GOOGLE BASE/SHOPPING SITE SPAM

What you need to know about Google base:

Google base is the latest revelation which has enabled viewers to search for products with much ease and at the quickest rate possible. It has created a revolution in terms of making shopping much easier for people.

Functionalities of Google Base:

Any website owner can create an account in Google base and upload product feeds and other details making it much easier for it to be found in Google Product Search. Google Base itself acts as a comparison website where it lists down a variety of products sold by different companies matching with the keyword given in the search bar. These products are also listed in order of increasing rates making it easier for viewer to buy a branded product at a cheaper rate.

The viewer cannot purchase the product directly from Google Base. When they click on a particular product sold by different companies providing similar services and products, it links them to the company's website where the actual purchase can be made. Thus it is more like an authenticated referral link to your company's website. This is a very beneficial advertisement strategy. The more hits on your company's website, the website ranking in the shopping search engine rises eventually.

Spamming shopping sites and Google Base:

Google and other major search engines follow a very strict set of code lines in order to validate and authenticate website and the search engines follow a very strenuous pattern in terms of rating these websites online. There are several websites online as of today and our whole world is intertwined together.
Because of its reputation it enables people to purchase quality services and products without much of a doubt.
Though spamming seems very difficult under such scenarios to get a good ranking for a company's particular website, it is not impossible.

Some of the ways to manipulate shopping search engines are mentioned below.

1. Google Base allows only one account for a particular website to list down their products. However, I have come across a spammer having a catalogue of 1000 products creating 10 different websites with different authentication details exhibiting the same 1000 products and thus in turn they are also able to create 10 different accounts in Google Base. As a result in the search engine list when a client or a customer searches for a product their websites are most likely to be listed at the top commonly in the form of duplicates. At least 6 out of the top 10 websites listed related to the search belong to the spammer who has 10 different websites. It is more like a lucky draw concept. The more resources or tickets you have for a lottery, the more chances for you to win.

2. The "Keyword" concept plays a critical role for every website to do business. It is more like a key to link to a particular website and the search engines list the websites depending upon the popularity of the website (which based on the ranking) and the keyword related to the search made by the viewer. Google as such does not allow keyword spamming in order to increase the popularity of a website and increase its ranking. It follows a limitation and a restricted pattern. However copywriters still do manage to create a meaningless document spammed with keywords and still submit it. As a result they are commonly listed in the search engine list which increases the scope of the website for more viewing and in turn generating more hits and increasing the website's rank.

3. Feedbacks and reviews play a critical role in influencing search engines. Search engines take these reviews in determining and assessing a website and come up with a rank for the website. Every website these days are filled with customer reviews and feedbacks. This is basically done to influence the people into availing or purchasing their services and products respectively. Obviously the more good reviews means the more reputation you get and thus people will get convinced to purchase products from your website. Spammers who own certain websites creates several fake reviews with fake identities and post them as feedbacks across the internet in many websites including theirs as well. Obviously they post these feedbacks on websites providing similar services and products to theirs. Now the search engine which takes positive feedbacks in order to rank a website among the top gets manipulated in the process and as a result spammer's websites are listed frequently among the top. The ratio of finding such websites in the list's top 10 is at least 6 minimum.  

Images

Screen Shots

The image highlights the policy guidelines put forth by Google base shopping sites. These policies cover the techniques that have to be prohibited or avoided by the users in order to prevent unwanted spam and manipulation.

These are the webmaster violations which if practiced will be penalized by Google.

Working Examples

This screen shot is an example of a Google base site which sells laptops and has an irrelevant product in its listings. It is an example of manipulation in Google base shopping site in order to increase the site rakings.

This is an example of Google base shopping site spam where the site "get-it-cheaper-here.com" is filled with junk product links which is of no use to the users. This site gets ranking by manipulating the search engines but serves no benefits to the users.

References

1. Google base spam

2. Google shopping spam

Other sites that refer to the same manipulation tactic are as follows

• Google base-definition

• Google support