Hi everybody!
It's the first time that I post as a Google Guide in the English
Webmaster group...I hope I am off to a good start :)
As some of you know, some of us from Google participated in the Search
Engine Strategies conference in London a few weeks ago. I would like
to post some questions and answers that we've heard, and open it up
for discussion! So don't be shy...I am looking forward to your
comments and replies!
Lella
-----------
What if I have a Flash site; how do I get crawled?
Do you do anything with the spam reports users submit? Should users
keep on submitting them?
Yes, absolutely! We love spam reports. :) Spam reports we receive are
analyzed and used for evaluating new spam-detecting algorithms, as
well as to identify trends in webspam. Our goal is to detect all the
websites engaging in manipulation attempts automatically in the future
and to make sure our algorithms rank those websites appropriately.
Please note that the result of submitting a spam report will not be
immediately visible to a user, so there is no need to submit the same
website multiple times in order for Google to evaluate it. You can
find here more information in our update on spam reporting:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/update-on-spam-rep...
"Our goal is to detect all the websites engaging in manipulation
attempts automatically in the future and to make sure our algorithms
rank those websites appropriately."
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
> Hi everybody!
> It's the first time that I post as a Google Guide in the English
> Webmaster group...I hope I am off to a good start :)
> As some of you know, some of us from Google participated in the Search
> Engine Strategies conference in London a few weeks ago. I would like
> to post some questions and answers that we've heard, and open it up
> for discussion! So don't be shy...I am looking forward to your
> comments and replies!
> Lella
> -----------
> What if I have a Flash site; how do I get crawled?
> Do you do anything with the spam reports users submit? Should users
> keep on submitting them?
> Yes, absolutely! We love spam reports. :) Spam reports we receive are
> analyzed and used for evaluating new spam-detecting algorithms, as
> well as to identify trends in webspam. Our goal is to detect all the
> websites engaging in manipulation attempts automatically in the future
> and to make sure our algorithms rank those websites appropriately.
> Please note that the result of submitting a spam report will not be
> immediately visible to a user, so there is no need to submit the same
> website multiple times in order for Google to evaluate it. You can
> find here more information in our update on spam reporting:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/update-on-spam-rep...
So, while I don't deal with Flash directly... the developer I work
with does. He has a task currently to build out some 'Flash' buttons
which sound like are just glorified animated buttons. (No biggie)
However, with that said... the folks in Marketing may want to 'kick it
up a notch' and start building out complete Flash pages. Which sorta
freaks me out. I've kindly pointed them to http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/search/faq/ and said that from what I've read here and at http://www.cnet.com/8301-13530_1-9844989-28.html,
we may be "OK" to start building out some pages in Flash and see how
they stack up against our regular HTML content.
Did I just give my co-worker bad advice. I don't have a URL to point
to for samples. I just would like a little more clarification. And
yes, I have read both of those links.
Lella, Spam has always been an issue, it would be great if at the
click of a button all those websites involved in practices against the
webmaster guidelines found themselves very heavily penalised. Thus
keeping the search for the most relevant and important sites that have
true content for the searcher. One of the thing have have had a moan
about on the forum and im not the only one here, is the webmaster
guidelines often leave a lot open to interpretation. For example would
you consider a website that say we provide our services in the
following geographical areas, then proceeds to list quite a long list
of Towns and cities. Is this really relevant information for the
user, or is it spamming to ensure when someone tries to do a search on
a local basis, example "product or services london" that there website
comes higher up in the search results. Even though the company
providing the service or product comes from miles away from london.
The webmaster guidelines are a little open there, as to if it is
against the rules. Admittedly it would almost be nice if within the
webmaster tools you could specify a smaller geographical location,
because my site is a .co.uk it is set by default to be UK based, but
had it been a .com i could have set its location to the UK. For the UK
it would be nice if you could set a location like a county wide or
regional wide, example setting you location as being the counties of
Sussex, Surrey and Kent, so any search that was aimed at being local
would by default pull up the website that had elected via the
webmaster tools to be set in those location.
State side I guess it would, set to example Alaska, any one doing a
search using the term Alaska would see those sites on the search, but
anyone doing a search for services in a specific town in Alaska would
see websites that elected to be seen in the search in that particular
state, if that makes sense. Just my 10cents worth or 10pence worth
(geographical location dependant on the currency )
> Hi everybody!
