

Matt Cutts from Google wants webmasters to report link spam - keltex
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/calling-for-link-spam-reports

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andrewljohnson
I don't see what the point is. Mahalo is still indexed, and we pretty much all
flagged that site en masse.

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jasonmcalacanis
We've deleted or noindex almost every short content page (stub).

People can't create stubs any more.

The issue is resolved and after our analysis the short pages were 6% of our
traffic. we deleted them or expand their content and it looks like we will be
even on a traffic basis after doing this.

lesson learned? short pages only hurt you and are a waste of time since google
is smart enough to not rank them (at least not well).

Look at our homepage and you'll see our new standard is 300 original words or
delete/noindex the page.

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volomike
Last I checked, Google owned Doubleclick, and they are in the ad business and
want to get more page views and clicks on ads. So, it's kind of hypocritical
of a Google engineer to say something like this.

And what's wrong with link exchanges, anyway? Let's say I do Model
Railroading, and I want some traffic. So, I join a "web ring" of other model
railroader websites. Now my page rank goes down? Screw you, Google!

This also seems like a Blackhatter's dream. Got competition with your ad
campaigns? Fine, just report your competition to the linkspam link and boost
your rankings.

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prawn
If you're linking to sites as an 'editorial decision' (i.e., you vouch for or
approve of the content on that site), then you're fine. Otherwise, and if it's
a paid link, you are supposed to nofollow it.

One of my issues with this is that on one of my sites, I have paid links that
I vouch for. They're people I know providing services I've actually used and
if my Google Account got pulled up by a rogue complainant or competitor, I'd
be really pissed off.

The help docs on these sorts of things are pretty ambiguous though. One
frustration I have is that they routinely discuss getting 'editorial'
backlinks from bloggers, but for small businesses this can be exceptionally
hard. If you're a tiler, for example, you might (if you're really proactive)
have a four page site with some examples of work, testimonials, contact info
and a list of services. None of your customers/testimonials are going to be
blogging types. Most of your suppliers aren't going to link to you because
they've barely got on top of their own web issues. But you'll get beaten in
the rankings by a blogger or general content-producer who knows about SEO. Why
isn't paying to advertise on those sites _and_ getting some link juice
(without the link being nofollowed) an option?

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ericd
>Why isn't paying to advertise on those sites and getting some link juice
(without the link being nofollowed) an option?

Because that breaks the assumptions of their algorithms - that people link to
what is interesting without any conflict of interest. If webmasters were
allowed to pay to increase their pagerank, then rankings become about who can
pay for the most/best backlinks, rather than what is most interesting to users
on a given subject.

The short answer: Google doesn't want their SERPs to be overrun by spam.

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prawn
But the end result of that tiling example (and I have a lot of smaller clients
that are in that sort of position) is that the blog spam and MFA sites
dominate, while the small players with a legitimate, physical business
struggle to get attention. Who links to tilers because they're interesting?

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og1
This could be abused like dmca takedown notices against competitors.

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andybak
Only if Google acts on it without checking first which is pretty unlikely if
you think about it for more than a nanosecond.

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smokinn
True, but it costs nothing to submit your competitor and given the devastating
effect getting de-listed from Google can have on some sites the small chance
is worth it.

Ironically enough, I expect Google will get spammed with spam reports.

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prawn
Anyone use text-link-ads.com?

Given they don't nofollow links, will this damage them significantly?

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gscott
I have used them before for customer sites, it works ok but is really a
temporary thing until you get that customer to rank better on keywords that
they want and increase the pagerank through normal methods. As a temporary
shortcut text-link-ads has worked out ok for me. They were at one point
penalized but they changed their system around so that won't easily happen
again.

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prawn
Were you using them as a publisher (hosting ads) or as an advertiser (trying
to get traffic from them)?

FWIW, I am using them as a publisher.

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dchest
Note that your reports are bound to your Webmaster Tools account:
<http://imgur.com/NQxLT.png>

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swombat
Bookmarklet anyone?

