[HN Gopher] The top-ranking HTML editor on Google is an SEO scam
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The top-ranking HTML editor on Google is an SEO scam
Author : caspii
Score : 252 points
Date : 2021-06-07 21:35 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (casparwre.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (casparwre.de)
| didip wrote:
| The old Google would have hunted these down mercilessly (Panda
| update in 2011). What happened to Google these days?
| shanecleveland wrote:
| Could it be that Scorecounter is paying for their links to be
| embedded, as opposed to them being the owner/developer of both
| sites? If so, and provable, can they be flagged in some way?
|
| Doesn't say much for Google's ability to determine relevancy in
| linking or recognizing suspicious link growth. Or perhaps it just
| takes some time ...
| dstick wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, paying for links is still very much
| against Google's policies. Whatever weight that should carry...
| in my opinion you should always try to be as independent from
| Google as possible. It's such a huge liability.
| shanecleveland wrote:
| Clearly. But I guess it is not outright proven that they are
| technically buying links. Though they would likely fall under
| some form of bad behavior in Google's eyes.
|
| And, buying or otherwise, I am not sure what the mechanism is
| for bringing this to Googles attention.
|
| I doubt there is another acquisition channel for a project
| like this that would compare to SEO (and not just Google).
| qeternity wrote:
| I have little to no experience in SEO. Does Google have a history
| of weighing in on situations like this and manually penalizing
| bad actors? If so, I would love a link to read about.
| cocoafleck wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-...
| I'm sure that the title tells you that the article has an
| opinion (not unbiased), but I think it is a useful source.
| jboynyc wrote:
| Here you go: https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
| silviot wrote:
| They state that they don't manually pick results, but improve
| their algorythms to solve these problems. They prefer to share
| the least amount of details though, since it would better
| inform SEO spammers.
| RileyJames wrote:
| I agree with some of the other comments, googles actions on SEO
| are always shrouded in a little "algorithmic" mystery. That
| said, they do apply "manual action" penalties to individual
| websites.
|
| Using google search console you can determine if a manual
| action has been applied to your own website:
| https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en
|
| Rather than determine the ranks, these actions remove / punish
| offending websites from the ranks, effectively making room for
| 'good' actors.
|
| Manual actions often come after a a significant change in
| ranking algorithm or policy, and can be reverted / resolved in
| some cases. This usually requires removing or disavowing (in
| the case of unauthorized or unresponsive sites) the links
| pointing to a website.
| lumpa wrote:
| Amazing how such a simple approach can achieve content injection
| on a diverse network of unrelated websites, to the point of
| raising the profile of the vector and increasing the chances of
| further spread.
|
| I hope someone figures out which other campaigns were run with
| these tools. Also, whether you can find output with the link
| injections in source code, like on GitHub or distro packages.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Several points; the title is slightly misleading, i initially
| thought (in my ignorance) that OP was referring to a company
| employee, also this article is surprisingly open in 'naming and
| shaming' his competitor.
| caspii wrote:
| Yikes, should I have shown more discretion in naming the
| competitor?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No. People should name-and-shame more often in these sorts of
| scenarios.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| You know better then me. But i hope that since what you are
| saying is easily provable there shouldn't be any problem at
| all. Nice article, by the way.
| caspii wrote:
| Thanks. I think it is.
| ilamont wrote:
| Same story for various Wordpress plugins and widgety things that
| live in site footers.
|
| Google has turned into a cesspool. Half the time I find myself
| having to do ridiculous search contortions to get good results -
| appending site: _.edu or_.gov to search strings, searching by
| time periods to eliminate new articles that have been SEOed to
| the hilt, or taking out yelp and other chronic abusers that
| hijack local business results.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I followed some of the links in the article, and was unable to
| find the injected text / link. Did anyone else find it?
| stefan_ wrote:
| I'm so happy the author is an ethical SEO scammer and will not
| stoop to these tactics.
| caspii wrote:
| Big difference
| adolph wrote:
| Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million
| pounds?"
