Hi Tracy,

It is very unlikely that Google would ever disclose this sort of information - so I don't think you will ever be able to get hold of a report on sites that have been penalised by Google.

Trying to convince someone not to use dubious tactics can be difficult, particularly when they see other sites that seem to getting away with it. Some people will say that if other people are doing it and being successful, then they have to do it too. A case of 'if you can't beat them, join them.'

Some sites manage to 'get away with it' for months or years, and then Google will change its algorithm and the site will drop out of the rankings. There are also sites that have been manually penalised, but Google prefers to let the algorithm sort out the rankings. Of course, it's far from perfect and there are lots of sites that are blatantly getting away with using dubious tactics.

I suppose it's analogous to speeding. You can speed every time you drive, and not be caught for years. You can justify it by saying other people are doing it. However, if you get caught it's you that has to pay the consequences.

Sorry I can't be of any more help.

Cheers,

Daniel

---------------------
Daniel Phillips
Box UK
Internet Development & Consultancy
www.boxuk.com

On 17:03:05 15 January 2004 trohan wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I am wondering if there are any statistics or reports or
>surveys available that would produce legitimate numbers on
>Google sites banned due to illegal SEO activities? I have
>a client who has been approached by a SEO provider who
>wants to insert hidden text etc to increase ranking.
>Apparently this SEO has had amazing results and has had no
>negative effects, that is no sites have been banned. My
>client wants to use these techniques even though I am
>Obviously highly recommending that this is not the way to
>go, but I need ammunition. Any idea of what numbers
>exists for banned sites? What types of sites are targeted
>for illegal SEO activities? Any information would be
>helpful.
>Thanks,
>

Hi Tracy,
I've been trying to get some figures myself, but it varies so much on the keywords (branch) for there to be any useful statistics on spam in the top serps. The online casinos and pharmacys as well as the very commercial keywords such as those in the adult and travel industries, can have as much as 85%-90% of the top 10 using one form of Spam or another. It doesn't confine itself to what is on the page either, nowadays off page spamming in the form of link popularity built from blog, guestbook, link farm and forum spamming, is just as likely to get a top position as someone hiding text.
It is a case at the moment of many webmasters believing the ole saying 'if you cant beat them, lets join them'. It doesnt have to be that way though.

You can optimize and get top results without spamming. It takes more effort and expertise to do so for sure, and may well cost a client more than a doorwaypage generation merchant will charge, but you can sleep at night AND still be top. Sadly there are not many SEO companies left that offer such a service. A good idea when chosing a company, is to take a look at www.seoconsultants.com. They have a directory which is very carefully editted and only 'white hat' SEO companies get in there (they are very strict). Chosing any of the companies in their directory should give you a good nights sleep once the job is done.
Another analogy for chosing 'black hat' SEO is taking a months revenue to the Casino. Don't gamble unless you can afford to lose it. If your business revolves around online income then it is foolish to gamble on it unnecessarily. Unfortunately, getting a new domain is so cheap nowadays, many webmasters are willing to take the risk (those with zero branding and crummy sites in the firs tplace normally), especially when they see Googles spam filters failing and the top 10 so clearly full of spam sites.

Suggest to your boss that you should pick a company from seoconsultants.com and have some peace of mind. I am in no way related to SEOconsultants btw. (although my company is listed there).

Good luck.
Alan

>> Chosing any of the companies in their directory should give you a good nights sleep once the job is done.

Re SEOConsultants, whilst it is true that those who appear in it do meet their standard, bear in mind that non-inclusion should not necessarily be seen as a "black mark". A lot of very good SEO outfits, both US and UK, are not listed for reasons I've been into before

>Apparently this SEO has had amazing results and has had no
>negative effects, that is no sites have been banned.

The missing word in this sentence is "yet". If they are manipulating Google, one day they will be caught, and as many sites as can be ID'd will be binned by the Big G. If you client is interested solely in short term gain for throwaway domains, taking a punt on some Black Hat techniques can produce staggering results. If its long term (more than 6 months) traffic growth he needs, then he should avoid them like the proverbial plague

Avoid this one like the plague Tracy. Yes it sounds promising, easy and almost full proof. I bet they've even got examples of sites that are currently getting great rankings with it and everything

The thing you need to remember is that it’s working on borrowed time, and when that borrowed time is up, the curtains will come down, and you’ll be back to square one at best, and at worst receive anything from 1 to 6 month penalty during which all your listings from the domain will be removed from the Google database.

This illicit practise boils down to what search engines call cloaking…showing different content to the user to what you would show a spider, and you can read Google’s public policy on this at http://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html#cloaking. You can also see that this practise comes under their spam criteria at www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Do they enforce it…? Hell yes. In fact even mis-implementing something that can look like this practise will invite the attention of a spam filter, and I can assure you that I know this first hand.

Alas there are no official figures on the penalisation of websites, and it is largely anecdotal, and the most people know about being banned is when their rankings and traffic mysteriously disappear, and all their wailings are met with auto-response emails from Google.

Although that said, we have been involved in a direct Spam notification and appeal incident directly with Google in the US where a client received a genuine personal notification direct from Google in San Francisco, that their activity had inflicted them a penalty and could they explain themselves. Hugely rare to get such an email, but they are a top client of Google’s ad services, so may be membership does have its privileges. Anyway….this is for us, conclusive proof that they take these things quite seriously, and will vent their wrath on even the biggest kids in the playground. Suffice to say the appeal process was handled very well, and they were re-admitted in a matter of days.

The lesson? Stay clean, do SEO the proper way. Yes granted It’ll likely cost more to do a proper job, and it might take a tad longer too….but you’ll climb higher, stay there longer, drive more sales, and what’s more… no one will be able to touch you.

I can assure you conclusively that there is nothing more disheartening, than coming in one morning to find your Google rankings (worth £1.2 million in monthly sales to one of our clients) …have vanished without a trace.

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Greenlight

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On 17:02:24 22 February 2004 Virtuad wrote:

>Surely this is normal practise?

I think you might want to read this - http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Specifically:

"Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. "

--

Flash has its purpose in life but it does not mean that it can substitute _normal_ HTML based website.

The way I see it you have a timebomb ticking but you don't know the timer settings.

regards,

Alex