Web Spam Detection in Local Search at Google
The ultimate goal of any spam detection system is to penalize “spammy” content.
~ Reverse engineering circumvention of spam detection algorithms (Linked to below)
Four years ago, I wrote a post about a Google patent titled, The Google Rank-Modifying Spammers Patent. It told us that Google might be keeping an eye out for someone attempting to manipulate organic search results by spamming pages, and Google may delay responding to someone’s manipulative actions to make them think that whatever actions they were taking didn’t have an impact upon search results. That patent focused upon organic search results, and Google’s Head of Web Spam Matt Cutts responded to my post with a video in which he insisted that just because Google produced a patent on something doesn’t mean that they were going to use it. The video is titled, “What’s the latest SEO misconception that you would like to put to rest? ” Matt’s response is as follows:
I’m not sure how effective the process in that patent was, but there is a now a similar patent from Google that focuses upon rankings of local search SEO results. The patent describes this web spam detection problem in this way:
The business listing search results, or data identifying a business, its contact information, website address, and other associated content, may be displayed to a user such that the most relevant businesses may be easily identified. In an attempt to generate more customers, some businesses may employ methods to include multiple different listings to identify the same business. For example, a business may contribute a large number of listings for nonexistent business locations to a search engine, and each listing is provided with a contact telephone number that is associated with the actual business location. The customer may be defrauded by contacting or visiting an entity believed to be at a particular location only to learn that the business is actually operating from a completely different location. Such fraudulent marketing tactics are commonly referred to as “fake business spam”.
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