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How Not To Be a SEO Spammer

An anonymous reader writes "The head of Google's webspam team, Matt Cutts, has blogged about one of his colleagues receiving an email offering SEO services to help the web site www.google.com. The irony wasn't lost on Matt, who has blogged about these emails before. As this article points out, if ever there was evidence that the people who send many of these emails haven't done their homework, this is it."

65 comments

  1. This page should have more comments by spoot · · Score: 5, Funny

    It would make it rank higher organically with search engines.

    1. Re:This page should have more comments by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Funny

      I will send you my bill for this comment.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    2. Re:This page should have more comments by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Informative

      It would make it rank higher organically with search engines.

      Well, here's one....

      I had to go look up 'SEO' as I was drawing a blank on it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There, now I have some idea what the article is about.

      Maybe someone could optimize editors on /. to make sure all acronyms are spelled out at least once in the article.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    3. Re:This page should have more comments by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The real LOL is that the department heads think spammers/scammers "do homework".

      --
      No sig today...
    4. Re:This page should have more comments by FictionPimp · · Score: 1

      Because everyone on /. is a web marketer, developer, or designer?

    5. Re:This page should have more comments by drinkypoo · · Score: 3

      Because everyone on /. is a web marketer, developer, or designer?

      Because the term is used everywhere, all the time.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:This page should have more comments by Buzer · · Score: 0

      Maybe someone could optimize editors on /. to make sure all acronyms are spelled out at least once in the article.

      If this was some common newspaper, then yeah, it could be good idea. However, you should assume readers of Slashdot to be familiar with industry's (and general, like DNA and CEO) common acronyms on at least "I know what it is about" level.

    7. Re:This page should have more comments by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      Because everyone on /. is a web marketer, developer, or designer?

      Because the term is used everywhere, all the time.

      Well, dang, there's a first class assumption and exaggeration right there, no wonder we can't get good editors around this joint: Low expectations!

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    8. Re:This page should have more comments by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      Maybe someone could optimize editors on /. to make sure all acronyms are spelled out at least once in the article.

      If this was some common newspaper, then yeah, it could be good idea. However, you should assume readers of Slashdot to be familiar with industry's (and general, like DNA and CEO) common acronyms on at least "I know what it is about" level.

      Where I got my degrees it was driven into us to Spell Out anything we were going to refer to later in a written article, followed by the acronym in parenthesis. In longer works it would be included in a glossary in the appendix. This must seem foreign now, this concept of Technical Writing. The practice saved readers from having to mark their reading material and go seek out an explanation.

      I haven't seen an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) email in ages as I have a pretty good spam filter these days. Heck, I haven't seen and SEO article on /. in years.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    9. Re:This page should have more comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's far from an unreasonable expectation to expect someone to understand an acronym like SEO. There isn't a long drawn out discussion of what cloud architecture is, no explanation of the meanings of HTML or PHP or what the EFF is. This is a site of people passionate about technology, not to mention that if you clicked the links provided there is actually an explanation of SEO through context clues. ./ also assumes that you know how to Google.

    10. Re:This page should have more comments by cjjjer · · Score: 1

      You would think so based on the comments....

    11. Re:This page should have more comments by egcagrac0 · · Score: 2

      SEO is a business term, not a technical term. It's more relevant if you're in marketing than in devops.

    12. Re:This page should have more comments by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      Because the term is used everywhere, all the time.

      SEO, seo seo seo. Seoseo seoseoseo seo seo seo seeeeeeooooo. Seoseo...?

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    13. Re:This page should have more comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately I wish SEO were something I've never heard of. However, without gaming the results, your website will never be found in search engines, while your competition's will.

      It is like running a business and having to hire the glib talker who will sell your stuff, but will turn on you in an instanct... you hate the person with a passion, but you know the business competing with you has the salesdroid and without them, they win, you lose.

    14. Re:This page should have more comments by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Well, dang, there's a first class assumption and exaggeration right there, no wonder we can't get good editors around this joint: Low expectations!

