Spamming Versus Creative / Real World SEO Tactics

[Irony]

Don't hate Irony

I don't hate you seomike. Sorry for being too emotional or sarcastic from time to time, but that's what I am.

All this misunderstanding is caused by our different definitions of cloaking. When the term means absolutely different things for two people, there is no use discussing it further.

Let us both have our own ways. Cloaking is here to stay? Well, so be it. The time will show who is right and who is wrong... very soon I believe. No, no, I ain't gonna report you, it's not my style (cheers nuclei!).

Again and again, I don't really care if you outrank my site. Not sure we share the niche, but all the same. I've got my share of targeted traffic, and Google loves me without cloaks. It's ROI that troubles me now, and no cloaks will help me with it

We can discuss anything else if you wish, but please not cloaking again (for the reason I mentioned above).

Hope I'm not flaming And yes, you are right, it's all good.

As for "indoctrinated by extremist white hats" I think I should thank you for this phrase. Makes a nice signature (unfortunately they seem to be disabled here )

[seobook]

Originally Posted by Irony

As for "indoctrinated by extremist white hats" I think I should thank you for this phrase. Makes a nice signature (unfortunately they seem to be disabled here )

You can still change your tagline. I am a recovering former left handed person...

[Irony]

Thanks seobook, I'm considering it

[cuzco]

Originally Posted by mcanerin

Comment on the "All SEO is Spam" theory.

Personally, I completely disagree with this. Most obviously because it takes away from what SE spam really is. It's the basis and beginning of the "everyone does it, so why can't I?" thinking.

Let me give an example. Is there a difference between cheating on a test and studying for it? Both are done for the purposes of "ranking higher" Both are artificially increasing these rankings. You want to REALLY know what someone learned, give them a surprise quiz 6 months after the course. Anything else is little more than a short term memory test, not a knowledge test.

Some would argue that studying IS cheating, for the above reason. I didn't understand why the person making this argument to me was doing so until they came up with part 2: if studying is cheating, then it's no different from having a cheat sheet in a test room, really. Since they are both cheating, and no one is committing an actual *crime*, then everything is OK - it's only wrong if you get caught.

Wrong. There is a difference between cheating and studying. Learning how to write an essay for maximum effectiveness in an academic environment is working smarter, not unfairly manipulating the system. Writing copy and making sure your site appeals to a search engine is not cheating (aka spam), it's common sense.

Manipulation itself is not spam - everything we do is manipulation in some way.

Heck, that argument would allow for the claim that simply *posting* a website (and therefore allowing it to be accessed by spiders) is manipulation of the SERPS (the site wasn't there and now it is) and therefore spam.

Nonsense. By broadening the definition of spam to include almost everything, those making the argument are apparently hoping to make it mean almost nothing.

Won't work, sorry.

Ian

Good analogy, though I like to compare SEO to motorists trying to get from A to B as quick as possible.

Group 1, will drive within the speed limit, but never over it. They can still win the race if there is no competition or the others go off in the wrong direction. They are just happy to be driving and not really in the race.

Group 2, will drive just over the limit but low enough to avoid the wrath of the police and traffic cameras knowing they have some leeway. Everyone knows they do it but its not considered breaking the law.

Group 3, go even faster, especially in areas they know they wont be detected. They keep an eye out for cameras and police. They might gain a few penalty points but never enough to get banned.

Group 4, risk twice the speed limit. They sometimes get away with driving this fast for a long time, but when they are caught its an instant ban.

Occasionally the powers install speed bumps and other traffic calming measures which slow down some, or make them try a different route.

Sometimes they install new traffic cameras which catch groups 3 and 4 by surprise.

One day the powers install the more sophisticated cameras that calculate the average speed, or they just clamp down on speeders which catches groups 2, 3 and 4.

Each group thinks the next group up are law breakers but never see any harm in what they do themselves.

Now to make it a bit more like search engines, imagine there are no signs telling you what the speed limit is. The only advice from the powers that be is don’t drive recklessly, use your judgement and a few other driving tips. The few traffic cameras are hidden but overtime some drivers work out their location and what the limits are. There are no police so its left to other motorists to report people for bad driving.



