Or is Google dumbing down blogdom
by feeding their drivel back to them?
And what happens when that drivel is fed to you?
April 30, 2003
1. Start with a juvenile Google bomb prank:
March 13, 2003. A small-time, pro-war blogger puts up a page that resembles a Google page. You find it by looking for "French military victories" in a Google search and hitting "I'm feeling lucky." The trick works because his page turns up number one for these keywords, and the "I'm feeling lucky" button always takes you directly to the top page of the search results. This blogger seeds links to this page by inserting comments with links behind them in other blogs. He gets his 15 minutes of fame in the media, but everyone expects that the joke will fade soon because it's dependent on Google's freshbot results, which are insanely generous to bloggers. After the monthly deep crawl, the prank page is expected to be lower in the search results. So it's ha-ha, very funny. Script kiddies everywhere are laughing, while Iraqi civilians are dying. Screen shot of the prank page.
2.
A big-time blogger links to it:
This blogger is running a scam to inflate his Google juice. Not only
does the prank page survive the next monthly update, but it ends up
with a respectable PageRank of 6, and 138 backlinks. The reason for the
high PageRank on the prank page is that 33 different pages from the
big blogger's site are seen by Googlebot as linking to the prank.
Each of these pages on big blogger's site has a PageRank of 5. The
prank survives the update as number one for "French military
victories." Screen
shot of Google's backlinks to the prank page. If you scrolled
down and counted all the links from www.shellen.com, you would see
that all 33 of his archive pages repeat the link to the prank.
How does Jason do it? When you fetch any of his archive pages, there's a table on the left margin that also shows current postings and links. You can see the start of this table on this screen shot, taken on April 30. If you were to scroll down, you would see that he has postings from April 18 to April 29 in this table. But the page itself, as indicated by the URL and the right two-thirds of the screen, is from July 31, 2002.
4.
What the Googlebot found:
When Google did the regular deepbot crawl in March, it found
the prank link on each of the 33 archive pages on Jason's site,
since those were current at that time. Here's
a screen shot
of the top half of Google's cache copy. Note that the table on the
left side has now switched to the right side. This is a minor
glitch and doesn't affect our analysis. Google injects an extra
table on top to brand their cache copy, and all these tables together
confuse our browser.
5.
Here's the prank link:
This screen shot
is the bottom half of the previous page. On the lower right, you can
see the words "French Military Victories?" What you cannot see is that
the link behind these words leads to the prank page. Remember, all 33
of Jason's archive pages, one for each month since July 2000, have
exactly the same link on them. Each of these 33 pages is a PageRank
of 5, because Jason is a big-time blogger. Google tries to detect
duplicate pages, and accepts only one (or none) of them when found.
But only about one-third of the page is duplicated in this case, so
Google thinks they're all worth indexing.
Will this juvenile prank stop working after the next update? Let's
hope so. Meanwhile, Jason's Google juice is the biggest scam of all.
But we're thankful that so far we haven't found a blogroll on his site.
|
UPDATE 2003-05-03: This page was criticized on
the grounds that the technique of a side panel with external links
to affiliated domains, repeated throughout the site, is a common practice.
If it was really skewing PageRank, Google would have been forced long ago
to fix the algorithm. We argued back and forth via email for two days.
Finally this critic said, "You seem to imply in your piece that it was deliberate manipulation by Jason Shellen. There's no evidence of that." Our reply was, "Of course he's gaming Google. Why else would he place his current links on 33 archive pages, the 33 pages — apart from the home page — that have most of the Google juice on his site?" Then in our email we linked to a year-old Jason Shellen page, to show that he has a history of gaming Google. Perhaps this evidence from a year ago should have been presented as part of this page. Here it is: the top half and the bottom half. Case closed. |
Case Study No. 2:
by Daniel Brandt, September 20, 2004
Aaron Matthew Wall, by his own description, is a "SEO junkie." Search engine optimization (SEO) is an industry that has grown up primarily around Google. For several years, Google provided about 75 percent of all external referrals to most websites, and at the same time Google is the search engine that's easiest to manipulate. Google is the drunken, incompetent sheriff in the wild, wild West, and SEOs are the hired guns.
Mr. Wall is a small-time cowboy who discovered the Internet
only two years ago. His technical knowledge of programming,
protocols, and server administration is close to zero, but that
matters little. He taught himself enough about SEO to write a
120-page ebook that you can download for $79, and hangs out with
enough like-minded people on over a dozen forums to present himself
as an SEO expert. He intends to get rich by doing this, and why not?
Google is conspicuously rich, even though most of the blame for the SEO industry rests on their shoulders. If a sheriff habitually left his office unlocked at the end of the work day, with loaded guns in the unlocked guncase, while knowing that children are constantly playing just outside his door, he would be asked to be more careful. Google is doing the same thing, but investors are throwing money at them faster than Google can spend it.
