Joined: 19 Jun 2004 Posts: 529 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:12 am Post subject: Google Being Blamed for Phony Blogs
A recent article in Wall Street Journal Online reports that the finger is being pointed at Google for the deluge of 'Splogs' or spam blogs which have become one of the biggest problems on the internet and also artificially inflate websites popularity.
Will be interesting to see how Google in particular respond to this problem which affects all legitimate affiliate marketers. _________________ Declan O'Reilly
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Joined: 09 Aug 2003 Posts: 1838 Location: Columbus, OH
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:50 pm Post subject:
Yea, it was an interesting read. It's actually the marketers that create the splogs that are to blame, but it is partly Google's fault, too.
They make it too simple to make tons of posts to Blogger blogs quickly, and then they spider and index those blogs.
The problem certainly won't go away, as tools currently exist to do similar things to Wordpress and MovableType blogs. _________________ Robert
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Joined: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 895 Location: California, The OC
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 6:00 pm Post subject:
Declan OReilly wrote:
A recent article in Wall Street Journal Online reports that the finger is being pointed at Google for the deluge of 'Splogs' or spam blogs which have become one of the biggest problems on the internet and also artificially inflate websites popularity.
I love that..."artificially inflate websites popularity". You could say the same thing about purchasing links, article submisssions, hell, even link exchanges.
The biggest problem on the Internet? I wouldn't go that far. I see much bigger problems then Google's blogspot. Besides, they have an off button. They could use that. They could offer a paid service, like $1, IMO would deter a lot of spammers from using it, because of the fact they'd have to setup up an account, etc..; wouldn't be a quick high for them.
This problem will never go away. Most people are talking blogspot. You very easily setup blogs on free hosting accounts. You could automate that process as well.
Personally, I don't think they'll ever close the doors on Blospot/Blogger. All those wannabe bloggers putting Adsense/Adwords on their site. It's a profit machine in over-drive.
robertb wrote:
The problem certainly won't go away, as tools currently exist to do similar things to Wordpress and MovableType blogs.
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 6:22 pm Post subject:
I wonder if human editted directories are the solution to all this automated junk creation stuff.
Imagine for a moment there were no search engines, and the only way to get free traffic was to convince human reviewers at a niche portal that your site had enough unique quality to merit inclusion.
It would seem this would go a long way towards changing web publishing for the better.
The problem of course is that the search engines are really convenient, and still do a decent job.
Hmm. Suppose when you used a search engine it got all it's results from human edited directories, not from crawling the World Wide Wasteland?
I like this plan better than crawling all sites, and then using college students to try to weed out the junk, a seemingly hopeless task.
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Joined: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 895 Location: California, The OC
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:11 pm Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
Imagine for a moment there were no search engines, and the only way to get free traffic was to convince human reviewers at a niche portal that your site had enough unique quality to merit inclusion.
I think your right. That's why I see more and more evidence of TrustRank (PageRank's cousin).
TrustRank gives certain websites "authority" status by human, Google employee, reviewers. Link Analysis won't go away, as that's the fabric thats been woven into the Google Algo, but TrustRank can help build quality SERPs, now that links (anchor text) have gotten outta control.
By building links from TrustRank sites, you'll see your sites within the top SERPs at Google. _________________ Free Software builds pages of content over time! - Claim it here SpywareBlockingSite.com for Sale - $149
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:09 pm Post subject:
First I've heard of TrustRank, thanks for the education Voasi. It is interesting that Google, who favors automated solutions, seems to be finding it necessary to increasingly return to human judgement.
It seems to me that it is in everybody's (except the gimmick crowd) interest that sites be judged purely on quality.
Imagine a web where webmasters spent _all_ their time on creating quality content because _that_ was what their success depended on, not SEO and various marketing schemes. Isn't that what Google wishes we would do? Isn't that what users wish we would do? Isn't giving Google and users what they want actually a fairly clever strategy?
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to pursue this common sense strategy if we didn't have to think about marketing, which is not really an activity that adds value to the Web?
Suppose Google created a separate search tool called "Best Of Google" or some other better name.
This engine would be based entirely on human reviewed sites. The crawlers would only crawl approved sites.
