
SEO: 4 things huge sites are allowed to do but you’re not. - Brandrsn
http://nenadseo.com/big-dogs/
======
jawns
The most egregious example of a huge site doing things that smaller sites are
not allowed to do is ...

GOOGLE!

Recently, I've seen its "survey wall" cropping up on more and more sites.

It works like this:

You do a Google search. You see a link to an article you want to read. You
click through.

You're met with a message that tells you that if you want to actually read the
page, you have to complete a survey.

And the whole thing is powered by Google:
[http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/10/31/googles-latest-
conten...](http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/10/31/googles-latest-content-
paywall-experiment-pay-with-an-answer/)

Remember back when Experts Exchange tried to pull the same nasty tactic --
have its cake (get indexed in Google search results) and eat it too (hide that
content behind a paywall)? Remember how slimy it was, and how Google penalized
it several times, as it tried various other ways to cloak its content?

Well ... Google is doing exactly the same thing.

~~~
stevenleeg
I've actually noticed Chegg doing the _exact_ same thing experts exchange did.

For example, if I'm looking up homework help for second order differential
equations, I'd see something like this[1] in the Google results. Does anyone
know why is this not being penalized?

[1] – [http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-
answers/1-f...](http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-
answers/1-find-particular-solution-nonhomogeneous-differential-
equation-y-10y-25y-e-5x-2-find-gene-q3701548)

~~~
digitalengineer
Same as Quora. I can google it and clcik the link to it, but then it's blurred
and I need to login to see answers: "You must be signed in to read this
answer."

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
In my experience Quora ranked a LOT higher before these shenanigans. I do not
think Quora is getting the best of both worlds here: High organic rankings and
many user sign-ups.

------
mrsaint
When Google replaced other search engines like Altavista back in the last
century, one thing that made it so special was that it was fully automated and
didn't seem to favor anyone. Nowadays, post-Panda, things seem to have become
a lot more murky, and I am not sure whom to thank for that (overzealous SEO
folks perhaps who had tried to game Google's algorithm?). I mean seriously,
have you ever received one of those "Please remove the link to our website
from your website because the link hurts us" requests? At the same time as
this article pointed out the new rules don't seem to apply equally, making
things even more murky. Curious where we're heading with that...

~~~
lazyant
silly question: how do you know a link hurts you?

~~~
moron4hire
I would like to know as well.

~~~
antjanus
you kind of don't...that's one of the issues.

------
blauwbilgorgel
This is clickbait. The last story they had on HackerNews was shortly after the
RapGenius drama. According to someone smeared in that story they tried to
blackmail him: Pay us and we won't publish. Tweets from them collaborate this:
"It is a report on Expedia BH (Blackhat) SEO, check your G+ account Martin,
anyone in charge can contact us back. Yes, my husband contacted you there,
please keep communication with him.". I usually do not mind an agenda, but in
this case I do not want any HN readers burned by this company. This post will
give them 1000s of visitors and perhaps a few clients.

So there definately is an agenda. Google banned a few of these people's sites.
They are not happy about that. But they still have something worthwhile to say
right? Wrong. This is only written to create uninformed controversy and a
difficult PR problem for Google.

They are not insiders leaking how big sites do shady SEO. They were creating
spammy small sites and sometimes were sourced to write linkstuffed articles
for bigger sites. They can see just as much as we can see.

We don't know if these tactics are even working. Maybe Google already
discounted any links, through algorithmic detection, spam reports or manual
spam fighters. Who knows? Certainly not the spammers that were caught time and
time again: Proving Google is way ahead of them. Google can't ever say: These
guys are right, we favor big sites. But that is the popular sentiment they are
exploiting. One does not have to feel sorry for Google, but I hope people
realize the position they're in here.

If you want to know more about how Google fights spam (they probably dinged a
few major sites during the time it took me to write this post):
[http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-s...](http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-
spam.html)

If you want actionable SEO advice for your startup:
[http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-
marke...](http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-marketing-
for-startups/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3IZFGERbM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3IZFGERbM)

~~~
MichaelTieso
I'm sorry but you are incredibly misinformed. As someone that has sold
sponsored posts for a very long time with some of the biggest websites on the
internet, I can confirm to you that it is happening at a much larger scale
than you can ever imagine. For those that know, this story is not really news
and has been going on for several years. Google has indeed been fighting spam
and has done a decent job at it but in many cases the smaller sites are the
ones affected the most and the big name sites get away with it.

"We don't know if these tactics are even working." They are working. Google is
catching up but it's still FAR from being ahead in fighting these blackhat SEO
practices. What you mean is that Google WON'T be saying "these guys are right,
we favor big sites" but the reality is they do.

I made a fairly large comment on here with the last report. Many of the
comments said "show me proof!" which then I came along and did just that. Matt
Cutts reached out to me shortly after and I forwarded over emails received
from Expedia. The funny thing is, a few weeks after that I STILL got emails
from Expedia BUT it wasn't from Expedia.com. "Only Expedia.com was affected so
we're still going to sell links for Expedia.co.uk". It amazes me sometimes how
blind everyone is about this.

------
jacquesm
1 thing you're allowed to do: Ignore google completely. Build your business in
such a way that it works, with or without google sending you traffic. That way
you don't need to lose sleep over your rankings and you don't need to panic
every 6 months when google updates their algorithms in a major way.

