search engine abuse

Anyone know what the Google or Yahoo response time is on these issues ?
Or who to complain to on MSN ?

We complained over a week ago, and no response or action yet from either
Google or Yahoo.

See the offending page at http://www.waterlowcharitychristmascards.co.uk/

If you look at it in a normal browser, with javascript on, it's selling
Christmas cards, and makes no mention of other vendors.
If you turn javascript off, you (like the search engines) see a huge
noscript section, the last paragraph of which says:
"Waterlow Christmas cards is owned by Powell Print Limited, an
independent company with no links to the following - Charity Guild,
Collisons, Care Cards, CCA, CCA Direct, CCA Group, Kingsmead, Astra
Imprints, Fresstyle Impressions, Art in Design, J Arthur Dixon, Issi,
Camington, Printing Direct, NEBS, Yewbank, 4C, Standard Forms, Almanac,
Christmas Collection, Card Aid, Unicef, Charity Cards, Scottish
Christmas Cards, Christmas Connections, Clinton Cards, Water Aid,
Company Christmas Cards".

This is a long list of all their rivals' names and trademarks, included
purely for spamming purposes as far as I can see - and it works very
effectively.
Enter "yewbank personalised" in a search to any of Google, Yahoo, or
MSN, and the Waterlow site is number one.

Similarly for many of the others - I've checked issi, christmas
connections, and the various cca sites - some of which haven't launched
yet (waterlow has been up for a while, and started actually selling on
1-July).

So, we've complained to Google and Yahoo. We can't find how to complain
to MSN (we found something for registered trademarks, but nothing for
company names).
Ten days on, there's no change in search engine results, no
acknowledgement, nothing.

Is it spam ?

Should we (as a rival business being abused) be doing it as well, if
google (and the others) can't or won't take action, and are busy driving
our customers to our rival's website ? The moral high ground doesn't
appear to deliver the revenue, but we don't want to get banned, if/when
google and others get around to taking action.

We spend good money on google ad words, but competing with this will get
seriously expensive, if it's even possible.

Most of the other search engines seem to be either minor players, or
based on data from those three (google, yahoo, msn), so I haven't looked
too hard at them.

Thanks
Chris

Chris Sharman <chris.sharman (AT) sorry (DOT) nospam> wrote:

[SE spamming by a competitor]

We complained over a week ago, and no response or action yet from either
Google or Yahoo.

I've no first hand experience with this, but I'd be surprised if any SE
manually adjusted a site's position in search results. At best they may
from time to time evaluate their automatic weighing routines.

So, we've complained to Google and Yahoo. We can't find how to complain
to MSN (we found something for registered trademarks, but nothing for
company names).
Ten days on, there's no change in search engine results, no
acknowledgement, nothing.

I'd imagine that SE's get quite a few of such complaints, and that they
send them straight to the bit bin.

Is it spam ?

The example you gave is pretty innocent imo. I'm not sure why you are so
offended by it. So what if they list the names of competitors, it should
have very little weight when it's being indexed, unless the original
site has stuffed up royally the original site should be listed well
above this site in the listing when someone searches for their business
name.

Should we (as a rival business being abused) be doing it as well, if
google (and the others) can't or won't take action, and are busy driving
our customers to our rival's website ? The moral high ground doesn't
appear to deliver the revenue, but we don't want to get banned, if/when
google and others get around to taking action.

I fail to see why you think that mentioning a competitor on your site
would improve your turnover.

For some businesses SE referrals are likely to be the best way to
attract visitors. However most businesses would do better by spending
the bulk of their attention to real world promotion.

--
Spartanicus

Spartanicus wrote:

Chris Sharman <chris.sharman (AT) sorry (DOT) nospam> wrote:

[SE spamming by a competitor]

We complained over a week ago, and no response or action yet from either
Google or Yahoo.

I've no first hand experience with this, but I'd be surprised if any SE
manually adjusted a site's position in search results. At best they may
from time to time evaluate their automatic weighing routines.

I was under the impression that a temporary ban for abuse was not
uncommon, and that a new form of abuse would be coded into their checks
fairly promptly.

So, we've complained to Google and Yahoo. We can't find how to complain
to MSN (we found something for registered trademarks, but nothing for
company names).
Ten days on, there's no change in search engine results, no
acknowledgement, nothing.

I'd imagine that SE's get quite a few of such complaints, and that they
send them straight to the bit bin.

That would seem unreasonable, since they define abuse and solicit
reports at
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality

Is it spam ?

The example you gave is pretty innocent imo. I'm not sure why you are so
offended by it. So what if they list the names of competitors, it should
have very little weight when it's being indexed, unless the original
site has stuffed up royally the original site should be listed well
above this site in the listing when someone searches for their business
name.