|
| Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose...
| we would have to discuss terms, of course..."
|
| Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"
|
| Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I
| am?!"
|
| Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are
| haggling about the price."
|
| http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/haggling-about-
| price.htm...
| emerongi wrote:
| Well there, Adolph. Surely, with that name, you must be a
| supporter of the ideologies of Hitler himself?
|
| Quite easy to lump people into categories, huh? No nuance
| at all.
| imaginamundo wrote:
| Well, that is unfortunately.
|
| In 2015 I was fired because some issues on a site that I was
| working on because some friction with the company owner. Two
| months before I was fired I reported that some links to others
| sites non related to our service was on the initial page (some
| porn and some scams pages). After that I heard from my ex-
| coworkers that a manager from another area from the company told
| that I was fired because I was linking porn on some pages from
| our service. I didn't knew at the time that those tools existed,
| but only today I realized that it is an option.
|
| I was really sad with that manager and didn't understood the
| reason to lie to my friends the reason of my demission. But is
| nice to know what may have caused the issue. Better late than
| never hahaha.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| I'd put my money that they included 'online scoreboard' as the
| first phrase in the `<meta name="description" content="Online
| scoreboard"> tag per Google's recommendations for SEO which put
| them ahead.[0] Also, to this one point of many when searching for
| `online leaderboard` you get the top spot because leaderboard is
| not included in the other website's description.
|
| The network tab in devtools isn't loading Google Analytics on you
| site. I think the bigger conspiracy is that Google isn't giving
| high search result rankings to websites that don't include Google
| Analytics. Part of the reason is they use time on site after
| following through a search result link as a dimension of quality
| for that search result. If that makes sense? They give 10 search
| results and their algorithm can tell if the search result
| satisfies the end user's request if they don't go back to the
| search results but rather continue on that site.
|
| Lastly, clicking through a search result to your site might not
| give the searching user what they are looking for. Amazon
| discovered every time a person has to click they are far less
| likely to purchase an item so they created one click. Your
| competition makes it visually clear what their site does. You
| probably would get far more retention on the original click to
| your site if you have an image of what the end product looks like
| in a hero, front and center (with all the meta tags described in
| Google's document on SEO of course.) That way people won't click
| back to the search results page which Google is tracking as a
| dimension.
|
| [0]
| https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.dk/en/...
| lloyddobbler wrote:
| > I'd put my money that they included 'online scoreboard' as
| the first phrase in the `<meta name="description"
| content="Online scoreboard"> tag per Google's recommendations
| for SEO which put them ahead.[0] Also, to this one point of
| many when searching for `online leaderboard` you get the top
| spot because leaderboard is not included in the other website's
| description.
|
| While I like the thought progression you're going through, this
| is a "not really." Google has confirmed a number of times over
| the past 15+ years (going back to the Matt Cutts era) and even
| in the document you linked that the meta _description_ does
| nothing to influence ranking in the SERPs. However, the meta
| _title_ does influence ranking.
|
| I'm on mobile, so unable to dig in right now - but my guess is
| either this has something to do with the meta title, or the
| specific anchor text of the backlinks that are getting inserted
| via the app in question.
|
| Aside from that, agree 100% with your other assessments.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| This (and another comment you made deeper down) make me think
| you may be stuck on the mechanical/technical side of SEO. While
| it is important, it is not nearly as important as it used to
| be, say 10 years ago. It's probably much less than 50% of your
| overall ranking. Yes, you need to get it right, but relevant
| back links and the associated link text on the sites linking TO
| you will have a far greater affect. Google prioritizes what
| OTHERS say about your site more than any factors you can
| control. Mainly because people abuse those factors
| significantly.