All good fun!

[Irony]

The worst of it is that cars get crashed from time to time.

But yes... very good analogy indeed. I love races, especially Formula 1.

[nuclei]

Originally Posted by Irony

very good analogy indeed.

I would agree.

[Nick W]

According to Alan Perkins, IP Delivery is not necessary cloaking, but cloaking is always spam.

Nick W is now rolling all over the floor, tears streaming down his face as he chokes on that dribble....

Wonderful thread with 3 distinct groups going head to head:

1. The "im not a spammer brigade" -> So busy justifying their actions that for the most part they entirely miss the point.

2. The "im an seo, so i know im a bad boy crowd" -> Mostly folks that know the score with a handfull of real bad boys thrown in for good measure..

3. The "what's all this crowd" -> Read it an weep guys, this is good stuff if you can read between the lines and sort the facts from the dillusional fiction.

What fun!

Nick

http://www.blockedpr.com/

There seems to be a theory that Google is BLOCKING the passing of PageRank from certain selected sites that are deemed to meet certain standards

_ or is this just some algorithmic flaw that is statistically bound ot happen when there are BILLIONS if webpages reverse engineered?

What are YOUR opinions

[Incubator]

We are currently seeing this with a client regarding PR. After watching google for awhile we have seen the links from goggle showing only PR4 or higher anything elses seems to go to the section "containing the term" on google
All the PR3 PR2 etc.... have migrated over to none clickable links

WC

[David Wallace]

I have seen this as well and a very popular site that offers search engine news and tips seems to be affected by this although I don't know why. They are not on the list (blockedpr.com) and I am not going to name them here publicly but it does seem for some reason that some sites are not passing any PR benefit to the sites they link to, at least by what the tool bar shows us.

[Incubator]

After watching google over the months , we use to be able to do link://http:www.mydomain.com and recieve a count on that factor .

Now that same return offers link:TYU77V61sTAJ:http://www.mydomain.com.
The TYU77V61sTAJ seems like a filter or part of an ALGO.

any opinioons on that ?

Cheers

Wc

[Incubator]

I have emailed google and will post reply regarding my last post


WC

Remember the "Controversy" regarding WHEN.COM Cloaking and being dropped by Google & Yahoo - (this was the incentive for originating this post) they have now been given another chance - they are now on the SERPs again

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=whenu
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3354171
http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/whenu-spam/
http://www.tweakxp.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=14644

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=whe...t&cop=mss&tab=

Meanwhile, Google's response was swift: I notified Google of the cloaking infractions on Sunday, and WhenU's sites were removed from Google by Wednesday. Try a Google search for "whenu" and see for yourself: You'll get critics' sites and news coverage, but not www.whenu.com itself.

[Incubator]

Originally Posted by Incubator

After watching google over the months , we use to be able to do link://http:www.mydomain.com and recieve a count on that factor .

Now that same return offers link:TYU77V61sTAJ:http://www.mydomain.com.
The TYU77V61sTAJ seems like a filter or part of an ALGO.

any opinioons on that ?

Cheers

Wc

Here is the reply from Google

[size=2]Thank you for your note. Please be assured that the new search behavior does not affect your link search listings. Our engineers are currently investigating this new behavior. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,

The Google Team

[/size]

[Webmaster T]

Interesting discussion with the same old arguments from both sides. Not all cloaking is bad and in some cases is necessary due to laws governing some industries. Should Google penalize a pharmaceutical company for cloaking? No it's against the law to sell some of their products in some countries. Cloaking is also used to enhance the user experience for instance language the page is using or server load balancing.

I have used some content delivery programming to enhance the user experience. For instance loading code with no JS if the browser doesn't support it. This inadvertently gives SE a different version but the page content is the same. Links just won't open in a remote window they'll point to the static page. There's a difference between sniffing for SE IP or useragent and sniffing for browser configuration. I don't think this is cloaking but some do. It's awful tough to say either way because you have to know the intent of the implementation. I think cloaking is a good technique to use the "Am I doing this just for SE" test for determining "appropriate" and "inappropriate" techniques.

