Yet another highly regarded site with high PageRank has been caught gaming Google. This time, its Syndic8.com, and once again, Andy Baio is on the case.
Last time, if you may remember, it was Matt from WordPress who added over 100,000 spam articles to his website, using his high PageRank to lure Google searchers, who would then hopefully click on the ads. Now Syndic8, a popular RSS feed indexer, is doing the same thing. And unlike Matt, they are quite proud of it.
At the bottom of Syndic8.com, there are a bunch of links to the spam articles:
Auto Insurance Quotes
RSS Sports News
Pay Day Loans
Online Personals Resource
Bad Credit Debt
Mortgage Broker Online
Discount Travel
Credit Cards Online
Online Jewelry Store
Cheap Sun Glasses
Online Marketing Methods
MLB Baseball
MCSE Training Database
Obviously, I will only reproduce the link text, not the links themselves. Following one of the links to mortgage-dot-syndic8-dot-com, you find the ability to “get low interest rates on home equity loans”. You can also read very plainly written articles detailing what a Fixed Rate Mortgage is. And of course, at the top of the page: Google AdSense ads.
Syndic8 has a PageRank of 7, and that is passed on to two of the spam subdomains. Four others enjoy a PR of 6, one has a PR 4, and the remaining three have a PR of 3. Until this was revealed, no doubt the guys who run Syndic8, Jeff Barr and Bill Kearney, were making at least a small bit of money. As Andy says, “Do people really think this is a legitimate form of advertising revenue?”
Well, Google certainly doesn’t, and they’re on to this scam now. GoogleGuy posts in Andy’s comments:
syndic8.com’s choice to “rent out” subdomains to spammers and link to the spam from their home page will directly impact their reputation in search engines. At this point, site owners should realize that linking directly to spammy webpages like this–especially on their own domains–can affect their reputation in search engines.
Jeff Barr also comments, with an explanation of why this was necessary:
Obviously, we do have some links to some sub-domain pages, each with a bunch of ads on them. A while ago one of my existing advertisers asked me if I would consider doing this for them, and after some thought I agreed. The advertiser creates the pages, and I point DNS and link to them.
Some people don’t like this, and I do see your point. However, I don’t have any hidden links, I am not doing anything tricky. From my point of view I am able to fund the operation of my site based on the fact that its home page has a good pagerank.
From my side, I am doing my best to build and maintain a useful service while not going broke doing so. I fully realize that there are lots of ways to fund a “public resource” site like this, and I simply chose one that worked and was available to me. The primary thing I care about is being able to provide a great service to my users. That’s what gets me up at 5 AM every day to work on the site. If that’s what “being run by a bunch of hackers with no business sense” means, then that’s fine.
As far as the question about “making the world a better place,” that’s for the world to decide, not me. From my point of view, my site lets lots of people get a better perspective on what’s going on around them because they get access to multiple points of view as found in hundreds of thousands of feeds. I get emails like this just about every day and I am happy to do my part to help them.
The fact of the matter is that this is never necessary. If a site enjoys a high PageRank, that is like owning a storefront in Times Square. The people will come to them, not even knowing what is there. All that website has to do is sell a product, any product, and the high PageRank will ensure at least a few sales. It is sad that perfectly talented people, who could come up with a very popular website, could not build one single product the public wants to buy. Hell, they could have just sold t-shirts.
(via ThreadWatch and Keith)
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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