shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Adam — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:17:06 GMT

Heh, what's all that pagerank really worth anyway, if you don't spend it on good causes like this. :)

I hope you do win, even if you're not going to get the money. Good luck.

spammers and their pets

Rune — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:30:26 GMT

I sympathise fully with you Raymond.

A few years ago, this idiot promoter wanted to promote a new CD release and he wanted to use the "power of the Internet". I.e. he did a "forward this email to five friends and CC me to participate in the contest!".

I emailed him and carefully explained him the downside to his campaign. His answer? "This is the future of the Internet! Get used to it!".

Too bad he was in a grey area judicially speaking. He was later forced to apologise, and I have not heard from that guy since.

Rune

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Some random guy — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:43:21 GMT

Gee... it would sure be ironic if somebody at google (or another search engine) saw this and special cased that search to give the official site as the top link...

Seriously, though. They're getting really cheap advertising ($9000 is nothing)but an extreme loss of goodwill.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

AndyB — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:49:01 GMT

take the money Raymond! I mean, if you don't get it and donate it to the nearest donkey sanctuary, then the winner will be whichever immoral mumpty who managed to spam his way to the top.

So, regardless of whether you like donkeys or dislike spammers, I really think you should link back and spoil the spammers party.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Gordon Smith — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:09:01 GMT

What would happen if someone added the link as a comment, for example: http://www.shopauto.ca/seo.phtml?

Gordon.

[No effect, since you also have to sign up for the contest, which I haven't. -Raymond]

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Neal — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:10:23 GMT

Well Raymond, I just searched google for shopautodotca seocontest oldnewthing and this blog entry comes up so it's already been indexed. You're low, low, low in the results for the plain terms though because I haven't found you yet and I'm on page 10 of the results.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Earl — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 20:44:13 GMT

You, sir, are my hero. F**k those spammers.

earl

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Sriram Krishnan — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 20:44:59 GMT

I remember Anil Dash doing similar. See http://www.dashes.com/anil/2004/06/nigritude-ultra.html

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Sebastian Redl — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:01:04 GMT

I would find it extremely funny if Google just blacklisted these two search terms (who wants to search from them anyway?) and displayed no results at all.

I am in this contest, but I agree

Danielle — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:30:23 GMT

I am in the contest and incidentally one of the biggest spammers is currently in #1, and rose there quickly (passing sites that have been in for months) based on this spam (forums, comment spam, so on).

Spamming at this point seems to be the only way to win this thing. I myself tried creating content and I have links from sites that have chosen to help me, or through regular link exchange. This seems to work (sort of) but my approach is no competition for the more prolific spammers.

I think it is important for any contest of this kind to specify that Google guidelines be followed.

Though I am in the contest, I absolutely see your point of view. At the beginning of the contest, I am pretty sure wikipedia was spammed which I find patently wrong.

Hey if you get to #1 for sure take the money! Why wouldn't you?

Mostly I entered this contest to learn about SEO and I have learned things over the past months that frankly I did not want to learn.

Cheers.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Johan — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:19:20 GMT

You're not doing too good, you would probably need to put the search phrase in the <title> tag of your blog to have a chance.

Thanks!

Danielle — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:04:42 GMT

Yes, I dropped from #1 to #5 yesterday with the great increase in spam links this week. It had slowed for a while, which allowed me to get to #1 after being at #2 and #3 for a while. The page title was set up in the blogger dashboard, but I changed the HTML as you suggested. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

On another note, I would like to suggest that these contests can be enlightening when looking to watch what Google does in "strained" situations where there is great competition in a short period of time. I have indeed found it very instructive as to how Google reacts to different onsite and offsite changes.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Adam P. — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:30:05 GMT

So this company has ponied up $14,000 find the biggest comment spammer they find? Why would you want a comment spammer as your SEO manager? I don't get it.

