I was looking over some recent link exchange requests that have built up in my inbox and noticed an even greater trend toward junk sites than normal.. Adsense ads so well blended in to the links that you had to really look to see where the ads ended and the real links began.. Or even better, sites with 5, 6, or 7 ad blocks on a single page.. Even a few pages with nothing but ad blocks and an RSS feed..

Add to these the CSS spammers, the comment tag spammers (don't they know that doesn't work any more?), or just the plain old scraped content run through a randomizer so it doesn't show up in a copyright search.. There are a ton of sites out there that are trying very hard to game the system..

So I'm wondering, when you come across these sites do you hit the report abuse button or do you simply move on and forget about them??

I think it depends on my mood and how busy I am. One of my clients has a diehard competitor using repeated words. I actually called friends and have them all report in hopes the raise the flagged priority in their index (if there is one).

But as a norm, I don't typically search for duplicate content. Doesn't IE7 have some sort of embedded tool to inform you if the site has duplicate content? I had to uninstall because it kept crashing my PC (damn MSN).

If there is obvious SEO abuse, I report them about 70% of the time. The rest, I'm usually just too busy to deal with.

i report sites i see using really blatant spammy techniques

if clients see their competitor ranking above them and clocks their riduculously huge chunk of hidden text in their homepage they want to know why i dont do that. if other sites appear to be getting away with breaking googles rules some website owners dont undertand why they should be sticking to them.

still to see the ones i reported moved though.

cest la vie

It can take up to a few months Kay, depending on when Google and others get to the spam removal chores.

I suppose it depends on which rules they are breaking.. if you report to the Search Quality team (MC and Co) or to AdSense AW. Or both.

You should certainly use the methods in place as this is how the majority of minor spam (KW stuffing, text color infractions) get's taken out for the most part.

Can you attach the URL for those? I know about the main spam report form, never heard of those others. And where in AdSense would I report? Thanks for the insight!

I usually just hit the back button & continue my searching. I figure Google will eventually wise up & filter out the spammers. That and I'm too lazy .

I always use it.

I don't think I've ever reported a site for anything - maybe once. I used to write that reporting a site just for spam is a rotten thing to do, and I still think it is. The one exception (in my book) is when it's a competitor - because it's business, and we do what we can to beat the opposition.

But things have changed a bit, and bad MFA sites are all over the place, and in the serps. I'd report them if I thought it would do any good. But I'd never report a site just because it contains spam. It's not my job to keep the serps free of spam; it's my job to make use of the serps, by whatever means I can.

The adsense abuse link is here -

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/ ... swer=18386

The site that originally got me to thinking was this one..

http://www.jewelrycheck.com/thematic.htm

It's by not the worst offender of adsense, but unless you look closely there is nothing to distinguish the adsense from the standard links.. I haven't reported them, but have given it some thought..

I haven't used the report spam link too often either.. Only in extreme cases.. And then only when it was in the jewelry industry.. Like Phil said, that's business..

Now, the MFA sites, those are a whole 'nother issue entirely.. My reports have devolved down to

It would be interesting to know what the AdSense people made of those links. They have the required "Ads by Goooooogle" at the top, which makes them all look like ads by Google. The reason that it would be interesting is because I changed the left nav links in the non-forum part of this site to match the Google stuff at the top of them, and I did it with the AdSense people's ok.

The gradient background repeating bothers me more than the actual ads blending in with the text links... it's not exactly hard to fix :\.

I'm really tempted. most of my competitors above me are the obviously computer generated interlinking massive site ie lawinfo.memphis lawinfo atlanta with like 5k links all their sites.

I have'nt reported any, yet