Spam Report Works!!!! Options

[Nadir]

Hi guys,
I reported a spam about 2 weeks ago for a competitor in France that was using doorway pages, hidden text and all kind of spammy techniques to rank well.
I was really annoyed so I reported him to Google with the spam report link and today I checked to see if he was still there and he's definely gone! So I would say that it's worth it to repor a spam, I don't see why someone should rank better just because he uses spam techniques....

[toddieg]

i reported a spam site and labeled it 'jagger2' as matt c suggested... in the past they never worked - this time, it worked w/in the week.

note: i don't report spam normally, but i was asked to do so by someone else...

[JohnMu]

Yep, they're really quick about it at the moment. I also don't normally report spams (lol, would fill more than 24 hrs a day), but some spam-sites are so terribly bad that you really just have to make sure you never see them again, LOL (I'll assume any spam-sites people here make are higher quality :-), heck my 4 yo makes better sites). Google has even been mailing me back about some of the sites I mentioned, gave me a direct mail address for reporting them. Ooops, now I look like a spam-crusader :-). Whatever, I love how they respond and take action on stuff that is really bad!

[randfish]

I've always been torn about spam reporting. I'd much rather outrank a guy naturally before pulling him down for spamming. If I beat them that way, I always wonder to myself how they achieved that position and whether a new competitor could come in and take that space. I'm just picky about being first 100% naturally, I guess.

Not that I take offense to anyone else spam reporting - it's a valid tactic, just not high on my personal list.

[JohnMu]

Rand, for the record, I never do spam reporting for competing sites (though some of them would deserve it) - the ones I report on are sites that have hogged the top slots in the serps for general terms (non-competitive, mostly mom+pop-type sites) and are so far off the scale when it comes to spam that I feel they're taking much more from people who don't know better (those mom+pop sites with good content but bad SEO) and are just out there to catch a cheap $ or 2 from random visitors...

In a competetive area I can see spammy sites sometimes making a fleeting try at being valuable (if only by scraping content from elsewhere); but in areas where the others are mainly "once-weekly or once-monthly webmasters" I think it's just way out of place. Those are the sites I report on, try to give the little guys some air to breathe :-)

[randfish]

Yeah - I could definitely get behind that. I almost long for the days when I operated in smaller circles like that

[2k]

Unlike rand I'm very much of favour with spam reporting. After all, it makes a life lot more easier when you don't have to spend resources on fighting against spam (which in some cases is pretty close to mission impossible).

[sonjay]

Rand, I admire your attitute about "being first 100% naturally" but I diverge from your stance on the reporting of spam. Trying to beat the spammers is like competing in a footrace when your opponents are using steroids, and there's nothing natural about that. To me, "being first naturally" necessarily implies that we're all subject to the same rules, and winning means winning honestly against others who are all subject to the same rules.

Not trying to convince you to start reporting spam! Just raising a different POV.

[Foghorn]

I've never submitted a spam report because I feel it's a little akin to tattling on your neighbor and most spam techniques can be easily overcome with a few more links.

In any event it looks to me as if Google is counting on SEO's as defacto employees, as of late. It started with GG at WMW and now with Matt's blog Google's trying to convince SEO's that they are on our side when everything that we do is somehow attempting to manipulate their results.

Now that they have some confidence they say that 100% of the spam reports from J3 were personally reviewed when it was widely reported to be a total waste of time to even fill out the report in the past few months.

Those that have the toolbar installed already provide them with their browsing habits, now they're counting on spam reports to help them clear up their results and some apparantly are giving them access to all their visitor data with the analytics.

I'd be careful who I'm sleeping with.

[toddieg]

my take on spam reporting is 'if i don't do it, someone else will'
better to use my time optimizing my own site for the long haul and eventually the spam will be weeded out.

[GeoffreyF67]

I don't report spam sites nor do I ever plan to.

However, for those that do, I'll give you fair warning...

If you continue to do so and I see that the problem is getting worse, I can only say that I'll have to go to war with ya I won't reveal the tactics I'd choose but I already know what I'd do if it got too bad!

Right now, however, I look at it a different way...as long as you're out there trying to take down spam sites, that's that much more time I've got to optimize my systems to rank even higher than yours

It's kinda like trying to take out a warlord in Iraq...soon as you do, another one will pop in to fill his place. It's like a big fun game of whack a mole

G-Man

[2k]

However, for those that do, I'll give you fair warning...
If you continue to do so and I see that the problem is getting worse,, I can only say that I'll have to go to war with ya...It's like a big fun game of whack a mole

g-man, this is just giving in return each their fair share (in the spirit of thanksgiving). You see, us whitehats also like whacking the mole

[GeoffreyF67]

Hahahha - yeah, I'm like the groundhog in that Bill Murray movie tho

G-Man

[bragadocchio]

In any competitive field on the web, I think one should keep in mind that any of their competitors may feel that making a spam report is a reasonable thing to do, and will send an email to Google or Yahoo! without tossing and turning at night over whether or not it was the right thing to do.

[JohnMu]

I wonder -- does the webmaster get any sort of notification if a spam report is made? For instance, say someone tags my legit sites as spam because they don't like me, does Google (+co) notify me about that? Or do they check first? (and then notify?) or do they just ban from the serps? (forever?)

I know I'm probably just dreaming, but it would be a fair thing to be able to contest a spam-report and have a chance to prove that the site is legitimate before Google pulls down the knife, but then again, I bet they have better things to do than listen to some webmasters begs for mercy.... (I just wondered if my sites have ever been reported as spam and/or if Google has spoken a ban on them... for micro-sites with few regulars I would not even notice..)

It would be interesting to have a small insight in the way these things are processed at a major search engine :-)

PS G-Man, I would never report one of YOUR sites :-)))

[GeoffreyF67]

LOL softplus

Actually, I think they have someone review the spam reports before they actually ban the sites.

Google loves to make a bit hubulu about their mighty algorithm but it takes a lot of people behind that algorithm to pull it off

G-Man