US Patent US8515941 B1 granted Aug 20, 2013, is titled “System for unique automated website generation, hosting, and search engine optimization”. And their websites still rank well in Google despite Google Panda 4.0.
It’s pretty rare that I out another SEO firm or company (okay, well maybe not). But this one really has me fuming this time. So blatant that they have been awarded a patent for creating web (search engine) spam. And apparently they’re pretty proud of the fact that their automated generation of websites and “invisible content” that’s read only by search engines that they tout it in their sales literature.
The system generates both unique visible content and also unique invisible content read by search engines but not typically visible to end users.
The problem I have is that Google hasn’t caught this automated spam, even with the latest Google Panda updates (which should be penalizing these types of sites). You would think that if you have a patent on your process of generating search engine spam Google would have caught it by now. Nope. Rankings are as good as ever for this company’s websites.
I’m not targeting this company in particular. I’m upset that Google has apparently not been able to handle search engine spam like this. There are so many websites and small business owners who have gone out of business in the past few years because of Google Penguin and Google Panda that it’s sickening. But even more sickening is the fact that Google hasn’t done enough, and allow search engine spam to continue to thrive in their search engine.
Just for the record, when I refer to “web spam” or “search engine spam”, I’m referring specifically to websites whose content violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines or their “acceptable guidelines”.
In the case of the company who owns this patent, they use the same company name on all of the domain names that they set up. There’s absolutely no hiding anything (although they could and probably should). It would be easy for Google to identify all the websites that are search engine spam sites and simply ban them from their search engine index.
– All of the sites that are “generated”, in an automated fashion, are extremely low quality, spam. They violate Google’s acceptable guidelines, and, in fact, if reviewed by Google, would receive manual penalties and be banned from the search engine.
– Just the process and “invisible content” that they clearly state in their patent is against Google’s guidelines.
– While the websites will not technically link to the client’s site, those sites have the client’s name on them and their brand on them. So, as a result, any client hiring this company is diluting their brand and, in fact, allowing another company to spam–with their name on it. I have to think that Google sees this additional spam and, ultimately, can take action against the whole entire brand, not just the spam websites or the main website. By spamming (allowing this company to create spam websites), you’re ruining your overall brand authority on the web.
If you’d like proof that this company is creating web spam, let’s take a look at this search result in Google.
In that search result you will see hundreds of “doorway pages” or “low quality spam content” that’s never intended to be read or viewed by real humans.
If you look at the company’s patent (they’re proud of this?), you’ll also see: “The system generates both unique visible content and also unique invisible content read by search engines but not typically visible to end users.” This, stated in the patent’s abstract, is, frankly, appalling to me.
Google’s latest algorithm updates (now even Google Panda 4.0) should be handling websites like this–that contain literally hundreds of low quality articles and content designed just for the search engines.
So, here we even have a patent on creating search engine spam, with a company name on it, a huge massive network of websites (over 1700 websites at last count), and Google has done nothing about it. Many of the websites rank well in Google’s search results, and, in some cases, there are even 6 of these websites showing up in the top 10 search results in Google.
What’s appalling to me that there is a patent, even on Google.com, for generating web spam. And even this patented method isn’t banned in Google or even penalized by their latest algorithms. No wonder why so many website owners are upset with Google now. I don’t blame them.