Google Abuse

[qwidjib0]

I've been reading up here for some time, but by and large i'm still a noob in the SEO world. I've been working for some time to get my hosting company ranked for being based in my town. It's not a large area; so it seems to me that a search on "bloom ington ho sting" shouldn't be too difficult. It seems we've even succeeded in making it to the low 1st / second page in Google and Yahoo, but here's the kicker..

4 other hosting companies, seem to have SEO'd a page for every single town, state, or country you can think of. Their sites appear to have been generated just like directories, but, they're not. They're just massive hosting sites that claim they're based out of basically every community in the entire world. One even hides the links with light-grey-on-white at the bottom of each page.

I know both Google and Yahoo have policies against this, so I contacted both Google and Yahoo now going on a month ago. Still no changes. Which brings me to my questions..

- Am I just being impatient, and they're going to remove them?

- Do they not take these abuse reports seriously?

- Am I wrong in my belief that what these guys are doing wrong?


I'd really love some feedback, because again, I'm a noob.

[BroadProspect]

yep, we all share this feeling, this may help to cheer you up (http://www.searchenginesmarketingblog.com/2005/09/11/fake-fake-fake-fake/)
you just have to emulate them
/BP

[DianeV]

I'd also suggest branching out on your target terms. For instance: Bloo ming ton web h osting, Bl oomin gton w eb hos ts. Etc.

[sootledir]

I'd also suggest branching out on your target terms. For instance: Bloomin gton we b ho sting, Bloom ington web hos ts. Etc.

I agree with DianeV. Get links from sites with those keywords and in a few weeks you can be on top.

[I, Brian]

I've been reading up here for some time, but by and large i'm still a noob in the SEO world. I've been working for some time to get my hosting company ranked for being based in my town. It's not a large area; so it seems to me that a search on "blo omin gton ho sting" shouldn't be too difficult. It seems we've even succeeded in making it to the low 1st / second page in Google and Yahoo, but here's the kicker..

4 other hosting companies, seem to have SEO'd a page for every single town, state, or country you can think of. Their sites appear to have been generated just like directories, but, they're not. They're just massive hosting sites that claim they're based out of basically every community in the entire world. One even hides the links with light-grey-on-white at the bottom of each page.

I know both Google and Yahoo have policies against this, so I contacted both Google and Yahoo now going on a month ago. Still no changes. Which brings me to my questions..

- Am I just being impatient, and they're going to remove them?

- Do they not take these abuse reports seriously?

- Am I wrong in my belief that what these guys are doing wrong?


I'd really love some feedback, because again, I'm a noob.

The kicker is really that Google obviously does not seem to regard you site as important enough for the keywords you're aiming for.

You also mentioned that you're in the "low 1st / second page in Google and Yahoo" so that tells me that if you can only complain about 4 of them, then there are plenty of other pages/sites which are going to beat you anyway.

When you really need to focus on, in my opinion, is to stop complaining about other sites, and just focus more on your own site. The fact that you're not doing very for your target keyword tells me that you are not trying hard enough for it.

Forget how the four sites are beating you - spam reporting them in lieu of keeping your own site focussed is not a good SEO strategy at all.

[projectphp]

Forget how the four sites are beating you - spam reporting them in lieu of keeping your own site focussed is not a good SEO strategy at all.
Bravo, well said!!!

Always focus attention where you have control (your own efforts) and not where you have little or no control (spam reporting, arguing with legislative bodies over regulations etc).

Do SEs care? Yes. Will they do anything? Who knows. Should you worry? Hell no! Go do something productive. There are many ways to market a site, and IMHO, spam reporting definitely isn't one of them!

[qwidjib0]

Thanks for the advice; so it looks like the consensus is not to bother with reporting search spam. Unfortunately basically all the sites above us do seem to be as such in one way or another - the others are just actual directories that spam the company info over a page loads of times nonsensicly or for totally irrelevent results, and I never expected to be able to change that. In fact I'd be kind of a hypocrite to complain, because our site is even listed in one of them. :rolleyes:

As far targetting a variation goes, it seems like this would be a generally great tactic, but, I seem to see the same with thing any variation of the 'location-based' search I make. SEO'ing a hosting company seems hard, and moreso I'm inexperienced, impatient, and without the budget for a serious SEO firm at this point, but I suppose I'll just keep working towards finding what works.

