In a message dated 11/26/2008 7:39:22 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, puppy@KillerChihuahua.com writes:
This accomplishes two things: 1) you might succeed in knocking the page off Google’s front page for appearing to have gained a spammy link profile and 2) it gives you a legit looking reason to remove existing links on powerful Wiki pages.>> -------------- I haven't read the article, but they are saying to do this *just* to knock a page off the front page of Google hits ? I don't really understand the motivation.
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On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:59 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
I haven't read the article, but they are saying to do this *just* to knock a page off the front page of Google hits ? I don't really understand the motivation.
If WP is #1 or #2 and your spamvertisment is #4 you can increase your income greatly by getting WP delisted even if you can do nothing to improve the position of your site.
There are far more effective techniques that these SEO scummbags have not figured out yet.
Has anyone stopped to ask whether this is really worth it to the SEO? In terms of labor and cost/benefit?
Suppose for discussion that this works. At most, it puts a very small part of an extremely well known website slightly lower in the rankings. I doubt it's a valid assumption that if some unknown site is number 3 in the rankings and WP dips down to number 4, large numbers of people who would otherwise have gone to the most popular reference site on the Internet will migrate to the unknown site.
Brand value counts for something. When I'm browsing Google News and *The New York Times* appears fourth in the listings while a small town newspaper pops up at third, I'm still more likely to click on the *Times* article. Especially if I'm in a hurry.
-Durova
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.comwrote:
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:59 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
I haven't read the article, but they are saying to do this *just* to
knock a
page off the front page of Google hits ? I don't really understand the motivation.
If WP is #1 or #2 and your spamvertisment is #4 you can increase your income greatly by getting WP delisted even if you can do nothing to improve the position of your site.
There are far more effective techniques that these SEO scummbags have not figured out yet.
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2008/11/26 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
Has anyone stopped to ask whether this is really worth it to the SEO? In terms of labor and cost/benefit?
Suppose for discussion that this works. At most, it puts a very small part of an extremely well known website slightly lower in the rankings. I doubt it's a valid assumption that if some unknown site is number 3 in the rankings and WP dips down to number 4, large numbers of people who would otherwise have gone to the most popular reference site on the Internet will migrate to the unknown site.
Most people don't look beyond the first three results so yes depending on the keyword its worth it.
Brand value counts for something. When I'm browsing Google News and *The New York Times* appears fourth in the listings while a small town newspaper pops up at third, I'm still more likely to click on the *Times* article. Especially if I'm in a hurry.
What brands would you go for if looking for rather than news you were looking for info on asbestosis compensation (I understand that asbestosis is one of the most valuable keywords going)? Brand is useful yes but most SEOers don't have that so SERPs position is what they go for.
Durova wrote:
Has anyone stopped to ask whether this is really worth it to the SEO? In terms of labor and cost/benefit?
In that world, it's a non-issue. For one thing, neither the SEO's nor the suckers who buy their services are the sharpest knives in the drawer. (If they were sharper, they wouldn't have to be bottom-feeders.)
And if an SEO can say, "I guarantee to improve your search engine rankings", and if he can convince suckers to pay him to do so, then it *is* worth it to him, regardless of whether he actually improves his customers' hit rates (or even whether he actually improves their rankings).
Out of interest, do any edit summaries actually say "Trim internal links to reduce overlinking. You can help, see [[WP:Overlinking]]"? :)
FT2
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 8:11 PM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Durova wrote:
Has anyone stopped to ask whether this is really worth it to the SEO? In terms of labor and cost/benefit?
In that world, it's a non-issue. For one thing, neither the SEO's nor the suckers who buy their services are the sharpest knives in the drawer. (If they were sharper, they wouldn't have to be bottom-feeders.)
And if an SEO can say, "I guarantee to improve your search engine rankings", and if he can convince suckers to pay him to do so, then it *is* worth it to him, regardless of whether he actually improves his customers' hit rates (or even whether he actually improves their rankings).
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Simplest to find that (almost trivially simply) with a db query - I suggest seeing if there is a developer who doesn't mind running one.
FT2 wrote:
Out of interest, do any edit summaries actually say "Trim internal links to reduce overlinking. You can help, see [[WP:Overlinking]]"? :)
FT2
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 8:11 PM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Durova wrote:
Has anyone stopped to ask whether this is really worth it to the SEO? In terms of labor and cost/benefit?
In that world, it's a non-issue. For one thing, neither the SEO's nor the suckers who buy their services are the sharpest knives in the drawer. (If they were sharper, they wouldn't have to be bottom-feeders.)
And if an SEO can say, "I guarantee to improve your search engine rankings", and if he can convince suckers to pay him to do so, then it *is* worth it to him, regardless of whether he actually improves his customers' hit rates (or even whether he actually improves their rankings).
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On 11/26/08, FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Out of interest, do any edit summaries actually say "Trim internal links to reduce overlinking. You can help, see [[WP:Overlinking]]"? :)
The exact edit summary produced by the script is "Delink common terms. See: wp:overlink"
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Switzerland&diff=prev&oldid=239558371
Edits like this make me wish I lived in [[Austria]] or [[Liechtenstein]] and could speak [[Romansh language]].
—C.W.
On 11/26/08, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If WP is #1 or #2 and your spamvertisment is #4 you can increase your income greatly by getting WP delisted even if you can do nothing to improve the position of your site.
Yes, especially if WP has an article which describes your goods or services as fraudulent.
There are far more effective techniques that these SEO scummbags have not figured out yet.
Might be better not to list them here and now but I imagine there are some software changes which could be made in the near future to be more able to counter these attacks whenever they do occur (rather than a couple of programmer-months later).
For example I know edits which add [[wiki-links]] pointing to a specific page can be seen in (but not filtered from) the inverted "related changes" page. But for the technique described in this thread it would be helpful to have some way to track removal of incoming links.
Something less tedious than comparing the current whatlinkshere to a saved whatlinkshere list from last week (which would require anticipating the attack).
On a side note something like this for mysteriously emptied categories would be helpful too.
Surely at least some of the edit/behavior patterns of the other tactics you allude to would be more easily recognized by a bot watching recentchanges than by a human stumbling upon a user with a couple strange and not obviously related edits.
If you know the game already you are an a good position to prevent successful play of it. Match and exceed, as their mantra says.
—C.W.