SE spammers using blogs

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Originally Posted by Chris

But serp spam, email spam, etc all brings in a lower quality of visitor than clicks from a good content site.

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Ok let me get this straight....

Bob #1
Bob #1 searches for "payday loans" in google and visits your great content site full of information and sees your adsense ads that say "apply for loan here" and he clicks it.

Bob #2
Bob #2 searches for "payday loans" only this time a spammy made for adsense site is ranking, and he visits the page. Bob #2 sees an adsensee ad that says "apply for loan here" (exactly what he's looking for) and clicks it.


Care to explain how Bob #1 is a "higher quality" visitor than Bob #2? He's not.. both clicks are targeted and both Bob's got what they were looking for. Either one is JUST AS LIKELY to apply for that loan and convert for that advertiser. It's just easier for white hats to complain when they believe differently :rolleyes:

Bob #3

Bob is searching for football scores, he clicks a site that was cloaked and redirects him to a viagra site. He is intrigued by the ad copy, so he clicks an ad. However, since bob wasn't in viagra buying mood, he just wants to see who won an NFL game, he quickly leaves the advertiser's site.

Bob #4

Bob visits a crap scraper site with nothing but incoherent content and adsense ads. He clicks on an ad, not because he really wants to visit the advertiser's site, but because he is finding nothing of us on the site he is currently on. He eventually leaves and tried Teoma instead of Google.



But like I said, anything that tarnishes the image of the Internet, like spam, will eventually hurt publishers in the pocketbook as consumer confidence in the Internet drops.

You can make sites for adsense, that isn't spam. Spam is duplicate content, cloaking, keyword stuffing, redirects, fake content, or anything else that misrepesents the nature of your site.

yo-yo, perhaps you're not an AdWords user, so maybe you don't get it.

The quality of traffic is different. Using your example, who is more likely to click, bob 1 or bob 2? The answer is bob 2. Why? Because when people surf the web they're naturally looking for a path to get the information they're after. If someone lands on a page full of spammy trash (ie, auto gen articles) they're instantly looking for a way to click off the page to something more interesting, and you can bet the spam site has made the adsense links look like an "inviting escape route"

If I'm an adwords advertiser, do I want people looking for an escape route or do I want someone who's perhaps read a good article on pay day loans and after being informed, then decides to click on the "apply for pay day loans" link? I think you know the answer. It's obvious which one will convert better.

It may sound like I'm being picky here, but when you're dealing with thousands of clicks a day, and each one is costing you $0.50+ a time - these things matter immensely.

This is why many advertisers (including myself) switch off delivery to the content network. This is not good for anyone in the end.

... so yeah, spam sites hurt everyone involved, apart from the spammer.

Hope that helps you see things a little differently.

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Originally Posted by chromate

yo-yo, perhaps you're not an AdWords user, so maybe you don't get it.

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Last month I spent $5,346.00 on Adwords. $3,820.00 of that total was spent on the content network.

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Originally Posted by chromate

It's obvious which one will convert better.

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If both visitors were looking for the same thing then I don't see any difference.

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Originally Posted by chromate

This is why many advertisers (including myself) switch off delivery to the content network. This is not good for anyone in the end.

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That's actually great for me, I'm paying $.25/click average for highly competitive keywords ($35/click bids in overture) on the content network and they're converting excellent.

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Originally Posted by Chris

Bob #3

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I agree - redirects to sites that are untargeted are crap.

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Originally Posted by Chris

Bob visits a crap scraper site with nothing but incoherent content and adsense ads. He clicks on an ad, not because he really wants to visit the advertiser's site, but because he is finding nothing of us on the site he is currently on. He eventually leaves and tried Teoma instead of Google.

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Why would bob click on something he wasn't interested in instead of just hitting the back button...

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Originally Posted by chromate

Spam is duplicate content, cloaking, keyword stuffing, redirects, fake content, or anything else that misrepesents the nature of your site.

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Duplicate content and keyword stuff don't neccessarily misrepresent a site. If I have a site about watches and I have articles (that hundreds of other sites have) about watches, how is that bad? If I stuff keywords that say "watches for sale, great watches, designer watches, etc that is not misrepresenting my site....

I fully agree about redirects and UNTARGETED traffic, that is spam.

I'd have to agree with yo-yo on conversion quality on spam sites. However, there are advertisers who are more concerned about their image and brand than conversions. These are the same type of people who will bid way up beyond unprofitable ppc levels just to be #1 on the serp.

