Can Google Kill Spam This Year?
- Thread starter jboeckman
- Start date
If they kill spam for SEO, then they just open the doorway up for negative SEO.
To me it sounds like google has given up trying to moderate and code against spam and instead plan to penalize anybody and everybody who have any spamlike links in any type of quantity.
Suits me just fine, I have my whitehat sites and now instead of trying to outrank my competitors I can just throw a few million xrumer links at them and watch them rot with their penalties.
We'll see how long googles new stance lasts =). I know I'll be playing both sides, so no matter what happens I can still eat delicious noodle soup.
To me it sounds like google has given up trying to moderate and code against spam and instead plan to penalize anybody and everybody who have any spamlike links in any type of quantity.
Suits me just fine, I have my whitehat sites and now instead of trying to outrank my competitors I can just throw a few million xrumer links at them and watch them rot with their penalties.
We'll see how long googles new stance lasts =). I know I'll be playing both sides, so no matter what happens I can still eat delicious noodle soup.
I think they will, but it might take longer than that. I think they will widely reduce web spam in 2012. IMO all of this is a lead up to them introducing a new system within Google Webmaster Tools which will allow you to "nofollow" your own backlinks. Devalue all spammy links, give webmasters the ability to "nofollow" their INCOMING backlinks and you've taken care of the negative SEO issue as well.
I think you guys are missing the big picture. Google is doing an awesome job fighting spam, and the casual weekend blackhat is going to be forced to change his ways or go out of business. The hardcore bhs will always be there, but it wont be as accessible as buying Scrapebox and a AA list of blogs to target.
And good for Google raising the bar. The future of SEO isn't in links anyway.
And good for Google raising the bar. The future of SEO isn't in links anyway.
You really do have a knack for saying exactly what's on my mind. Let's get married.
They can't eliminate search spam, they can just change the way that people spam. Eliminating how beneficial untargeted link spamming or cloaking is can be done, but that leaves a large field available for more targeted types of spam.
Google has a problem that they can't really get around: If they penalize too harshly for external factors(like link spam) then people will switch from promoting their own site to sabotaging their competitors. Effective spam fighting requires them to find and hold a very, very delicate middle ground. They certainly can put up one hell of a fight, but to an extent their hands will always be bound.
Google has a problem that they can't really get around: If they penalize too harshly for external factors(like link spam) then people will switch from promoting their own site to sabotaging their competitors. Effective spam fighting requires them to find and hold a very, very delicate middle ground. They certainly can put up one hell of a fight, but to an extent their hands will always be bound.
1. Old links are displayed first.
2. Select all of the links you know about.
3. Invert selection.
4. Nofollow all selected links.
I'm not saying it's perfect but it'd be like combing through your spam folder in email to make sure you're not missing any important emails. Google engineers will probably figure out something more ingenious. Perhaps "Enable auto nofollow on suspected spam links" and from there it's really like your email spam box, where you just go through "un-nofollowing" non-spammy links. Is that a double negative? Lol.
So pretty much the only direct references to "the end of spam" are Panda Updates and Blog Networks getting de-indexed. Yawn.
They don't have to penalize. They just have to change the external factors.
Which they have already started to do.
It's close-minded to think that a couple of updates spell the end of SEO, but infinitely more close-minded to think that Google will never "win". Unfortunately guerrilla is all too correct about Google doing an awesome job fighting webspam, and I think they're improving exponentially (and will continue to do so). Why? Because thing like their processing power, accumulated data/statistics and storage are also increasing exponentially. They will be able to collect more data and investigate more patterns on what's natural that they simply didn't have the processing power to do just a few years ago. Stuff that you won't be able to fake without an increasingly ridiculous amount of resources.
Simply put, the cost of doing BH SEO that really looks natural to Google is going to continue to become exponentially more expensive.
Clearly, anything I say is conjecture, but these are my thoughts on the matter:
As Google gets better at determining the relevancy of a page, people seeking to game their algo will need to get better at forging relevancy. Cheap and simple techniques will lose their value, sometimes overnight, and be replaced by more expensive, time-intensive methods. The more difficult a ranking factor is to duplicate, the more valuable it is likely to become.
This is good news if you are able to think outside the box.
As Google gets better at determining the relevancy of a page, people seeking to game their algo will need to get better at forging relevancy. Cheap and simple techniques will lose their value, sometimes overnight, and be replaced by more expensive, time-intensive methods. The more difficult a ranking factor is to duplicate, the more valuable it is likely to become.
This is good news if you are able to think outside the box.
I'd like to see someone run a case study on throwing massive xrumer, scrapebox and aln on a competitors site.
The nofollow attribute never worked out for G the way they had hoped in the first place, I'm not sure they want to complicate things that way. It resulted in PR hoarding, and I think that if they introduced a method to nofollow inbound links, it would create such an incredible market for link-buying that the consequences would never be the same.