It would be a badge of honor webmaster's could aspire to. Imagine that official "Best Of Google Badge" hanging proudly from your logo.
And the Best of Google tool would give users a shortcut to the best sites. As surfers, we really don't care about 95% of the Web, right?
Give us the good stuff!
Yes, DMOZ already attempts this. But, as I understand it (I may not) you can't actually search all the pages of all the sites listed in DMOZ from one search box. And DMOZ is volunteer based, which is groovy, but not a good model for a serious web service, imho.
Finally, imagine that somebody at Google is already working on this. Imagine the billions of dollars and hours that have been invested in SEO, Martel style filler content, clever gimmick schemes, etc etc, going up in smoke the day after Google releases the Best Of Google.
I think we'd all be wise to not get too emotionally attached to business models based on the current search engine setup, because the Net is still young enough for it all to change over night. _________________ Free Email Discussion Group For Your Site
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Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:50 pm Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
Suppose Google created a separate search tool called "Best Of Google" or some other better name.
This engine would be based entirely on human reviewed sites.
I love the idea and I'm sure it would be hugely popular, but what a challenge!
Yahoo tried something similar, and found it was too difficult, even when charging sites $299 a year for a review, so it has switched mainly to a search engine-based system.
DMOZ tried it and is floundering because of corruption and volunteers who can't cope with the flood of applications.
How much would you be willing to pay to have your site reviewed for "Best of Google"? _________________ Allan Gardyne
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Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:14 am Post subject:
Thanks for weighing in Allan. Good point, the "who's going
to pay for it" question is clearly a central one. I'll take
a stab at it, and hope others will as well.
For starters, it seems like Google is already paying a bunch
of folks to award TrustRank, and weed out thin affiliates.
And imagine the army of techs they must have working on
protecting their algo based SERPs from manipulations. Big
bucks I bet!
So, one possibility might be to redirect these folks away
from applying bandaids to the automated SERPs, and put them
to work on building the Best Of Google instead.
Here's how Google might deal with the flood of applications
from webmasters. Don't take applications. If Google
employees can't use their own SERPs to find the Net's best
sites, doesn't that illustrate the problem?
Why not charge end users? How many hours a month do you
waste digging through trash in the SERPS? A million users
paying a $5/month subscription fee could buy a lot of
reviewers.
Why not charge advertisers a higher rate for their Adwords
listings on Best Of Google? Surely any advertiser would
covet the associations that would come with that placement,
right?
Webmasters can contribute to the effort by continuing to
invest billions of hours and dollars in providing the FREE
content the entire system depends on. And now we'll get
rewarded for providing the best content we are capable of.
Consider this logic. Users want quality SERPs. Google does
too. Most webmasters would likely prefer to work on content
creation instead of marketing. Hundreds of millions of
smart people, the majority of us, want this. Google alone
has billions of dollars to play with. We can't do it?
If you'll permit me to rant a bit further, here's a theory
on what may be the main obstacle.
We assume the "big boys know best" in spite of all evidence
to the contrary.
One little guy I know built a nice little Net service all by
himself, and sold it to the Net big boys, who immediately
lost control and trashed it, losing their substantial
investment in the process. 300 big boys couldn't run a one
man operation. Big boys have big problems that us little
people don't have.
A more dramatic example:
The governments of US, Russia and now China each have spent
trillions of dollars of their citizen's precious resources
building a system that can destroy all of human
civilization, and most of the life on the planet, within 20
minutes.
Thanks to their efforts we are now one bad day, one
bad judgement, away from the end of time. These are the
very biggest big boys who led us to this situation.
Make sense to you? Big boys know best?
Point being, I don't think we should assume this is impossible
just because it hasn't been done yet.
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Joined: 19 Jun 2004 Posts: 529 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:52 am Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
Suppose Google created a separate search tool called "Best Of Google" or some other better name....Yes, DMOZ already attempts this....DMOZ is volunteer based, which is groovy, but not a good model for a serious web service, imho.
It theory this appears to be a solution but in practice it wouldn't really work. DMOZ is already straining under the sheer weight of unreviewed websites. BUT the problem is not getting listed in DMOZ but in weeding out all the dead links that exist there now.
