Google added the “Irrelevant keywords” section to the sidebar of the Google Quality Guidelines. This section, called “Irrelevant keywords“, details the practice of keyword stuffing, and gives specific types of examples of where it is being used today is worth noting.
As you can see in the previous sidebar of the Google Quality Guidelines section of Google’s support, there was no page titled “Irrelevant keywords”:
But now, take a look, as of this morning:
Let’s take a look at the specific examples that Google is referring to:
Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
I believe this is an attempt specifically to “work” the mention of phone numbers into the guidelines. There has been a big problem with the websites that lists thousands (millions) of phone numbers in an attempt to get traffic. If you search for someone’s phone number in Google, you’ll see very spammy phone number websites. This “keyword stuffing” example that mentions phone numbers specifically, and Google has not liked these types of sites for a while now.
Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
Google has told us that listing the cities a business serves on their website is spam. You cannot list a bunch of cities on your website and hope that you will rank for those city names.
If you are a carpet cleaner in South Florida, for example, you can no longer make a list of all the cities you serve on your home page, for example.
Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example:
We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at [email protected].
This is not new. But, it definitely is worth repeating and mentioning, and I’m glad that Google has included this example of keyword stuffing. The text just doesn’t read right, and the writer obviously wanted to just put those keywords in there so they could rank better.
Overall, the to lists of phone numbers and stuffing lists of city names onto your website is a concept that Google obviously doesn’t like. They are clear attempts to by the website owners to game the algorithm.
