

A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques - dazz
http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2010/06/17/need-help-understanding-the-latest-mahalo-spam/

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mikerhoads
Disclaimer: I used to work for mahalo.

You mentioned these sites having no unique or original content but after a few
quick searches on questions on the star wars answers sites it was pretty clear
that all the ugc is original. True there is not much of it, but thats because
the sites are only a few months old at the most.

You've proven that the category structure across the sites is similar and that
new sites often don't have much content but Google already knows not to grant
page rank power to new undeveloped sites. The backlinks from these domains
will only carry weight if users engage it and significant content is
built...and if that happens then your entire argument goes away.

If there are actual users building niche content, I don't really see the
problem here. If you don't agree with that then you're making the case against
all niche forums and communities just because you don't like the guy.

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jellicle
Google, for whatever reason, thinks that a very light touch with regard to
spam sites is appropriate. (Although Cutts is right that an inurl: or site:
query doesn't show anything - he's saying, "Show me a real-world query that
has nothing but spammy results and then I'll do something").

I think and have thought that a Google competitor could come along and beat
them by having a heavy hand against spam sites. If it's designed to attract
search engines, NewGoog doesn't index it, period. Any business generating
datafog for search engine consumption gets deindexed entirely and permanently.

Go ahead, type any question you want into Google. ANY question at all. You get
a list of 500 search engine question spam sites, most of which are written in
broken English and contain more or less nonsense strings of words thrown
together. NewGoog would wipe all that shit out.

Attention Google: offer an option (like SafeSearch) that applies a HEAVY HAND
to spam sites. We will love you for it.

~~~
ryanhuff
What's the best way to pass a site over to Matt Cutts?

This site has GOT TO GO! <http://www.codeweblog.com/> It is polluting my
Google search results.

As an example, search for "android intent activity pass". The search result
titled "android intent pass variable activity" looks promising, but clicking
on it brings you to this site, which contains machine generated nonsense
content!

~~~
percept
I've also been seeing it regularly in technical search results, and it seems
to have come from nowhere as I don't remember ever seeing it before (the
domain's associated with a Chinese address, created 2006).

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moultano
That isn't really fair to Matt. What he's saying is, show them ranking for a
query they shouldn't be, and then he'll start to be concerned.

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raganwald
The essential question I ask is whether Mahalo is gettingthe same treat ment
as any other site. So, if you and I launch a site that uses the same "thin
affiliate" sites for crosslinking and disregards the other Google rules that
Mahalo disregards, will we get a pass or will we get blacklisted?

If Cutts ignore our site, then he's being consistent. However, the author of
the post contends that Mahalo is getting away with stuff that is getting other
sites penalized. That's a very different thing to the question of how well
Mahalo ranks.

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Aaronontheweb
I don't think Google would give Mahalo preferential treatment - although sites
like TechCrunch sometimes give us the impression that Jason Calcanis, Google
Brass, Kevin Rose, etc... are all part of some sort of untouchable Silicon
Valley illuminati, that's really not the case.

Google cares more about the quality of its search results than any personal
relationship - I don't think they'd hesitate to burn some of Mahalo's domains
if they thought it was negatively impacting users.

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tzs
I am having a hard time understanding what he's complaining about. Is there
supposed to be something wrong with having a general information site (mahalo)
and a bunch of specialized sites (starwarsanswers.com, for example) that
contain information on specific topics with links back to the general site?

~~~
hooande
What purpose does this serve? Maybe you could explain to me why someone would
do this? What is the benefit of using several different domains instead of
subdomains or subfolders on the general site?

~~~
tzs
"Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were discussing at
lunch yesterday on this great site, generalsite.com/topics/starwars".

A couple days later, Bob wants to go there to check out another Star Wars
question. All Bob remembers is "starwars", and fails to find the site.

Compare to "Hey Bob! I found the answer to that Star Wars question we were
discussing at lunch yesterday on this great site, starwarsanswers.com".

A couple days later, Bob wants to go there to check out another Star Wars
question. Bob has a good chance of remembering "starwarsanswers".

Separate domains for different topics is more friendly to users. That's
probably why Google has no problem with it--as the Google guy said, its impact
on users they care about.

~~~
mvandemar
There are 14 questions on a site with 308 indexed pages, such as:

<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/travel-how-tos>
<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/language-how-tos>
<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/health-how-tos>
<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/home-garden-how-tos>
<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/wedding-how-tos>
<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/dance-how-tos>
<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/black-belt-test>
<http://www.starwarsanswers.com/mahalo-profile>

~~~
Isofarro
These are all empty pages. They look characteristic to pages that were not
designed to be there or linked to. A bug rather than a feature.

How do you navigate to these pages from the starwarsanswers.com homepage? I
don't see any of those listed on the right hand margin. Sure, they may have
been exposed because of a deployment error early on that has now been fixed.

Looks to be a basic website error than something attributable to malice.

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geuis
Hackaday is not a site that was created in the last year.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
I'm sorry, what do you mean?

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ddemchuk
I'm gonna go out on a limb here: Who gives a shit?

Everyone treats Google like this super police agent who's job is to keep our
minds free from digital pollution. Yet 97% of Google's income comes from their
ad network, which thrives on having publishers and SERP pages to serve up
their advertising customer's creatives. Ultimately, I'm sure Google is fine
with this Mahalo stuff, because it means they have more ad space to publish
on.

What Mahalo has going on is not much different than the major article
directory sites like EZine and Associated Content. Search on one of those
sites for corn on the cob and I bet you'll find a bunch of similar articles,
all plastered with adsense. In fact, I have tools right now that can rewrite
an article and allow me submit more corn on the cob articles in under a
minute. But you never hear anyone bitch about those sites, because it's User
Generated Content. Ultimately, how are they any different?

Honestly, knowing what I know about Black Hat SEO Tactics (I know a good
amount), I'd rather see someone building out massive crappy content sites than
spamming their backlinks everywhere. At least they aren't polluting everyone
else's sites by getting XRumer blasts and Blog Comment Spamming.

~~~
ryanhuff
Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My
recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions
(doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear
promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This
may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific
searches to sites like Stack Overflow.

I really wish Google would address this issue.

~~~
ddemchuk
Everyone wants high quality search results, of course. But like I said in my
OP, Google is a for profit company that depends on high traffic keyword
searches and high volume publishers to maintain their livelihood. It's not
that far of a stretch for them to not necessarily be dying for "quality"
search results as much as we are. If the lower quality results are making them
money, it would be against their own business model to squelch them.

So it really is a question of who this issue is affecting. For us, it's
annoying. For Google, it's a profit source.

~~~
mvandemar
You are absolutely correct. However, at that point it becomes an ethics issue.
If these are financially motivated search results without disclosure then it
becomes a whole different ball of wax. If they are deliberately screwing up
their relevancy algorithm in the name of a bottom line then people need to
know that.

~~~
ddemchuk
The reason people trust and believe the spam search results that come up and
blindly make purchases on those sites is the same reason they can't realize
that Google isn't some non-profit public service but is in reality an ad-
littered money machine: people are stupid.

