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Wordpress Banned by Google for Spamming
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Mar 31, 2005 02:40 PM
from the there-be-scammers-everywhere dept.
from the there-be-scammers-everywhere dept.
The Real Nick W writes "Wordpress, an incredibly popular Open Source Blogging system was found to be spamming google by inserting hidden links to junk content on high paying Adsense keywords such as mesothelioma and debt consolidation. Following Threadwatch picking up the story an anonymous Google rep appeared in the original thread admonishing bloggers not to use sneaky tactics to rank highly for "duplicate content" such as the 100,000 hidden articles on the Wordpress site. The articles have now dissapeared from Google and it remains to be seen whether Google will ban Wordpress outright as they tend to do when SEO's and web dev's pull these kinds of stunts."
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The day will come when... (Score:5, Funny)
Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Something fun to do (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Something fun to do (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, a link back to this /. story.
Parent
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
But, given the quality of the postings here, you can be a smoker or a late night toker.
Parent
Lots of problems like that... (Score:5, Interesting)
SEO (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SEO (Score:5, Interesting)
If Google gives higher rankings to sites that have more links pointed at them, would you consider link exchange programs sneaky? For instance, lots of websites link to slashdot.org, but I doubt that CowboyNeil has a SEO company getting reciprocal links for
Are link exchanges just another example of exploiting a flaw in google?
Parent
Lying to People by Lying to Robots by SEOs (Score:5, Insightful)
- Tell you to write content that's actually interesting to humans. (Editors do this professionally, and pagerank originally attempted to do this by guessing that if people go to the effort to put links on their web pages then the targets are probably interesting to those people.)
- Make sure that your interesting content is presented in a way that robots can find it. (An FAQ that tells you to put your keywords in titles and META tags can do this, or an HTML editor tool can do it automagically, but some people do need to pay someone else to RTFM for them, and theoretically an SEO can make money doing it.)
- Lie to the robots so they guess that your customers' actually-uninteresting content is probably interesting, so the robots show the humans the boring SEO-assisted pages first instead of the actually interesting pages. This lying is the main business that effective SEOs really engage in. (Ineffective SEOs are in the business of lying to their customers about being effective SEOs, but they and their customers deserve each other and sort of by definition don't have a high enough pagerank to worry about.)
- "Sneaky attacks" are SEO lies.
- "A very closely monitored network of domains" is SEO lying too.
- Hijacking blog comment services is really annoying SEO lying.
- Robogenerating lots of pages with lots of popular search keywords, especially if you're building them into URL names, is SEO lying.
- Robogenerating them without actually storing them anywhere might be technically interesting SEO lying, though disk space is so cheap these days that it might not be necessary.
- Hijacking real pages using 302-Redirect attacks is technically interesting for about 15 minutes, but is really nasty spammer lying.
Googlebombing by using sneaky techniques to promote your "403 Weapons of Mass Destruction Not Found" and "Miserable Failure"->"whitehouse.gov" pages was technically similar to SEO lying - but it was clever and amusing metacontent, and deserved its 15 minutes of fame, and watching the sleazy Republicans reply in kind was amusing too, but it's Been Done Now.Parent
Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem: Spammers are very obviously trying to muck with our results.
Solution: Block said spammers.
The only problem is that it's hard to notice all but the most egregious offenders.
I've love Google to add a link to the standard search results. Something like "Report Spam." If enough (100k, a million, whatever) unique people/IPs reported a site or result, it would be flagged for human review.
the problem with that solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
That has to be the most insightful thing I have EVER read in a slashdot comment. You should suggest it via the google suggest page. It sounds like a great idea to use the most awesome pattern matching machine(the human mind). I'm sure there are more than enough people like you and I that can tell just from the description it's a google-attacking spam page that would flag it.
In short, mod parent up.
Parent
Google Spam Report (Score:5, Informative)
They used to link to it at the bottom of some (random?) search result pages, but I haven't seen it posted publically in a while. Perhaps it didn't actually work as well as you or they hope it would.
Parent
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Next ban eBay! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Next ban eBay! (Score:5, Funny)
It seems that's what they do - whatever you search for, they put "for sale" on the tail end of it and hope you click on it.
