Big Mouth Media Banned for Excessive Hidden Text Spamming - Google's Matt Cutts Confirms Hand Job
Live blogging WMW here. Not sure why, but someone threw out the Big Mouth Media site for review. Matt Cutts said that the site was hand removed from Google for spamming. He said they had about 13,000 characters in a 60 by 60 box.
Matt Cutts said that they had lots of content that was obviously not for human consumption, and
[BMM] said it was accessible.
I said it was excessive.
We covered this on TW previously, where allegedly BMM lied to some of their customers in this email:
>> We can confirm that we immediately contacted our partners at Google who
>> confirmed what we knew: that our site was NOT removed due to any breach
>> of Google's published guidelines and following a review at Google, we
>> were immediately reindexed and are now back at No1.
My invitation to BMM to revert to using their "non spam" pages is still on the table.
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Comments
Good stuff, Aaron!
Thanks for posting that as that was a bit of a tricky one in terms of whether it would be considered spam. (The small box.)
Interesting about the BMM alleged lie too.
Excellent catch Aaron.I
Excellent catch Aaron.
I stand by my comments made when the story broke, on UKNM email list, and here.
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/5677#comment-34539
Oooooh, THAT'S gonna smart
Oooooh, THAT'S gonna smart if it hits the mainstream press
What about colgate?
Ok so there was a thread about colgate doing keyword stuffing. They used java script and a nonscript code to reviel hidden keywords and descriptions and many sem's considered this going grey hat! now if you check out
http://www.colgate.com/
the hidden text is there but no way to access it! LOL! WATCH OUT COLGATE!!!
see other thread
There's a whole 'nother thread on colgate here somewhere...
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6172
Anyway
Anyway the title sound ok for me :
Google's Matt Cutts Confirms Hand Job
What's silly about this, in
What's silly about this, in my view, is that they (BMM) really didn't need to do it this way, and now they're faced with a "Now what?" question.
SEO Malpractice
That's what I would refer to as SEO Malpractice.
There really is no need for that. And, there are much more elegant ways to hide text, stuff text, blend text, etc. Leaving a visible footprint like that is just sheer ignorance on someone's part.
The search engines have their hands full this year. With CSS use on the rise, we're seeing many more sites utilizing CSS-P and negative coordinates. We're also seeing a lot of display:none. And then there are those who leave footprints and use display:hidden. Or, they drop the CSS-P negative coordinates into an inline style on the page. And then you get the really smart SEOs who label their classes with the words "hidden" and "stealth". Dingbats!
These are all high risk tactics. And, if used in a competitive industry, your competitors will snitch on you in a heartbeat. Why take the risk? And please, don't use the old "the client forced me to do it" bit, that just won't fly.
For those of you who may be utilizing these strategies, and you are a U.S. based consultant and/or company, be prepared for litigation to start taking place with these issues if a client can directly link their loss in traffic/sales to your SEO strategies which are clearly outlined as dont's in the SE guidelines. I wouldn't doubt if we see lawsuits in the aftermath of this discovery (if there are client websites involved).
This is SEO Malpractice in it's simplest form.
thanks for that definitive statement pageoneresults
Thanks for that definitive statement pageoneresults. Too bad I completely disagree with it.
Not half the SEO as you, eh? Last I looked it was the hide and stuff parts that led to trouble, not running outside your standards.
And you would combine screen and print media styles in one CSS file by using.... what, exactly?
which, last time I looked, was valid markeup, with the "hidden" word used to define how the contents are not presented to the user in the browser. Dynamic styles, anyone?
Yes, I noted the sarcasm, and no, I don't believe you set the standard for defining the use of stealth nor hidden in stylesheets.
Um... no, not all competitors run and snitch when given a chance to mis-represent a competitor. Personally I think that's pretty lame.
Trying very, very hard to overlook (once again) your inflammatory tone, p1, I note a few of the words you used -- I bolded them. That's a (1)big "if" followed by a (2)high criteria and a (3)strong filter which leaves few (any?) SE guidelines standing.
Thank You John!
Did I hit a sore spot or something?
My standards? What's different with my standards and those of the W3 or those of the Search Engines? They are not my standards.
John, what the hell does that have to do with hiding content off the screen using negative CSS coordinates? Or using a small invisible container and stuffing content?
Wow! Did I even remotely hint that it was invalid markup? I'm very well aware of the use and implementation of hidden attributes. Shall we put this all back into context and discuss the issues at hand and not something that is totally irrelevant to what is being discussed?
No, I don't, and I can't remember when I ever stated that. But, you know what, 7 out of 10 times when we see those terms, guess what? It's a loaded style sheet. And yes, the sarcasm is intentional. :)
Personally I think it's pretty lame too. But that doesn't change the fact that it's done day in and day out.
Okay, if you want to get into a styling war, so be it. I can get pretty fancy with this stuff too. Don't let my age and demeanor fool you. ;)
seo malpractice
Please feel free to publicize the term SEO Malpractice as often and as frequently as possible. As the domain owner of the hyphenated version I'd really like it to come into more common useage ...
A True Marketer - SEO-Malpractice.com
lol! Hold on to it and give it a little more time. You're sitting on a gold mine. But, you'll have to contend with the person who owns seomalpractice.com. ;)
Now why doesn't that surprise me?
I would have bet substantial amounts of money that the whois said what it says...
they still show up for me
BMM is still showing up in the SERPs for me, even for some pretty competitive terms
Google should be careful
If they confirm too many hand jobs the vice squad might raid the place.
BMM is still showing up in
They were apparently removed from Google then got back in once they removed the iFrame that was keyword stuffing.
See the earlier link Jason provided on that.
still ranking #1 for seo
I still see them at number 1 for search engine optimisation
they rank now, but for a
they rank now, but for a brief period of time they got a hand job.
this post was more about stating who the liars were since they tried to call us liars trading on their name, when in fact they were likely lying in the process (to their clients no less)
Ahh...so now it's all making sense
Sorry if this is a bit offtopic, but I've been wondering what has brought Edward out in full force the past few weeks trolling forums looking for fights.
But his post on SEO Malpratice makes it all a whole lot clearer. Been wondering when we'd find out what was up his sleeve.