How about a little old skool search spam? OK, Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped points out in
BMW’s
Doorway Pages that the automaker is employing hidden content on its web site
in Germany. Search engines see one thing; humans another. It’s cloaking, but not
IP based, more of the "poor man’s" variety that uses JavaScript.
Look at this
page.
You’ll see nice, pretty pictures of BMWs. Philipp then illustrates how when you
turn off JavaScript, you get a page of completely different content, including
the use of the word "used car" 42 times in what appears to be a gibberish
doorway page. That’s a page where the sentences may look like they are saying
something to a search algorithm but make no sense to a human reader.
When I disable JavaScript, I actually don’t see what Philipp got. Instead, I
get a page telling me that I need to have JavaScript to view the site. Part of
this seems to be due to some redirection going on. But here’s an easy way to see
what Google’s actually being shown — this
page from the Google cache.
Related reading
How to optimize VR content for search
Virtual reality (VR) has been the talk of the town for a little while now and its marketing potential is getting difficult to ignore. But despite the clear benefits of VR, businesses are still hesitant about diving in. Can VR content be found using search engines? Is it even possible to optimize virtual reality content for search? We take a look at how to do VR SEO.
Baidu SEO: How to optimize for China’s biggest search engine
Speak to pretty much anyone about SEO and the rhetoric will largely be in regards to the "Big G". But there are countries in the world where Google is not king, and one of them is China. If you want to optimize for the second-largest economy in the world, here's what you need to know about Baidu, China's primary search engine.
Google Search Console: What the latest updates mean for marketers
Google Search Console has benefited from some significant upgrades over the past decade. That said, it is still far from perfect and few would argue that it provides a complete package in its current guise. Therefore, Google's recent announcement of some changes to the platform was very warmly received by the SEO community.
How to optimize featured snippets for voice search
When it comes to voice search, featured snippets are key. If a searcher is using voice search and expecting a verbal reply, they will not be presented with a choice of results - and where a featured snippet is present, this will be the result read out. So how can you optimize your featured snippets for voice search?
