cloaking used to get top ranking

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scottvh

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2004
Messages
18
Hello dmoz,

Take a look at a very good example of using a mouseover technique to fool search engines into high ranking.
www.asiwebpage.com/hydrocarbon_analyzers_b.html rank #1 on google
www.asiwebpage.com/hydrocarbon_analyzers_c.html rank #2 on google

The technique uses a page (or pages) stuffed with key words as an entry point to a website that seach engines index and rank very highly. The page is indexed and when the visitor places his mouse on any part of the entry window or scroll bar the mouseover function redirects the visitor to the target website which could be "anything". This technique uses ascii escape sequence to mask the address of the target website on the intro page. This technique completely eliminates the form and function of search engine ability to index website content. This is not a good thing - I suggest we report these websites to you and other search engine that use your index to ban them from being listed. I would appriciate your comments and suggestion on addressing this issue.
 
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motsa

Curlie Admin
Joined
Sep 18, 2002
Messages
13,294
We aren't a search engine and unless a site violates our guidelines, we're not going to ban them. Feel free to report them to any search engines you want but there's nothing we can do here.
 
pvgool

pvgool

kEditall/kCatmv
Curlie Meta
Joined
Oct 8, 2002
Messages
10,093
This forum is only for matters related to ODP.
We have nothing to do with Google. If site violates their rules it should be reported to them.
We are not a search engine.
We don't care about rankings, we don't have any.
We are humans and only interested in what humans see when they visit a website.
 
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scottvh

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2004
Messages
18
Search engines use DMOZ

I know that you are not a search engine - you are an index of websites and the foundation database which is used by many search engines that look to you for valid, accurate website indexed content. When those that abuse this foundation of data by being listed in DMOZ and then using nefarious, misleading, and deceptive techniques, fool search engines, users, and DMOZ as to their true intent, it seems to me that it is, among others, also your concern. What is a very serious concern to me as a user and the reason I bring this issue to your attention is the method use in the example previously cited has the potential for total collapse of the index / search engine systems by use of this cloaking / redirecting technique. It should be targeted by all of us in the cyber community and promptly eradicated. Your comments are appreciated.
 
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scottvh

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2004
Messages
18
that's why its called cloaking

The example I cited is indexed in DMOZ uses the default site address http://www.asiwebpage.com/ in the category Science: Environment: Environmental Monitoring: Products for Sampling and Monitoring: Air

Everything looks fine so far... but now that it is listed, the search engines’ bot the site and finds the keyword stuffed phantom pages and indexes that content (not the content as usable information by human beings) as the content (and ranking) for the site. The result is DMOZ is used to legitimize a website that may have "some" content related to the category, but once indexed in your database, any and all search engines that look to you see that website in a completely different light. A con has been committed and DMOZ is the patsy.


See this page for a better description of what this really is -
New Spam Techniques Catching Fire
by Gord Collins
http://www.stickysauce.com/articles/searchenginetips/new_spam_techniques_catching_fire.htm

"Non Robot Detectable Redirects

<body onMouseOver="eval(unescape('%6C%6F%63%61%74%69%6F%6E%2E%686F%70%69%63%62%61%74%6F%6E%73%2E%6E%65%74%2F%27%3B'));"

The use of a mouseover code (above) is quietly gaining a strong level of usage. The code automatically redirects the visitor to another page, but only upon the mouse pointer being over the page itself. Since a search engine robot doesn’t have a mouse pointer, it is blind to the tactic. The tactic is combined with a server side redirect to another page, which may or may not be relevant. The purpose of the redirect may be a part of bigger ploy to support another ranking strategy."
 
B

brmehlman

Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2002
Messages
3,080
There are really two separate issues here, an ODP issue and a search engine issue.

First, the ODP issue. The site has two listings, one topical and one regional. For both listings, the description given leads me to expect pretty much exactly the content that I find when I go to the site. No dmoz abuse, no conning of dmoz or its users here.

Second, the search engine issue. I agree with you in deploring this sort of manipulation of search engine results. If you write to Google and other search engines, they may actually be able to do something. If they consider it egregious enough, they may even ban the site. More likely, they will use complaints about techniques like this to refine their algorithms to reduce the effectiveness of the techniques.
 
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scottvh

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2004
Messages
18
Thank You!

I greatly appreciate your comments and assessment of the issue(s) I submitted. I respectfully disagree with your conclusion regarding ODP not being a victim of a con. Maybe I should have more accurately stated that DMOZ is a mule in this process. You are not so much the victim of the con but a facilitator of the con. There is almost No Way they would be listed on most search engines without being indexed by DMOZ first - you enable the perpetration of false ranking status by the search engine that look to you for valid “human accessible” content. The stuffed phantom page(s) which you are “blind to" alters the truthful extent of content in the site to anyone that uses a search engine and is therefore a victim of con. The example I cite here is only the tip of the iceberg as an example of the potential harm we should be on guard for. It is a very bad omen.
For example, crook makes a website with some “legitimate” content and submits it to DMOZ. DMOZ indexes it. Crook submits website to search engines and loads cloaking pages that contain tons of keywords to get to the top of the ranking of certain (any) keywords. Unsuspecting visitors clicks on highly ranked listing and redirected to a completely different site that loads spyware, malware, and Trojans on his system. Crook’s mission accomplished.

Thank you again for your consideration and thoughtful replies.

PS-
Per your recommendation - I submitted notice to the search engines that I found were indexing these cloaked pages in their search results
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
http://www.aolsearch.com/aolcom/feedback.jsp
information@webcrawler.com
wn.domain@looksmart.net
 
M

megri

Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2004
Messages
10
If some site is spamming search engine ODP should consider that site owner is playing games with public at a large i agree that you make correct listing and you are right at your place but you knwo that site owner is spamming or doing a illegal activty . You can atleast remove the listing
 
bobrat

bobrat

Member
Joined
Apr 15, 2003
Messages
11,061
I don't believe cloaking is illegal.

It may be immoral, nefarious, evil and many other things. It may be also against the terms of service of Google.
 
F

flicker

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2003
Messages
342
I also believe that Google's bot will crawl any site that has *any* ingoing link to it, not just an ODP one. So if a site has one legitimate page and several spammy doorway pages and other garbage, then as long as there is one ingoing link from anywhere going in to the legitimate page, it will all get crawled.

It's next to impossible to get *all* the ingoing links removed from a site, even if you are the webmaster of that site and trying to change URL's, so spending your time and effort to get only some of them removed is pointless. Better to alert Google to the garbage pages so they can ban them directly. (I've done this for spam pages I've come across, and they've been de-indexed rapidly.)

As for us, we have an important policy not to use our directory to try and manipulate Google's rankings (we need this in order to keep our directory ethical and credible), so we can't punish sites based on whether or not we think they should have a good Google ranking--just report them to Google if we see something, same as you.
 
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