Target.com's Aggressive SEO Tactic Spams Google

eldavojohn writes "Greg Niland is blogging about target.com's aggressive near-spam search engine optimization, and is more than a little critical not only of how this affects the most popular search engine, but also why it will probably persist. If you want an example, search for 'Exercise Bike Clearance' and click the first link."

Could have made it a link

[master5o1]

Exercise Bike Clearance [google.com]

Easy response

[bl968]

At the bottom of every Google Search result page is a link titled Dissatisfied? Help us improve. Click it. Tell them the link is spam. Google ends up filtering them out of the search results, and we all win!

Re:How are these getting indexed?

[adolf]

Generating them is wrong, according to Google [google.com]:

Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold(TM) that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Emphasis mine, on the areas that Target is plainly and obviously not following. There's a bunch of other stuff listed which they might be doing as well, but I can't be bothered to look into it any further at the moment.

Re:haha

[supersat]

Google for link:http://www.target.com/gp/search/ref=sr_bmvd_redirect?field-keywords=Anal%20Massage%20for%20Lovers%20Vol%202&url=index%3Dtarget%26search-alias%3Dtgt-index. Six sites are linking to it! It's showing up in Google's results because people are linking to it.

Of course, the story is a bit trickier than that. People are linking to an old product URL (Target sometimes has humorous products on their site), which Target redirects to a search page when they no longer carry the product. Google indexes this redirect and treats both URLs as the roughly the same (you'll notice that the links you find above point to a product URL, not the search result URL).

In many cases, this is a reasonable thing to do. People point to content they care about. They usually don't care what the exact URL is. If the URL changes, they likely still care about the original content. Target's redirection breaks this assumption, but I'm not sure there's a straight-forward fix. Perhaps they could return a 404 response (with the same content) when redirecting from a broken product URL?

Re:Easy response

[ricree]

I disagree. While using another search engine certainly gives google and inventive to improve the search, it doesn't really help them to do it.

People switch services for all sorts of reasons. Fashion, apathy (if, say, they switch computers and it has a different default engine), etc. Dissatisfaction is just one reason, and since the process of leaving is silent, they have little enough way to tell why.

Reporting the trouble to them gives them the reason you're dissatisfied in a way that switching doesn't. Of course, they're always free to ignore it, but at least if they do then switching can be an incentive for them to improve rather than an enigma they have to puzzle out.

Re:How are these getting indexed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn what you're talking about: these aren't generated. Example:
http://www.target.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&index=target&field-browse=1038626&rh=k%3Aadolf%20from%20slashdot [target.com] will give a page claiming that the search had no results. This is exactly the same as, say:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=aosdnfons+foasnfo+nafonwefoawenfowng&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 [google.com] which ALSO has no results.

So, sometime in the past, someone searched for 'exercise bike' in the clearance section of target. Then they posted about it, and google found that, and indexed the page. Then the item went away, and google.. kept indexing the link. There's no irrelevant keywords here, no hidden text, no hidden links, and the page DOES help users, since coincidentally, it's a search results page correctly informing people of the results. Yes, that's right, the top result for 'exercise bike clearance' is a search results page from someone else's search engine; in this case it just happens to be target.com's search engine.

There is NO indication that Target did anything wrong here, I don't understand why no one has noticed that yet.

Re:Easy response

[JackieBrown]

Maybe if there were such a pattern.

Try exercise equipment clearance. Not Target.
exercise machine clearance
Heck, even "exercise bike" and "exercise bike sale" doesn't lead to Target.

Hell, the example on their page is a site speficic search site:target.com "We could not find matches for"

Re:Could have made it a link

[mlk]

Or Inda used google.co.uk [google.co.uk], which does return fitness equipment clearance first and Target second.

Re:How are these getting indexed?

[cenc]

I could see target using a database dump of searched terms in to an automated XML map that google bots are slurping up.

Re:Could have made it a link

[spyrochaete]

The query you want to run is:
[blockquote]site:target.com "could not find matches"[/blockquote]

This produces 604,000 results. Definitely black hat seo spam. Google needs to either filter "/search?" and "/ref=sr" or they need to penalize Target like they would for any other spammer. Target is a large American retailer so Google probably won't do anything at all.

Re:Obviously not intentional

[Wildclaw]

Google's algorithm puts trust in domains that other people link to.

Exactly. And that is the flaw in the algorithm. You can't trust the whole site just because some of the pages are well linked to. Links to a certain page, only indicate that the specific pages are interesting and/or relevant, and only concerning the subject linked about.

This flaw has become more and more noticeable with Google over the years. You often notice pages from more popular sites popping up, even though they have nothing relevant or new to add about a specific search query.

Re:haha

[mforbes]

The word "Company" is derived from the French word compaignie, meaning a body of soldiers. That word is in turn derived from the Latin words "Com" and "Panis", meaning "with bread"-- i.e., the biblical phrase "... and they broke bread together" (this was still common practice for people working closely together up until very modern times; for that matter, coworkers stillroutinely eat together.) Therefor the word "company" refers to the people who comprise it, not the organization as a gestalt. Although I'm American and follow the American usage, I understand the reason for this particular British usage.

Re:Easy response

[SEWilco]

WTF is a gym?

Gym is a guy I met IRL at the convenience store, when I was buying a pizza and chips. I tried to email him, but encountered some weird site featuring steel and leather furniture.

Re:How are these getting indexed?

[PongStroid]

<h1 class="offscreen">Welcome to Target Products and Promotions</h1>
<h1 class="offscreen">your mom is hot Products and Promotions</h1>
<a href="#mainBody">Skip to Main Content</a>
<a href="#leftNav">Skip to Left Navigation</a>
<a href="#scripted_tabs">Skip to Product Information Tabs</a>

These are used to allow users navigating the site with screen readers an easier time. Search for 508, screen readers, and accessibility for more info. A bit more searching will show target was sued 3 years ago for its site not being accessible to blind users.

Re:Easy response

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh a gym! (pronounced gime)

Re:haha - Mod up!

[Anonymous Coward]

'Anal Massage for Lovers Vol 2 Wow.

Vol 1 wasn't enough? Wow indeed!

There were some gaping plot holes that needed to be filled.

Re:Easy response

[teko_teko]

He's dead, Gym!