Unlucky! - What to do if your name is included in a spam dictionary

#1

Big Bill wrote:

Quote:

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:06:22 -0700 (PDT), LaGrone
benjaminlagrone (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Hi,
anyone wanna try and help me with this one?

Someone has had their name included into a SEO spam dictionary.

What I mean is; when you do a search for their name "ben *******" ,
most of the search results that come up are machine generated text to
build relevance.
heres the text that's in the pages "ben ***** savings and loan crook"

The text is in these types of pages: yahoo geocities guestbook, yahoo
small business guestbook, phpbb sites.
They link to these types of sites: pharmacy, loans, software, viruses,
you know, the usual suspects.

I've contacted several owners and asked them to remove the sites with
some success.
I've also asked Google to update the index on them.

I made good progress, but shortly after, new sites started popping up.

I think they are all originating from a Dutch SEO company.

This is a special problem I'm sure because I have not found much
documentation on the subject.

Please pm if you want to help & need more info. I'll be happy to
forward.

Ben L.

Well the high priest of this stuff, online reputation management, is
probably Andrew Goodman. Seek and ye shall find. However, a little
defensive SEO is what I imagine he'll recommend, and I'm numero uno in
Googs UK for that most days. You need to flood these situations with
enough optimised good stuff to push the bad stuff down off the front
page to the more obscure reaches.
You can get in touch if you like, I'll have a looksee. I'd want to
know what he's done to upset people, though, I'm not going in blind.

BB

Oh it is SERP's .. cant be a hard phrase build pages with enough onpage
tp push it all down. Can try and rank pages all ready around but best
make your own and push em all away. Harsh mate but bit of work I think.

Jay

#2

Hi,
anyone wanna try and help me with this one?

Someone has had their name included into a SEO spam dictionary.

What I mean is; when you do a search for their name "ben *******" ,
most of the search results that come up are machine generated text to
build relevance.
heres the text that's in the pages "ben ***** savings and loan crook"

The text is in these types of pages: yahoo geocities guestbook, yahoo
small business guestbook, phpbb sites.
They link to these types of sites: pharmacy, loans, software, viruses,
you know, the usual suspects.

I've contacted several owners and asked them to remove the sites with
some success.
I've also asked Google to update the index on them.

I made good progress, but shortly after, new sites started popping up.

I think they are all originating from a Dutch SEO company.

This is a special problem I'm sure because I have not found much
documentation on the subject.

Please pm if you want to help & need more info. I'll be happy to
forward.

Ben L.

#3

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:06:22 -0700 (PDT), LaGrone
<benjaminlagrone (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

Hi,
anyone wanna try and help me with this one?

Someone has had their name included into a SEO spam dictionary.

What I mean is; when you do a search for their name "ben *******" ,
most of the search results that come up are machine generated text to
build relevance.
heres the text that's in the pages "ben ***** savings and loan crook"

The text is in these types of pages: yahoo geocities guestbook, yahoo
small business guestbook, phpbb sites.
They link to these types of sites: pharmacy, loans, software, viruses,
you know, the usual suspects.

I've contacted several owners and asked them to remove the sites with
some success.
I've also asked Google to update the index on them.

I made good progress, but shortly after, new sites started popping up.

I think they are all originating from a Dutch SEO company.

This is a special problem I'm sure because I have not found much
documentation on the subject.

Please pm if you want to help & need more info. I'll be happy to
forward.

Ben L.

Well the high priest of this stuff, online reputation management, is
probably Andrew Goodman. Seek and ye shall find. However, a little
defensive SEO is what I imagine he'll recommend, and I'm numero uno in
Googs UK for that most days. You need to flood these situations with
enough optimised good stuff to push the bad stuff down off the front
page to the more obscure reaches.
You can get in touch if you like, I'll have a looksee. I'd want to
know what he's done to upset people, though, I'm not going in blind.

BB
--

http://www.kruse.co.uk/
http://www.fat-odin.com/
http://www.here-be-posters.co.uk/

#4

"LaGrone" <benjaminlagrone (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote ...

Quote:

What I mean is; when you do a search for their name "ben *******" ,
most of the search results that come up are machine generated text to
build relevance.
heres the text that's in the pages "ben ***** savings and loan crook"

Looks like a grudge.

1. Any known enemies?
2. Any rivals likely to be that scummy?
3. Does he have a point (harder to fix) or
4. Is he simply twisted (easier to fix)?

The action you take really depends on whether or not you know who's behind
it.
So detective work comes second.

First start gathering evidence (whois info, page downloads, etc., in case
you need it later).
--

Andrew
seo2seo.com
sick-site-syndrome.com

#5

Guys, here's an update:
and by the way thanks for your interest and posts.

Strategy:
1. contact site owners, request removal, slow, but I get a good
response, except Yahoo. And then go up the respective line of
authority to the ISP and even governing body and registrar.
2. as each site drops the posts, i request google to remove from the
index.
3. If I can't get it dropped by the site owner, I submit to google as
index spam, which I'm beginning to thing is a better idea than 1 & 2
together.
4. Eventually, there might be a lawsuit to follow some nasty letters
from expensive lawyers.
5. Placing positive info on the web through some large indexed social
networks
6. linking to positive articles in the newspaper
7. create sites that link to items 5. & 6. to build relevance
8. Detective work. We are going to contact the sites benefiting from
inbound links on the SEO spam request that they cooperate or we'll
pursue legal action. Honestly I'm not sure it will be a fruitfull
endeavor to try to sue a rogue Dutch SEO company, I'd prefer that I
can convince the SEO spammers to remove the offending text 'ben *****
savings and loan crook' from their dictionary. The subject matter
initially was for loans, but has moved on to viagra, then to malware,
and porn.
9. More detective work. Keep trying to find the SEO spammer, the
source and either get them to remove it, or try to get legal action.
Most of the domains are registered privately or by proxy. I don't
expect this to be easy anymore.

What I'd really like to ask is wheather anyone has ever heard of a
dictionary file used like this, is it something they wrote themselves,
or is it something they may have purchased?

It's making progress, slowly, would be faster but 6 new posts have
popped up since I began, I've successfully made 12 disappear.

to answers most of the questions:
1. highly likely
2. highly likely
3. there was a trial, but the client fought and won, partner went to
jail, appealed, won the appeal, and then sued the gov in a civil case
and won damages.
4. The important thing is to remember that the text is random text,
it's just 1 phrase in about 50 that are used to generate relevance. So
my opinion is that the first three questions are relevant to the
problem. I thought the same thing at first, but now that I see the
details I can say this is just about being really unlucky.

Anyone have any suggestions on this?

Cheers and thanks,
Ben LaGrone

#6

On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:05:01 -0700 (PDT), LaGrone
<benjaminlagrone (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

Guys, here's an update:

was there a beginning to this ?

Quote:

and by the way thanks for your interest and posts.

Strategy:
1. contact site owners, request removal, slow, but I get a good
response, except Yahoo. And then go up the respective line of
authority to the ISP and even governing body and registrar.
2. as each site drops the posts, i request google to remove from the
index.
3. If I can't get it dropped by the site owner, I submit to google as
index spam, which I'm beginning to thing is a better idea than 1 & 2
together.
4. Eventually, there might be a lawsuit to follow some nasty letters
from expensive lawyers.

eh ?
wtf has this got to do with being listed on spam directories ?
As long as you are not linking back, who cares ? none of the search
engines do.
I have - for some reason - a number of japanese porn sites that link
to me. Hasn't affected me at all in the way of SERPS.

Quote:

5. Placing positive info on the web through some large indexed social
networks