Its really just dependant on what perspective you are looking at it from. As an advertiser, anything that sends you converting traffic is good. As Google, a mixture of both, some blogger pointed out that google is making way more money from spam than they are paying their algorithm guys to get rid of it. From someone building a quality site, they are bad if they are taking your rankings, but not always; I've gotten tons of traffic from these sites that scraped wikipedia's links. As a user, they are good or bad depending on what you are trying to find.

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Originally Posted by yo-yo

If both visitors were looking for the same thing then I don't see any difference.

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That's just the point. They may not be looking for exactly the same thing. I agree if you as an advertiser have exactly what someone is looking for, it doesn't really matter where they click from. But haven't you ever been sidetracked by something? It's a hell of a lot easier to get sidetracked if you're not interested in what you're looking at in the first place, like a page full of spam. So even if you're only mildly interested in the ad, you will probably click anyway. If you search for "pay day loan comparisons" and get a page of comparisons, you're less likely to click the adsense ads than if you get a page of spam.

Mildly interested people don't convert as well as people that're highly interested.

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Originally Posted by yo-yo

That's actually great for me, I'm paying $.25/click average for highly competitive keywords ($35/click bids in overture) on the content network and they're converting excellent.

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Well, good for you. :) But that illustrates the point that most advertisers switch the content network off because generally it doesn't convert as well.

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Originally Posted by chromate

So even if you're only mildly interested in the ad, you will probably click anyway.

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No, I'd probably hit the back button. 99% of the time I search for something in any SE the first result I click on winds up being some sort of spam or junk site, I don't click their ads - I hit back and click the next result.

Of course not everyone is so smart :D

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Originally Posted by chromate

But that illustrates the point that most advertisers switch the content network off because generally it doesn't convert as well.

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There are way too many factors involved to say that "spammy" sites are the reason the content network doesn't convert as well for SOME advertisers.

You have to take into account for :
a) click fraud
b) blending ads to look like regular links
c) the different mind set of someone browsing a web site and someone searching on google

Just imagine how much click fraud gos on every day... that's the REAL problem.

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Why would bob click on something he wasn't interested in instead of just hitting the back button...

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cause bob isn't the brightest internet user. You know there are people who type URLs into search boxes because they don't know they can type directly into the address bar at the top of their browser.

That is true; I see it all the time.

Also people who are so used to certain browsing software, and don't know about the *actual* internet, who believe that you just turn your computer on, type it in, and push enter.

As an AdWords advertiser I hate the idea of rewarding someone for scraping someone else's hard efforts to create a spammy site simply to display AdSense advertising. More times than not I turn off content ads in my AdWords campaigns for this reason alone. If it weren't for SE spammers who use cloaking or site scrapping to show a page consisting of no content and only AdSense ads, I'd be willing to pay a lot more for ads delivered on honest to goodness content sites than I would for ads displayed on search results pages.

I don't care if a SE/AdSense spammer has a child dying from cancer. The SE/AdSense spammer is a cancer them self that is hurting those who are trying to make an honest living and who try to bring real value to the Internet. They are trying to get rich at the expense of other using less than ethical means.

Nothing personal against Nintendo, but I'm thrilled to death that tactics like AWS have collapsed. I'd love nothing more than Google, other SEs and context ad providers to get smart and put an end to SE spammers who create junk pages that display nothing but ads. It would increase the ad revenues for hard working web publishers who try to produce real content. It would also improve the ROI for content advertisers and thus make it more worthwhile for them to spend more of their advertising budget on content ads.

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Originally Posted by KLB

As an AdWords advertiser I hate the idea of rewarding someone for scraping someone else's hard efforts to create a spammy site simply to display AdSense advertising. More times than not I turn off content ads in my AdWords campaigns for this reason alone.

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Are you a business man or a preacher?

I'm in the business of making money, and quite simply (if it isn't illegal) I don't care how they send me targeted visitors. Targeted visitors = money regardless of the method or page that referred it.

You can keep turning them off, and keep letting me increase my ROI by paying them less, thanks!

Just remember, [smart people] work smarter, not harder. ;)

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Originally Posted by yo-yo

Are you a business man or a preacher?

I'm in the business of making money, and quite simply (if it isn't illegal) I don't care how they send me targeted visitors. Targeted visitors = money regardless of the method or page that referred it.

You can keep turning them off, and keep letting me increase my ROI by paying them less, thanks!

Just remember, [smart people] work smarter, not harder. ;)

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To me, scrapper sites are not targeted traffic it is desperate ignorate traffic that is trying to escape a useless site. Have you ever wondered why Google doesn't let us see what content sites are sending us traffic?