In addition to his active presence on more than a dozen forums, using many screen names (search for awall19 to find most of his posts), and his 38 book reviews at Amazon.com, Mr. Wall claims to have registered 100 domains. We found these:
www.seobook.com www.search-marketing.info www.aaronwall.com www.drugs.1emallway.com www.5htp.cc www.depressionblog.com www.reformblog.com www.blackhatseo.com www.newnavy.us www.fattyweightloss.com prisonerabuse.blogspot.com www.directoryarchives.com www.search-marketing.org www.msn-watch.org www.bloggoodies.com
The above list includes three sites that promote drugs, which seems peculiar until you start reading his self-absorbed blog at www.aaronwall.com. There you learn that Mr. Wall, now age 25, joined the Navy at 17, became a nuclear-reactor operator, and was discharged for drug use. He resides in State College, Pennsylvania.
His main blog, www.seobook.com, consists of ads for his book, lots
of links, and almost no content. There is evidence of massive
viral linking efforts behind this blog when you use Yahoo's external
backlink count (Google's backlink count is broken). To get an idea
of the scale here, consider that Harvard has 251,000 external backlinks,
Yale has 242,000, and www.seobook.com has 140,000. This is what's
known as "Google juice."
Why am I picking on Mr. Wall, when there are hundreds of blackhat SEO gunslingers who are more dangerous to your pocketbook than he is? It's not really a question of blackhat SEO vs. whitehat SEO. This sort of ethical determination could only be made if Google itself was responsible, and worked harder on improving their algorithms. Instead, it's a question of greater or lesser risk.
If you spam Google with hundreds of domains or thousands of links as an SEO, you and your clients may get delisted by Google. That's the big risk, although Google is very slow to act in these cases. But there is another risk also. If you use Google's known weaknesses against a company or individual, you might find that they are in a position to do something about it.
Mr. Wall is using my name to sell his book. When I told him that I objected to this practice, he started a thread on a forum where he ridiculed my objections, and linked to it on his blog with my name in the anchor text. I defended myself in this same thread, whereupon his buddies ganged up on me. I said that I would add a section to this page unless he took my name out of his blog title and took my ranking-tool form off of his blog page, at which point he linked once again with my name in the anchor text, pointing to the same forum thread. There is little point in complaining to Chris Ridings, the forum owner, because Mr. Wall is a moderator on this particular forum, which means he enjoys special privileges. Basically, Mr. Wall is held in high regard within the SEO community and everyone agrees with his methods. But what he's doing amounts to a Google bomb on my name. It will probably get worse once his buddies get into the act, now that this section has been added to this page.
The behavior that I objected to is that Mr. Wall linked to a
ranking tool that I put up on another of our nonprofit "watch"
sites last July, from his www.seobook.com blog. There were three
problems with this link. One was that he linked deeper by placing
the input form on his blog, which sidestepped my own form with its
extensive educational commentary. The tool was designed to educate
users about web ranking and traffic measurement. Secondly, Mr. Wall
implied that this was a good tool for SEOs to use, because the
search engines couldn't trace them when they use it. I do support
privacy with this tool, but not so that SEOs can improve their
techniques. Finally, Mr. Wall put my name in the title of this blog
page, calling it the "Daniel Brandt toolbar," along with the name
of his book.
The purpose in placing my name in the title was to sell more copies of his book. If you do a search for "Daniel Brandt" in Google, with or without the quotation marks, the first two hits are from the titles of his blog pages. With the quotation marks there are 13,300 hits total, and without the marks there are 616,000 total. It makes no difference to Google, because Mr. Wall is a blogger and Google thinks bloggers are wonderful — why else would Google rank them so near the top? In taking advantage of Google's incompetence, Mr. Wall knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it. Google's algorithms are a huge problem for many who are involved with the web, except for those who exploit these algorithms for private profit, over the objections of those who are victimized by these exploits.
As proof that Mr. Wall did this deliberately rather than
inadvertently, keep in mind that two additional links to my name,
pointing to the thread he started on a forum that ridiculed my
polite letter listing my objections, were added after he read my
objections. Moreover, Mr. Wall openly advocates a blackhat SEO
marketing technique that involves bidding on the names of authors
in his industry, so that your ads show up when those names are
searched (see the "Cheap AdWords" screen shots). This is the same
thing he did with my name, except that his book title shows up in
the main index in a search for my name, and in AdWords for a search
on the authors' names. Mr. Wall admits that by using this
technique, "Some of the responses you will get from other
businesses will be positive ... some will be negative. The good
thing is that you are getting responses."
PageTop PgDn2 Screen shots of Cheap AdWords: PageTop PgDn2 PgDn3 |
That's an excellent description of blackhat SEO, even though Mr.
