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Businesses Scramble To Stay Out of Google Hell
whoever57 writes "Forbes has up an article on the consequences of being dumped into a claimed 'supplemental index',
also known as 'Google Hell'. It uses the example of Skyfacet, a site selling diamonds rings and other jewelery, which has dropped in Google's rankings and saw a $500,000 drop in revenue in only three months after the site owner paid a marketing consultant to improve the sites. The article claims that sites in the supposed 'supplemental index' may be visited by Google's spiders as infrequently as once per year. The problem? Google's cache shows that Google's spiders visited the site ss recently as late April. 'Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site's pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible--because site operators often don't know what they did to get placed there.'"
- Keep using the same domain name. Right now changing your domain name incurs a huge penalty from Google. You will lose 90% of your traffic for 8 months.
- Use unique titles and meta descriptions for each of your pages. If the titles and meta descriptions on two of your pages are the same, one or both of the pages will likely go into Google Hell
- Don't buy links to your site to boost your pagerank from unrelated sites. If Google sees links to your site on the same page as links to Viagra sites, you will likely get a spam penalty.
- Ensure that your content is original and unique. If you use syndicated content, or syndicate your content to other sites, Google will realize that the content exists in two places and put one of them into Google hell.
If you do get into Google hell:Google's obligation is to serve the consumer doing the search with the most accurate and fair results possible, not to ensure that sleezy companies paying big $ to "consultants" who game the system maintain their sales.
For shame, Forbes!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When you hire a consultant specifically to improve your Google page rank, I guess you are opening yourself up to stuff like this. It sounds to me like this guy hired someone who thought they knew how to game the system, and the system gamed him back.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Sounds to me like they should have hired a more professional consultant, it seems to me thats who the company should immediately be blaming rather than Google.
"Forbes has up an article on the consequences of being dumped into a claimed 'spam index', also known as 'Mail Hell'. It uses the example of e360, a site selling mortgage refis and anatomical enlargement, which has dropped in graylist rankings and saw a $500,000 drop in revenue in only three months after the company paid a marketing consultant to improve the emails. The article claims that sites in the supposed 'spam index' may be re-evaluated as infrequently as once per year. The problem? The site was reevaluated as recently as late April. 'Mail Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of spammers that depend on breaking spam filters to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see their emails. And getting out can be next to impossible--because spammers often don't know what they did to get placed there.'"
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I suppose this is Dante's 9th ring.
696e6b6564
Unfortunately that is the price you pay for basing your business on the assumption that a FREE SERVICE (namely Google's ranking system) will continue to work in your favor. Many businesses are getting their "advertising" for free by being ranked highly by Google, and prominently displayed in search results. Maybe they should consider paying for strategically placed ads like everybody else.
So basicly a guy paid a "consultant" to abuse how Google works and then when Google changed the system to stop this happening he complains that he got punished for it?
At what point is this guy any sort of victim when he knowingly exploited the system for his own gain and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
I like muppets.
1) Go into business
2) Gather home pages of major competitors
3) Add links to these home pages on disreputable web sites
4) Watch their traffic go down.
5) Watch your traffic go up.
6) Profit
Just cant figure out where the "..." fits into this one.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I am by no means an SEO expert... but I've had VERY good luck with google indexes for the small sites I build for people. I've even gotten some business from it, because people some how think I'm some sort of genius. So what's my secret?
I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AT GOOGLE FOR WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO AND I FOLLOWED THE RULES
If you simply follow the rules that google lays out, you won't get sucked into google hell. If you try and game the system by paying for consultants to "juice" your site, you gambled and lost. Bottom line: Don't be evil, and google will not punish you
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I think this is evidence of a couple phenomena in modern business:
The first is what I guess I'll call push vs pull, and that's the difference between business that cater to people who have a specific need "Hey, I need food, so I'm going to look for a place where I can get it" and businesses that create things they try to sell that people don't necessarily need but will buy on impulse - for instance, those businesses that are always sending fliers in the mail to get you to buy things you might not otherwise need.
The other issue here is what I would call demand density - if a business has to be online to reach people across the globe, that means that demand density is very low. However, a grocery store has very high demand density - advertising is only necessary (if at all) over a very small geographic location because the market is local.
Now, I'm not sure if I fully understand all the pros and cons of trying to support businesses with very low demand density - is society as a whole better off with the mechanism to provide goods and service to very disperse locations, or is the effort required to distribute the goods / services over such a large location really worse than not supplying that demand and eliminating the transportation / communications infrastructure overhead?
More to the article's point, though, if I had to depend on a search service to get my business revenue, I would rethink my business plan. While I understand the ideas behind 'global economy' I am still a bit conservative in my belief in the merits of self-sufficiency; relying on a search service means that my business would be at the mercy of that service which I may not be able to control. Control is fairly important in businesses, I would think.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Here's a summary of the article (which I incidentally read yesterday):
Why sites go in Google hell is a total mystery.