I think the Google/Yahoo! does it why can't I argument makes no sense because they own the index it's up to them to make and enforce the guidelines as they see fit. They use the techniques to add functionality to the site not to get placement for free ads! SE are not public property so the owner should have the right to decide what it sees as unwanted manipulation.

No one likes to be told how they should conduct business, why should SE be held to a higher standard? Sure, in a way they are a public trust but I think it is pushing it to think they should have to to follow their own guidelines afterall they make them so if they choose to not enforce them on their site or any other that is IMO, their right as owners of the index. They make the rules we can disagree but saying it should be OK because they do it is not being realistic about why they do it and why some cloakers do it.

Google isn't doing anything wrong when they scrape a site because for the most part if you deny them access using a Robots.txt they will obey it. No deny in Robots.txt is IMO, an invitation to index the site. Yes sometimes they slip up but IMO, it's never intentional.

Danny has said in the past that Feeds are a form of cloaking and I agree with that but don't see anything wrong with it because it is a sanctioned technique. Someone usually gets paid for clicks from cloaked listings (most are based on clicks AFAIK) why shouldn't the SE get paid it's their index? I see this as SE just giving the consumer a SE sanctioned alternative to cloaking. One that is easier for them to monitor and control quality of the pages. This was lax for a time but seems to have been clened up some recently.

Using cloaking to get flash sites indexed seems a short sighted solution it doesn't really address the problems where no plugin is loaded. Why not just put the same amount of time spent cloaking the site into developing an HTML version? That enhances the user experience and gives SE what they want in a way they feel is "appropriate". I think some people just believe if there is no hocus pocus involved it can't be a good SEO solution.

• Athough, Google STEMS to some degree there are different SERPs for different Stemmed versions - apparently favoring the ORIGINAL wording of the search.
  
• Searches like Website & Web Site, e-commerce & ecommerce, optimization & optimisation etc...Return different SERPs althought they mean the same thing.
  
  
  
• Common Misspellings eg. Britney Spears Searches - produce thousands of extra queries
  http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html

__________________________________________________ _________

Would Optimizing Doorway pages to attract that vibrant traffic cross the border of Spamming


Look at the SERPs for


search engine OPTMIZATION

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ne+optmization

A common misspelling. Assuming they mean ...

Search Engine Optimization

some are established firms that have optimized - but some are actually selling SEO services - unaware of their misspellings.


__________________________________________________ _

Sometimes even the Major Search Services can't agree on a Spelling...


TAKE WEB SITE/ WEBSITE for examples


inventory.overture.com - keyword suggestion tool - will automatically change WEBSITE to WEB SITE under all circumstances...


Yet Yahoo which owns it - as well as Google will suggest WEBSITE near the top of the SERPs

Did you mean: website

- Google

Did you mean: website?

- Yahoo!

Google now reads Javascript

http://www.webpronews.com/printable.php


http://www.girardgibbs.com/traffic-power.html


http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/..._20890106.html

http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=10791

javascript redirects & deceptive doorway pages


But the fundamental purpose of any search engine is to offer relevant informaiton

If sites are pulled - the user still is deprived of THAT information

Perhaps the next evolution of search is to algorithmically neutralize those SEO affects - but still allow the VALID information to come up in relevant searches

[nuclei]

Originally Posted by ! !

Google now reads Javascript

From what i have seen this is marginal so far. Their Googlebot/Test bot is an excursion into reading javascript and apparently CSS. However, so far results for it seem to border on only some outbound links hidden by lower level javascripting. Google still can not read extreme cases of links that use javascript to not pass PR. I have not seen any cases where redirects are yet seen as what they are, but that is coming sooner or later too.

[Mel]

Not sure what it means yet, but if you view source of Googles new text cache and compare it with the regular cache, the only apparent difference is that the text cache removes all of the Javascript and replaces it with blank lines.

[paulhiles]

I sincerely hope that Google is able to read JavaScript, as this will inevitably lead to the detection of all manner of unscrupulous techniques (particularly redirects). I've tried reporting sites for using this sort of technique but without any success. The usual response from Google is that with 4 billion sites in their index it may take them a while to get round to dealing with it! ;o)

So the sooner they find an automated way of dealing with this problem the better it will be for all concerned.