Google Is Supporting Link Farms

[milkmanuk]

Freelacer.com and sites like this are full of cheap mass content writers from India advertising their services. Not to mention the amount of people using sites like these to get thousands of low quality spun articles. If this is the case why hasn't Google banned it from its searches?

 

[ScottB]

Google tries to automate its filtering process, so some sites don't get caught easily (and others who shouldn't be caught, are). Google for "Google update Panda" for some more info on the recent Google update which was aimed at deprioritising low quality sites in the index.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

So google should ban freelancer because they provide people who write content? So all the other freelancers who do NOT write content should be banned anyhow, because they use freelancer to find clients.

Not as easy as it appears is it

 

[milkmanuk]

It is that simple. Freelancer is one of the biggest suppliers of terrible content, it threatens the web. If you look closely at these freelancer sites 90% of the people on it are offering black hat SEO services. So what if some are playing by the rules.. I didn't support the war but i'm still paying for it.

 

[thetime22]

It is that simple. Freelancer is one of the biggest suppliers of terrible content, it threatens the web. If you look closely at these freelancer sites 90% of the people on it are offering black hat SEO services. So what if some are playing by the rules.. I didn't support the war but i'm still paying for it.

You actually raise a really good point.. Google hates link farms so why aren't they cutting off the suppliers that are providing this? Never thought of it that way.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Freelacer.com and sites like this are full of cheap mass content writers from India advertising their services. Not to mention the amount of people using sites like these to get thousands of low quality spun articles. If this is the case why hasn't Google banned it from its searches?

Why should it?

Is it offering something that's immoral? Is it taking money for a service and then doing a runner?

If someone wants crap content, they can buy crap content. No laws are being broken.

It's up to Google - and other search engines - to decide how to rank sites to avoid crap. Which they're trying to do algorithmically.

Are they perfect at it? No. Are they getting bettter? Probably.

Steve

 

[directmarketingadvice]

You actually raise a really good point.. Google hates link farms so why aren't they cutting off the suppliers that are providing this? Never thought of it that way.

By the same logic, Google hates link spam and link buying, so why doesn't Google ban all sites offering SEO services?

I'm not saying all SEOs do dodgy linking, but then no-one is saying everyone on freelancer is offering poor quality articles.

Steve

 

[Spock]

Totally agree with Leeky, I've used web and graphic developers on Freelancer in the past and they have been very good. Just because there are other services on offer doesn't mean the whole site should be penalised.

 

[thetime22]

Looks like they already are being pushed down by Google.. If you google freelance SEO or outsource SEO they are nowhere to be seen.

 

[fisicx]

If you look closely at these freelancer sites 90% of the people on it are offering black hat SEO services.

So which law are they breaking? What bit of legislation refers to any sort of SEO?

Google has defined its own guidelines. They are not legally binding and you can choose to ignore then if you wish.

If Google want to ban a site they can do so. If they don't want to ban a site that's up to them.

If they introduced a rule to ban all milk related sites then that's up to them as well and there is nothing you can do about it.

 

[unet]

Google is clamping down on spun content and link farms but its a losing battle. Obiously seo is big business and people want shortcuts in attaining a ranking on their business. you cant blame them

 

[directmarketingadvice]

If Google want to ban a site they can do so. If they don't want to ban a site that's up to them.

And one of the good things is that they don't tend to ban sites - unless those sites either appear to be doing something dishonest or are breaking google's t&C directly.

And I, for one, am glad that's how they operate.

Better that than have them going through sites deciding who is "worthy" of being in the index and who isn't, based on their own preferences.

(Or, even worse, based on their own self-interest.)

Steve

 

[milkmanuk]

So basically we can conclude that if you have a link farm you will be banned. But if you supply the link farms you are ok because "they don't just supply link farms, they provide good things too". Interesting...

 

[thetime22]

So basically we can conclude that if you have a link farm you will be banned. But if you supply the link farms you are ok because "they don't just supply link farms, they provide good things too". Interesting...

Damn your good at arguing, you sure your not a lawyer?

 

[milkmanuk]

Why should it?

Is it offering something that's immoral? Is it taking money for a service and then doing a runner?

If someone wants crap content, they can buy crap content. No laws are being broken.

It's up to Google - and other search engines - to decide how to rank sites to avoid crap. Which they're trying to do algorithmically.

Are they perfect at it? No. Are they getting bettter? Probably.

Steve

You could make an arguement that link farms are immoral. Yes.

 

[fisicx]

You could make an arguement that link farms are immoral. Yes.

No. They aren't immoral any more than link pages that people used to have on the their websites.

If you register your site on a directory to give it a ranking boost then you are breaking the google guidelines - should we ban your site?