Wall thinks he's wearing white, and even owns a domain where he
criticizes other blackhat techniques. Again, this is primarily
Google's problem. A number of companies, of which GEICO is the
largest, are suing Google for trademark violations. Google allows
trademarked names to trigger ads placed by competitors, assuming
that the competitors bid high enough. This makes money for Google
and the competitor, and takes business away from the trademark
owner. Google should stop this practice. Similarly, using the
names of other people to trigger ads, or to place your book title
near the top of the rankings in a search for that name, provides
exposure for you at the expense of that person. This is just plain
wrong, but Google doesn't care.
|
UPDATE 2005-08-31:
Web spammer Traffic Power sues web spammer Aaron Wall Priceless. |
Case Study No. 3:
by Daniel Brandt, October 12, 2005
Chris Beasley makes six figures a year from his computer in East Lansing, Michigan. He's not a blogger, but rather a "template spammer" who generates affiliate sites using multiple domains. He gets good PageRank with linking schemes, and runs Google AdSense on many of his affiliate sites. He's featured here because he put up his two-page www.google-watch-watch.org site in 2003, one year after this site started.
Almost every time Google Watch is mentioned on any forum or blog,
an anonymous elf comes along and adds a link to Mr. Beasley's
watch-watch site. This is perfectly understandable, because at six
figures a year it becomes a simple matter of protecting an
investment. By now the watch-watch site usually scores in the top
ten in a search for "Daniel Brandt" without the quotes, and that's
without my name in his title. This is impressive for a two-page
site with ad hominem drivel criticizing Google Watch, and
which ends with self-promotion.
Mr. Beasley used to start out the second page of this site with a less-nuanced explanation of why he made it: "Because I love Google. Google is a great company, a good company, a responsible company. They are in a position of tremendous power and they do not abuse it. They never sacrifice their vision for the sake of making a buck." I stupidly assumed that even Google cultists would gag on these words, and for two years I neglected to answer Mr. Beasley on this site. I was wrong, and I apologize — bloggers and slashdotters everywhere lapped up the watch-watch site.
In mid-2005 he deleted these sentences. Perhaps his income had declined, or perhaps he thought Google was less inspirational for other reasons. This is the only improvement I've ever noticed on his two pages. Here is a partial list of his various template and other sites:
www.websitepublisher.net www.coupon-code.com www.4webtemplates.net www.online-literature.com www.wilderness-survival.net www.artist-biography.info www.kissitmakeitbetter.com www.fitness-training.net www.4orienteering.com www.online-mythology.com www.universalweddingregistry.com www.diycostume.com www.iddb.org www.thefantasyforum.com www.cbswords.com www.discountpowertools.net www.thediscountkitchenstore.com www.4fineart.net www.4discountapparel.com www.discountgardensupply.net www.4finejewelry.com www.4discountsports.com www.discountdietfood.com www.ironmountainoutfitters.net www.4discountcomputers.net www.4discountjewelry.com www.4discountgardening.com www.4discountluggage.com www.4coolgadgets.com www.4discountinstruments.com www.4discountunderwear.com www.4lightfixtures.com www.4overstockedshelves.com www.4personalizedgifts.net www.discountathleticshoes.net www.discountbathandbeauty.com www.discountdrugstore.biz www.discounthomeandgarden.com www.4countryliving.com www.discountdepartmentstore.net www.4englishshirts.com www.4discountshopping.com
|
"I now own nearly 100 sites on various topics. It's sometimes hard to
explain to people what it is that I do, especially people not in this industry.... I publish content and collect advertising revenue for the most part." |
There are two charges that Mr. Beasley levels against me. One is that I'm a "self-proclaimed public interest activist." I've been an activist since 1967, starting with a prosecution for publicly resisting the draft, and continuing until now. Isn't there a manual for responsible publishing somewhere that recommends dropping the "self-proclaimed" slur after 30-odd years of sustained activity?
The second charge goes back to a journalistic ambush in Salon
by Farhad Manjoo, which ran on August 29, 2002. Mr. Manjoo put words
in my mouth. In the interview, I never used the words "United
Airlines" or "Rumsfeld," but he made up these embarrassing examples
because he wanted to make me look stupid. The entire article, titled
"Meet Mr. Anti-Google," took the same tone. Remember, it was completely
shocking to liberals, geeks, and marketers alike in 2002, that
anyone on the planet would have any criticisms of Google. I
complained in a letter to Andrew Leonard, Mr. Manjoo's editor at
Salon, about this yellow journalism. Salon ignored
my letter.
Now Mr. Beasley comes along and gleefully quotes the worst parts of
the article. I informed Mr. Beasley that I was misquoted as soon as
his watch-watch site went up, but he ignored me. And Google-lover
Jimmy Wales scolded me when I tried to delete the Salon and
watch-watch links from Wikipedia. Mr. Wales is already rich, and
knows that someday Google will make him even richer. Wikipedia is the
world's most-scraped site. Google loves Wikipedia — those scrapers
have to grab content from somewhere so that they can show Google's ads
on their pages. Everyone gets rich, except for anyone who gets slimed
by the process.
Someday Salon will go bankrupt, and Google will start squeezing
Mr. Beasley's web-spam income in order to keep its market capitalization
in the stratosphere. That will make it two down and two to go. The
remaining problems will be Google itself, where it all started, and
that Wales-worshipping cabal of anonymous administrators at Wikipedia.
Caution! More noise ahead!
