Spammers got my site penalized (lesson learned!)

Hello,



One of my web pages got penalized for using certain words. I did not put them there but some spammer added some comments that contained the forbidden words. Anybody can add a comment on that page and if some comments where offensive or pure SPAM I would just delete them. It looks like the GoogleBot indexed the page before I got the chance of deleting the offensive comments because I can see the offensive comments on the copy of the page from Google’s cache.

After this unfortunate event it is clear to me that every comment needs to be moderated before it is allowed on the page. My web site is small (with just over 1500 unique visitors a month) so it’s hard to understand why someone would bother to spam such a low traffic web site almost daily. I can only image how big the SPAM problem is for popular web sites.

My question is: how long will I get stuck in this situation ? If Google will reindex the page and see that the offensive words were removed will it just remove the penalty ? Or the penalty will remain for a longer period of time because of the “bad history” of the page ?

I would appreciate an answer from somebody who has been in a similar situation.



Regards,
Razvan

 

moderating posts makes users less eagier to leave messages. you could do what i did, create a list of forbidden words and check every comment before adding it to database.

 

There is no such thing

The reasons were maybe other areas.

Can you give us the URL ?

 

Hmmm... I haven't thought to that. The good aspect of your approach is that your filter will improve in time.

Would you care to share the list of bad words that you use currently ?



Regards,
Razvan

 

Ohhh.. you are wrong. Words like "se*' or various pharmacy products (via...ra) can quickly demote your site.
If you have a test page you can test it for yourself. Even words like "exoti**c" can get you a small penalization because it is heavily used on adult industry web sites.


Regards,
Razvan

 

http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/bb_badwords.txt

Oh .. You mean this site is penalised ? It ranks 10 in the world for viagra.

I did tests on these words. Nothing happend to me. I am positive you got penalised for something else. Not for a "viagra" comment.

 

I don’t follow your logic. If you search for “sex” do you expect to see no results (you expect that all the sex-related sites to be banned) ? The same for Viagra. Do you expect to see all the sites related to Viagra to be penalized ?

Make a page about another domain (lets say financial information) then put sex-related information on it and see how it will perform for financial related searches.

Or make a site about programming in Java then add Viagra information on it then see how it performs for Java-related searches.


Regards,
Razvan

 

I think you are confusing "Adult filter" with "penalisation / penalty".

jeet

 

I don't think that google would penalise you in this way. This would require some kind of 'word compatibility matching', i.e. referring to sex on a financial site is penalised, whereas referring to sex on a hospital site is ok. Imagine how complex that would get.

And I'm sure even if google concluded that referring to certain 'sensitive' words on a financial site was taboo, there would be some circumstance where it would make sense to write about that kind of stuff. What if on your financial site there is an article about finances associated with the sex industry? It wouldn't make sense to penalise for that.

 

Razvan, please understand (if you care to listen to others).

A simple Viagra comment in your 99% unique good content website, will NOT get you penalised in Google.

If you understand that, then it's ok.

It's another area of thing on your website, that got you penalised, that's IF you are penalised, because up until now, you haven't gave any URL.

 

I am sorry, but I cannot provide the link – there are some reasons for that.

Actually the spammer inserted lots of links (about 3-4 browser pages) to viagra, cialis etc… web sites. The links were only text e.g. "http://www.website.com" because the comments on my web site cannot contain <a> tags.

Do you still maintain your opinion that something like this is harmless ?



Regards,
Razvan

 

Thanks for the link !! Only now I observed it. I guess I was too concentrated on the "sensitive words"-"penalty" discussion.

And, yes, my web site got attacked mostly by spammers commercializing what you have on that list.


Regards,
Razvan

 

I'm just saying that IF your website got penalised, it's a very small chance that those spammy links or comments are the fault.

Other things are the cause. Since you provided no URL, i can't say what.

Welcome (for the list).

 

i must agree with expertu. those kind of words can't get you penalized. i'm sure the problem is another...

 

hmmm what are some of these forbidden words please pm some to me so I never use them all my sites are pg rated by I never new google had forbidden words

 

The words that are not forbidden here are "read the thread" - and this is what I suggest that you should do.



Regards,
Razvan

 

Well, you have a situation in which I'm going through on my blog. I'm getting a good amount of comment spam that follow the form you are describing.

I moderate every comment. So, if you are concerned about spam showing up then simply moderate everything. I also ban the IPs of the spammers, though that only seems to work for a short while.

Skinny

 

Actually I wouldn't agree. If you use Wordpress the default when the Mod is on is that once someone's first comment is approved, they are no longer sent to the queue for subsequent comments.

Most spammers use automated programs (especially the one described by the OP) so its their first and only comment. You then specify its spam within wordpress and further attempts are blocked.

I personally moderate every comment as its very important to me to not have spam but then again I do it for quality and reputation, not neccesarily rankings.

 

But if he only got a few files indexed, can't those keywords decategorize his website for a given category? like if i only got "php scripts" keywords on my site, i will rank well for Computers -> Programming >- web programming -> php

but if i will also add porno,sex keywords i wont' rank so hihg anymore for the "php related terms"

 

I completely agree. Quality & reputation is also very important for me. If people come to a website that has 3-4 pages of links to Viagra then they may hit the "back" button. Most web surfers are more than tired of this crap that appears in forums, e-mails, comments, guest books ....

Regards,
Razvan