Story 1: A guy sold diamonds on his site. One day he went to Google hell, but he had no idea why. Why is Google not telling him? He had no idea why this happened... ok... ok... so he paid 35 grand to a SEO "expert" who filled his pages with trash. He removed the trash and few months later he went out of Google hell. To this day he doesn't know how he went out of Google hell.
Story 2: A guy had a site with lots of visits from Google. One day, he went to Google hell, but he had no idea why. Why is Google not telling? Ok... ok... so he had paid for a ton of links from spam sites, and he had to email each of the sites to get the links removed. Few months later he went out of Google hell, and this guy also has no clue what helped him.
Summary: It's a total mystery, that Google hell, I tell you.
So they list two cases of people whining that they paid "consultants" to optimize their sites but got caught. And then make Google out to be the bad guy?
Both of the "businesses" seem shady to me anyways, and their practices on optimization only appear to confirm that. They got caught, Google did what it's supposed to do. Now they're being punished.
Sure, they may have reversed any of said optimization, but as the article even says, it can take 6 months to a year to be indexed again anyways. So take two of these and call us in a year...
Skyfacet's consultant didn't improve their rankings at all, instead causing them to plummet. One wonders just how lucrative this sort of thing is? After all, if this consultant has done this for them, perchance he/she/they have done it to others? Perchance it would be a good idea to a) sue them, b) report them to BBB, and c) begin a this-google-consultant-sucks.com website.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
After reading the article, I typed "diamonds" and "engagement ring" into Google, then looked at the sponsored links. No sign of skyfacet.com, Mr. Sanar's company. I find it hilarious that Sanar would pay $35,000 to some slimball "consultant" to try to distort the Google search rankings, but not spend one penny on Google sponsored links, which would put him on the first page every time.
I have zero sympathy for unscrupulous businessmen who try to game the system, get caught, and then whine about it. Kudos to Google for playing hardball and fighting to keeping their search engine useful and relevant instead of letting the spammers ruin it.
This kind of thing has always baffled me. It is quite possible to conduct business online without relying solely on search engine traffic. While search engine traffic is valuable, if your business strategy is relying on that then you're placing your entire business in the hands of an independent party with it's own interests.
Google can do whatever the hell they want with their search index. Why on earth any company would place themselves entirely in someone else's hands, particularly someone else who doesn't have the slightest care in the world what happens to your business is really beyond me.
Any sane business person should enjoy search engine traffic when they have it, but place themselves primarily in the position where they don't need it. Relying entirely on an independent company with it's own interests for your business survival is beyond stupid.
with a $3,000,000 diamond business? He deserves to be in Google hell for that alone.
/goes to sit in the corner wondering what he did with his life/
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
I don't think you understand what "free market" means. Google owns the index, Google decides how it works. The searcher is their customer, NOT the "small business owner".
If they please their customers with the best possible results they will make more money. If they allow themselves to be gamed, searchers will go elsewhere and Google will lose money.
If you don't like that, go start your own search engine.
BTW, they have been sued over this kind of thing and they have always won. The ranking is their opinion and they are entitled to it.
Why would you create a business around your rankings on search engines which everyone knows can change from day to day depending on other sites and ever changing ranking algorithms? Even when you're not paying some SEO guy ridiculous amounts of money to scam the system and get you stuck in Google Hell that's a rather obvious huge risk to be taking.
I understand that proper advertising is expensive, I've got a failed business of my own due to not being able to put the necessary money into it, but guess what? That's business. You pick the risks you're willing to take and deal with the results. Basing the majority of your business on search result ranking is low cost (unless you pay an SEO expert $35k which would have been better spent elsewhere, like real advertising, or a new car, or a 35,000 cheeseburgers from a fast food value menu) but high risk due to the constant changes.
have good content, based on keyword analysis, that people value, keep it current, organize your content properly, lay out your titles and page content strategically and accuraterly and you'll do fine on any search engine, try to game 'em, they'll get ya...
it ain't rocket surgery...
dB Masters
I used to have a site reviewing free web page hosting, back in the '90s when that was a relatively new idea. I had a form where people could suggest sites, and every weekend or so I'd go check them out, try setting up a sample page, and add the results to the list.
All of a sudden, over a period of a couple of months or so, the "request" page started getting flooded with suggestions for "new" free web hosting sites that seemed awfully similar, and offers to exchange links, and what in retrospect were obviously the work of the kinds of parasites that Google's been fighting. Pretty soon maintaining the page wasn't fun any more, and I quit updating it and eventually took it down.
Given that Google has to automate this process, I think they're doing a pretty good job.
The searcher is their customer, NOT the "small business owner".