Most of our referrals come from google searches for our name and/or product.
Google specificly say "Avoid hidden text". On an associated page
(blocked from the index) they say "writing text in such a way that it
can be seen by search engines but not by users" is an abuse.
Doing it with our business name and trading names seems very clearly
abuse - a burger bar putting up a sign saying "not MCDONALDS" would find
themselves in court pretty fast.

Should we (as a rival business being abused) be doing it as well, if
google (and the others) can't or won't take action, and are busy driving
our customers to our rival's website ? The moral high ground doesn't
appear to deliver the revenue, but we don't want to get banned, if/when
google and others get around to taking action.

I fail to see why you think that mentioning a competitor on your site
would improve your turnover.

If someone bought their Christmas cards from CCADirect last year, and
does a search for 'cca direct personalised', it would obviously be
attractive to come up as an option.

For some businesses SE referrals are likely to be the best way to
attract visitors. However most businesses would do better by spending
the bulk of their attention to real world promotion.

Well, yes, we do a lot of that - and we publish our url on our brochures
- but I think a lot of people type in what they remember and let google
find the site.

Interesting that you've a completely different take on this. Thanks for
your thoughts.

Chris

Chris Sharman <chris.sharman (AT) sorry (DOT) nospam> wrote:

[SE spamming by a competitor]

We complained over a week ago, and no response or action yet from either
Google or Yahoo.

I've no first hand experience with this, but I'd be surprised if any SE
manually adjusted a site's position in search results. At best they may
from time to time evaluate their automatic weighing routines.

I was under the impression that a temporary ban for abuse was not
uncommon, and that a new form of abuse would be coded into their checks
fairly promptly.

This quote from
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality
seems to confirm what I wrote:

"Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems,
so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports
we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and
block future spam attempts."

I've no idea where your impression that manual banning is common comes
from, or why you believe that new forms of abuse are coded into their
checks fairly promptly. Changes to a SE's indexing weighing mechanism
are extremely precarious. Any serious SE should be very careful before
making any changes to such a mechanism and test it thoroughly before
deploying it.

There is also the fact that the particular issue you are experiencing is
extremely difficult if not impossible to detect with an automated
mechanism without resulting in plenty of false matches.

Most of our referrals come from google searches for our name and/or product.
Google specificly say "Avoid hidden text". On an associated page
(blocked from the index) they say "writing text in such a way that it
can be seen by search engines but not by users" is an abuse.

The Google warning about not hiding content is merely there to deter
those that are easily scared from using such techniques because Google
knows that they cannot realistically do anything about it themselves.
Hiding content can and is being used in appropriate ways. A SE bot
cannot distinguish between what is appropriate and what is not, hence
they are unlikely to try.

Doing it with our business name and trading names seems very clearly
abuse - a burger bar putting up a sign saying "not MCDONALDS" would find
themselves in court pretty fast.

So would Sun Microsystems if they used the domain notmicrosoft.com and
put "not Microsoft" in the masthead of their site.

I fail to see why you think that mentioning a competitor on your site
would improve your turnover.

If someone bought their Christmas cards from CCADirect last year, and
does a search for 'cca direct personalised', it would obviously be
attractive to come up as an option.

I don't see why since it will be listed far below the CCADirect site in
the results.

--
Spartanicus

Spartanicus wrote:

Chris Sharman <chris.sharman (AT) sorry (DOT) nospam> wrote:

[SE spamming by a competitor]

I was under the impression that a temporary ban for abuse was not
uncommon, and that a new form of abuse would be coded into their checks
fairly promptly.

This quote from
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality
seems to confirm what I wrote:

"Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems,
so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports
we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and
block future spam attempts."

I've no idea where your impression that manual banning is common comes
from, or why you believe that new forms of abuse are coded into their

We recently had a cowboy working here (thankfully briefly) who admitted
to having had other sites repeatedly banned for similar spamming for 30
days or until fixed.

checks fairly promptly. Changes to a SE's indexing weighing mechanism
are extremely precarious. Any serious SE should be very careful before
making any changes to such a mechanism and test it thoroughly before
deploying it.

Well, indeed - but they've also got to be responsive enough to stop the
spammers from destroying their usefulness.

There is also the fact that the particular issue you are experiencing is
extremely difficult if not impossible to detect with an automated
mechanism without resulting in plenty of false matches.

I would agree with that - all the more reason for them to read and act
on the reports they solicit on their page.
I appreciate that there's a cost involved - I'd think most businesses
would be happy to pay a few dollars costs to have their rivals warned
and/or barred for abuse that's costing them ranking.

Since Google (and Yahoo) do solicit reports, I think I'm entitled to
have it read, and perhaps a brief reply - either "no, it's acceptable
because..." or "yes, we agree it's abuse - we've requested its removal
within 24 hours - if it's not removed please escalate". $5 should cover
that, and ease my frustrations.

MSN don't solicit reports, but that's their attitude.

Chris

Other people search some sex website sing google,yahoo and msn but in
my case these search engine are used to research on entertainment,music
and programming. games are also allowed.