      Both editors and users have responsibilities. I am well-known to have long railed against slashdot's "editors", often putting the word in quotes as to the left so as to drive my point home — no doubt childishly in the eyes of some. Which is ironic, because the "editors" do their work with crayon. But as a user of a site about technology news, you are responsible for familiarity with common acronyms which relate to technology. The internet may be mankind's greatest achievement, and we discuss internet technologies often here on Slashdot. The web is an internet technology. Search is a critical part of the web, and has been for many years. Optimizing websites for search engine indexing has been done about as long as automated spiders have been constructing their databases. And SEO has long been a well-recognized acronym for this process. It is trivial to find out what SEO means by using Google, or probably even Bing. In short, a reader of slashdot has no excuse for needing to be told by Slashdot what SEO is. They are not only disconnected and thus ignorant, but also lazy.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    15. Re:This page should have more comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please sell us more.

    16. Re:This page should have more comments by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Please sell us more.

      I do SEO by creating original unique content and using meta tags. Not really something you can sell. If someone wants some articles written, they could talk to me about that.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    17. Re:This page should have more comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you like the definition for CEO, how about RAM, CPU and other pesky terms to which no nerd should be expected to know the definition?

    18. Re:This page should have more comments by CCarrot · · Score: 1
      --
      "I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
    19. Re:This page should have more comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because everyone on /. is a web marketer, developer, or designer?

      I had to go look up '/.'

    20. Re:This page should have more comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, things must have changed a lot in the ten years since I let my domains lapse. All I did was provide good content and link buddies, and a search for "quake" always had me close to the top of the results in all the engines.

      You only need SEO if your site sucks. Nobody will come unless they have a reason. The best SEO is lots of people actually wanting to come to your site.

    21. Re:This page should have more comments by idragontech12 · · Score: 1

      If you want, your site increase than you create First on page optimization next you create off page optimization. I have a professional web design & development company and seo services. If you want than We give different services example : web site annalist, web site competition annalist, keyword research, meta tag optimization, image optimization, Alt tag optimization, content optimization, Robot-ex creation, sitemap creation, google index etc, if you want more visitor than you create social media marketing, relative forum posting, social bookmark, relative blog comment, article submission, link wheel and web 2.0 etc. please check my services: http://idragontech.co.uk/

    22. Re:This page should have more comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Very helpful information.
      I appreciate how you emphasize the need of everyone's business to Inbound Marketing and SEO, very impressive. Surely that this awareness might open new and creative talents like you to come out great results.
      I would like to share a website I also learned very helpful amongst your readers cause I believe it can define SEO more both professionals and beginners. It is ColibriTool. I found nice results using http://colibritool.com/ on my free trial account with the website: http://colibritool.com/
      Regards!"

  2. Google, eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Never heard of them, now Bing, Bing is a search engine that I know exists!

    1. Re:Google, eh? by firex726 · · Score: 1

      Let me go check Alta Vista for the address for this... bing

  3. trust me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    SEO is like Voodoo in some sense. It's not measurable because there's too many factors outside your control.
    Is there traffic because the SEO is awesome, or is there traffic anyways. No one knows.

    The only thing an SEO can say for sure is that we can make the proper on-site changes. Without ever
    mentioning the word traffic - because that leads to false hopes.

    1. Re:trust me by pspahn · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, it's mostly snake oil, but there is something to be said for properly implemented schema.org tags, well formed page names, and the rest of the stuff that makes your site not only bubble higher in the search results, but also provide useful links within your search results.

      And by the way, you can indeed quantify SEO improvements. The only problem is that the SEO guy usually doesn't know how and ends up asking a developer anyway.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    2. Re:trust me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      SEO is the modern day snake oil salesman. Give me money and I'll give you this magical thing.

    3. Re:trust me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL Snake oil... maybe now but not about a year ago... :) SENuke really kicked the shit out of google lol

    4. Re:trust me by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

      How is it not measurable, you either go up or down in relevant search results. Anyway amusing as this story is, I have a hunch that almost all of the SEO spam has nothing to do with SEO, but is rther people trying to social engineer access to servers for viral distribution purposes.

    5. Re:trust me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SEO is the modern day snake oil salesman. Give me money and I'll give you this magical thing.

      Aside from all the stuff that actually is snake oil by the original meaning of the term, like health supplements, herbal treatments for ED, crystals, etc., there's a pretty huge market for what could be termed modern snake oil:

      All forms of marketing; SEO is just the spammiest and it's one we've heard of.

      Psychology: "your fear of spiders seems to be an acute case of arachnaphobia."