Websites come and go and it is impossible for any one organization such as DMOZ to keep up with the expansion of the internet. The only viable way of dealing with it is a form of self regulation. Eventually websites will become so smart that they will deliver tailored results based on personal preferences.
Eventually even Google will face up to the fact that no matter how many people they pay to weed out spam sites there will always be more spam sites to replace those weeded out. _________________ Declan O'Reilly
Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code.
Do what successful infopreneurs do...
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:36 am Post subject:
Declan OReilly wrote:
...it is impossible for any one organization such as DMOZ to keep up with the expansion of the internet...
According to that article, 70,000 new blogs are being created every day, so for Best of Google to work, there would definitely need to be a combination of computer algorithms and human input.
I'd love to see Google try. Imagine being No.1 in your category in Best of Google!
I just tried best.google.com . Unfortunately, it says "Not Found". _________________ Allan Gardyne
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Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:28 am Post subject:
Thanks for your comments guys. This is an interesting game of idea tennis.
Hmm. Best Of Google doesn't have to exactly imitate or replace the functions of regular Google. That is, it wouldn't have to keep up with 70,000 new blogs a day etc. Regular Google can still work at that job.
In any niche there are well established authority sites that have built substantial content and reputation over time. These well established experts don't come and go on a daily basis.
As example, in the Net biz niche we have sites like Allan's and WilsonWeb. A reader could get a perfectly good education on affiliate marketing and general Net biz, quite large topics, using these two sites alone.
I agree there are challenges presented by going in a new direction. And there are challenges presented by sticking with the status quo too.
It's just like the spam issue. It's easy to insightfully poke holes in every proposed solution, but declining all proposed solutions results in the spammers owning 80% of all email traffic.
Hmm again. Maybe one way to explore this might be to ask ourselves whether we would pay $5 a month to be able to search just the authority sites.
If a million people decide that a Best of Google would save them more than $5 worth of time each month, then that's a $60 million a year budget, plus the boosted ad revenue.
That's probably not enough to immediately review every niche, but you could get a good start on the most popular niches, eh?
If people want it, and are willing to pay for it, it's probably doable? _________________ Free Email Discussion Group For Your Site
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I love that..."artificially inflate websites popularity". You could say the same thing about purchasing links, article submisssions, hell, even link exchanges.
Yes, competing for better ranking is bound to occur. It just comes down to what different people label as acceptable tactics.
Quote:
They could offer a paid service, like $1, IMO would deter a lot of spammers from using it, because of the fact they'd have to setup up an account...
Yes, barriers to entry. The tiniest barrier will often stop automation spoiling the party, but the crux is prevention rather than cure...
Quote:
Personally, I don't think they'll ever close the doors on Blospot/Blogger. All those wannabe bloggers putting Adsense/Adwords on their site. It's a profit machine in over-drive.
Adsense is great in theory, but in practise it's proving to be the motivation for a huge wave of SE spam. Spammers need a way to monetise, but this has become too easy.
Regarding Phil T's ideas on Google staffing resources...
How about channeling a few more into vetting Adsense applications. Does anyone remember when Adsense was new? They were a little more selective in those days.
Declan OReilly wrote:
Eventually even Google will face up to the fact that no matter how many people they pay to weed out spam sites there will always be more spam sites to replace those weeded out.
AllanGardyne wrote:
According to that article, 70,000 new blogs are being created every day, so for Best of Google to work, there would definitely need to be a combination of computer algorithms and human input.
But all this is "cure". If you make the option to monetise slightly more selective in the first place, "prevention" will go a long way towards stopping things getting any worse. At the moment things are slipping all the time.
For me, Google risks losing the long game for pretty much the reason it got to the top in the first place - searcher satisfaction.
Monetising free search is fair enough as long as you don't render the SERPs so unattractive to searchers as to make people go elsewhere. Tightening up on Adsense is the root solution, surely. The longer they leave it, the harder it will be to sort it out...
As a searcher, I sometimes wonder if I'd get better results by just clicking on the paid ads in Google SERPs as it is. Just look at how paying for traffic focuses the mind.
Just my opinion,
Charlie.
P.S.
