ontology2, I think the good sites are there, their just heavily swamped under all the trash that’s built up over the years. You would be surprised how many good quality sources I find as a result of using StumbleUpon (which get’s content filtered by users giving it the thumbs up / thumbs down / report as spam). Of course it’s getting hit with more and more junk which is affecting the service, but I’ve found some really good sourced material there. 
I create product review sites, the content on the site is genuine, with neutral reviews based on what other people thought of the product.
The content on the site is not spam at all, and I sit at the #1 spot for a lot of products, in most cases I sit above the vendor when the product is searched.
I also use wordpress sites, high PR article sites with authority, and social bookmarking sites to get backlinks.
I’ve now opted to manually reply to blog articles with a response that is relevant to the content. And I only post on blogs that are related in some way to the review site I am promoting. As for bookmarking and article writing I use software to manage the submitting and bookmarking.
But does this make me a spammer? My review sites often have more information than the vendor and amazon. So people find the content useful. The only advertisement I place on the site is adsense. But this works for everyone because the user finds the product they want and the advertiser makes a sale.
Still, the question remains. My site is there for my to make cash, that’s the only reason why I publish these sites. Am a spammer? Or an internet marketer in the supplying the content what the user demands?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a sticky situation but review sites do have a reputation these days for having paid reviews, bad blood being passed around (etc) - not that I’m implying that you are guilty of it, though I do wonder how you can actually prove that none of the reviews were financed or falsely attributed - especially as review sites are entirely subjective and unless you meet and know the background of every person who reviews, it’s next to impossible… don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you are a spammer but having a website which makes cash and helps others make cash through referrals (link or word of mouth) does fit a definition of sorts.
Well said.
I suppose in a sense I am guilty for attributing to the poor comments on blogs and paid links. Not that I am intentionally doing anything “bad”, but it’s often a tough fight to increase SERPS especially when you have some seriously shady billion dollar companies using some black techniques to promote their product.
I think it was Joel Comm that was guilty of selling link space on his high PR blog and I’m sure other top end marketers are guilty of it too.
Not only that but long tails keyword marketing is becoming popular. It used to be the small fry that used long tail marketing, but now the big companies are using it as an additional means of traffic.
But, I suppose it all boils down to the products are not mine, they own the TM, so why should I piggy back and make cash from them by outdoing them in the search engines. On the opposite side of the fence would they refuse the sales I am driving in … doubt it.
Sorry if I swayed off topic, lets keep it back to the point.
Hi there, I host my own WordPress blog and receive many spam comments (thankfully all blocked by [URL=“http://akismet.com/”]Akismet) which contain several spam links each. I’d be more than happy to use a plug-in (if one existed) to automatically submit the spam URL’s to Google (and others) in the fight against spam.
Wow, lots of helpful comments, thanks everyone. So it’s more those spam garbage posts ppl make on blogs. Grief, how annoying those are! That’s something that would be wonderful to see take a hit but I’m afraid cascadingstylez was spot on in saying, “It’s a never ending battle and it will never end.”
Sure must keep a lot of ppl busy though… (sigh)
You're right to point out that social media sites are playing an increasing role in discovery online. However social media is better at evaluating some types of content (blog posts, photos of kittens) and worse at evaluating other types of content, i.e., product reviews.
So far as right and wrong, there are a lot of shades of gray. In some cases, a link is an appropriate reply to a blog post or a forum thread. If you take the time to write a good and thoughtful piece of content, isn't it fair to get a link in return? On the other hand, it's not hard to find abandoned forums and wikis that are loaded up with complete garbage.
Contentwise, product reviews are an area where there's a wide range between content that's super-useful and stuff that's the worst junk. When I buy things, I like to do my research, so I love good product reviews... I want to find them very badly. On the other hand, we all know there's k-rap out there... As a visitor, I care about the quality of the site more than I care about what they did to promote it.
Spot on!
I won’t lie to the masses and say my hands have been clean the whole way through. The reason I can talk from both sides of the fence is because I’ve been on both sides.
As far as black is concerned everything is short lived. White, on one of the lighter shades of grey (however right or wrong it is) produces more sustainable results.
I publish my own blogs, and when I see an honest comment, I know the poster has read the post, understands it, and has taken his/her time. If there only after a free backlink, I really don’t mind giving them one because they made an effort.
