This Crap Pisses me Off

Discussion in 'SEO' started by iShopHQ, Nov 7, 2005.

  1. #1
    For all Googles vaunted 'advanced' algorithm voodoo, sites like this still rank.

    Look at the source of this page:

    http://www.laurenslinens.com/drbiab.html

    And see if you can figure out why it is number 3 for 'dan river bed in a bag' even though it only has 3 backlinks (all internal).

    I guess I should go out and stuff in a bunch of spacer gif and keyword stuff their names too--

    Cheating m-----f-----s!
     
    iShopHQ, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  2. PaulJ

    PaulJ Peon

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    #2
    I agree. Stuffed comment tags and 1x1 images went out with the ark. I dont know the market, but my guess is that there is such little competition that Google would rather throw back this site than nothing at all.
     
    PaulJ, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  3. mopacfan

    mopacfan Peon

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    #3
    I'm not sure I'm seeing the same thing you are. I viewed the source and searched for "alt". I found almost every occurance had the text of "pad". I don't see where the cheating is coming into play.
     
    mopacfan, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  4. webmistress

    webmistress Guest

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    #4
    webmistress, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  5. iShopHQ

    iShopHQ Peon

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    #5
    mopacfan-

    look at the actual name of the gifs... it's not the alt tags that are stuffed. They are running some sort of rewriter (poke around their site) that changes the name of all the gifs on the whatever page to replicate their keywords....

    webmistress-

    I've got a PR5 site totally dedicated to comparison shopping for bed in a bag sets, dan river included, and I'm not even in the top 1000..... site is 13 months old....

    I was extremely meticulous with page titles, anchor text, rewriting, page content, headers, etc.....

    Me: nowhere
    Cheater site: #3
     
    iShopHQ, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  6. webmistress

    webmistress Guest

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    #6
    Bizrate is #1 for many G datacenters i've checked with a PR1. If it was that easy to tell who ranks #1 just by having a peep at the source of the page, i guess we'd all have #1 ranks for all our keyterms. of course, i'm perfectly aware that this site might be causing you some harm in your business but i'm sure you'll figure out a way to this. If you really think you have a better page for this term, i honestly think contacting google is the best course of action :)
     
    webmistress, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  7. mopacfan

    mopacfan Peon

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    #7
    Is that cheating? I don't believe it is. If the alt tags were stuffed, I would agree. But making image names reflect the keywords is very cunning.
     
    mopacfan, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  8. HN Will

    HN Will Guest

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    #8
    Forgive me if this is obvious - but this page would actually be helpful if I was looking for such products. This is G's goal - even if seo hat color is a bit off-white...
     
    HN Will, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  9. iShopHQ

    iShopHQ Peon

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    #9
    hey webmistress

    I've contacted google before regarding sites that were breaking the rules; blantant (and provable) cloaking. keyword stuffing, invisible text - I've never seen any action on any of my communications.

    mopacfan - cunning, sure I guess. Everyone has an opinion, but I think it's cheating. It's just another version of keyword stuffing using an element that isn't typically identified with keyword stuffing.
     
    iShopHQ, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  10. aeiouy

    aeiouy Peon

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    #10
    Well they have been addressing spam reports with an added zeal during the jagger update. You might want to try and resubmit a spam report and use the word jagger in the description.
     
    aeiouy, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  11. BILZ

    BILZ Peon

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    #11
    Most of the image filenames appear to be like this: laurenslinens_1866_108046356, the alt tags seem pretty prudent not deceptive. And the main URL laurenslinens.com has over 80 incoming links. (most are from itself) The page wont let me view source or save the page...

    Your site's (bed-in-a-baghq.com) use of the term Bed-in-a-Bag seems a bit excessive - perhaps spammish. Also, your site has over 1200 incoming links which google might be penalizing you for. Ive read that if a site accumalates inbound links too quickly - google thinks they are not "naturally occuring" links - which can hurt you. Plus your homepage has a million links on it. Google doesnt like to see pages with 100+ links.
     
    BILZ, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  12. webmistress

    webmistress Guest

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    #12
    If you've contacted G about a similar site then it's normal that they didn't take any action because is nothing less of what what google expects to see in its listings. Don't look at this site with a competitors eye iShopHQ, but rather with someone interested in beds and stuffs. Isn't the site useful?

    And where did you see that this site is breaking the rules? :confused:
     
    webmistress, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  13. lorien1973

    lorien1973 Notable Member

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    #13
    Ah yes. Keyword ranking did that site. I'm not surprised.
     
    lorien1973, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  14. lorien1973

    lorien1973 Notable Member

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    #14
    Its a yahoo store. All the code is pretty standard stuff, really.

    All images on every yahoo store (except a few special ones) will look like:
    laurenslinens_1866_108046356 its stupid, we know. But its yahoo, so its expected. Each image is dynamically generated whenever we publish a site, so that url will change all the time too.

