I know people hate it when people out others, but I have to do this. I ran across a site that:
1) Creates with content.
2) Has with little or no original content.
3) Has already been caught buying links for one of its international sites
4) Creating pages with malicious behavior
Matt should shut this obvious blackhat down.
Matt you can find the site at (you will note that I nofollowed the links to them to avoid a penalty from being in a bad neighborhood)
I don’t get it.
don’t know how to explain it
Quite Funny.
Very funny IMHO. Come on Jill, think about it ;)
d
So do you think Google wants to show up in Google?
Who watches the watchers?
Er, but they’re not trying to get those maps pages you linked to rank.
In fact, those pages are blocked via robots.txt.
@vanessa rank in what sense? they dont have to be crawled,indexed they are a part of the site. They have built in rankings
@jill i think Google wants to hijack rankings via aggregated (scraped content) to sell contextual advertising .. if I do that, I get in trouble … yes or no?
If they get a pass can I get a pass for a few of my sites? :)
From what I hear, they do a lot of machine generated stuff.
But the Google guidelines are there if you’re looking for your pages to rank in Google for specfic search queries. If you’re not concerned about being able to do that (which it appears they’re not) then why would you care about following them?
As far as I know, the Google guidelines don’t apply to every single web page in the world, just those that want to rank in Google.
So again, I still don’t really get your point.
@jill … lets explore the issue
1) it’s robots.txt ‘ed out. why? to keep the content out of other compliant engines and to compliant crawls, not to keep it out of its own engine, which it wouldn’t bother wasting crawl costs on.
2) Google is 100% interested in those pages ranking for certain search terms. The difference is they do not adhere to any type of algorithmic ranking , they are positioned in the SERPs for “specific search queries” (for the above examples they rank for McDonalds in the top 5, within the one box) … it is silly to insist since they aren’t crawled that they aren’t meant to “rank” … type in almost any business name, and click “more” next to the business name in the one box … how much traffic do you think that brings pages like that? How much contextual advertising is sold based on that organic traffic? Would I be able to do the same thing? No. Because if I robots.txt ‘ed out my pages, I would still not have a direct key into the first page of the results.
Google doesn’t need to follow webmaster guidelines because they are Google, doesn’t really cut it for me.
Yes or no, they are directing search users with the intent to contact local businesses to pages with aggregate content, that also display contextual ads for competition from the SERPs? Yes or no, sites have been banned for the exact same issue?
Because it is Google’s product, we can throw up our arms and say, they can do what they want? I think its healthy to question this type of pseudo authority. By simply being sheep, herded by the big G, we allow ourselves to have our livelihoods to be 100% controlled.
Is this post going to change anything, no. Will it make some think, sure. Thinking is good.
3) The argument that since Google does not “crawl” or “index” these pages is as silly as the PR slap the put on Google.jp, it means nothing. It still shows up in the SERPs, just like Google.jp will never be effected by a decrease in something that only Google counts.
4) Let’s look closer at the privacy issue that no one wants to talk about. If you went to a website, that loaded a trojan onto your computer that infiltrated your Outlook, and used your email to deliver contextually related information based on this information, how would you feel? Oh its illegal cause you didn’t opt in? Wait I never opted in for Buzz. Now lets say the same Trojan started sharing your email contacts with others.
My point in this all is, let’s open up our mind a bit, and just see some issues being presented before us. Google wants to move to a world where everything happens within Google. Chromium, android, and Google Apps are 100% proof of this. Where does that leave the small internet business?
They may be blocked by robots but hey look at that they still show up in the google index if you click that review link now don’t they
Huh?
Oh, I mean, “Take that McDonalds”. That’s who we’re mad at right?
@graywolf notice how they hijacked the Yelp listing there too. Click show on map, then click on the McDonalds Restaurant link .. amazing! Why would they do that to Yelp? Oh, must be to improve the user experience ;-)
yelp, citsearch, zagat yep google is building better content by stealing … err … aggregating others content and slapping adsense on it … just like an MFA site
@graywolf but those sites can stop Google by blocking them right? Oh wait that would effectively destroy their business. So I guess they should be happy with what Google gives them. Its not like Google needs webmasters for anything … except content and a reason to exist
Hi Dave – agree a lot with you on the Google and its infiltration of email etc. I think, though I have always been an evangelist, that it is time to start looking and thinking about Google’s quest for internet domination (insert evil laugh here ;)) and the fact that they store ALL the info. Add that to the relinquishment of control by the founders and the issues you are talking about now are only likely to accelerate and grow and exponential speed as Google becomes Microsoft like. So I agree with you there.
lol wow. I still love Graywolf’s power point a few years back about how hypocritical Google is. This is just a new spin on it.
Ya we already know Google is the only exception to their own rules. When you drive and push as much traffic as Google does you get to make rules as to how and when and why you drive that traffic.
Google creates and has the ability to continually create useful tools that people love and use every day. Most popular websites today just suck your time (YouTube.com sucks our time and Google’s money, lol silly Google).
You don’t see people whining about Ask.com or dogpile.com doing this for example.
But still Google is being very disruptive, the whole Buzz thing I love (its what Google Wave was trying to do)! So far so good for me. Never been in better touch with my seo friends.
Kewl you shldou come up with that. Excellent!