Nelson's Weblog: culture / bnet-spammers-2

c|net spam redux

I wrote a rather strongly worded blog post against bnet, a c|net property. It looked to me like they were keyword spamming Google with business keywords, particularly when I got a garbage page as the #1 result for a search.

Stephen Howard-Sarin, a VP working on BNET, was kind enough to write and explain that some of what I thought was spamming was actually a simple bug:

We had a Reuters story about PIMCO on BNET, and it got tagged like other content. But our contract with Reuters only allows us to keep a story live for 30 days. At the end of the period, we pulled the story but Google had index the story and the tag-listing page by then. So when you went to find it, you got a crappy error page.

Fair enough! I apologize for assuming malice in what was just a simple mistake. I'm still not wild about bnet's aggressive cross linking and keyword URLs but frankly if I ran a content site like theirs I'd be doing some of that too. For me the line is drawn at intentionally fooling search engines into sending traffic to you even when you don't have content. bnet wasn't deliberately doing that, so I withdraw the accusation of spamming.

Completely coincidentally, rumour has it that Google has recently altered its ranking algorithms for link weighting. I've got no idea what Google has done or if it would affect link structures like bnet's, but I note that today the lousy bnet page is no longer on the first result page. Maybe Google just got around to reindexing the page.

Many thanks to Mr. Howard-Sarin for being polite and professional. It's been a good reminder for me to elevate my own blog standards. I'm a bit embarassed at my use of the word "scumbag."

culture
2007-10-25 00:47 Z


Mastodon @nelson@tech.lgbt Linkblog Wed 2024-11-20 Francis Williams painting The Platonic Blow Tue 2024-11-19 EmojiRain Bantam Tools Artframe Using OSM vector tiles Starlink sold out Fine-tuning LLMs at home Bluesky starter packs Mon 2024-11-18 Carbon Mapper Sun 2024-11-17 Love, Acceptance, and Screeching Modems Voyager 1 backup radio Gay Tblisi Usenet feed growth Methane mapping City99 console font Sat 2024-11-16 Lorraine Gervais Sill Justin's Linklog Thune 2004 blog campaign Fri 2024-11-15 Open source garage door Search Archives 2023 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2022 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2021 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2020 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2019 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2018 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2017 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2016 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2015 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2014 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2013 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2012 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2011 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2010 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2009 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2008 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2007 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2006 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2005 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2004 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2003 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2002 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2001 12 11 10 09 08 07 One good site MDN Nelson Minar nelson@monkey.org Blog licensed under a Creative Commons License		c\|net spam redux I wrote a rather strongly worded blog post against bnet, a c\|net property. It looked to me like they were keyword spamming Google with business keywords, particularly when I got a garbage page as the #1 result for a search. Stephen Howard-Sarin, a VP working on BNET, was kind enough to write and explain that some of what I thought was spamming was actually a simple bug: We had a Reuters story about PIMCO on BNET, and it got tagged like other content. But our contract with Reuters only allows us to keep a story live for 30 days. At the end of the period, we pulled the story but Google had index the story and the tag-listing page by then. So when you went to find it, you got a crappy error page. Fair enough! I apologize for assuming malice in what was just a simple mistake. I'm still not wild about bnet's aggressive cross linking and keyword URLs but frankly if I ran a content site like theirs I'd be doing some of that too. For me the line is drawn at intentionally fooling search engines into sending traffic to you even when you don't have content. bnet wasn't deliberately doing that, so I withdraw the accusation of spamming. Completely coincidentally, rumour has it that Google has recently altered its ranking algorithms for link weighting. I've got no idea what Google has done or if it would affect link structures like bnet's, but I note that today the lousy bnet page is no longer on the first result page. Maybe Google just got around to reindexing the page. Many thanks to Mr. Howard-Sarin for being polite and professional. It's been a good reminder for me to elevate my own blog standards. I'm a bit embarassed at my use of the word "scumbag." culture 2007-10-25 00:47 Z Nelson's Weblog • culture → blogs, books, design, food, games, movies, music, olympics, processing, travel, tv