That's not even close to true. Your customers are, without fail, the people that pay you (or at least, the people you're trying to convince to pay you). Searchers are Google's product; advertisers are Google's customers.
This is no different (in this respect) than radio and ad-supported television: your listeners/viewers are the product you sell to your advertisers.
Don't ever think that Google wants to make you, the searcher, happy - they want to make their advertisers happy. If the best way to do that is by making you happy (and so far, it pretty much has been), then lucky for you. If it isn't, tough cookies: you're not the one keeping the cooling on.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
You misunderstand slightly.
Companies which pay Google to place advertisements are Googles customers.
Companies which do not pay Google for advertisements are not Googles customers.
Random people looking for websites are not Googles customers either.
In order for googles adverts to be productive people have to visit websites, if they visit a website which actually matches with the sort of website they were looking for then googles adverts are more powerful.
Anyone gaming googles system to drive people to their websites without taking account of whether this is the best website matching the surfers requirements is hurting googles customers by not maximising the effectiveness of the audience for their adverts.
Looks like google's search algorithms worked perfectly, he tried to game the search engine results and
got sent to the black hole.....
No sympathy here!
Got Code?
The problem is not with google. The problem is with a bad website redesign by unknowledgeable people that do not understand how search engine placement occurs.
Cached url's can be kept functional through the use of apache re-writes and many other web tools. For example, when I was commissioned by a client of mine to redesign a web application critical to their business from one technology platform to something completely different, I made extensive use of the apache re-write module. Even though all their old urls no longer existed, I took the extra time of a good redesign to forward every pre-existing url to its new url equivalent. The end result was improved functionality of the new applicaton and better search engine placement without the loss of the cached urls during the sometimes lengthy search-indexing transition.
A company that is that dependant on web sales from search engines should have paid the small amount extra to make sure old urls remained functional. Fire the person who grossly messed up and next time hire better people.
A famous quote appropriate to the diamond company's situation... "God is in the details."
The diamond company got sloppy.
My site, for example, is the largest repository of baby names on the 'net, but when you type in "baby names" you won't find it. I put it down to my not buying adwords, where plenty of other baby name sites do (they typically have 300 to 500 times less names, yet rank higher).
Nice advertisement but your site sucks. Content and layout are poor. Maybe you need to check out the other baby name sites to see where you went wrong. Think quality over quantity.
It's true. They are in a losing battle with the web spammers who are developing an artificial intelligence based system that will make it so Googlebot won't be able to tell the good stuff from the bad, and if that weren't enough they ignore spam reports, and bury the reporting mechanism so deep that nobody wants to be bothered to report it anyway.
What this will mean is that we'll be on a user-ranking system like Digg or the like since the users can vote a topic down if it's spam and it gets buried almost immediately(well within a couple hours as compared to days/months/years) but since Google isn't prepared for that type of system, they will soon find themselves overwhelmed with spam.
I have at least one site that was permanently delisted by Google for some unknown violation and yet I get just as much traffic without them as I did with them. I don't think they're evil nor am I against them but if they don't wake up soon they're going to lose this game, not to Yahoo or other search engines, but to the spammers themselves.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
I agree. It's not like Jewelers aren't pushing an entirely created market, anyway - and one with blood on it's hands. When the diamond industry stops killing Africans (and, I'm sorry, "Less than 1% of our diamonds are blood diamonds!" is simply not good enough) and comes up with a good reason that their earth-grown diamonds are better than cool synthetically grown ones, I'll start to feel pity for them.
[Ego]out
Does this also mean that you can "game" the sites of your competitors to get them into Google hell?
Exactly -- I'm surprised this hasn't come up more.
It seems that if I want to deep-six your site, which might mean your entire business and/or livelihood, all I need to do is find the most inept link spammer I can, and pay him a pittance to whore your site's URL all over the place, on tons of spamblogs and Viagra pages. All of a sudden, Google will notice, can your page off of the search results, and you're hosed.
I've got to imagine that this has already happened; heck it seems like a fairly good extortion scheme: pay us or we'll linkfarm you until Google notices and your competition slaughters you. It's like SEO, only in reverse.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
since you can eventually get out.
Man, you really need that seminar!
...do not pass Go(.com) and do not collect $200.
Additionaly, you may visit Google Hell with no penalty, but you must route all traffic through the 'Just Visiting' proxy.
As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
1) Create automated system which 'accidentally' blacklists honest sites obstensibly to relieve load on Google spider 2) ??? 3) 'Google Professional Services' analyzes 'honest' site for problem areas, provides personalized recommendations to 'honest' site's webmaster about what changes are necessary to stay out of blacklist. 'GPS' marks 'honest' site for immediate 'reindexing.' Assuming GPS recommendations were followed, site moves out of blacklist quickly. 4) Profit!