| caspii wrote:
| I only switched Google Analytics off last week! I had it on for
| the whole time before and it made no difference.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| I don't know about all the link injecting HTML editor stuff
| however they are following Google's guidelines on SEO in the
| PDF I linked above perfectly. It's really simple to have good
| SEO. Google's document is about helping you help them help
| search users find the content they are looking for. This page
| on 'online field hockey scoreboard' is a perfect example of
| perfect implementation of Google SEO per their
| recommendations.[0] The search term 'online * scoreboard' is
| in the <meta> tag, <title> tag, <h1> tag, and first <p> tag
| wrapped in <strong>. Perfect implementation on their part.
| I'm sorry but it isn't a conspiracy and now you know.
| [0]https://scorecounter.com/field-hockey/
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| I mean, you did read the part where the HTML cleaners were
| adding links to the content they were "cleaning" right?
| Whether it's what is causing the higher ranking or not,
| they are certainly _trying_ to do something underhanded.
| duskwuff wrote:
| This is not how SEO works. Putting a keyword in your page's
| title/text/etc can help _slightly_ , but it's a much weaker
| signal than (say) a couple thousand keyword links from
| seemingly unrelated sites.
| nostromo wrote:
| I've heard so much about how PageRank isn't that important to
| Google anymore -- but there are many reports of SEO tricks that
| get people on the first page of Google for common queries. It
| seems like it's still quite important after all.
| Lammy wrote:
| Those can both be true. PageRank is a relic of a time when
| search engines more consistently returned the same results for
| the same query. These days we're all filter bubbled with
| personalized results
| advisedwang wrote:
| They may have abandoned the actual page-rank scoring system (a
| quite specific implementation) without wholly abandoning the
| idea of using "who links to who" as a quality signal.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I suspect this will only get worse over time. There was a time
| when, if you wanted to put a site online, you (or somebody that
| represented you) made a point of understanding everything that
| went into it. But, even as what's considered a professional web
| site has gotten exponentially more complicated, too many people
| see setting up an online presence as something like printing a
| brochure: details irrelevant. Somebody who _does_ understand the
| details is going to use them to their advantage.
| adventured wrote:
| I agree, there has been a clear, negative direction of stacking
| complexity in Web development for the past 20 years. It's one
| of the primary reasons Wordpress has 1/3 of the Web and there
| is a cottage industry of developers that specialize in just
| hacking at Wordpress to make it do things it's not particularly
| great at. Most people and most businesses can't come remotely
| close to building their own high-functioning sites (from
| scratch) in a cost effective manner, while getting all the
| critical details (eg building for SEO) right. So you get an
| obese do-everything CMS, and throw in some plug-ins, to sort of
| shim the problem.
|
| Why is Shopify worth $150 billion? Well, other than the bubble,
| this effect is why. People can't easily build their own
| ecommerce sites, can't integrate everything they need to, in a
| way that doesn't cost them a small fortune.
|
| Wix is a pretty mediocre service, clunky and slow. It's worth
| $15 billion? How in the world does that happen. Well, building
| sites is super difficult for most people. The opportunity to
| make that problem better is, apparently, huge.
| onion2k wrote:
| _There was a time when, if you wanted to put a site online, you
| (or somebody that represented you) made a point of
| understanding everything that went into it._
|
| I've been making websites for 24 years. Making a website has
| always been quite hard, especially for a nontechnical user, and
| there has always been scammers happy to take their money.
| What's worse is that a lot of the time the scammers believe
| they're actually selling a good service. There have always been
| people happy to chuck any old rubbish up on a domain and call
| it a website, even if it was full of scammy links, stuffed
| keywords the same color as the background or in tiny text, with
| JS that overwrote your browser history and blocked the back
| button, with no context menu, etc etc.
|
| Its annoying, and sad, for those of us who care and consider
| ourselves professional. But it definitely wasn't any better
| years ago.
| julianz wrote:
| True. A company we bought in the very early 2000's was paying
| $1000 a month to an SEO "expert". The expert hadn't noticed
| that the site had a robots.txt file that was excluding all
| search bots but was still happy to take their money and
| produce faked up reports about how busy they'd been pushing
| search terms around.
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(page generated 2021-06-07 23:00 UTC)