“In my opinion, this is partly the fault of Google, which seems to value content over links.”
wreckage list
Google is under siege from search engine optimization (SEO) spammers who exploit flaws in the search engine to rank tons of junk pages, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of keywords each. search engine journal I will report.
“In my opinion, this is also Google’s fault for seeming to value content over links,” marketing consultant Bill Hartzer told the site.
The issue was first discovered this week by SEO expert Lily Ray.in X-Post to previous TwitterShe pointed out that a search for “Craigslist used auto Parts” only returns two results from Craigslist, overwhelmingly spam pages. (Ironically, searching for this exact phrase now returns Ray’s post as the first result.)
and SEJ It points out that many of the domains on spam pages were recently registered. As entrenched SEO tactics become more sophisticated, and emerging technologies such as generative AI make it easier to carry out these schemes and increase the scale at which they can be carried out, the vicious speed of attacks has further raised concerns about Google’s capabilities. Masu.
As of Thursday, searching for other Craigslist-related questions still shows some junk results toward the bottom, but not as many as described in the initial report. It’s unclear how many other search terms are still significantly affected, but this builds on the general perception that not all Google search results are doing well.
spam war
Search engines have long relied on backlinks, or links that lead from one website to another, to rank results. Having a lot of backlinks from reputable websites basically tells services like Google that your webpage is worth showing.
But with the right tricks, spammers no longer need to rely on these coveted signifiers.according to SEJSpammers instead exploit so-called long-tail keywords (basically long phrases of very specific keywords that are rarely searched for) to boost the rankings of their pages.
Their specificity means there are fewer competing results, so spammers take advantage of this by creating countless junk pages created just to serve these unpopular keywords.
Spam attacks also exploit local search mechanisms, which filter based on a user’s geographic location. In addition to spamming the long tail, junk pages may pretend to be servicing random locations in order to further boost their rankings.
Hartzer investigates the footprints left behind by spammers I created a link graph This reveals how intricately connected many of these junk websites are to each other. Based on his findings, these keywords appear to be driving spam attacks.
“This pretty much confirms the fact that everything is done by content, not by links,” Hartzer said. I wrote to X.
in Replying to another thread Danny Sullivan, head of Google Search, said the issue was “under consideration.”
Sure, Google will wipe out this spam attack as usual, but it’s a seemingly never-ending war of attrition that’s only going to get harder to fight.
Learn more about Google: Man is horrified that someone used AI to rewrite all his content and republish it with new errors