Who's still being outranked by spam?
-
Over the past few months, through Google Alerts, I've been watching one of our competitors kick out crap press releases, and links to their site have been popping up all over blog networks with exact match anchor text.
They now outrank us for that anchor text. Why is this still happening? Three Penguin updates later and this still happens. I'm trying so hard to do #RCS and acquire links that will ensure our site's long-term health in the SERPs.
Is anyone else still struggling with this crap?
-
This is nothing new .. this is like playing Russian roulette .. they are taking the risk and they are enjoying the benefits while the sun shines. I do not think we can do anything to change this situation.. hope Google is listening and will come up with something and believe me this tool will not make any difference -
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en
I have tried this many times and of course no result so far.
-
Ah. Well, at least you got a reply!
-
I 100% agree with this, and I am working on long term strategies in the hopes that our competitors will face consequences soon enough--two of our biggest competitors were completely destroyed by the first Penguin. It's a little hard when you have higher ups demanding answers as to why we went from number #1 to #4 over the past three months.
-
Yes, I did that yesterday, but unfortunately, a few weeks ago I got an email from Google saying they received a spam report I sent them for a different site over eight months ago, so I'm not expecting any kind of expedient action on Google's part.
-
I'm seeing it less and less in the travel space. But when it does happen I agree that it's hugely frustrating. You simply have to keep on doing the right thing in the firm belief that Google will reward you in the end. Don't be tempted to copy spammy techniques because (a) you'll probably suffer in the long run, and (b) it might not actually be those that are causing your competitors to outrank you.
-
Have you tried a webspam report?
-
The recent algo updates to catch this sort of stuff seem to be a bit hit and miss at the moment. But it does give us reason to believe that Googs are actively working on removing the trash, but it is still just an algo, it's not perfect. Hopefully they'll continue getting even better at identifying and removing spam.
-
Everyday I keep seeing spam website ranking at the top, frustrating to see that they are up there.
Example 1, we are trying to #1 for a educational course name for a client that is a training school. They are currently being outranked by a website that has about 90% exact match Japanese blog comments, simply because those blog have a high DA.
Example 2, we have a regional client trying to rank for [keyword] + [city name], they are being outranked by an EMD who has 1 link, which is a directory. Whereas we keep pushing new content on the client's site and building their social networks. Sure, the number 1 website isn't doing any shading spam techniques, but they are simply ranking because of their domain names which I thought Google's latest update would of fixed that..
-
Yes - I am struggling with exactly the same issues. I actually sent a private question to SEOMoz last month asking for advice because I was so frustrated. One of our competitors has set up hundreds of fake blog networks with exact match anchor text all over the place linking back to their ecommerce site (to the tune of 300,000+ links)....I know their tactics, because I used to work for them (and it's obvious when looking at their inbound links in ahrefs.com). I disagreed with their SEO approach and frequently voiced my opinions. Fortunately, I was hired away by one of their competitors
Now I work for a great, honest, hard-working company that does great #RCS every day. Still my former company, even after Penguin and Panda and more Penguin and Panda, consistently makes Page 1 while my current company is lucky to make Page 2 for some really important keywords. It is very very frustrating!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why Moz is showing Spam Score at my New Domain?
Hi folks I just registered a new domains boring magazine but I forgot to check the spam score. Recently, I checked and it showing spam score of 46% without any backlinks. You can check the domain age is 30 Days only till now. Need your recommendations on how can I reduce it and on which basis Moz showing it as spams? sp.PNG
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ImranZahidAli0 -
Google Finance Filled with Spam
Not sure if anyone else does anything with Google Finance. In the last few months, I have been noticing a lot of spam sites filling the search results in Google "ticker pages". In this example you can see 4 or the 5 top results are from the same blog network with spun low quality content.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SuperMikeLewis0 -
On the use of Disavow tool / Have I done it correctly, or what's wrong with my perception?
On a site I used GSA search engine ranker. Now, I got good links out of it. But, also got 4900 links from one domain. And, I thought according to ahrefs. One link from the one domain is equal to 4900 links from one domain. So, I downloaded links those 4900 and added 4899 links to disavow tool. To disavow, to keep my site stable at rankings and safe from any future penalty. Is that a correct way to try disavow tool? The site rankings are as it is.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AMTrends0 -
Bad keywords sending traffic my site, but can't find the source. Advice?
Hi! My site seems to be the target of negative SEO (or some ancient black hat work that's just now coming out of the woodwork). We're getting traffic from keywords like "myanmar girls" and "myanmar celebrities" that just started in late June and only directs to our homepage. I can't seem to find the source of the traffic, though (Analytics just shows it as "Google," "Bing," and "Yahoo" even though I can't find our site showing up for these terms in search results). Is there any way to ferret out the source besides combing through every single link that is directing to us in Webmaster Tools? I'm not even sure that GWT has picked up on it since this is fairly new, and I'd really love to nip this in the bud. Thoughts? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 199580 -
Why are "outdated" or "frowned upon" tactics still dominating?
Hey, my first post here. I recently picked up a new client in real estate for a highly competitive market. One trend I'm noticing with all the top sites they are doing old tactics such as:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jay328
-Paid Directories
-Terrible/Spam Directories
-Overuse of exact text keywords for example: City name + real estate
-Blogroll/link exchange
-Tons of meta key words
-B.S. press releases blog commenting with kw as name Out of all the competition there is only one guy who is following the rules of today. One thing I'm noticing is that nobody is doing legit guest blogging, has great social presence, has awesome on page, etc. It's pretty frustrating as I'm trying to follow the rules and seeing these guys kill it by doing "bad seo". Anybody else find themselves in this situation? I know I'm probably beating a dead horse but I needed to vent about this 😉2 -
Is the SORBS-SPAM list a big deal?
Someone here pointed out that my server ip is on the SORBS-SPAM list and I was wondering if this was a big deal, and how it might have got there, and I would go about getting it off the list?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ayetti0 -
Has anyone seen this kind of google cache spam before?
Has anyone seen this kind of 'hack'? When looking at a site recently I found the Google cache version (from 28 Oct) strewn with mentions of all sorts of dodgy looking pharma products but the site itself looked fine. The site itself is www.istc.org.uk Looking in the source of the pages you can see the home pages contains: Browsing as googlebot showed me an empty page (though msnbot etc. returned a 'normal' non-pharma page). As a mildly amusing aside - when I tried to tell the istc about this, the person answering the phone clearly didn't believe me and couldn't get me off the line fast enough! Needless to say they haven't fixed it a week after being told.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JaspalX0 -
What's been your experience with profile link-building?
What have your experiences been? Short Term? Long Term? There isn't a lot written about it, and I'm wondering where it falls in the order of things. I was very hesitant to jump in, but have launched a few campaigns, both for local geo targeting phrases, and national accounts. Surprisingly, I've seen a surge in rankings, but also wonder how short lived they will be. I've noticed the links still don't come up in tools like open site explorer, but I'm able to find them when searching for the unique username I used while building the profiles. The sites I'm listing on have no relevance to industry, unless by chance, although the PR's I'm using are all 4 or higher. Is this considered gray hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | skycriesmary720