    On the other side of it all, this site actually sells the product. Your site is an affiliate. Which really deserves to be higher?
     
    lorien1973, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  15. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #15
    I have a really hard time finding anything wrong with this. So they are using what they know will help them get ranked high in a SE by exploiting known methods in a given SE to make money. Hmmmmm.... Isn't that what most the world is doing? Perhap not in the same manor, but I can hardly call it cheating.

    If this is something that is not allowed, perhaps the SE in question should not be granting as much weight to these factors as they do.

    If you are not ranking in the top 1000 and you put all that effort forth, perhaps you are doing something wrong? Personally I would concentrate on getting your site ranked, rather than asking why Google perfers one over another.

    If this particular site was heavily laden with nothing bad adsense and looked like utter crap, I think I would be a bit more concerned. All this looks like to me is a company that is selling a product and hired someone that knew how to get the site ranked so that they would be able to actually sell their product.

    Where is the cheating?
     
    Mia, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  16. iShopHQ

    iShopHQ Peon

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    #16
    You can't view the source by right clicking; save teh page to your local machine and open in a text editor. You won't see the laurenslinens_1866_108046356 format then - you see keyword stuff scr= on the images.

    lorien - store vs affiliate - depends on your POV I suppose. Froma consumer POV, personally, I think my site is more useful: I can see over 200+ items from multiple vendors, read descriptions and compare prices. I can click through to the one I want (if I find it) and buy it with no additional cost to myself.

    The laurens site has 14 dan river bed in a bag sets, no description, and no prices. My site has 44 Dan River Bed Sets, with description and pricing. There are only two vendors that sell Dan River, but overall I've got 206 sets from 9 stores.

    Does it matter that it's an affiliate? Not to the consumer. Why should it to the search engines?
     
    iShopHQ, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  17. lorien1973

    lorien1973 Notable Member

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    #17
    You have a problem with the alt tags on images? I don't get that - its good coding to put that on the page. Only thing that stands out to me on this page is the comment tag stuffing on the top of the page. Trademark of keyword ranking...that went out years ago.

    The other images (alt="pad" and some others) are default yahoo images that cannot be removed. They track a user's progress thru the site.

    Click on item names, then you see prices and desrciptions. I'll say that this store has a less than optimally coded lay out on its section pages, but again this is a very standard yahoo store layout. Not what I'd prefer, but it works and many yahoo stores run it everyday.
     
    lorien1973, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  18. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #18
    Ah, duh.. Yeah. Well naming a image a keyword is often times relavent. I mean if the image is of a certain name/brand of product and you call your images name/product.jpg that is pretty normal. Nothing wrong with that. It's actually a good idea on several levels. For one, it probably made it easier when building the site as far remembering what images goes where.

    No offense, but the point was made that the store you are complaing about is an actual company making/selling these items where your site is nothing more than an affiliate site.

    Again, no offense, but the site you are complaing about does not have any adsense or other affiliate type links on it, and yours does.

    Personally after looking at both sites (again, no offense), the site you are complaining about looks more relevant to the subject matter, and seems to flow a bit better. There is nothing on it but what they are selling. Nothing else taking the viewer away from the product, ie., irrelvant links, ads, etc..

    And your point is? Is this more an argument over whose site is better, or who ranked better? Who cares. Take a lesson from the site and redesign yours from the inside out to get it to rank higher. Complaining about a site that clearly is properly ranked just because you do not like the descriptive nature of the products or the quantity hardly qualifies as cheating.

    Again, work a bit more on your own site. You'll ge there eventually.

    Maybe not to the consumer, but possibly to the SE.
     
    Mia, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  19. iShopHQ

    iShopHQ Peon

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    #19
    It's not the alt tag
    It's not product/IMAGE.gif. It's not use 'a keyword' as the image name - see below
    It's the keyword stuffing the src="" of the image tag

    Look at the source in FireFox and you see the images as:
    src="http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/laurenslinens/laurnhd03.gif"

    Look at them in IE (you have to save the page and then open it) and you see for the same image:
    src="Bed In A Bag, Bed-in-a-bag, Bed In A Bag Sets, Dan River Bed In A Bag, Bed-in-a-bag Sets_files/laurnhd03.gif"

    So which one does the Google bot see?

    "Bed in a bag" occurs 45 times on my page
    "Bed in a bag" occurs 50 times on the other page and this DOESN'T include occrances in the image src= tag....

    And we can debate all day, but to me, this is shady....

    My complaint is not that mine doesn't rank (though it would ne nice), it's really that this one DOES, despite using such a spammy trick.
     
    iShopHQ, Nov 7, 2005 IP
  20. Mia

    Mia R.I.P. STEVE JOBS

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    #20
    No offense, but there is nothing shady going on. Nothing, nada
     
    Mia, Nov 7, 2005 IP