eBay Subdomain Spam

23 out of the top 32 Google search results for titleist provx golf balls are ebay.com, subdomain.ebay.com, spam.subdomain.ebay.com, popular.spam.subdomain.ebay.com, etc.

Maybe they didn't intend to use the subdomains so aggressively. Maybe it is not search spam. But even if that is the case, it is a display of pathetic relevancy algorithms by Google. Time to move away from core domain authority or put a cap on the subdomains Google.

Published: May 10, 2007 by Aaron Wall in google

Comments

eric
August 5, 2007 - 6:33pm

Do all of these sub domains rank well because the spiders read from left to right and consider text further to the left to be more relevant?

In that way golf-balls.spammysite.com would have an advantage over legitsite.golf-balls.com or even premier-golf-balls.com. Would it be accurate to say that this is the reason why?

Thanks for all you do,
Eric

August 5, 2007 - 7:57pm

Hi Eric
Not IMHO. I think the advantage is eBay's overall ad spend, and the associated trust and clout their brand and ad spend bring to anything associated with them.

werty
May 10, 2007 - 11:08am

Next time you want to buy something online and it only has 2 ads send me an email and I will build an aff campaign for it (c:

Kyle M Brown
May 10, 2007 - 2:34pm

"Titleist pro vx" returns separate results. Also, a search on the manufacturers website does not return any results for "titleist provx". So in this case the syntax may be the reason.

Why do you feel the subdomain is an issue. Its their domain and their brand which they built, and now they are using it via subdomains, why is that a problem?

Should eBay purchase a separate domain for every product on their site? I dont get your position in this post.

Your thoughts?

Scott
May 10, 2007 - 6:58pm

If I remember it correctly, there was a guy a while back that had zero back links and a brand new domain.

He was able to get thousands of lame pages indexed quickly because the algo behing Google and other engines indexed his sub domains and treated them like other domains linking to the main rather than as a sub domain. A vicious cycle that kept moving and getting contentless pages/sub domains indexed which pointed to the main domain and other pages/sub domains.

http://merged.ca/monetize/2006_06_17/step-by-step-how-to-get-billions-of...

I thought this was already "fixed"... but it may just be that it was not all inclusive, and more selective in nature.

http://searchengineland.com/070509-130626.php

May 11, 2007 - 3:11am

I do not think eBay needs to register a new domain for each product, but the relevancy sucks when 23 of the top 32 results are from one company...thats all.

kid lash
May 11, 2007 - 8:48am

so you are either lookin for a new set of clubs or workin for the man...which is it?

May 11, 2007 - 8:58am

Neither...my fiance loves golf almost as much as she loves me :)

CleanHat
May 11, 2007 - 9:06am

This is a serious spammy problem. Thanks, Aaron, for pointing it out!

My question is: now that I see this works for eBay, Monster, etc... should I do it myself just to keep up or should I stay on the high white-hat road hoping Google will stop allowing the exploit?

stiffpicken
May 11, 2007 - 5:46pm

hoooooo boy! that is what we refer to in the business as "dominating the page". what are the odds that a user won't click one of their links? pretty dang low.

impressive sub-domain junkiness

September 4, 2007 - 2:08am

Google is a sell out! They sold out the good in "do no evil" for hefty ad spend. That's the bottom line (pun intended)

googlemonster
May 27, 2008 - 2:34am

But if you want to see the most subdomain spam i've ever seen look through this site: www.new|dress|upgame dot com with no space etc. check through some of his/her other sites, ropping in perverts? What is the strategy here exactly?

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