The shopautodotca seocontest anti-meme

Joe White's Blog — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:53:37 GMT

Sheep Guarding Llama » June 8, 2007: Traveling to Frankfort for the Weekend

Sheep Guarding Llama » June 8, 2007: Traveling to Frankfort for the Weekend — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:58:46 GMT

PingBack from http://www.sheepguardingllama.com/?p=1926

Response to Adam P

Danielle — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:30:17 GMT

I guess since I am in the contest, I have some insight to answer Adam's question:

They plan on looking at the top 5 in the contest, and selecting from them the best candidate... after what could only be referred to as the longest job interview ever!

But what you must understand about the city where the contest is being held - there are no real SEO companies first of all, just web design that also offers SEO. Anyone who has paid for SEO in this city (that I have spoken to and looked at their sites) in essense is paying only for meta tags. No joke!

Also, the company itself did not seem to put enough thought into the contest rules prior to launch. For all they know their site is being dragged into "bad neighbourhoods". I believe they should have specified Google guidelines to ensure fair play, and to ensure their site was getting good quality links.

Keep in mind that not everybody in this contest is using these techniques, even though everybody on the first page has used spam links (creating thousands of no content pages, comment spam) to get their rank (except for me).

N.B. I only posted my URL in my first comment, as I think it would be innapropriate to add too many links to my site from this particular post. ;-)

Google Trends

Mike K — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:41:53 GMT

In the past month Google trends shows the search term "seocontest" skyrocketing in popularity... interesting.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=seocontest&ctab=0

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

jayson knight — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:37:00 GMT

Danielle,

"I only posted my URL in my first comment, as I think it would be innapropriate to add too many links to my site from this particular post."

All of the links left in comments on Raymond's site are rel=nofollow, so it doesn't really matter anyways.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

mann3r — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:58:14 GMT

jayson,

for the issue of rel=nofollow, google dont count it but yahoo and msn does.

As for the issue of spamming, danielle if you agree, we have been closely checking how the number NOW is doing in the contest, the organizer should take into this as an option since they have in the prize that a chance on seo company position, the question is will they hire for an SEO with spamming as a way to get high in engine?

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

meh — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 13:01:02 GMT

mann3r: Actually, it was introduced by Google:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Miral — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:10:48 GMT

There's always a chance that it's some kind of honeypot approach to find and wrist-slap the biggest link-spammers around. At least I hope that's what it is.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Fred Foobar — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:36:52 GMT

On a side note,

Wow. Anyone with Firefox and Firebug, click that link posted earlier: http://www.shopauto.ca/seo.phtml? Watch the JavaScript error count quickly hit 1,000.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

MB — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:14:23 GMT

This page is already on page 3 of the results :-)

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Dean Harding — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:26:29 GMT

It's on page 2 for me. The actual ordering on google can be rather changeable but it certainly seems to be slowly moving up the ranks :-)

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Shopautodotca contestant — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 03:52:27 GMT

lately Google has been concentrating on paid links and has been ignoring comment spam I hate to spam blogs when I am in a seocontest but it get very tempting when the top site is winning by comment spamming and buy links does not work like it used too. Blame Google for the comment spam because they are make comment spam more powerful if it did not help and caused sites to drop no one would do it.

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Bahbar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:37:23 GMT

Wow, you are already 5th on the first page. Pretty impressive. It probably helps that some people actually link to your page to help your cause!

re: shopautodo... (etc. etc. etc. :P)

SHODAN — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:51:29 GMT

Rune wrote:

{His answer? "This is the future of the Internet! Get used to it!".}

Uhh... You know what? I'm very, very sad. Why? Because he was right. I mean, take a look around... :(

How can we fight this overflow? I seriously don't know. All systems are built to be beaten (although Google is the best barricade builder so far). Too bad the only thin required for using a computer is intelligence. No morals, nothing. Just ability...

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

brian — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:03:51 GMT

Why hire spammers when you can trick them into "competing".

re: shopautodotca seocontest online contest tacitly encourages comment spam

Danielle — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:37:57 GMT

Not bad, you ended with #6 spot in Yahoo! But at the very least, people in this seocontest saw this post and the discussion that ensued.

Cheers!