      Consumer electronics: "these gold plated plugs make the sound twice as gooder, and these hopelessly obsolete amps will make it sound "warmer."

      Automotive: "this isn't just carpet cleaner, it's *automotive* carpet cleaner. Oh, and you want fuel for your truck? I know it's identical to heating oil, but we paid the government a lot of money to force you to buy it as diesel."

      Computer emspeedeners, "tune your registry and defrag your hard disk!" and anything computer security related.

  4. I guess they saw Google.com's bing rating? by mysidia · · Score: 2

    It is true, that searching for other search engines is a favorite way your average end user utilizes to access other search engines. So Google's SEO / ranking across other search engines is pretty important.

    (Obviously; this is essential to their core business, and they won't leave this to an outside contracter )

  5. News for nerds, stuff that matters by Swampash · · Score: 4, Funny

    Next up: Slashdot reveals that some of those billionaire Nigerian princes aren't actually real!

    1. Re:News for nerds, stuff that matters by splutty · · Score: 1

      I think it would be far more shocking if Slashdot would reveal that some of those billionaire Nigerians *are* actually real.

      Now wouldn't that throw a spanner in the spammer.

      --
      Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
    2. Re:News for nerds, stuff that matters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Of course some of them are real! I got an email from one promising me 10% cut on $5bn he was trying to pass on to a relative in my country, and so I said to myself "whatever, I got nothing anyway, so let's just go for it" and he did good on his promise! Now I'm rich and you can be too! Just send me your credit card details and I'll pass them on to the same guy who send me all that money...

  6. Well, there is some logic to it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    If you search for "web search" on Google, you get some "websearch.com" as top result, then wiki entry on web search, then Yahoo and lots of other shitty/scammy looking pages like mywebsearch, Google is nowhere in sight.

    Searching for "search" gives, in order, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter's search, search.com, Dogpile, Wikipedia and even AOL. Google's search is on second page.

    Damn right they can't SEO for shit!

    PS: Searching for "search" on Bing gives Google as top detailed result with links to subsites.

    1. Re:Well, there is some logic to it. by AbsGeekNZ · · Score: 3

      searching for "search" on nz.bing.com gives Google as the 5th result....bing no where to be seen!

    2. Re:Well, there is some logic to it. by wvmarle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Then they give good results. If I use a search engine to search for search engines, I'm not interested in the search engine I'm searching with to show in the search results, as I found that one already. So that's six searches in one sentence :-)

    3. Re:Well, there is some logic to it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, FFS! Everyone knows you do not, under any circumstances, google Google! Don't do it, the internet itself will collapse in a recursive that will never reach its stop condition. You have been warned! Don't do it!

      OTOH, you may yahoo Google, bing Yahoo and google Bing. Those are fine.

      And, be thankful we live in simple times, because many years ago you would have had to yahoo Altavista, altavista Lycos, lycos Webcrawler, webcrawled Excite, excited about porn...and, er, huh? what was I talking about?

    4. Re:Well, there is some logic to it. by wwalker · · Score: 1

      If you google google google is 3rd. :)

    5. Re:Well, there is some logic to it. by mysidia · · Score: 1

      Oh, FFS! Everyone knows you do not, under any circumstances, google Google! Don't do it, the internet itself will collapse in a recursive that will never reach its stop condition. You have been warned! Don't do it!

      That used to be the case, but I heard Google's MapReduce engine finally came up with an answer; google for google, and the answer will be 42

      Or rather, "Search instead for googol"

  7. Oh, the irony by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0, Troll

    Imagine. A Google exec getting inappropriate targeted marketing messages and complaining about it on his blog.

    I'd like to be the first to say, fuck him and his evil ass company.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  8. Props, though. by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Funny

    The spammer managed to get ahold of a real human inside Google. No small feat.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    1. Re:Props, though. by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Funny

      The machine learning researcher in me feels this comment is overly presumptuous and possibly discriminatory.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  9. SEO is necessariy evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately SEO like laywers are necessary evils.

  10. This is a non-story by antifoidulus · · Score: 2

    Um, isn't the very definition of a spammer someone who doesn't do their homework, i.e. spams mails out to as many addresses as they can find? I somehow doubt that mail was typed into a mail client and sent specifically to Google. Some spambot harvested a bunch of info and then sent emails to everyone it could find. In other news, water is wet.
    I *suppose* you could add a filter to the spambot, but really why? There are only a handful of search engines, and I'm sure the admins have really good spam filters, so you don't gain a whole lot by excluding them.