AllanGardyne wrote:
I just tried best.google.com . Unfortunately, it says "Not Found".
Have you tried the desktop version? It's called "Favorites". (I think there's a Mac version, too.)
From humble beginnings, it's grown into quite a resource. _________________ "Before I speak, I have something important to say."
- Groucho Marx
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 3:15 am Post subject:
Charlie wrote:
For me, Google risks losing the long game for pretty much the reason it got to the top in the first place - searcher satisfaction.
Yes, with you there.
Google and quality oriented publishers are fighting the same battle. I see it as a branding war.
On the one hand you have search engines and quality oriented publishers, whose long term prospects depend on convincing the public that the Net is where you go for useful quality content. These folks want to make a living by adding value to the Net. They are trying to create a quality brand.
On the other hand we have what I refer to as the "cleverness culture" which are all the folks fascinated by any gimmick they can use to extract a dime from the Net, for themselves, right now. This group is not concerned with giving value, only taking value. They aren't concerned with the effect their actions have on the branding process your and my future depends on.
If typing "MASSIVE PROFITS FROM YOUR ONE CLICK INTERNET CASH MACHINE AND FREE *** TOO!!!" across the top of their page sells one more unit, these folks are estatic.
What distresses me is that many otherwise sensible quality publishers don't seem to realize we are in this branding war, and so they applaud the mindless antics of the cleverness culture, making it cool and spreading the contagion.
If you are in your 20's, and planning to spend a lifelong career on the Net, this branding struggle demands your attention.
If you're an old geezer like me or Charlie, then maybe you can skate by on the remaining "Wow, ain't it cool" buzz left over from the dawning days of the Net. _________________ Free Email Discussion Group For Your Site
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Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 5:26 am Post subject:
The endless stream of new blogs and websites is scary, and something that affiliates should be worried about.
So are all the copycat cats. We've just persuaded a free web host, Lycos, to delete three sites which had stolen our material.
How's Google going to cope?
Already, we're seeing that Google places an age limit penalty on new sites. It also appears to favor very large, old, well established sites.
This is only anecdotal evidence, but perhaps it's important. Some of my smaller websites have been hit by new algorithm twitches recently, but my largest oldest site is doing better than ever, receiving more traffic this month than it did last month. Algorithm twitches almost never seem to affect it.
Perhaps the long-term lesson to learn from this is that you'll increase your chances if you pour your efforts in large, well established sites with lots of links to them.
And if you are making money, invest like crazy! _________________ Allan Gardyne
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On the other hand we have what I refer to as the "cleverness culture" which are all the folks fascinated by any gimmick they can use to extract a dime from the Net, for themselves, right now. This group is not concerned with giving value, only taking value. They aren't concerned with the effect their actions have on the branding process your and my future depends on.
I don't have any problem with cleverness or tricks per se. Tech tweaks have always been very interesting to me. But you're bang on with the short term takers...
One big trend lately, is for "gurus" to demonstrate the ethical use of an automated method (which they are selling) knowing full well that many people will use it as a spammers' fast track.
These people are the most revolting examples possible - they promote the problem while being paid to take the high moral ground in public. To make matters worse, (at least) some use the tools privately in ways they "told" everyone else not to.
No names, but SE spam is flavour of the month.
Quote:
If you're an old geezer like me or Charlie, then maybe you can skate by on the remaining "Wow, ain't it cool" buzz left over from the dawning days of the Net.
Sounds like thin ice to me. Besides, how old do you think I am?
To quote Jethro Tull (think rock band not agricultural revolution)...
"Too old to rock and ro-o-oll - but still too young to die...".
AllanGardyne wrote:
The endless stream of new blogs and websites is scary, and something that affiliates should be worried about.
Just in case Google are listening - so should searchers...
Quote:
Already, we're seeing that Google places an age limit penalty on new sites. It also appears to favor very large, old, well established sites.
I think there is some sense in it, but what about new quality? For me the assumption that everyone has the right to publish needs looking at, irrespective of how long they've been doing it.
If anyone can do something for free on the promise of easy money, many will. That's a very bad thing for everyone.
Cheers,
Charlie. _________________ "Before I speak, I have something important to say."
- Groucho Marx
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