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How to do the dirty on google, or almost? Could we learn something here?

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peter.s:
Yesterday, I here said, it's on purpose that I title some threads "Review" (and even if my first post there isn't a full-grown "review" (yet)) since I (rightly) assumed that such titles get good coverage with google, all the more so with DC as the site it comes from (and relative hit numbers, e.g. for the RN thread, vs. others, prove me right).

Today, I've been googling for "winsnap review" (soon on bits for 15$ = 50 p.c. off, regular price 2 months ago being 25$), and quickly gathering some hits from the first 15(! i.e. I'm among those who systematically look into the second tenner, too (and further on in some instances)), I then browse those pages.

Hit number 14 (so at least it was not listed within the very first google page, but then, those first 10 links weren't all for "reviews" either...) was

"WinSnap Review - StrategyEye Digital Media
digitalmedia.strategyeye.com/.../04/.../winsnap-revie...
21 apr. 2014 - WinSnap enables users to effortlessly capture the screen in five methods, apply drawing tools to prepare them for online publishing (including ..."

and clicking on it was this:

http://digitalmedia.strategyeye.com/article/nGDjDLvS5s/2014/04/21/winsnap-review/

with this:

"WinSnap Review
21 Apr 14RecommendTweetShareEmail
WinSnap enables users to effortlessly capture the screen in five methods, apply drawing tools to prepare them for online publishing (including watermarks and filters), and export the new images to multiple types of formats. It features an appealing and...

Read full article [this line being a link of course]
Source: Softpedia News - Global [this line being in a very tiny font]
Related Companies [plus button linking to many unrelated things]
Related Categories [ditto]",

with lots of other things, and with a pop-up "Free Daily Dose of Headlines from Our Newsletter - Submit"

and the tab was "WinSnap Review".

Now, clicking on "Read full article", you'll get a full review indeed,

"April 21st, 2014, 15:01 GMT · By Elena Opris
WinSnap Review"
[full review]

but the url being,

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/WinSnap-Review-438309.shtml

which also had been direct google hit number 8 yet.

Now that "portal" (or how would you call it?) has a search field, so I entered the name of the author there, "Elena Opris"), and I got a bunch of similar hits, i.e. some teaser on that strategyeye site, and links to external content.



Now this arises the question if Ms. Opris is somewhat connected to that strategyeye site from where she (like fellow authors there) has them link to her own articles on various sites, which would be perfectly legitimate imo, OR if strategyeye just collect material they are interested in, for commercial reasons = for touting their own site, by generating quite high-placed google hits, then delivering links to the "real stuff" which from the users' pov are worthless, since they will have clicked on the direct link (from google) anyway. Note that I'm not insinuating strategyeye does something "illegal", in that second alternative, since they don't "embed" that external content, but (except for the teaser) just provide correct, external links.

Now the first alternative would be perfectly legitimate, as said, since authors should be entirely free to do some "link gathering" for their disparate stuff spread over the web; whilst the second one would be considered a nuisance, since this "intermediate" site would be bandwagon jumpers who, for their interest, just bother the "googler";

in BOTH cases strategyeye does something really smart, they create lots of coverage for their own site, with external content, coverage that they would never get otherwise... and google's algorithms astonishingly not being "able"/willing to detect this "fraud" ("fraud" just from a philosophical pov: as said, nothing "legally illegal" here): "astonishingly" because it would have been more than easy, if they had been willing to do so, to detect (and eliminate or put them further below, say after 60th position or so) hits that just contain teasers from and links to real content that already has been listed anyway, further up (here, as said, 14th vs. 8th position).

Any insight, both re google (and why they don't cut it) and re such sites appearing as unwanted intermediates? For current google (algorithms), that seems to be a viable business model, even though, like numerous other business models, it represents a public nuisance, too?