The comments you have to watch out for are the generic ones. Something I used in my dark days was stuff like:
“Excellent post. I was going to publish something similar, looks like you beat me to it 
Do you mind if I tweet this?”
And the above worked 90% of the time. The blog owner is forced to reply, he sees free traffic, he sees the post as legitimate, but if you notice it’s generic. That post would work on any blog post.
But sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between legit and robot posts. I usually check the link the poster has used. A lot of them will contain “Make Money Online” type sites.
Well, in reality it is hard to keep the web “clean”. I think Google is somehow threatening people that these kind of posts will label as spams. Just like paid links, people can still hide their links with paid or NOT, I mean in reality it is really hard to track,
Thanks for quoting. Infact, this is not a big problem to focus. You just need to know how to be wise at these spam bloggers. 
Forgive me in advance and I don’t want to create an argument…
But I’m not sure that I see the difference between a paid link and an advertisement. If I have a site and I charge folks to display advertisements how is that different than if I am paid to post a link on my site? The banner ad may convey more information than a simple link, but it is probably also more intrusive.
Google has ‘sponsored’ links - paid links/advertisements by another name.
I can see the issue with posts to blogs and forums that add nothing more to the conversation than a link to the poster’s biz site.
Just my $.02
Well, even if Google does nothing about such spammy resources and link building techniques, it is long known among webmasters that artificial links are no longer useful and so they have lost values already.
That is a great news I hope people stop spamming on my blogs with them hundreds of damn links.
I see Google’s attempt as nothing more than self preservation.
Many poeple see Google as being ‘part of the furniture’ and that it can;t do anything wrongl. They see it as biggest and best and that it will always be the biggest and best. I doubt it ( let me have my dream )
I believe that ‘biggest and best’ should be ‘biggest and best’ if and because, it is ‘biggest and best’ - not because it is biggest and therefore overly powerful.
Basically, as I see it, they are clamping down on paid-for or revenue-sharing schemes under the guise of removing spam.
Many revenue-sharing schemes amount to leakage from googles income. I think google risks accusations of abuse of power and, I accept, that as an inevitability once a company becomes so big, relative to its competitors that it distorts the market. We have seen it before; it’s a conditional business fact, I believe - conditional on a company becoming so dominant that it abuses its position.
I see googles action similar to that of a property landlord preventing the tenant from sub letting the property except however in this case, it’s worse to the point of being wrong.
The property is not owned by the landlord - google does not own anyone’s own website and so should not be allowed to interfere with their own business practices and money-making efforts.
[scenario]
website A pays website B for a link because website B ranks highly in google. This means that google would be listing website B highly (whether, or not, it paid for a sponsored link), and website A gets customers driven to it - where google got no income from website A.
[/scenario]
That is the key reason for google, and/or any other search engine which operates such revenue-generating techniques, to try to persuade us that they are trying to do is a favour by getting rid of spam. Spam is a waste of time I agree and a scurge but, let’s get real…this (by google); in reality is nothing more than an attempt at business-strategic, self-interest behind the mask of a good guy. The ramifications are significant - I have seen how they are already beginning to affect a market and it isn’t good.
No point in shouting if not prepared to do anything, I also believe. Roll-on the future. I see it and it’s gooooood.
bazz
For the betterment of Google search result the spam sites should be blacklisted from the SERP. The reason behind this is, today many sites are doing their promotion using certain software that can drop their links in hundreds for site within few minutes. Now it is the responsibility of those site owners either to approve them or not.
Ex: many blog site are approving just
thanks
good job
nice blog
type of comments so as to get importance and increase the weightage. These sites are promoting those spams and so should be taken care.
Thanks for the good info. reminds me of the blog www-spam
lol. just kidding,
This is good I have been running into a lot of garbage sites on my searches that do not belong in the results and are only there because someone gamed the search engine. A few forums I don’t even go to anymore because every thread is just a spam posting board with links to garbage sites.
As other people were saying it is probably hard on a mass scale to tell for sure if links are paid for, But i,m sure they will come up with some decent formals to get the wost offenders.
i think its bad, making people to write a long sentense, if we mean easily with few words in comments
It’s probably just spam
I think Google doesn’t want any one making money online except them!
Google make money when we make money, it makes no sense at all for them to not want anyone else to make money because everyone would stop using Google.