Chances are you have run into spam. Crappy text, crappy links for cheap viagra or Louis Voutton handbags, endless cycles of page redirects like a labyrinth.
Google has a preference for dealing with things algorithmically, but there has always been a strong suspicion that Google took manual action to fight spam or to even ‘penalize’ websites.
It’s nice to see Matt Cutts give some actionable advice instead of, “not worrying about that too much,” which is Matt-speak for “please don’t think about such things, your focus is all wrong.”
So in case you are spending your weekend deleting spam here are the Google Webmaster Team’s videos on spam.
Pure Spam
I should have put this one at the end, but please quit the Internet, you totally suck at it.
User-Generated Spam
This is just neglect, your website is fat and you need to walk it around the block a couple times, make it do some push-ups and deep knee bends and get back into shape.
Unnatural Links
Need to stop ‘manipulating’ anchor text, or at least stop making them so keyword rich. Anchor text is meaningful because it is only a couple of words long and describes content. Stick with that.
Unnatural Links To Your Site
It’s a sure sign of manipulation. Shouldn’t have built those links, and now you get to take them all down.
Unnatural Links From Your Site
What? You want to run a link farm? LOL!
Thin Content
Talking about doorway pages including multiple pages for location based searches and affiliate programs. If you are an affiliate and just using the feed and add nothing unique.
Hidden Text
Seriously? That’s such a hack move. If it was never intended for a user to see don’t do it!
Conclusions
It’s about time that Google took this on and was transparent about it. Especially if you are using Google Webmaster Tools. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s tough to police the Internet, but you can still keep the users in the loop.
If you are complaining about getting hit by this, you really should have known that you were violating guidelines and there was a risk involved.
