple bloke, Richard, if a site which is using specifically-stipulated ruled-out methods with no other visible means of support continues to rank, I would feel fairly safe in saying that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Comment by Jim Munro — May 13, 2013 @ 3:02 pm
Lots of valid points here. Rob's right about the negative feedback I received from some members of our community; though I will say that I didn't out a particular company, I only identified discrepancies in recent algorithm updates had impacted a client practicing white had SEO and PR.
I suppose I had hoped that my peers would support me and respond to Google with "yah, what's the deal here?" Rather than "how dare you publicly identify spam".
Says something about a select few in our industry. I guess that's the cost of standing up for what you believe in. No good deed goes unpunished.
Comment by Steve Wiideman — May 13, 2013 @ 4:53 pm
Rightly or wrongly outing is viewed with a very negative outlook Steve. It's always been that way, and I suppose it comes from the fact that very few long standing SEOs have nothing to hide.
Regardless of the feedback you got, it does look like you will achieve something for your client. At the end of the day that's probably more important than keeping your peers happy.
Did you write a blog post in the end BTW?
Comment by Richard Hearne — May 13, 2013 @ 4:58 pm
I don't think you did anything wrong +Steve Wiideman, just the opposite. I loved the video and you did a great job. You did the right thing for the client and that's the most important thing.
Comment by Rob Wagner — May 13, 2013 @ 5:00 pm