  11. so i got an SEO phone call.... by acedotcom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    she wanted to boast my rank on google. i asked her how she found my business number and then pointed out that someone had to google it....which means my SEO is just fine. she then hung up.

    --
    they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
    1. Re:so i got an SEO phone call.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I told them that when I needed SEO I would search for it and whichever company ranked highest would get the call.

    2. Re:so i got an SEO phone call.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL She scraped it from yellowpages.com :) along with 10,000 other businesses with their phone # attached

    3. Re:so i got an SEO phone call.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should have asked her how to make big letters like they taught in first grade.

    4. Re:so i got an SEO phone call.... by bytessaver · · Score: 0

      I think, slashot.org is very important site for seo. slashot.org give different service. You want google rank than you create slashot account. please see my site..http://idragontech.co.uk/

  12. Maybe he can raise Google's ranking on Bing? by swillden · · Score: 1

    Maybe the SEO guy wants to help Google get a higher ranking on Bing, Baidu, etc.? I mean, I just googled "Web Search" on Bing and Google was #7 on the list. That's not good!

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    1. Re:Maybe he can raise Google's ranking on Bing? by CraigStolly · · Score: 1

      Lol, God help the person who needs help from other search engines to discover the existence of Google.

    2. Re:Maybe he can raise Google's ranking on Bing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's interesting. When I did it, Google was #2, and Bing was in #7.

    3. Re:Maybe he can raise Google's ranking on Bing? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Lol, God help the person who needs help from other search engines to discover the existence of Google.

      I'm disappointed that no one responded to my use of "google" as a verb when describing searching on Bing to find Google.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  13. gmail are evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Oh the irony of google and spam. Gmail is the biggest contributor to spam in a different way. They refuse to shutdown the gmail accounts created in their 100,000's each week, which are used to register on forums and blogs that require email activation. just check out stopforumspam.com and you will see that gmail domains total more than the rest of the top 100 spam domains combined. Gmail abuse reporting is pathetic, as are the people at gmail that make the decisions.

  14. well this is coincidence by bitt3n · · Score: 3, Funny

    so google gets an offer for SEO, and shortly thereafter google just happens to appear on slashdot?

    I guess they opted for the budget package.

  15. Google Needs It by VorpalRodent · · Score: 1

    This Google insider obviously doesn't understand the problem.

    I did a Google search for "google", and the Google homepage showed up 7th on the list (under some news articles and links to Maps and Analytics). Clearly Google doesn't know what they're doing, and needs to use better SEO so that Google will rank them higher.

    The bottom line is - if Google showed up higher in the Google search results, more people would use Google.

    --
    Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
  16. What caused it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As this example shows, the ones selling these services haven't done ANY research. What makes you think that they researched a method that works on search engines?

    If it does go up, for whatever reason (e.g. someone else goes down), they take credit for it.

    If it goes down, they either tell you to buy more of it because you cheaped out, or go off to another sucker, because what are you going to do? Phone the police?

  17. Why it's unnecessary by pellik · · Score: 1

    I just checked, and google is the #1 result for search on bing.

  18. I work at a web host... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... :P

    SEO Spam, auto-blogs, scrapers, trackback spammers, etc. It all needs to die. It's a scourge of the internet (one of many). The asshats that bathe in this diarrhea effectively dilute search engine results, sometimes to the point of preventing you from actually finding what you're looking for. Oh yes, and since they typically know little to nothing about computers or how the internet actually works, they beat the tar out of our servers. They cause issues for hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, for the gain of pennies.

    SEO Abusers, auto-bloggers, etc. :: You're driven by greed, and now, there's not enough novelty left to go around (this wasn't your doing; I wouldn't expect you could achieve something of that magnitude). Go away; the internet did not ask for you, and does not want you.

  19. Because everybody is a spam recipient by billstewart · · Score: 1

    Yes, SEO is a business term. The technical term for it is "lying to search engine robots so they'll tell people your page is more interesting than it actually is."

    There are other people who can help make your web site more interesting, or make it more accessible to search engine robots. Most of those people call themselves web designers or editors or content specialists or people who've spent 15 minutes reading Google's advice.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks