The New Spam
Google is still extremely vulnerable, whether they like to admit it or not, to arbitrary influence from spam. It?s these spamming techniques that prompt the creation of these filters in the first place. But has there been a line crossed?
Most certainly. It is a huge problem when advocates of white-hat techniques follow the rules, and the ruthless spammers don?t follow any rules, but when those spammers still end up winning, it?s frustrating. In this case, however, it isn?t even about spammers and their intentions. If you have a better PageRank than John Doe, then John Doe?s content will look better for your site than it will for his. Is Google?s criterion for relevancy so hampered by its link relevancy that they can simply fail to determine what original content is and what is duplicate? This seems fairly simple to me.Terms like 302 Hijacks, Google-bombing, and Google-Washing are new terms; some of which you?ve never heard of, but the concepts are fairly similar. They are basically techniques that black hats, whether they are scrapers or old-fashioned spammers, use to influence a search engines results by attacking the competition, either on purpose or not. I will guarantee you that spammers do it intentionally. Instead of trying to do the right thing to win, they sabotage the results against the competition, even if for only a few weeks. Google denied early on that someone else could hurt your rankings, claiming it was completely impossible. Now, we know this has changed and Google?s Webmaster FAQ pages have been updated to say: ?There?s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.?
There have been many new coined terms for this type of behavior that takes advantage of the duplicate content filters, probably many of them popped up because ?duplicate content filter penalty? is a mouthful. Google-washing, Google-bombing, dupe-wash, source wash and others, all basically mean the same thing. They mean the original source material is washed out by all the duplicate content from across the web. You post your article, or it gets submitted to article distributors, then millions of blogs or scrapers repost your original content, then the source material gets wiped out in the SERPs.
302 Hijacking, is a completely different animal. This refers to another site getting their URL listed even though clicking takes to your domain. Why would they do this, would you ask? Traffic. They don?t care if it?s qualified or not.Recently, this has happened to one of even Google?s own: Matt Cutts. Matt is known as the ?GoogleGuy?. While what's happened to Matt?s blog is not really "hijacking", it does bear similarities. The source of a story, in this case, Matt's blog, has been ?washed? out of the results pages by duplicates on other sites; part of a noticeable problem in the way that search engines handle duplicate content, and the trouble they have determining the original. In particular, Google seem very prone to this - and as I have pointed out, no one is exempt...
?What you are seeing?is stealing contents in day light and Google isn?t able, as usual, to differentiate between the original contents and the duplicates. And as many fellow members, which sites either dropped totally from the index or just lost much of their rankings because of the same problem, have reported on this thread. It is a real disaster that both Google and the webmasters community are [phrasing].?
So where do I direct my criticism? Will it be enough for me to know that people are getting fed up with the more and more irrelevant results in the SERPs from the likes of Google, and hope they just use Yahoo or MSN instead?
How do I ensure that my original content is what is going to be listed in the SERPs after six weeks? That is a good question, and one that I probably can?t answer at this time. The only advice I have at this point is just keep submitting the content, and hope that Google catches on. That advice feels lame, however. After all, what comfort or solace does the words ?Better luck next time? actually bring, especially when you know the competition has cheated? Great, original content is always one of the key things you are encouraged to have in your website. But we have seen a huge shift in content importance, especially where Google is concerned, in favor of link popularity. This really has not been a big secret since Google showed up on the search engine scene in 1995 (at that time called ?BackRub?). But some of us feel it has now gotten out of hand. Those sites that have far more link superiority get credit for content that may or may not even be their own, while those sites that choose to opt for content over link popularity get punished for duplicate content. MSN seems to be the first search engine to effectively handle the duplicate content accurately, with Yahoo coming in close behind them. Google is still clear out in left field.
So how do we keep all three search engines happy, while getting your original content ranked high in the SERPs? In summary, concentrate on your link popularity, and keep that content coming. You could write Google letters, asking them to remedy the situation, but who knows whether it?ll help. With the way that search engines change, I?d imagine that enough uproar from the community will get Google?s attention.
Contributed by Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Op...oogles-Filter/
Now lets see if the copy of her article on GFY will outrank hers
