Spamming Google - to report or not to report this?

I said it's not the best anology, but it holds more water than which you give it credit. It's still very simple. SE spamers cause harm to those who follow the rules. If you spam, you deserve to be penalized.

 

OK, if this guy was cloaking, I'd almost agree with you.

But we're talking about some crappy CSS tricks here...

Do you honestly think they are making a huge difference to his results?

At the end of the day, if you want to do well in a competitive field, it's a hell of a lot easier to do it wearing a black hat.
I guess I'm a cop out...

 

No one said you were wrong SE, I just said that if one is working a conspiracy to get high SERP's there is nothing wrong with raising hell about it.

You are a smart guy seeking advantage, just don't tell anyone your secrets or they might snitch on you and your sites

 

I'm smarter than that mate...

 

Spam also drives innovation. I'm not saying it's a good thing but without people trying to bend and break the rules, Google wouldn't have anything to fight against and code a better algorithm.

 

That's the way I see it.

If Google was never spammed, then it wouldn't improve any.

 

Well, if you are trying to convince me that spam is a good thing, sorry but it ain't gonna work. You can as easily argue that the makers of viruses and worms and trojans are doing us all a favor by showing us the security vulnerabilities in our software -- actually, I suspect that's how some of them rationalize their antisocial behavior but I don't accept that either.

 

OK, I see your point, but everyone here is trying to make a buck out of the internet.

The Coop network isn't exactly promoting high quality natural results is it?
It's working for us and we are exploiting it.

One day, SE's will stop it from working - then we will have to find another way to Spam Google (Because that's what we are ALL doing).

 

All SEO is spam

except writing wonderful magical 'content'

if you want to be a puritan

don't buy links (this would include directories, becasue you know in your heart you arn't buying them for traffic)
don't trade links
don't use the coop
don't build mulitple sites
don't put keywords in your anchor text, let it just come naturally

once you are doing all these things you can file all the spam reports you want without being a hypocrite

 

I think that's a bit extreme. You're talking about what SEbasic earlier called "grey hat" SEO, I'd say. But I thought the OP (or one of them... it was a long time ago now) was asking about whether or not to report blatant spam.

I'm not sure that I'd agree that all SEO is spam but whatever... There is an issue of degreee here, I think. If "grey hat" SEO or even "white hat" SEO gets a relevant page to rank better in a search engine for search terms relevant to the site, that's a bit different I think than using spam techniques to push a porn site into the top 10 for "real estate in France", don't you think?

 

It's all relative though isn't it.

Let's just say for arguments sake - I have a viagra site (Like I say, just for argument sake).

Now, on this site I use cloaking, the Coop, buy links, and also scrape content for the site.

Now on this site, I also have a lot of useful information, and an affiliate link through to viagra.com (Or whatever).

If I get #1 for the term Viagra Sales, is this still spam?

It's useful to the visitor, no matter what way you look at it.

I guess what I am saying, is yes - if you are a porn site and start comin up for keyphrases like "teletubbies", then you should be banned (Not only banned, but arrested IMO).

But If you are coming up for terms and people are happy with the site - how is it spam?

Like I say - It's all relative isn't it.
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This is just my opinion guys - I'm sure there are many that will disagree with me, but think about this - If you could get that #1 position you've been trying for so hard, just by installing a simple script on your server, would you not do it?

I sure as hell would.

 

Honestly, no, I wouldn't. Because I've put a lot of time over several years in getting my site to the top 5 without using any questionable techniques and there is no way I'd jeopardize that, especially since I've seen competitors come along and spam their way past me temporarily, only to fall drastically after a while as Google caught on to one or more techniques.

Still, I do agree it isn't all back or white. I'd have less problem with the Viagra site that was #1 for Viagra than the one that was #25 for teletubbies but I'd probably also look closely at the #1 site if I was a competitor and if they were doing something clearly black hat like cloaking I would not hesitate for a second to report it.

 

Well, each to their own

 

If you go over highrankings or ihelpyou I'm sure there is someone who call the 'grey' stuff black hat spam

i agree optimzing porno site for teletubbies while its sort of amusing I would consider that real spam

 

I must say this has been an interesting thread to read. I think it's very telling that some people believe it's ok to basically cheat. I work my butt off trying to optimize my site and learn as much as possible about what I can and can not reasonably do. If someone thinks it's ok for someone else to just take a shortcut and knock me down to a lower place than I've earned that's a load of crap. You should go get a job at Enron or something. Oh, wait, you can't do that any more, they put those guys in jail.

I guess what some people are saying is if I work hard and try to do things the right way I haven't earned the position I end up with. I guess if someone else shows up and cheats his way past me then he's earned it. That's crap. All he's earned is a swift kick in the ass. I don't have a ton of money to spend on advertising or spreading around for links and stuff like that. Everything takes a lot of hard work. Getting a decent position in the serps is the best way for me to find some success and I've busted my ass trying to make it happen. If someone cheats past me and I find out about it I'm going to burn him good, and I'm going to make sure everyone knows about it.

 

Good post man, now if we can only get SEbasic on solid ground we will be fine

 

here, here....

 

if playing H1 with css is spamming then doing link exchange is also spamming and every SEO is spammer.

As long as i know, google dont ban any site manually.

 

um life is not fair, anything that involves money is ruthless

its business, successful businesses put their compettion out of business

if you don't have money to spend on promoting your site ... tough

thats like saying "I don't have enough moeny to advertise on TV so no one else should"

If you method doesn't work,don't hate the world get a better method

 

Nobody is hating the world, we just hate the spammers.

Google states quite clearly that hidden text and hidden links are considered "illegal" methods of SEO (or spam). So hiding text and links using CSS and then banning the robots from viewing the .css file is spam. Its an easy thing to do... not rocket science. But as long as Google does nothing about it he is being rewarded with good rankings for using a method they consider spam.

And my guess is that a number of people have copied that method by now ....