[Sigia-l] Re: Spam and be punished

[Are Gulbrandsen]

Anders Ramsay:
> My Norwegian is a bit rusty, but the article doesn't seem to go into
> much detail about the offending technique, except to say that doorway
> pages "and other techniques" were the basis for Google's actions. No
> Norwegians on the list?

Ok, I'll give it a try. Here's a quick summary and translation. 
(Getting the sigia-list in digest mode I don't know if anybody else 
have answered this already).


Short summary:
--------------
The site www.eguiden.no have a section on search optimization for 
websites where they often report searchengine spamming.

Oct 25. they wrote an article and included a 10 page analysis of the 
Radisson SAS case:
- Article: http://www.eguiden.no/cparticle188538-9692a.html
- Report: http://www.eguiden.no/getfile.php/121823.69/Radisson%20SAS.pdf
   (Page 4-10 of the report give examples of the html-code and 
javascript used)

In the report they refer to Googles spam policy and an article in 
Search Engine Watch about doorway pages
- http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
- http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167831

As a result of the report Google removed radissonsas.com and 
radissonsas.no (and possibly more radissonsas domains) from Googles 
index.
- Appearantly you won't find any Radisson SAS hotels in Europe 
searching google today.


Translation/summary of the article
----------------------------------
Article: http://www.eguiden.no/cparticle188538-9692a.html

The main technique used is shadow domains with doorway pages.

There are over 700 pages made for the searchengine spiders which are 
not usable for potential hotel guests. All the pages have a redirect to 
the main page radissonsas.com. There are pages optimized for every city 
in Europe where Radisson SAS have hotels, and they are written in 
several languages and with variations of the most used keywords and 
phrases for hotels.

Read the full 10-page report PDF/336k:
http://www.eguiden.no/getfile.php/121823.69/Radisson%20SAS.pdf

It's our opinion that this violation of the Google spam fraud policy is 
so serious that Google have to remove the domain radissonsas.com from 
the index.

To stop spam and fraud, the searchengines need help from us users, and 
Google have a page where spam like this can be reported. You can report 
pages you think violates Googles policy here:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Summary of the report:

If you search Google for "konferansehotell i oslo" [Eng: "Conference 
hotel in Oslo"], you get the following result on top:
---------
konferansehotell i oslo, Radisson SAS Hoteller i Oslo.
konferansehotell i oslo:: Søker du hotell eller konferanshotell i
Oslo? Reservere hotellrom ... eller ferie. konferansehotell i oslo.
...
oslo.radissonsas.com/lang-norsk/
phrase/konferansehotell_i_oslo.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
---------

If you click on the links you get to 
http://oslo.radissonsas.com/norsk/index.php
and not to http://oslo.radissonsas.com/lang-norsk/ 
phrase/konferansehotell_i_oslo.html

Note the space before the word "phrase" in the URL used to fool the 
user.

In the phrase-page there's a javascript which is executed by the 
client. The script builds a url, in this case 
http://oslo.radissonsas.com/norsk/index.php , and redirects the client 
to this page.

The URL to this "trick-page" is invisible for anyone using a browser 
with javascript turned on, that is for most people.

The searchengine spiders won't get redirected because they won't read 
and execute the javascript code.

You can find 705 hits in Google searching for all of the words:
radissonsas com phrase

Here's some of the hits. Note that all html-pages have phrases, and 
that the html-pages are optimized using theese phrases.

	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/ 
lang-deutsch/phrase/kopenhagen_hotels.html
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/lang-deutsch/ 
phrase/hotels_in_kopenhagen.html
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/ 
lang-deutsch/phrase/kopenhagen_hotels.html
	• 	 copenhagen.radissonsas.com/lang-deutsch/ 
phrase/hotels_in_kopenhagen.html
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/lang-deutsch/phrase/
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/lang-norsk/phrase/
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/lang-dansk/phrase/
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/lang-francais/phrase/
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/lang-svenska/phrase/
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/ 
lang-norsk/phrase/hotell_i_koebenhavn.html
	• 	copenhagen.radissonsas.com/ lang-norsk/phrase/hotell_koebenhavn.html
...



Best Regards,
Are D. Gulbrandsen
The XML-group,
Center for Information Technology Services
University of Oslo