EDIT: I should have added this link, too, perhaps, but I didn't want to blur the above question; on the other hand, google's brilliant coverage could be related to that link, in some way: http://www.strategyeyedigitalmedia.com/pricing

peter.s:
Let me clarify:

a) Prices on that site are very high, and whilst it could be that some corporations pay such sums, it's not evident why anybody would pay such prices for links to articles of Ms. Opris, not even her employer? Since I don't grasp the benefit he would get out of this scheme, all the less so since I didn't get her possible employer's name from the steps described above. Thus, I "understand" the business model of that site, but not the one of that site's customers. (Google direct: 8th position; the same target, thru this high-paid intermediary, 14th position: rather high, but obviously unnecessary to pay for.)

b) I don't see why google should give 14th rank to a page where's just a slug and a link, to a page which is ranked 8th anyway, for the very same google search. The very fact that google "knows", from hit 8th's content, that the "review" on hit 14 is just a slug and teaser, should "motivate" it to relegate that non-hit (which only could be considered a valid "partial, indirect hit" if (and as long as) google had not found and listed the real review ( hit 8 ) yet) to a position further down.

I did not want to imply, above, that google might have a financial interest in the proceeds of hit 14, which would explain prob. b) indeed, but that would have been an explanation that does not explain prob. a), which is the primary prob here.

Of course, there are paying/paid, in fact "press release" sites, but they are very different from what we see here, since they publish (and try to get good rankings for) "information" nobody's really interested in, whilst linked info on number 14 here is readily (and duly) available as number 8 (and similar articles over there, similarly), since we're speaking of real info, sought-for and of general interest.

Thus, this site and its treatment by google are kind of utterly mysterious.

40hz:
One could speculate endlessly on how Google does the voodoo that determines ranking and page landing. An entire industry has grown up attempting to outfox Google in such a way as to raise one's ranking without getting excluded for trying to do so. They call it "SEO optimization."

IMHO it is a complete waste of time and effort to try to figure out how Google works - or how to game it. Google offers paid advertising programs such as AdWords and AdSense which can be beneficial to rankings in the long run. So there's always that factor at work. But doing anything (other than not making your pages hard for a spider-bot to index) will only bite you in the ass eventually. As Google becomes aware of loopholes, they close them. And sometimes Google also sees fit to "punish" (without recourse - and at Google's sole discretion) sites that appear to be deliberately taking advantage of such loopholes.

Want to really know for certain how Google does its thing? Go get a job with Google programming their search software. :)

peter.s:
"As Google becomes aware of loopholes, they close them."

That's common sense, and is certainly true in the normal course of things, and that's why I'm wondering since my point b) above would indicate that this is not about "becoming aware" at some point in time, but of it "being evident to google" that those cannot be valid links/hits. And that's why I say point a) above is the key to my question: If we better understood how/why that site makes money, we could perhaps grasp why google plays their game, open-eyed. ;-)


(edited for plenty of typos: sorry for the inconvenience)

TaoPhoenix:
"As Google becomes aware of loopholes, they close them."

That's common sense, and is certainly true in the normal course of things, and that's why I'm wondering since my point b) above would indicate that this is not about "becoming aware" at some point in time, but of it "being evident to google" that those cannot be valid links/hits. And that's why I say point a) above is the key to my question: If we better understood how/why that site makes money, we could perhaps grasp why google plays their game, open-eyed. ;-)


(edited for plenty of typos: sorry for the inconvenience)
-peter.s (June 06, 2014, 02:45 PM)
--- End quote ---

Between this and the prior quote, in some ways Google is not "monolithic" like the Borg. Rather, it's Matt Cutts' crew that is directly in charge of all this stuff. For all their other evils about info usage, Google search must at least be the easiest product to "dogfood" aka Google uses it themselves along with everyone else.

So you can bet these spam links show up to them as fast as anywhere else. So some Google employee gets grumpy for 30 seconds, throws their bouncy ball against the wall, then fires off an email to Matt C.

It might just take some time for them to eval each source of "spam links" without breaking something else.

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