 

[SearchBlogger]

I don't think it's a good idea to ban an entire site because some of the people on it are supplying poor content. It's a much better idea to punish the sites that go on to publish this poor quality work.

 

[Andy_Smith]

Googles Panda update from what I've heard is aimed at not only lowering the domain rank of these types of sites, but also penalising sites linked to from them. Also I think that sites that have links from low authority sites will get penalised a bit.

 

[Andy_Smith]

*when I say penalised I mean it will have an adverse effect on page ranking and page authority.

 

[eventdomain]

I used to love Google and Co, the web was fairly clean and easy to find the info - now its just a mess of crapola the poor searcher must wade through to find worthy sites of interest.

It's up to Google - and other search engines - to decide how to rank sites to avoid crap

The crapola is still there - it hasn't gone anywhere, its not been removed, thus it hasn't been dealt with by the top 3 engines. Bots are easy to program, this huge 'web clutter' situation could have been avoided with a bit of thinking.




http://www.kellysearch.co.uk a great example of how things should be done with search.

 

[cmcp]

I know there's a big boohoo from the SEO chaps on here about Google over-engineering it's SERPS but I've always found relevant results and actually find the local, maps, news etc options quite handy.

It's rare that I get irrelevant (crappola?) results from Google.

http://www.kellysearch.co.uk a great example of how things should be done with search.

Great?

 

[eventdomain]

Great?

Well, its not full of clutter, and is superior for industry type searches.

Btw, that company is owned by ReedBusiness, same guys who own Caterer.com and Totaljobs Group. I believe the entire group of 80 portals brings in about 5 billion a year.

So, yeah - great is a fitting word.

 

[cmcp]

It's not actually search, is it? It's a directory of a few thousand suppliers. You hardly need to hack the gibson to get relevant results there. Besides, I wouldn't call it a great example of usability, given the result descriptions don't read very well.

I work with search developers who use systems like Verity / Autonomy, complex taxonomies and crazy amounts of data. You're as well comparing apples and oranges if you're going to treat mental algorithms and two bit directories as one and the same.

 

[unet]

hey I love a great link farm - takes all the hard work out of the boring stuff. Just gives you more time to do the thinking out of the box.

nothing wrong with a bit of farming

 

[MASSEY]

By the same logic, Google hates link spam and link buying, so why doesn't Google ban all sites offering SEO services?

I'm not saying all SEOs do dodgy linking, but then no-one is saying everyone on freelancer is offering poor quality articles.

Steve

Any seo that offers link building services is dodgy if we want to really pin point the problem with manipulation of serps.

The intent of the seo is to build links for the client in order to improve organic rank. Against google guidlines.

Which is why i chuckle to myself when the seo's on here say "write great content" they truely are full of it

 

[terryuk]

By the same logic, Google hates link spam and link buying, so why doesn't Google ban all sites offering SEO services?

I'm not saying all SEOs do dodgy linking, but then no-one is saying everyone on freelancer is offering poor quality articles.

Steve

Almost the whole SEO market is built around Google, the more people promote SEO, the more they promote big G.

"We'll get you on Google"

Not Yahoo or Bing.

Google love it, there search gets manipulated 24 hours a day they make money we make money. Everyone who plays there cards right is happy.

 

[Curious]

Maybe G likes a bit of spam (not sure when this article is from btw) - http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/spammers-googles-defensive-line/

 

[I, Brian]

(not sure when this article is from btw)

It's from April 2006.

 

[Esk247]

http://www.kellysearch.co.uk a great example of how things should be done with search.

Thats dreadful though. I can't find anything on there at all. Apart from some out of date companies from 2009 that no longer have websites. http://www.slj.co.uk/ for example.

Google is fine when searching for actual companies, when you have the name of the business, of course it can do that. It falls down a bit when you push the boundaries of the search though e.g. searching news articles, older content, media information or locally based search results as it cannot define certain areas of the UK properly as there are usually two/three towns with the same name..it rarely manages to define between the three.

 

[Curious]

It's from April 2006.

Thanks :redface: Still viable though?

 

[BusinessRookie]

From my own experience, I am a bit bemused at the Google approach of "build your site for user experience, not for search engines" because I've looked at several competitors who occupy top spots for keywords and they use duplicate content and a whole host of rubbish, non-website relavant links (from link farms).

I've started to pay for anchorlinks via articles now and that seems to help. I've also given SocialMonkee a go - 25 free backlinks per day

It seems to have a positive effect. My site content is well developed and I've moved up the rankings quite a long way for some keywords but still not quite at the top. The site content has only been live though since the beginning of January.

I've also managed to have 2 Google local listings for some reason?!