I'm not just an AdWords advertiser, I am an AdSense publisher and scraper sites hurt my efforts two ways. They drive down the value of AdSense clicks by generating vast quantities of useless inventory and they increase advertising costs by sending junk leads to me.

Mark my words, if Google had the nerve to really do something about shutting down scraper sites, Advertisers would have a better ROI and publishers would have higher eCPMs. The only ones to lose would be Google and the scraper sites because they wouldn't be making money off of junk clicks.

Certainly little incentive for Google to do anything that would even take a tiny fraction out of its earnings now that its a publicly traded company..

Does anyone have any proof that scraper sites don't convert well for the advertisers? Or are we just assuming?

Google denies us the ability to find proof by not allowing us to know where clicks are coming from. AdSense clicks normally have no referrer information associated with them.

With that said, I'm not looking for lots of clicks, I'm only looking for people who are really interested in my product. It is reasonable to assume that if a page contains nothing but garbage text and AdSense ads disguised to look like a site menu that users are more likely to click on the ads out of confusion and ignorance. This makes these clicks much less valuable to me. Besides I don't like the idea of using my advertising dollars to support such scummy tactics that provide no inherent value to users or the Internet.

You would need to do a site targeting campaign to find out. I've heard some people say the content network does well for them, others say it does terrible. Of course this would include both scraper sites and high quality sites.

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Originally Posted by moonshield

Does anyone have any proof that scraper sites don't convert well for the advertisers? Or are we just assuming?

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No, they don't. People like KLB are just mad for several reasons:
a) The spammers are smarter than him
b) make more money than him
c) do it with less effort than him

It's just like if you show up in a shiny new mercedes and a construction worker shows up in his ford escort. He asks what you did to earn that mercedes and you tell him you clicked a few buttons on the internet, meanwhile he's busting his *** 16 hours a day just to put food on the table, do you think that angers him? ;)

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Originally Posted by KLB

To me, scrapper sites are not targeted traffic it is desperate ignorate traffic that is trying to escape a useless site.

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That's funny. I have several traffic equalizer sites that are over a year old. 1 of them makes an average of 15 affiliate sales per month from only 200 or so visits. The affiliate knows exactly where the traffic is coming from, and doesn't seem to mind me making him money :D

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Originally Posted by yo-yo

No, they don't. People like KLB are just mad for several reasons:
a) The spammers are smarter than him
b) make more money than him
c) do it with less effort than him

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Actually I'm mad because some of these spammers are doing it by scraping pages like mine and then creating cloaked pages that feed the scraped content to SEs. In otherwords they are trying to get rich by using other people's work. My hard work contributes something back to the Internet. I provide something of inherent value to the user. I provide something the user wants to use in and of itself.

Spammers create nothing that adds value to the Internet at large. They steal other people's efforts and then create pages that contriibute nothing back to the Internet. All they create is something everyone wants to escape. This is not being smart this is being a thief. Anyone can create this type of crap. It takes real smarts to be able to create something of true value. what spammers do is unethical, immoral and sometimes illegal (e.g. copyright infringment).

The real problem is Google allows this to continue by not giving AdWords advertisers a means of figuring out what sites clicks are coming from so that advertisers can exclude sites they don't like.

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Originally Posted by KLB

My hard work contributes something back to the Internet. I provide something of inherent value to the user. I provide something the user wants to use in and of itself.

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Just like I thought... the hard worker despises those who make more than him without working hard ;)

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Originally Posted by KLB

what spammers do is unethical, immoral and sometimes illegal (e.g. copyright infringment).

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I almost cried that was such a sad story. Unethical, immoral? PLEASE. Since when does Google or a few snobby webmasters decide what is ethical and moral? You have some nerve...

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Originally Posted by KLB

The real problem is...

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The real problem is people like you who are always judging and putting down others you disagree with.

Sounds to me like you're just trying to convince yourself yo-yo.

Cloaking etc is one thing, but scraper sites are a completely different story. It's not "smart" to scrape content from other people's sites. Spammers using these techniques are simply profiting from other people's hard work. That's why they don't need to work hard, because they steal. End of story. It is theft and shouldn't be treated as anything less.

And besides the fact that spammers using these techniques are simply piggy-backing off of other people's hard work, who says that an ethical web publisher has to work so much harder than a spammer? There are many people, myself included, that have been earning a good income through very little work. In fact, last year I barely touched my sites at all. It was like a year long holiday. (Not something I'm proud of!) Recently, I've hardly done anything apart from pay for other people to write content for me.

So yeah, it's not like I'm working hard, but I still manage to create sites without spamming and stealing. Meanwhile I have to constantly search for spam sites that steal my content because they're too lazy or inept to produce their own.

