Are we ever going to see program operators expand their definitions of spam to SE's?
 

When I send a nice little note to the program operators about their affiliate spamming their referral code all over google I usually get the "duh.. what?" response.

Now you can't be expected to know everything in this business.

Be that as it may, I am quite sure a lot know exactly what I mean and are playing stupid.

How many programs are terminiating affiliates for search engine spamming?

Not sure i understand. Whats tha problem? Submitting their link codes to google?

Google throw those submissions away... it's the rather obvious cloaking attempts in google's cache.


Here's a chance for the SE heavyweights to chime in

:popcorn:

Ok, better question. What makes it wrong?

If you are looking at it that way, nothing really, what makes e-mail spam wrong?

If a program forbids email spamming and other techniques why is SE spamming a non-issue?

Who draws the line between SE spam and a good placement? The sponsor program? A complaint? There's no good arbitrator for this situation.

WG

I've had search engines pick up my ref codes simply by spidering my site. Had this happen in google and msn.

Now what if some ass comes along and starts reporting me for SE spamming?

It sure as hell is not my fault they spidered my affiliate link.

Exactly. I don't spam SE's because I'm too lazy to wait 30 or more days every update. And what program is going to can someone sending mad SE hits.

Exactly.

You're on crack. You can't see the difference between email spam and "search engine spam"?

Heh.

I think he's just upset because he can't get good search engine listings. Aww.

who the fuck cares? search engine spam rarely makes it past three months. It is the people who do it correctly who will be there long term anyways.

such is life

Ok, let's say the line is cloaking and it's usage (especially, certain keyword clusters that have nothing to do with eachother).

There is no site for the "listing" - only a redirect to the ref code. A nice cachebreaker if the person is smart too.

This is spamming by what the search engines say. Your opinion?

Oh come on.

good placement is when your site rules the engine.

Spam is when you have mulitple sites ruling the engine, and they all redirect to the main site.

I don't do that shit myself, but whether it's wrong or not probably depends a lot on whether you're the spammer or the guy trying to break into the ranking.

My first thought when I read that post was "this guy's an idiot if he thinks there's even a remote possibility that any sponsor is going to punish an ace se spammer."

Hehehe, not quite unless the competitors are phantom customers, even then they only last 2 weeks before they get banned.

If surfers can't find porn on google (give it a try and see where you wind up) they will be searching kazaa.

if that's the case, then how is a sponsor going to verify it. Is a sponsor going to simulate googlebot or spoof an ip address to verify that cloaking is in fact going on (assuming the SE spammer has disabled google cache). In my opinion spamming SE's is not really wrong but rather a short term strategy. I don't do it because I'm in this for the long term but it can be useful to help get additional traffic and still not considered spam.

For example, what about a tour that was designed entirely in flash, it has very little chance of any SE success unless its coupled with keywords and/or text on the page and this might distract the surfer from the actual tour, so in this case I would justify cloaking. But of course there are those who cross the line and use cloaking to gain an unfair advantage.

Once again I still think there is no fair arbitration to determining what is SE spam and what isn't and who determines it.

WG

Gruffy, you've lost it. I mean really....

You don't see the difference between email spam and SE spam? Ok, here's the difference. The only reason the sponsors don't want just anybody spamming their program is because it can cause them a lot of headaches and possibly get them shut down. Spamming Google is not going to get anybody's IPs blocked or their sites shut down. That's the diference between email and SE spam.

In my opinion, the search engine is responsible for removing the SE spam, not affiliate programs. So long as there is a single affiliate program that will look the other way, SE spam will continue to exist and on a much larger level than just adult. If search engines want to retain their quality, they will enforce it themselves since surfers will use an alternate engine if the results deteriorate. Can you imagine every affiliate program out there trying to clean out SE spam, this is clearly not a simple task. This is a job for the SE's and not the affiliate program.

WG

Yes, but the flash tour would have a site attached to it. Not just spider food and irrelevant domain links.

Anyway, end result is google penalizes sites with mouseovers and affiliate links. Whats next?

Yeah, of course.
My point was only that spam can be clearly identified. My edit makes that more clear, I think.

Agreed, and in protest I'd like to take this opportunity to show myself this picture.

http://www.raceworx.com/funnypics/pa...re%20sense.jpg

Not if the entire site is contained within the flash tour. I've seen this quite a few times before for some client's I've had and it was either doorway pages with redirects or cloaking as the solution since the client didn't want to add spider food / text around the flash tour. That didn't leave many options.

And I doubt Google will penalize onmouseovers considering Google does this themselves with Adwords. As for banning affiliate links, I doubt this will be done either since an affiliate can just as easily get a new affiliate account in seconds.

WG

Affiliate links I knew about.

mouseovers? Wasn't that just a rumor started by some idiot right here on gfy?

ummm - if a site takes submissions it isn't spam.......

Blacks on Blondes forbids it in their TOS. You cannot submit your affiliate URL to the search engine.

You don't need to submit it to get good listings on the search engines.

I agree just being the tight ass I am, I read TOS once in a while and I noticed it. First time I had seen that even mentioned.

I've always wondered this too...
spam mail traffic and spam SE traffic are generaly about the same quality (depending upon the targeting of course ;))

mail has lost it's value more because everyone with a $99 list and $400 software is mass mailing.......way too many amateurs...SE spam is much more costly........

I admit I hate SE spammers, because I don't know how to do it myself ;)))

where are all the "se spammers suck" threads on GFY? There are a ton of "fucking spammers" type threads, but always the mail stuff...

I guess it's only because spam mail annoys more people...although, I will say this: I find much more honesty in the spam mail I get than in 99% of the porn searches on I do on search engines ;)))

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p.s. hahahah ahahhahahhahahah hahahahhahaha ahhah.

i know i know.. the panda messes me up everytime.

You call yourself "The panda?"

Sure do!

http://smartcherries.com/hosted/bunn...s/DSCN4290.JPG