Just treat them like you would treat the weather, enjoy it when it's nice but
make sure your business runs even when it is raining. If you're dependent on
Google for your traffic _you are doing it wrong_.

~~~
ssharp
You can build your business in such a way that it works with or without
Google, but it's going to work a lot better with Google than without it.

People do lose sleep over rankings, because in some industries, the amount of
traffic and business generated by organic search is substantial. If you're
relying almost entirely on Google search traffic, you are doing it wrong, but
if you're ignoring organic optimization, you're also doing it wrong. Telling
people who may be making many millions of dollars in revenue from organic
search to just "treat it like the weather" is horrible advise. I think I know
what you're saying, build up other traffic channels, but the way you're
phrasing it makes that harder to see. At some point as marketing grows, most
websites start branching off into many, many different areas -- paid, social,
email, etc. -- but organic search is still a big part of the mix.

Panda and Penguin finally backed up what Google had been saying for years. The
problem is that there is always a gap between what Google says to do and when
Google chooses to specifically enforce what it had been saying. In the
meantime, lot's of people exploit that gap.

The best long-term move is to do what's right, but when you see cases like
this, you really lose trust in how Google is treating websites.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
The trouble is, anything you do to try to gain favour with a search indexer:

a) Is going to distract from the quality of your content, unless you should be
doing it anyway

b) Is going to be irrelevant (at best) or counter to your original intent (at
worst) when the indexer's algorithm changes, and Google are changing their
algorithm all the time, with far more resources behind it than you have to
keep up with it.

~~~
ssharp
You "A" point is why we've seen the rise of "content marketing" over the past
few years.

Of course, that practice gets exploited a lot, with people using word mixers,
automated article writing, low quality writing, etc. as a means to just fill
up their websites.

However, there are lots of businesses that do content marketing in such a way
that it benefits the company's search rankings, but also provides high value
content to interested person. Since we're talking SEO, look at Moz. They sell
premium tools to help companies improve their search rankings, but also offer
a wealth of free, quality information to people interested in online
marketing.

------
franze
the hypothesis here is that: big sites do shitty SEO but they are still big
sites, that is why google is evil.

this hypothesis if flawed: just because they are big site - and are still big
and show up in google - does not mean that they get away with it.

google's response - from algorithms, mini algorithms (which just target a
specific vertical of sites) and spam actions - are most of the time subtle and
seldomly targeted at a whole site (especially if the site overall delivers
some value)

i have consulted websites - market leaders in their markets and vertical -
which had major SEO issues from their technical setup (shooting themselves in
the foot) + manual penalties + (user generated) spam issues on their site.
still they were the market leaders from brand perception and overall site
traffic. they were performing well compared to the competition, they were not
performing well compared on how well they could (and later did) perform
without these issues.

my recommendation of loves looking at crappy SEO at other sites: And why
beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the
beam that is in thine own eye? - in general a better use of your time and
ressources

------
devx
I've also noticed sites like TheVerge do native advertising in a way that's
very hard to tell until you actually see the article. And I don't think I've
seen any "Sponsored" or similar tag anywhere close to the article, which I
believe is in Google's policy.

Google itself seems to be doing this, too (not properly labeling ads), while
telling everyone else not to do it and penalizing them.

~~~
sogen
Agreed, Google Ads now look exactly like search results, dark pattern!

~~~
Karunamon
Aside from the bright yellow "AD" lozenge right next to those, you mean. And
the separation between them and the rest of the results..

------
paxtonab
My first impression on reading this article is that the sites he names
(techcrunch, careerrookie, etc.) have hundreds of thousands of indexed pages
of actual content. They may be being practicing black hat seo (or just wasting
marketing dollars), but their content is actually relevant, and their referral
traffic from these links probably outweighs any SEO penalties they are
receiving for these practices.

It should be pretty obvious that you can't spend a weekend creating an SEO
link farm and expect to get to the front page of Google... Try bankrolling a
professional editorial staff for a year and generate actual content in
whatever niche you want and then run your anchor text experiment. Post a link
to HN with those results!

------
MichaelTieso
The solution to this: penalize sites for 3-6 months regardless of how big or
small they are. I see far too often big sites getting a small slap on the hand
then get fixed up real fast back to where they were before. They gain much
more out of it by doing blackhat SEO and risking becoming penalized for a few
days. Most sites I've seen get penalized go right back to selling and buying
links not long after they've been fixed up.

------
miamidesign
I wrote about this sort of thing back in May
[http://www.whitehatseo.org/ethics/cnet-news-
storm](http://www.whitehatseo.org/ethics/cnet-news-storm)

------
techaddict009
Seeing recent Top news related to SEO on HN it seems like backlinks is the key
to rank in Google.

Quality of content and Quantity doesn't matter all what matters is backlinks!

------
gesman
All of bad, big sites spent tons of cash of Adwords.

No one at google is going to penalize the "giving hand"

------
securingsincity
I know Matt Cutts is a HN user would love to see him way in as he did on the
Rap Genius controversy

------
ig1
I didn't read the whole article but from the first example it's not particular
strong. Google discourages widget back-links but that's far from considering
it black-hat.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence suggesting that Google treat widget
back-links differently depending on who the widget is from.

~~~
emhart
It gets much stronger

EDIT: Though the vitriol does go off the rails a bit toward the end...

