On the subject of spam – here’s an interesting one. You can do plenty with the Google search bar other than your “normal search”. You can use search operators to get a different look at websites. Here’s one you can do that’s fairly interesting. In the search bar key in the following
Site:mysite.com
But substitute ‘mysite.com’ for your own website. This then shows you web pages that Google has indexed. Now, if you are a keyword rich site (ecomm perhaps) you can go further, using the site operator again search for a keyword (red widget in this example)
Site:mysite.com red widget
This will return all the pages the Google feels should be in search results for a search for “red widget” – but we’ve limited it to only your own sites pages. The page at the top of that results list in the page that Google feels is the most appropriate for that search term.
Sometimes that page is a surprise to some companies as it may not be the “red widget” product page. Knowing the page that Google preferred can make focus a little on the SEO so as to “move” that to another, more desirable, page.
Yet another interesting operator is “inurl:keyword” – this will throw up any site that has that keyword in the title. Where gets is really interesting is looking for hacked sites – and the nice one to look for are sites with a Pharma Hack. These are sites that have been compromised and are now selling (unbeknownst to their owners) a variety of medical enhancements. I don’t want to use the exact word here but you’ll get the drift
inurl:little blue pills
Then restrict your search to Ireland and bingo – many of the sites that have been pharma hacked. Naturally, there are sites that are using that phrase “legitimately” as in the Irish Times with a report on the product. But many of the sites are selling the little blue pills through a backdoor on a site. The link here shows the Irish sites that’s have been hacked or new pages produced in the past year. Just be careful opening these pages. Make sure you have a decent anti virus programming in case some of the scripts get nasty.
And it’s the great and the good. From a Travel Agents site, to one of the Enterprise Boards site and a creative agency and so on.
These sites are going to be seriously downgraded in the current Penguin update. The note here is to check your site in the search engines every once in a while, make sure it’s secure – latest patches, secure directory permissions and the such.
