Why Google allows target.com to spam search results(goodroi.com)
goodroi.com
Why Google allows target.com to spam search results
http://www.goodroi.com/why-google-allows-target-com-to-spam-results/
8 comments
A guy posted a "fictional" link to a search for "jon payne is so hot" on target website in the comments:
http://www.target.com/gp/search/188-1977530-4602238?field-ke...
Soon enough, the search for "jon payne is so hot" on google returns target as top result.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=jon+payne+is+so+hot&ie...
http://www.target.com/gp/search/188-1977530-4602238?field-ke...
Soon enough, the search for "jon payne is so hot" on google returns target as top result.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=jon+payne+is+so+hot&ie...
Could not find target website in the results anymore. Either this was intentionally removed for being a hot topic or (imho more likely from what i have seen) google generally gives new content "opportunity window" on first page where if it to generate sufficient click throughs it gets buried; what you witnessed could have been that.
Also humorous, on these search results:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:target.com+We+could+not+...
the top result is:
"Anal Massage for Lovers Vol 2 : Target Search Results"
:|
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:target.com+We+could+not+...
the top result is:
"Anal Massage for Lovers Vol 2 : Target Search Results"
:|
I would go as far to say any results page which is the result of an in site search should be removed, rarely if ever have I found any value from these pages through google.
I disagree with this as an absolute.
Google will often show cooks.com search results for a search for "X X recipe," and these are typically the correct result, showing a dozen similar recipes for the dish I'm looking to cook.
Google will often show cooks.com search results for a search for "X X recipe," and these are typically the correct result, showing a dozen similar recipes for the dish I'm looking to cook.
Are these pages being served up as 404s ? If not, that sucks. If yes, why would Google diligently index a 404 and strongly rank it?
Unfortunately they are served as 200 OKs (see http://tinyurl.com/yzca7ec)
I'm not really 'up' on involved rules with respect to web programming / interfacing with Apache, but is it standard practice to return a 404 when your search finds no hits? Technically it's not a 'page not found.'
It would require extra programming, so is not done unless you think of it/get a special request for it.
Should you use a 404? I could see arguments both ways. A "no results" result, is still a result. So it's not a 404.
I would do a 404 if you try to link to a product that does not exist, but not for a zero results found page.
BTW madars don't use url shorteners here - even for really long ones.
Should you use a 404? I could see arguments both ways. A "no results" result, is still a result. So it's not a 404.
I would do a 404 if you try to link to a product that does not exist, but not for a zero results found page.
BTW madars don't use url shorteners here - even for really long ones.
It really should have a
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>
in the header. That's the proper way to not allow a page to be indexed.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>
in the header. That's the proper way to not allow a page to be indexed.
Google doesn't, so I'm not sure that they can hold it against others.
Which is spam, even if well intended.
When you search google for some random term that doesn't exist, does it send back a 404? No.
Interesting: this story is apparently of enough concern that when i serch for "Exercise Bike Clearance" I get mostly articles talking about Target spamming Google.
[deleted]
how hard is it really, for Google to add
if "we are sorry we couldn't find" + searchquery then nofreetrafficforyou
I mean there are only a dozen or so ways for people say "we are sorry we tricked you into coming to our site with fake content", surely a company the size of Google can do a fix for this. Would eliminate overnight 90% of all those crappy fake search results
if "we are sorry we couldn't find" + searchquery then nofreetrafficforyou
I mean there are only a dozen or so ways for people say "we are sorry we tricked you into coming to our site with fake content", surely a company the size of Google can do a fix for this. Would eliminate overnight 90% of all those crappy fake search results
Now you have two problems..
But that's not really feasible for 100+ languages, not to mention character sets, etc. Editorial doesn't really scale for Google at all.
For many of the smaller languages (i.e., outside the top 20 or so) Google only employs at most one native speaker who's tasked to work on search quality.
For many of the smaller languages (i.e., outside the top 20 or so) Google only employs at most one native speaker who's tasked to work on search quality.
but they only need to cover 1 language, English. EVERY SINGLE "fake" page I've seen was in English.
Big brands have more links and more trustworthy websites referring to them
Here's something I don't get: where the hell are there links to target.com? I sure have never seen one...
Here's something I don't get: where the hell are there links to target.com? I sure have never seen one...
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http://www.ta...
is a better source, it shows 3.1mm incoming links...
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http://www.ta...
Shows that only 267k are from outside sources. Target is getting the credit of internal link structure from all their other pages. </educated guess>
is a better source, it shows 3.1mm incoming links...
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http://www.ta...
Shows that only 267k are from outside sources. Target is getting the credit of internal link structure from all their other pages. </educated guess>
If that were true, this would be the best-ranked site in the universe:
http://ianab.com/trillion/1.html
Except that those trillion pages have little incoming links ~ so they have no "juice" or "pageRank" to pass. Target has 267k incoming links then redistributes that via internal links / a while ago people started "link sculpting" using 'no-follow' in the link <ahref> to take all the homepage link juice and pass it to what they perceived as their better converting pages.. but google has since come out and said that wasn't a good thing to do...
Right. Having extra pages, versus extra content, is not specifically beneficial. If that were the case, other sites would fill themselves with specious stuff like empty search results pages.
Hah! Good call.
I wish I could dig up the source, but someone claimed that Google was issued a patent for a method of using editorial preference in their ranking algorithm. The guess is that they use it to give preference to large brand-name websites. In general, this is understandable, when you're entering shopping queries in google the national brands are more relevant than their horrible business-unit-based website organization would normally have them rank. And, as the article points out, there are exceptions.
"Imagine if each page generates just one visitor each day"
Yes, just imagine that! While we're at it we could even imagine that each page generates 6 billion visitors a day. How bad would that be???
Looks like a flaw in Target's site. Not news. Not interesting. Not anything
Yes, just imagine that! While we're at it we could even imagine that each page generates 6 billion visitors a day. How bad would that be???
Looks like a flaw in Target's site. Not news. Not interesting. Not anything
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-spam-illuminates-the-algos...
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-rankings-algorithm-ha...