UPDATE: Cutts has tallied the demands so far and shares them in a list here.
Original article: Matt Cutts asked on his blog what people wanted to see Google’s webspam team tackle in 2009. Of course, he has gotten a lot of responses (many from SEOs and Internet marketers), and will likely get a lot more. I guess this is the webspam equivalent of Google’s AdWords Wishlist and Google Mobile Product Ideas page, both of which call on users for ideas for improvements.
Some suggestions and responses from people include:
Matt Cutts
– cloaking
– a paid link reporting firefox plugin
– spam punishment through decreasing PR
– improving local spam
– more info regarding penalties
– eliminating content “pretenders”
– more focus on duplicate sites
– fewer sites requiring logins early in SERPs
– if it’s banned in search, ban it in Adwords and leave room for quality advertisers.
– scraper sites
– block spammers from ALL Google services
– Search Queries – Websites that take you to a search results page or something similar
– paid text links are still very successful after Google has made such a point against them
– There should be a SERP check for MFA sites which have some > zero content
– Google should pay more attention to DMOZ and Google Directory
– product review spam is out of control
– provide a Spam Detection API
– devalue ALL links for sites like, myspace, facebook, etc.
– less top positionswith A LOT of keyword stuffing
– have someone from the spam team LOOK at spam reports from the Google webmaster console and evaluate the site in the report taking MANUAL action
– Team up with Akismet and use their data for who’s spamming who.
– More focus on REAL spam like hacked backlinks, comment spammers, forum spammers etc
– less apparent value allocated to keyword rich domain names
– Shutting down all the splogs on Blogger!
There are plenty more where that came from and they are being added continuously. It is good that Google is giving its users places for feedback. They seem genuinely interested in letting everyone have a voice and potentially listening to that voice (or at least considering it). If you have something in mind that you would like Google’s webspam team to tackle this year, drop by Matt’s post and let him know.