Parent
Re:Next ban eBay! (Score:5, Informative)
Every time you do a search on google, add the following:
-amazon -google -search -ebay
You'd be amazed at how much cleaner the search becomes!
Bryan
Parent
If You Don't Want To Support WordPress After This (Score:5, Informative)
It's flexible, and I like it. You might too.
Re:If You Don't Want To Support WordPress After Th (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Geez - what a kneejerk (Score:4, Interesting)
Go here: http://planet.wordpress.org/ [wordpress.org]
Read. Maybe read it again if yer slow. Sounds like the guy was simply trying to raise a few bucks to support what is IMO one of the best blogging apps out there.
Re:Geez - what a kneejerk (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
So spamming for "good" is OK? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Dictate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google can't dictate content except on its own sites (google, froogle, etc), and they certainly are not doing it here. However they are perfectly free to leave junk sites out of their index. Google exercising freedom over its own index is not censorship nor is it dictating the content of other's sites.
Parent
Spam is spam is spam. (Score:4, Insightful)
I said then, and I say now, hogwash.
Any advertising by flooding a common communication channel can meaningfully be described as spam, whether it's Usenet, email, IM, Text messages, or search engine spamming. There's no point to trying to draw a magic circle around part of the problem and pointing outside and saying "that's not really spam".
Parent
their own shit don't stink (Score:5, Interesting)
Just keep hitting "Next Blog" and you'll find a ton of blogs set up for advertising, just like those.
Re:their own shit don't stink (Score:4, Insightful)
The uproar is over the fact that the lead developer and site maintainer of Wordpress was responsible for hosting the spammy pages. Even the page for donations has the hidden links. [wordpress.org]
The stated reason for this is to cover his costs and hire a full-time developer, but this raises a lot of questions about the need to do so -- What exactly are those costs? And is it really worth hiring a full-timer if it has to be funded with spam?
It doesn't help his case that he's presently on vacation in Italy [photomatt.net].
(I'm not trying to bash him personally -- just trying to clarify the issue for those that don't understand.)
Parent
About time dammit (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, at least they dont try to hide it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure they try to hide it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
What on Earth does an outdent of 9000 pixels, and setting the overflow to "hidden" mean, EXCEPT that they are trying to hide it?
After all, very few of us browse the Web by reading the raw HTML and JavaScript. I find all the bad HTML code is really bad for my brain.
Parent
what a shame (Score:4, Interesting)
Stuff like this is just sleazy, and calls into question the character of the devs and site admins. Either that, or it's just a really stupid, really immature move.
I wonder if they've realized they've just upset a lot of users, who are now wondering if they can trust the devs and the software they produce anymore. I wonder if they even care.
Fine, don't read the article! Here's the scoop... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why this is bad: WordPress is an open source piece of software. It's okay for the people running it to try to make money off it, either by asking for donations or selling t-shirts or anything else they can think of (www.textdrive.com comes to mind), but to knowingly break Google's rules and to receive money from a company whose practices many would consider shady without any feedback from the WP community is just a damn shame. A lot of people don't care and think everyone is being too critical of WordPress. They think asking for "transparency" in an operation like WP is stupid. Well yes, and no.
A lot of people have given a lot of time to WP. Did they have any say in this? From what I've read, they didn't. So this is one person taking the ball and running with it...he didn't ask if it was a good idea, he didn't ask for alternative ideas, he just decided that he knew what was best for the community and WordPress. Well, he didn't. Take a look at Wikimedia [wikimedia.org]. When they have a donation drive, you know exactly how much money they get and where it's going. You can find out about the drive in advance, and read about it afterwards. What about WordPress? Just 100k+ articles popping up without a word until after they are discovered...
