Stackoverflow getting killed by SEO spam. Google?
Search results snapshot: http://i.imgur.com/9SRoX.png
Spam page: http://efreedom.com/Question/1-1708417/Can-Extract-EXIF-Data-Using-PerlMagick
Scraped verbatim from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1708417/how-can-i-extract-exif-data-using-perlmagick
Spam site has two entries ranking above two stackoverflow entries.
Here's the search link, although rankings may have changed since I posted this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=perlmagick+remove+exif
I tried various edits, but HN won't turn the URL's into links.
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17 comments
| 14 points
| on HN
)
It's also not spam, all the content they've assembled is completely legally used and well presented. You're not brought to a malicious site or tricked into clicking any ads, you get the questions and answers you were looking for.
Google did its job. There's nothing wrong with that search result page or that site.
Excerpt from the Google Webmaster Central Blog[1]: "There are some penalties that are related to the idea of having the same content as another site—for example, if you're scraping content from other sites and republishing it, or if you republish content without adding any additional value. These tactics are clearly outlined (and discouraged) in our Webmaster Guidelines:"
[1] http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystify...
If you disagree, comment, don't downvote.
To restate: the searchfreedom page contains more of the stuff that an algorithm can know is important to a good search ranking like more mentions of the search phrase and more relevant outgoing links. It also contains nothing malicious. The stackoverflow page has some stuff that we consider important, like the ability to comment and by being the authoritative source. But Google cannot take this into consideration because it cannot know -- it's just an algorithm.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84039
This site is abiding by the letter of the license but not the spirit. Once you start defending this garbage, you let your guard down.
Jeff Atwood's intention with Stack Exchange's data dumps is to make certain (and ensure to its users) that his site will never become evil and hold all the community-contributed content hostage behind a paywall [2]. Although Jeff does not come out and argue against simple reposting of content without any added value, I frankly consider it unwanted spam that fragments a beautiful community.
[1] Unless the visitor notices enough to click the tiny and generic stackoverflow.com link, bringing us back to (hey) the original site.
[2] See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/defending-attribution-...
Edit: for formatting
Try it: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=perlmagick+remove+exif
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gledhololmniapejef...