Jun 7, 2006
Here's a little story about a spam report I submitted in February 2006 to Google, Yahoo and MSN for a competing site. Submitting a Google spam report is common practice these days, but the yahoo spam report and MSN spam reports are less common.The site in question had the works - orphaned doorway pages, white on white text and massively targeted for a single phrase per page, with no useful content.
The only visible thing on the page was their logo linking back to the homepage - all the SEO content was invisible unless you pressed CTRL-A. They had even used a white image for the background instead of color="#FFFFFF" to make it really hard for the engines to spot. Spam in anyone's book, no question.
MSN responded within a day or so to my spam report with a personalised reply - yes, written by a person. I wish I could find the response they emailed me and post it, but basically it said this...
We understand that you don't want to have to compete with other sites. bla bla bla. However, just because you don't like a particular website doesn't mean we should remove the site from our index. bla bla. We care about quality results bla bla and we don't go deleting sites just because you don't like them. bla bla etc etc.
I recall myself scratching my head and wondering if the 5 minutes they spent writing me a personal reply wouldn't have been better actually following the link and having a look at the site I sent them. I would have been quite happy with no reply and some action. I did appreciate the personal response, as you always do when dealing with behemoth companies like Microsoft.
Interestingly enough, Yahoo did absolutely nothing with my spam report. Google did nothing for 3 months, despite Matt Cutts asking for more spam reports (and deleting my blog comment when I very politely asked him to please deal with the spam reports we have already submitted before asking for more).
Finally Google deleted the site from the index. A few days later, the site had cleaned up their act, and about 3 weeks later they were back in the index with a PR0 instead of a PR4. Now they seem to be ranking well again, but not nearly as well as they did with the doorway pages.
The moral of the story?
I just want a fair playing field - SEO is hard enough without having to compete with ugly spam sites jam packed full of text that no person will ever see. Frankly, I'm pretty disappointed with all 3 engines for the lax response, and It doesn't offer much incentive to those that want to run clean sites.
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Comments
Dave Carter - Aug 16, 2006
Here is a classic case of spamming.I have submitted this and 20 other skiing web sites the same company operates in the same way to Google,over the last few weeks.
No action..so meanwhile they make loads of money booking ski holidays above their legitimate competitors.
If Google seriously want us to find spamming web sites they should make an example.This one uses deliberate hidden text so it is not an accident.They have been informed by me so they know.It is not an innocent mistake. They probably have another 20 web sites prepared for when they finally get booted out..if ever..Google..get your act together..or we all lose faith in you..Act faster..get a human working for you...to set an example..to scare the others off..just like the Vat man in the uk in the late 70's. They made extreme examples of offenders to warn off the others..Get rid of this spamming web site sap..and the others in the group..
John S. Britsios, aka Webnauts, - May 3, 2007
HEY:
IT SEEMS YOU DON'T GET THE REPLY MSN SENT TO YOU SCUMBAG.
SO LET ME BREAK IT DOWN FOR YOU SO IT MAY BE ABLE TO ENTER YOUR THICK IDIOTIC HEAD:
THEY ARE TRYING TO TELL YOU:
TO GET LOST, THAT YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE, A SCUMBAG, FILTH, LOWLIFE, BASTARD NINCOMPOOP.
HOPE FINALLY YU GOT IT, MORON
John S. Britsios, aka Webnauts,
Harvey - May 3, 2007
Wow - how does one respond to the above comment, so delicately and cleverly worded?
Well, maybe I am a thicko, but I thought that a keyword-loaded white-text-on-white-background doorway page was pretty clear cut spam, and that reporting spam like this was the whole point of MSN having a spam report page?
But maybe you are right John, I don't get it.
Whatever.
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LaMystique - Aug 14, 2006
It makes you really wonder what use the spam reports are really worth. It irritates me to no end to see competition using shady methods to artificially boost their rankings. If they spent that much energy on actually doing something beneficial to web visiotrs then the internet would be a better place in my opinion.