Thanks again.

[DianeV]

> SEO'ing a hosting company seems hard

Yep. Some terms are more competitive than others.

[mcanerin]

SEO'ing a hosting company seems hard, and moreso I'm inexperienced, impatient, and without the budget for a serious SEO firm at this point, but I suppose I'll just keep working towards finding what works.

That's the worst combination, since it quickly gets to the point where you start thinking that a little spam couldn't hurt, especially since everyone else seems to be.....

I applaud your efforts to not give in. But that's not enough. As DianeV said, you would be well served by branching out and focusing on some keywords that might have lower competition. Once you get some nice results for those, you can begin to work on the harder ones.

The worst thing you can do is try to go after the most competitive phrases when you are just starting out. The reason is that in a lot of cases your competition will have arrived there using, for lack of a better word, brute force. Even if you do everything right, it's not good enough against other people who are also doing everything right, or even people who are doing things wrong, but still managing to be more effective due to brute force.

I'm not saying you should not go after the hard ones, I'm saying don't put your sense of success or failure on them, at least at first. Start off with a lower volume search like "bl oom ing ton php web hos ting" or whatever, then make that number one. Once you've accomplished that, you will have learned the ropes, and your own preferences. THEN you can apply them towards to more competitive terms.

I know you said you don't have a lot of money to start with, but don't overlook the benifits of a limited PPC campaign for both keyword research and actual sales.

One last thing. This is from your competitors view (yes, you need to be aware of that). If you are a national or wide area business that people look for using localized keywords, you are in a bit of a bind. Imagine how you would optimize for McDonalds Restaurants, for example. Would you create a different site for every single McDonalds in every town just to catch local searches like "bloom ington mcdonalds"? That would be quite a project. They legitimately offer the food in those places, but in reality we both know that any sites they designed for the purpose of showing up for those searches would be "cookie-cutter" in nature. They would have a legitimate need to show up, but be forced to either create "fake" sites or stuff localize keywords into pages. I'm not fond of either option, frankly. But short of cloaking or going to PPC, those are the options for that type of company.

Because of this, although the end result is "spammy", it's doubtful that the search engines will be in a rush to react to your spam reports in many of these cases. I'm sure they'd like to, but since they are responsible for how their algo handles locale searches, it's not totally your competitions fault.

That doesn't mean you should feel sorry for them! Go kick butt. But don't pin your hopes on a spam report. If you see something that is legitimatly deceitful, like a non-web host showing up (rather than just ugly and spammy techniques) then report if you wish. But your best bet is to focus on your own site.

Good Luck,

Ian

[qwidjib0]

All the insights are very, very much appreciated - and yes I definately have no intent to attempt any black-hat SEO'ing if that's how it came off.

A funny note - as of today, if you search for "b lo oming ton hos ting" now, the #2 result is this very thread.

Wow I look like @#%$. :rolleyes:

[mcanerin]

A funny note - as of today, if you search for "bloo mington ho stin g" now, the #2 result is this very thread.

ROFL!

You are not the first that's happened to. At another forum I moderate we get requests every month or so to remove posts or words because the forum thread started showing up instead of the posters website! We usually don't since it's unfair to all the people who spent time helping the poster, but we certainly have sympathy for the situation - kind of embarrassing.

The good news is - no one optimized this thread. As a matter of fact, it's pretty poorly optimized, except for some link wieght.

So that means that beating your competition is probably going to be pretty easy. Looks like you just need a good linking campaign. Go to the link building section of this site and follow the advice. Those 4 other competitors don't know your market as much as you - to them it's just another town on a list. Since you actually care, you have the advantage.

Good Luck (and I promise not to say b****** h o s t i n g again) ;)

Ian

PS just for you, I've killed the phrases above by adding some spaces - but I probably won't be this nice in the future :)