SEO: Spamming

Yandex To Notify Webmasters Over Violations Of Their Webmaster Guidelines

Yandex, the largest search engine in Russia, now notifies webmasters when they violate their own Webmaster...

Barry Schwartz | Nov 23, 2015 at 9:07 am ET

Google May Have Penalized Another Underground Link Network

Did Google just penalize the SAPE link network again? Many "black hat" SEOs are reporting serious ranking drops in...

Barry Schwartz | Oct 15, 2015 at 9:21 am ET

Google: New Algorithm Changes “Aggressively Targeting Hacked Spam,” May Impact 5% Of Queries

Company says searchers may see some search results pages that have fewer than the typical ~10...

Matt McGee | Oct 6, 2015 at 2:00 pm ET

Sophos Uncovers Mass Link Spam In Google’s Search Results Via Cloaked PDFs

Hackers use PDF documents to inject links and keywords and -- through cloaking techniques -- scam searchers to go to other web...

Barry Schwartz | Jul 9, 2015 at 3:50 pm ET

Spammy Structured Markup Penalty & Recovery – Use Schema Markup With Caution!

Columnist Tony Edward notes that Google has begun issuing penalties for improper implementation of structured data markup. If you're making use...

Tony Edward | Jun 26, 2015 at 9:50 am ET

Google Changes Car Insurance Links After SEOs Complain

Google quickly changes their keyword rich anchor text in a recent blog post to avoid controversy in the SEO industry around link spam and link...

Barry Schwartz | Mar 6, 2015 at 2:03 pm ET

4 Easy & Honest SEO Mistakes That Could Penalize Your Site

You did everything right when optimizing your site for search -- or so you thought. Contributor Neil Patel explains where you may have gone...

Neil Patel | Nov 14, 2014 at 10:06 am ET

SEO: The O Is For Outing

As professional SEOs, we have a responsibility to make the web a better place. Contributor Kerry Dean argues that accusing our peers of...

Kerry Dean | Nov 13, 2014 at 12:46 pm ET

Calculating The Risk Of Search Engine Spam

Contributor Shari Thurow describes what can happen if you don't follow search engine guidelines on SEO....

Shari Thurow | Sep 29, 2014 at 10:05 am ET

Google Targets Sites Using Private Blog Networks With Manual Action Ranking Penalties

Google has reportedly taken action on sites participating in private blog networks, also known as PBNs. On September 18th, Google sent out...

Barry Schwartz | Sep 23, 2014 at 3:10 pm ET

Lawyers Sue SEO Firm For Violating Google Guidelines

A law firm in Michigan, Seikaly & Stewart, is suing its former SEO provider — but not for a lack of ranking success. Rather, the...

Greg Sterling | May 26, 2014 at 3:56 pm ET

Google Hits eBay With Manual Penalty In Search Results

What really happened to eBay dropping in Google’s search results this week? A source familiar with the situation tells Search Engine Land that...

Matt McGee | May 23, 2014 at 7:35 pm ET

On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google: An Explainer

MetaFilter is a news and discussion site dating back to the early years of the web. Founded in 1999, it’s attracting attention this week...

Danny Sullivan | May 22, 2014 at 4:40 am ET

Negative SEO From Links — What Can You Do If You’re Hit?

In this post, we cover the basics of negative search engine optimization (SEO) and look at what you can do to fight negative SEO link spam. This...

John E Lincoln | May 20, 2014 at 10:26 am ET

Coupons, Coupon Codes, Promo Codes…When Content Is NOT King

A few years ago, I did some work for a comparison shopping/coupon website. Curious about how well the site was doing in regard to their SEO, I...

Brent Payne | Apr 30, 2014 at 10:30 am ET

Google Provides More Clarity Around Sneaky Redirects Against Their Guidelines

Google announced on their Webmaster blog that they have updated two of their guideline documents to improve the clarity around what sneaky...

Barry Schwartz | Apr 30, 2014 at 9:20 am ET

How A Single Guest Post May Have Gotten An Entire Site Penalized By Google

Google made it clear earlier this year that those doing guest posts “for SEO purposes” might be subject to penalties. But the latest...

Danny Sullivan | Mar 26, 2014 at 3:38 pm ET

Google Now Targeting Italian & Spanish Link Spammers

Less than a month after Google targeted Polish link spammers and German link spammers, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts announced...

Barry Schwartz | Mar 11, 2014 at 8:17 am ET

Someone Outranking You With Your Own Content? Use The New Google Scraper Report

One of the most frustrating experiences for any publisher is discovering that someone not only has copied your content but outranks you on...

Danny Sullivan | Feb 27, 2014 at 2:58 pm ET

When The Best SEO Move Is To Kill The Site

The contents of the following column are based on real circumstances. Certain elements have been changed to respect the privacy of each site....

Eric Ward | Feb 25, 2014 at 10:00 am ET