Forbes, being one of the 'premier' business 'rags, the real story isn't what Google's actions. It's the spin that Forbes is trying to create. The real thing to learn from this is that Google is still unpopular in the Forbes reading circle.
Forbes is just trying to put some negative publicity onto Google any way they can. As many have already pointed out, no sane business model relies entirely on the search results from another business that has no vested interest. Anybody working at Forbes knows as much, and yet we have an article talking about "Google's gulag".
The real information here is from in between the lines. A power struggle behind the scenes, currently Google is the target of some negative image campaigning. What I'm interested in is, where that pushing originates. Who 'owns' Forbes and is pushing for bad press for Google?
If you have a lot of high quality backlinks then I think Google would be smart enough to ignore the low quality backlinks that don't affect your score much. They don't have to punish you for links. They can ignore them. If you have few to no quality backlinks then a bunch of spam sites linking to you would maybe have more of an affect. Google would assume then that your site sucks and you're trying to game the system.
I was highly backlinked by spam sites after a bunch of bots ran through the fields of my DMOZ mirror. My rank in Google went way up.
I got into Google Hell for not doing a proper redirect from an old domain. I basically flooded the new domain with traffic from old unrelated sites that had gone under from a server crash. About 6 months later I was back out. I don't have nearly the traffic but I still rank decently.
Google is not stupid. They're going to take a lot of factors in before punishing you. I imagine this clown did a cocktail of stupid things and rightfully ended up hosed.
Work Safe Porn
On the other hand, if Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL all think your pages aren't interesting, maybe they ... aren't interesting.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There's a lot more philosophy at stake here than people may realise. Ask yourself this: When you use a search engine, what results do you want to see? That is a complex question, partly because the answer changes from search to search.
If I want to buy some fly fishing gear, I might search for "fly fishing equipment." Pretty straightforward, but the search engine has to decide whether I want to learn about the equipment, read reviews of specific items, or find retailers to buy from. If I then search for "Berkley fly rods," the engine has to make the same decision, and also has to throw in the possibility of the manufacturer's website. The trick is that I'm more likely to be looking for retailers with the second search than the first, so they should be given more prominence in the results.
All well and good, but (a) trying to build this logic is tricky, and (b) companies benefit greatly by landing high on the list for any and every remotely relevant (and in some cases, even totally irrelevant) search. Therefore, companies try hard to get their name up on the list as often as possible, and google (and other search engines) try to present a useful set of results.
The question comes down to this: Who is the search engine company beholden to? They're making money by selling advertising to companies, so they don't want to deliberately censure them; however, advertising is only as effective as the number of potential customers, so they want to maximise exposure--by providing the best results to the customer. Ultimately, companies and consumers are at odds about what constitutes the "best" results, and google has to sit in the middle, acting as gatekeeper.
Having a neutral algorithm that tries to minimise companies' attempts at gaming the system is a good system. They can use it to back their 'useful results' ideal, and avoid having to beat down companies directly, risking revenue.
In short, this guy paid too much money to a scammer masquerading as a consultant, and is paying the penalty for it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Be a popular resource on the web and you'll get indexed with no fuss. In fact, it could become a problem.
I had a site that was, in a word, unmaintained. I didn't care, it was simply a file repository for certain wiring diagrams that I tended to reference, and I didn't make any effort to promote or hide the links. So what eventually happened, is that certain Google searches put my personal website high on the list, and I started getting traffic to my website, and with that came large logfiles, voluminous spam, and frequent "offers" to buy my domain name (although the offers never specified a price the person was willing to pay, so I simply ignored every single one of them.)
Occasionally I would write back and say "how much are you going to offer."
Finally, someone came back with a number, and I sold them the domain name. It's "searchportal.information.com" now, and I get a certain amount of amusement in the fact that the thing that I had linked there, which was of interest to nobody but myself as far as I was concerned, is the top link on that particular search page. Of course it leads nowhere but other spammy links.
It never occurred to me that people would want to intentionally increase their ranking. I always wanted ways to decrease mine. Ended up selling the domain name for a nice wad of cash, because the traffic it was generating was a problem.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but me, my lovely wife, P'zaz, our son, P-dawg and little baby Paashavimochaka absolutely do not like where you're heading with this...
Google search is a tool for selling ads. That's it. It has everything to do with Google getting paid by businesses in return for consideration.
Google AdWords is a tool for extorting money from businesses who are trapped into only having one kind of promotion available. If you don't pony up some cash, you're invisible.
And then it's just a race to see who can pony up the most cash. It'll certainly made Google's job easier when they're just a portal for WalMart.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
You're as visible as people want you to be. Business has no intrinsic right to anyone's attention. Lots of people give it to google because they don't abuse it by throwing up garbage like these complainers.