TO BOT OR NOT TO BOT

Good spotting, JCB.

I am mystified, however, to understand how bots here will enhahnce eHow's SEO overall

It was their implementation of what they call the Google Panda algorithm.

You can probably find more about it by using eHow's corporate name, Demand Media.

I'll see if I can find some links for you:

This describes what the Panda algorithm is about:


http://searchengineland.com/google-lowers-boom-on-ehow-com-73327

This is what I suspect eHow is doing. Spreading their low-quality content to other sites in an effort to bring them down to their level and defeat the Panda algorithm. They are probably using the bots to do the legwork.

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/google-panda-tips/

This tells how eHow has defeated the Panda algorithm by cleaning up their site and removing what even they considered to be "low quality" content. I still suspect they "botted" all their low quality content to other sites before they removed it from their own.

http://www.webpronews.com/demand-media-posts-record-revenue-and-profitability-2012-11

I think Jespah and ehbeth were the first to spot they were copying from eHow. After I saw their comments in one of the bots threads I started copying the title of their threads and pasting it in google, sure enough eHow popped up.

I think it’s a test and I believe these spambots will get smarter!

Thanks Butrflynet.

The piece I'm looking for was about the instructions given to contributors to ehow - how they could spread the word of their submissions.

The idea being that they'd drop off a tidbit of their item at other websites - which would take people to ehow if they googled the sentences/phrases.

That may be, but in my experience both here and at other sites, few people actually do literal content searches. Years and years ago, there was a member here who would post anti-evolution BS without attribution. It was simplicity itself to do a literal text search to find his source. The sources were either anti-evolution, religious web sites, which could be challenged on the basis of an agenda; or they were legitimate, reviewed articles which had been "quote mined," meaning their content had been taken out of context to give an impression counter to the overall meaning of the article. That member would always disappear for a while, and even relatively sophisticated members here would ask me how i came up with those.

It's possible, of course, that people would be lead to eHow by literal text searches. However, i suspect that such a search technique is still relatively uncommon. Something which enhanced unique key words or phrases would be more useful to them.

After reading Butterfly's article about Panda and Demand Media, i am now less convinced that these bots have anything to do with Demand Media, unless DM has farmed out this bot attack to an offshore (way offshore) company where English is not spoken well at all. The English in these bot posts (when they're not peddling content) really sucks, and even when they are peddling content, the English ain't so good.

Someone posted a link a couple of months ago that indicated that most traffic to A2k originates in India. It's not so much that the English used in India isn't good, it is just a different style of English (one we're going to have to get used to).

Oh no, you're wrong there--a lot of it isn't good. There's a lack of articles, of conjunctions, there are incorrect verb tenses. To me, their errors stand out like sore thumbs.

I get the impression Beth that some certainly does but surely not most

There's much truth to that. Unable to follow some such postings myself I note nevertheless that others of the same apparent technique respond with alacrity

I myself am delighted by the diversity of styles represented in a2k though I have to admit many like threads will be skipped by the middling US bonehead (me)

Yet I have to concede--indeed somewhat sheepishly--that I have invited such contributors to ask a countryman more proficient in English to first translate; so I herewith apologize most profusely, welcoming the ESL most enthusiastically