Marketing Defined

Google uses Human power all over the world to evaluate the accuracy of Google’s search results in its effots to combat Spam.

These “international agents”, who are paid $10 to $20 an hour, were recruited mainly through universities. They’re paid to check search results at Google every day.

Journalist Henk van Ess has caused a flurry of excitement on blogs and forums by revealing the existence of:

Google’s ‘Spam Recognition Guide for Raters’ which is the document provided by Google to their ‘international humanpower agents’ as a guideline for locating and downranking webpages set up by Spammers.

It appears, a Google employee broke a non-disclosure agreement by revealing this report does exist. I don’t know how long it will stay online. You may want to do what I did - put a copy of it on your hard drive … I have provided a copy for you to download at the foot of this Post.

The following is an extract from a recent newsletter - copyright: Allan Gardyne of Associate Programs, which covers salient points.

Don’t be distracted by the debate over whether Google should be doing this.

Of course it should. It’s just a form of quality control.

Google can use the evaluators’ findings to tweak its algorithms and reduce search engine spam.

What affiliates need to pay careful attention to is Google’s “Spam Recognition Guide for Raters”, which Henk revealed.

If you’re a “thin affiliate”, beware.

Although the report is a year old, about 80% of its contents are still being used by Google’s evaluators, Henk says.

The confidential document gives us an unvarnished look at Google’s attitude to affiliates.

If you’re using any of the “manipulative techniques” Google describes, this report will probabaly encourage you to take a hard look at your website.

I hope you’re not silly enough to be using hidden links or hidden text. Not surprisingly, Google teaches its “raters” how to detect them.

Are you creating pages without much content with the aim of collecting pay-per-click (PPC) revenue? Google’s raters are taught to mark such pages as “Offensive”, and gives examples.

Google secret guidelines spend some time discussing different ways in which some affiliates display results from pay-per-click search engines, so if you’re doing that, you’ll definitely want to study this report carefully.

Are you displaying ads disguised as search engine results?
Google finds them offensive.

Are you adding a Dmoz.org feed to your site with the aim of earning PPC revenue? That’s “offensive”, too.

Google says:

“We differentiate between affiliates that produce extra service, value, or content, and those that simply are duplicates of other sites, set up to boost traffic to other sites and earn a commission for it. The former ones are not Offensive and should be rated on the merits to the query. The latter ones are Offensive…

“Thin affiliate doorways are sites that usher people to a number of Affiliate programs, earning a commission for doing so, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user.
A site certainly has the right to try to earn income; we’re attempting to identify sites that do nothing but act as a commission-earning middleman.”

To Google, affiliate links such as qksrv.net, bfast.com and myaffiliateprogram.com - on the page or in redirects - “strongly suggest” that the site is a thin affiliate.

Are you using an affiliate datafeed? To Google, that’s another warning sign.

However, if you offer a comparison of prices between different online merchants, you’re OK, you’re not a thin affiliate.

Google provides an incredibly tough guideline, which hundreds of thousands of affiliate sites fail to meet.

Google says:

“Do not call a page affiliate spam when an affiliation is only incidental to the message and purpose of a website. To determine whether participation in affiliate programs is central or incidental to the site’s existence, ask yourself this question: Would this site remain a coherent whole if the pages leading to the affiliate (merchant) were taken away?”

That probably counts out most affiliate sites.

In summary, if you want to be friends with Google, make sure you provide extra value or content.

I’ve quoted only parts of the report. Any serious affiliate will want to study the whole thing carefully.

You can read the full report on Henk’s blog here….SearchBistro.com - Google Spam Guide Document

If the link doesn’t work, go to the Search Bistro website , find the June 5 entry and click on the “spam guide” link.

Quoted from: Allan Gardyne of AssociatePrograms.com
Associate Programs Newsletter Issue #263.

If you encounter problems locating the above document, please shoot off an email to me at Marketing Defined and I will be happy to send you a copy from my hard drive.

Needless to say, the above report has renewed my confidence in Google to a certain extent .. legitimate webmasters spend great hours of their own time, often with little or no remuneration to provide accurate SEO and Internet Marketing tips and strategies.

Working one’s “behind” off to gain high SE rankings to increase targeted traffic to a website, only to find the cheap results of Spammers quickly overtaking one’s hard efforts .. is downright demoralizing.

I applaud Google for this effort … and thank them for employing paid humanpower to combat SPAM. God knows, the inbox of my mail program would love such an intervention:-)

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How Google Combats Spam, Google Spam Recognition Guide