> It's the first time that I post as a Google Guide in the English
> Webmaster group...I hope I am off to a good start :)
> As some of you know, some of us from Google participated in the Search
> Engine Strategies conference in London a few weeks ago. I would like
> to post some questions and answers that we've heard, and open it up
> for discussion! So don't be shy...I am looking forward to your
> comments and replies!
> Lella
> -----------
> What if I have a Flash site; how do I get crawled?
> Do you do anything with the spam reports users submit? Should users
> keep on submitting them?
> Yes, absolutely! We love spam reports. :) Spam reports we receive are
> analyzed and used for evaluating new spam-detecting algorithms, as
> well as to identify trends in webspam. Our goal is to detect all the
> websites engaging in manipulation attempts automatically in the future
> and to make sure our algorithms rank those websites appropriately.
> Please note that the result of submitting a spam report will not be
> immediately visible to a user, so there is no need to submit the same
> website multiple times in order for Google to evaluate it. You can
> find here more information in our update on spam reporting:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/update-on-spam-rep...
With regard to spam reporting is it possible to submit multiple sites
all at the same time rather than one report for each site.
We are currently victims of google bowling and find we do not have
enough time to individually report the hundreds of porn sites linking
to as currently we can only report one at a time.
WRT the big list of places in order to show up for keyword/location
type searches. You would have thought it was really easy for Google to
see this kind of keyword spamming especially given that many of these
pages use a similar or same list. Unfortunately there are many sites
that rank very well for this and that can only serve to promote it as
a form of SEO. From a users point of view it is really BAD. I know if
I click on a serp result and land on a page like this I feel cheated
because I have been conned into going there and that can't be good for
user experience, can it?
A site that is targetting a particular location should contain far
more contextual text than a just a list of places.
Returns 10,800 results and there is no way anyone is going to convince
me that many (if any) of these these sites is at all relavant to the
locations listed. I can only assume that Google chooses to ignore the
problem as it certainly does not lack the capability to deal with what
is no more than a spammy list of keywords without context.
> For example would
> you consider a website that say we provide our services in the
> following geographical areas, then proceeds to list quite a long list
> of Towns and cities. Is this really relevant information for the
> user, or is it spamming to ensure when someone tries to do a search on
> a local basis, example "product or services london" that there website
> comes higher up in the search results. Even though the company
> providing the service or product comes from miles away from london.
There are so seriously obvious spammers out there that you would have
thought Google could catch so easy, but they seem to escape detection
this one seems a serious offender art-search.co.uk/artists/
wrought_iron/ do a search for say wrought iron gates kent, read the
snipit text google has in the search and you think hmm sounds good ill
view that. check the content of the site and the snipit of text found
in the search is no where to be found, and you realise thats its a
made for adsense website, with no content of any real use to a human
except to click on the paid links to go to another site. As far as i
can see a serious abuse of the webmaster guidelines, and abuse of
adsense. I would imagine everytime someone finds the site they curse
google for wasting there time because it isnt relvant to what they
wanted but its still there with all its hidden text, no content and
lots of lovely adsense. I guess its day will come when the google
alogorithm can detect it and it will be bye bye website.
Possibly one of the things many dont know is that as a searcher using
the google search if you found this site realise how much of a waste
it was you could easy file a spam report, most people dont bother or
just dont know that you can do such a thing.
> WRT the big list of places in order to show up for keyword/location
> type searches. You would have thought it was really easy for Google to
> see this kind of keyword spamming especially given that many of these
> pages use a similar or same list. Unfortunately there are many sites
> that rank very well for this and that can only serve to promote it as
> a form of SEO. From a users point of view it is really BAD. I know if
> I click on a serp result and land on a page like this I feel cheated
> because I have been conned into going there and that can't be good for
> user experience, can it?
> A site that is targetting a particular location should contain far
> more contextual text than a just a list of places.
> Returns 10,800 results and there is no way anyone is going to convince
> me that many (if any) of these these sites is at all relavant to the
> locations listed. I can only assume that Google chooses to ignore the
> problem as it certainly does not lack the capability to deal with what
> is no more than a spammy list of keywords without context.
> On Mar 19, 2:44 pm, irondarren wrote:
> > For example would
> > you consider a website that say we provide our services in the
> > following geographical areas, then proceeds to list quite a long list
> > of Towns and cities. Is this really relevant information for the
> > user, or is it spamming to ensure when someone tries to do a search on
> > a local basis, example "product or services london" that there website
> > comes higher up in the search results. Even though the company
> > providing the service or product comes from miles away from london.- Hide quoted text -