WordPress has made quite a name for itself, and is a great example of open source software in action. But this incident is a blight on the community. People will see this, not know all the facts, and make their own interpretations and ideas. Some will distort this to help their own FUD..."Why contribute to projects who are just going to try and profit off your code in any way they can?" Matt sounds like a great guy, and seems to have the purest of intentions, but not much good can come of a decision like this. Everyone is watching right now, and it's mistakes like this that open source could really do without.
built-for-adsense-sites are being punished (Score:5, Informative)
built for adsense sites [google.com]
This would be a non-issue if the Google search engine and Google Adsense program were not part of the same company. Or if the built-for-adsense website were not using Adsense. It's strange that someone would put so much work into creating these spammy sites then overlook something so obvious. You are putting your fate into the hands of Google, the judge and jury, when you rely on both Google as a search engine and Google as your ad network. I doubt wordpress would get noticed for spam if they were using another contextual ad network to monetize traffic or another form of online advertising.
WordPress can't think of another way to make $$$? (Score:4, Informative)
Can we PLEASE stop calling it "Optimizing"?? (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be more accurate to call them "Search Engine Spammers", because that's exactly what they do.
Stacking the deck is not fair (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm willing to look past what Matt does because he's essentially allowing another service (Hot Nacho) usurp his pagerank and I have a feeling he's going to drop Hot Nacho, but I'm having a harder time forgiving people like Chris Pirillo [pirillo.com] who promotes nonsense such as this guy's scheme [adsense-secrets.com] to get more money from adsense. It sounds too much like the get rich quick real estate schemes of the late night infomercials. Everyone, please! If you use adsense then live by the adage, if it sounds too good to be true, then most likely it is. Don't ruin it for the rest of us by doing this grey area shit. We all will lose out! Sure the tricks may work in your favor in the here and now (like a pyramid scheme), but at who's cost in the long run? Sites who put up legit information about a certain adword will be sideswiped by sites who cheat. It's not fair. If google can't fix the cheats, they'll just yank it for everyone across the board.
Additionally, by tolerating behavior such as this, we're opening the door for other sites to steal legit material written by those who've poured too much research and time in each article. Play by the rules and everyone will be happy. If you're a leecher, hoarder, or just plain criminal, I wish you the worst case of hemorrhoids, dysentery, and cholera combined.
One word... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Er... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Er... (Score:4, Interesting)
An ebay search for "asbestos" sometimes yields some surprising results.
Parent
Re:Er... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course the cause was the heavily laced vermiculite (I remember hopping in big bins full of the stuff when I was a kid. It was a really neat spongy stuff that looked really interesting [google.ca]) that Grace was processing at the St. Thomas plant, and they knew for many years that it was packed full of asbestos but decided that lawsuits due to death and injuries were less costly than cutting off the asbestos lined mine.
Anyways, a lot of executives at Grace should have gone to jail for gross negligence causing death, but of course they didn't. As it stands we never did sue Grace, as that sort of case is much less common here in Canada, but I'm sure my father wasn't the only victim.
Parent
Re:Er... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Er... (Score:4, Insightful)
People dont search for a word like"mesothelioma" just for fun, so its very likely to get "useful" hits.
Parent
Re:Er... (Score:5, Informative)
There are rummours these are one of the highest paying keywords around.
Some people will make anything to have these ads on their pages - even use hidden text to try and catch the Google bot attention. This is the "spamming" in the article.
Parent
Oh, crap!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Blogger.com (Score:5, Informative)
Spammers are paying the wordpress site to host bogus articles on the site. Since the blogs of people that use the wordpress software package link to the wordpress site, the wordpress site is ranked as an authoritative site. This lets the spammers get their rankings on Google boosted because wordpress links to them in the bogus spam articles.
It has NOTHING to do with what people are blogging about.
Parent
Re:Blogger.com (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Off topic - Google interview questions (Score:4, Insightful)
running time for quicksort [google.com]: second result has answer
powers of 2 [google.com]: first result has answer.
Parent
Re:Fork the bastards (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:They were begging for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google hasn't signed a contract with WordPress, either. It's their right to lay out ground rules and ban anyone who doesn't follow them.
Newsflash: Google can do what they want.
Parent
Re:They were begging for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, if every google search just led to a bunch of spam pages, Google itself would cease to be very useful.
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Re:They were begging for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google doesn't owe them anything. They're indexing them for free, and they can stop indexing them whenever they want if they don't meet Google's criteria for indexing.
Parent