A couple of weeks ago, on SEO Rockstars, I mentioned how I had stumbled across some quality parasite SEO located on Forbes.com.
f you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you’ll see a small JavaScript powered dropdown menu that says "Special Advertising." In that dropdown menu, you’ll fine a big list of "Special Advertising Phrases." Clicking on any of the phrases in the dropdown menu will take you to a "Special Advertising Page."
(For those who like to surf with JavaScript turned off, Forbes has been kind enough to include text links in a noscript tag)
The page you land on (which is clearly marked as an advertisement) contains a couple paragraphs explaining all about the "Special Advertising Phrase," and a few links to some related affiliate programs.
I just checked it again today and discovered that the Forbes "Special Advertising" pages are no longer ranking in Google.So was it a handjob, or could this be an algorithmic tweak?
I’m guessing it was a handjob. If it was an algorithm tweak, I would doubt that a similar "Special Advertising" page hosted on ucsdguardian.org would be able to make it into the top 5 for an ultra competitive term like mesothelioma.
But the bigger question is what exactly was the problem with the Forbes.com pages? I didn’t find any "hidden links" or "sneaky redirects." And none of the pages contain "naked" outbound links, so you can’t even make the argument that they were "selling PageRank." In fact, I’d argue that the Forbes pages were well within Google’s webmaster guidelines.
So what gives? Will Google be adding content to their guidelines that says any page that isn’t contextually relevant to the rest of your site’s content will be considered web spam? If they haven’t considered it, they probably should since they can’t seem to figure out how to address the issue algorithmically.
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7 Responses to “ Forbes.com Gets a Handjob? ”
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I image Forbes is pretty pissed that you brought this up on rockstars
It seems very coincidental that this got dumped shortly after you mentioned it.
Is this the new era of “doorway pages”?
I did notice that. And I think it sucks. It is a huge personal dilemma for me. Anyone that’s known me for any length of time knows that I’m not a fan of public outtings. But I also understand that Rockstar listeners want us to talk about real issues. I wish there was a way we could cloak a special feed just for the plex….
they should be upset with whoever convinced them this brand-dilution was a good idea.
Dude, a lot of stuff you mention on WMW get’s banned (hehe), didn’t you say that when you spoke of your link condom site with Matt (and he noticed the links to “article bot” or whatever at the bottom of that page) something “hand” related happened? What happened?
I for one am not too surprised that the Forbes pages got nailed by Google. We talked to the company that was selling links on them, and decided to pass. I am glad we did.
Guidelines or not, the pages (at least in my vertical) looked like spam, and the tactic of leveraging off of the Forbes domain just looked fishy. I think the argument can be made that they were not useful to searchers.
Excellent story! This stuff is disgusting! People will produce such blatant spam in the name of making profits, whether through selling links or using AdSense. The pages on UCSD Guardian are obviously created solely for the purpose of showing AdSense ads! It makes me sick
The company that did the Forbes site made a lot of noise with advertising in craigslist to pay bloggers for links. It was only a matter of time…