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Originally Posted by chromate

It's not "smart" to scrape content from other people's sites. Spammers using these techniques are simply profiting from other people's hard work. ... It is theft and shouldn't be treated as anything less.

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Really, so you're not complaining about Google listing your URL, title, and description - but you're worried about other sites doing it... :rolleyes:

Think it through a bit - that's an awful comparison.

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Originally Posted by yo-yo

Really, so you're not complaining about Google listing your URL, title, and description - but you're worried about other sites doing it... :rolleyes:

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No I don't mind if people display a link to my pages with a very brief description of the page. In fact I encourage this by providing suggested link text and descriptions. What I take issue with is people who scrape large sections of my pages and then feed this to SEs via cloaking so that they can feed users advertising laden pages.

There is a difference between providing a directory site that links to other websites or creating a page of unique content that then references another site and scraping the content of someone else's website in an effort to create keyword rich pages that are fed to search engines. There is absolutly no comparison between how Google indexes websites and provides search results and how spammer's employ scraping to produce garbage pages full of advertising.

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Originally Posted by chromate

Think it through a bit - that's an awful comparison.

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Is it?

The most famous scraping program (traffic equalizer for those of you under a rock) does what? IT SCRAPES SEARCH ENGINES. All they do is take the kw's and grab the top 10 results from google or yahoo, and list them on their pages.. just like yahoo or google do when you type the kw in.

So again... it's fine and dandy for google to come index your content, and get rich off displaying it on their site, but it's not ok for someone else to take that same description and url and use it for their site?

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Originally Posted by yo-yo

So again... it's fine and dandy for google to come index your content, and get rich off displaying it on their site, but it's not ok for someone else to take that same description and url and use it for their site?

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Nice of you to completely ignore my post that expanded upon what Chromate said.

Once again: I don't think anybody has any problem with a site that is trying to be a search engine or directory and links to sites and provides descriptions of a similar length as Googles provided the site's bots obey the robots.txt file and all caching instructions. What we have problems with are sites that: employ bots that disobey the robots.txt file and caching instructions; scrape long sections of text (more than the brief descriptions provided by Google, Yahoo or MSN); hide the links to the site or only stick them into a page after a really long section of white space such that users think that the ads are the content of the page and the page contains nothing else.

I honestly didnt read all 5 pages of replies before posting this, in fact I only read the first post.

Anyways, as I frequent black hat seo forums, trust me: few spammers get their adsense banned. The fact is google is a publicly traded corporation and they profit from the clicks... They need SE spammers.

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Originally Posted by g1c9

They need SE spammers.

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No, they don't. Ultimately if the Google SERPs are full of spam, users will eventually just search elsewhere.

It's like saying the world's economy needs terrorists because they blow stuff up and new things have to be made to replace those things. Very "Fifth Element's guy with the head shaved on one side with a plastic thing covering it"-esque idealism.

PS w00t 1500th post

We'll they don't need them, but they do profit immensely from them.

I don't believe that Google actually keeps the money from fraudulent clicks.

If you're not talking about clicks, and are talking about people getting to the top of SE results from spamming then you're just plain wrong.

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Originally Posted by James

I don't believe that Google actually keeps the money from fraudulent clicks.

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Eh? Scraped content has little to do with fraudelent clicks. Anyone with any familiarity of the history of scraped SERP sites will tell you how great that kind of AdSense traffic is at converting. This is very targeted traffic.

Google isn't going to ban people for putting AdSense on scraped content sites, and there is little or virtually no correlation between shady scraping practices and fraudelent click practices.

There are many reasons for people to dislike these kinds of sites and for Google to ban them, but the actual clicks generally tend to be high quality.

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Originally Posted by Kadence

Eh? Scraped content has little to do with fraudelent clicks. Anyone with any familiarity of the history of scraped SERP sites will tell you how great that kind of AdSense traffic is at converting. This is very targeted traffic.

Google isn't going to ban people for putting AdSense on scraped content sites, and there is little or virtually no correlation between shady scraping practices and fraudelent click practices.

There are many reasons for people to dislike these kinds of sites and for Google to ban them, but the actual clicks generally tend to be high quality.

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I tend to agree with these obserations. Scrapped content does not in and of itself lead to fraudlent clicks. By tolerating scraper sites, however, Google is earning profits from blatent copyright infringements.

I've seen an up tick in instances of my content being stolen by scraper sites that use cloaking to hide their activity. The problem is I'm not sure how to address these issues nor am I sure how we could get Google to lower the hammer on scrapper sites as they have a serious conflict of interest in regards to taking actions against such tactics.