How Google`s Quality Raters Treat Web Spam - Parked Domains
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A parked domain is a domain that expired, but was purchased by a scammer before the owner could renew it. Spammers put their own content on the site and benefit from the domain's link power.
I believe that Google monitors WHOIS renewal dates and can easily detect and correlate expiration dates to radical changes in content. This means that if parked domains get through algorithms, they can be flagged for human review.
Quality raters are instructed to use http://www.waybackmachine.org to learn how the site looked in the past. It's very easy to spot parked domains since they are usually machine generated. http://www.dasonet.com/todahfzkdk.htm
Thin Affiliates
If you rely on affiliate networks for branding and income I have some bad news - Google doesn't like low quality affiliates, as they call them "Thin Affiliates."
Thin affiliates copy merchant's text and images without giving much unique value. Google considers those pages low quality and instructs raters to label them as spam. As a merchant you are protected because raters cannot ban original merchants (unless you break other rules).
Thin affiliates may pass filters if they offer unique value like reviews, customer feedback or price comparison.
Hidden Text and Hidden Links / JavaScript Redirect / 100% Frames
This refers to cloaking. If you're new to SEO, stay away from cloaking. There are Black Hat masters out there who rely on it, but I do not know what they know, so I can't recommend it. You need to know what you're doing to make cloaking work.
Building a business model around cloaking is foolish. Google always patches the holes, so relying on cloaking software to fool search engines is kind of risky for your wallet. Software vendors may not be as fast to come up with new solutions.
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