They've since changed the "let us know" link so ite goes to the regular spam reporting tool. Maybe they'll be adding a paid links option to that, something to watch for. |
This makes me wonder why none of my "there's a company that's clearly using $StrangeSEOTechnique"-complaints led to any result up to now...
How effective are complaints made via http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html ? Has anyone here ever observed that a complaint resulted in de-listing the offending website? |
If you want to file a spam report, it is best to file it from within your own Google Webmaster Central account. You are verified there, they know "who you are" (not really, but almost :-)). They value those reports much higher than the anonymous spam reports.
I'm kind of worried about: "Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html." Does that form have any function? :-) If so, wow.
Does anyone know why "WebPosition Gold™" is still explicitly mentioned?
It would be nice to have more information to "cloaking". Particularly subscription cloaking would be itneresting, eg NYT, etc – after the WMW changes, I thought that was no officially "a bad thing". Of course, there is only limited room and some things are probably too complicated to compress into a tiny 1-page article. |
How long has the add-url form had a captcha? Interesting! |
I believe CAPTCHA was added to the AddURL form about a year ago.
I'm guessing the form does have some value although it goes unnoticed. As soon as you like to your site from another Google finds it. |
I wonder how they apply the 'little or no original content' rule to the large number of big sites these days that are more 'web applications' than 'web sites'.
Consider digg, technorati etc. These sites have next to no content of their own, yet they are still useful. (And often provide original meta-content, such as comments, ratings etc.) |
Tom Walter, I'm quite sure it was mentioned that sites that don't feature original content AND are not useful, violate the webmaster guidelines. To wit: "Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site." Digg, Technorati and others definitely provides additional useful services and so are in the clear. |
Hey, this is Patrick Sexton of feedthebot. There is a new guideline, check it out at SEOish.com |
Barry set me straight on this, whoops. I will leave the "discovering" to you sober people :) |
The detail pages on hidden stuff and cloaking created a fair amount of confusion. The message is there, but somewhat obfuscated. Look at all the threads titled "Why is image replacement now illegal?" or "Since hiding text with CSS is illicit will I get banned for standard designs?" ... I think the next update is due.
http://sebastianx.blogspot.com/2007/06/google-enhances-quality-guidelines.html
Sebastian |
