Can you guys share any indications you've seen that Google is going to get rid of the EDU and GOV spam that started drowning my content site since Jan 1st?
I know nothing about spam of .gov domains, but I know many ways people use .edu domains to host doorways and lift them to top positions of SERPs. If its a completely spammy page with generated text having no sense and redirect to some PPC or affiliate program then yes, Google has a reason to getting rid of it, but if its a good page that has been hosted on .edu domain to win competition over other sites, then what issues can be applied? You can only report these pages to domain owners, unless content of this page and the way these pages/subdomains were obtained are not forbidden by owner's rules.
Sqeeze, are you saying that a spammy page that ISN'T a redirect on a EDU domain is good? I hope not. Anyway, if I misunderstood you... I reported 2 pages of them to Google today since they've been there for weeks and most of them are 404s now. It's ridiculous that a 404 could be better than a portal site with a forum and nearly xx,xxx members, mid xx,xxx posts and many pages of educational content, not made for adsense at all. It's just a big slap in the face like Google is saying to me... "Webmaster, you are stupid for trying to create a quality site. What we really want is spam"
Wavefront, for example, some universities offer free hosting to students. A webmaster contact a student and offers him (her) to sell hosting account on edu domain of his (her) university. Then the webmaster creates a page (nice article, not dust) advertising some book, or eductation-related products and buys some links. Soon he appears in SERPs and easily wins competition over other sites. Now tell me how you can prove to Google, or staff of the univ that hosting account was sold and what rules will this page break if, for example, advertising of books and educational products is not forbidden by rules of the univ's hosting?
Ah I see Sqeeze. Well I'm not sure where you got the idea that the spam pages were quality content, but they sure aren't so I hope it won't be a problem. It's basically usually a redirect to PPC pages, OR if it's a page, it's just random keywords stuffed in there, with a few links to buy a product. I hope you don't consider that quality content.
Wavefront, I've said pages that ARE NOT containing generated text and ARE NOT redirecting surfers anywhere. I mentioned good pages (good text, no redirect, ordinary advertisement) that use, let's say "tricky" methods to win competition over other sites. They cannot be classified as spam and it will be very hard to prove that they are made using forbidden techniques (such as hosting these pages on .edu domains and stuff).
That sucks. Unfortunately, Google seems to be a bit slow these days in acting on spam. For instance, the 'miserable failure' Google bomb finally came down just after this last update.
Oh, I'm not an evil enemy of George Bush, I don't care US politics at all - I just say that sometimes Google will get rid of unwanted public opinion by applying filters created to wipe out "googlebombing".
Here's a play by play of Matt and the GoogleBombing affair - shows the various stances on the whole issue over the weekend... from Matt and Danny Sullivan to Grey Wolf and Bill Slawski... fun tussle