eBay affiliate spam pages on search engines.

[erthlng]

List was updated Tuesday February 20

Over the past few months, when using Web search engines to find a particular item, you may have run into a Web page that has the item listed, but when you click on the item for more details, you end up at eBay.com . It turns out that eBay pays "affiliates" to send them bidders and new users. These affiliates have built millions of Web pages which are designed to redirect traffic from search engines to eBay. With this weeks introduction of Yahoo's! new search technology (YST), we ran some searches for known eBay affiliate spam sites on the new Yahoo! search engine and found them..

Here is our latest list of sites that are repackaging eBay content then spamming the search engines with it. We did a tally on Feb 6th, and the first list we posted represented about 1 million+ spam pages. In the days that followed, most of them were removed from search results.

If you find a suspected eBay affiliate spammer post the URL and the search engine that you found it in, to this thread.


Some eBay affiliate SPAM sites, listed by search engine

in Yahoo's! new search
Spear2002.org

deruta-pottery.com

weekdayshopper.com

-----

Google
collector-resources.com has 9,220 pages

collectibles.la has 5130 pages

bid-cheap-auction.com has 33,700 pages

best-bid-auction.com has 22,000 pages

bid-on-auction.com has 40,300 pages

weekdayshopper.com has 26,000 pages


Total number of reported spam pages removed since Feb 6th

about 800,000



UPDATES ON THIS THREAD

Feb 17 -- Check out page 18 of this thread. "The Eliminator" submitted a list of over 200 spam Web sites to Google.
February 15-- Google cleared another 94,000 spam pages
February 12--Google cleared about 700,000+ spam pages. For details, see page 6 of this thread.

[colorfulpast]

Hi, Phil --

I thought the Google fix to get rid of these re-direct sites was, like, hours away:

**************************************************

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 2:30 pm Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abe,

I forwarded your link for the page you built to "Google Guy" and it sounds like Google is implementing some changes within the next two weeks that should eliminate the problems with the eBay affiliates getting listed on Google. We've been sending them these links for several months and he has indicated they were working on a fix, but this is the first time he has said they have something actually in place and ready to stop it.
_________________
Phil
President, TIAS.com Inc.
http://www.tias.com

*****************************************************

This is your post from another thread. So, what's the story?

But anyway, here's some more sites for you--

(praze thee lard) af-com-ministry.org
There are tons of .org redirects out there. Months ago we did a "who is" on this one, and this person has literally hundreds of site names ready to go.

lobeset.com

irebely.com

spear2002.org

weekdayshopper.com

4potterydeals.com

deruta-pottery.com

cccw.org

ipottery.net

(I found these in like 10 minutes. If I kept at it for a few hours, bet I'd come up with thousands more.)



Jana

Edited to change site names to non-clickable.

[erthlng]

From what I was told, we should have started to see something by now. The reason I ran those numbers was to see if they had gone down. What I found was that they were going up. I don't seeing anything happening. So the next best thing is to show how eBay affiliates are destroying Google search results.

It's affecting everyone and no one is reporting this story in the major media. The search results on Google for the antique and collectible market are in my opinion turning into eBay search results.

Your totals are as follows:

5,660 pages for lobeset.com

1,140 pages for spear2002.org

21,700 pages for weekdayshopper.com

1,100 pages for 4potterydeals.com

950 pages for deruta-pottery.com

1,520 pages for cccw.org

2,060 pages for ipottery.net

Total for these pages 34,130

Running Total - 2,108,330

[joolbud]

Here's another one--this one is a little different, but I think it qualifies:

22.700 pages for toytrump.com

Rita
_________________
Rita Perloff

[erthlng]

Thanks Rita,

Running Total - 2,131,030

[eagleridge]

To compound the problem, eBay has now decided it does want the google spider to visit (they had blocked the spiders for a few years). I noticed when I was searching for something early this week. This number will keep going up. Here are the direct eBay pages today:

801,000 : ebay.com
_________________
Jane
http://EagleRidgeCollectibles.com
http://AnimalFigurinesGallery.com

Hagen-Renaker little Horribles "Beautiful Baby" Made in 1959 only.

[sun818]

This type of activity has been in place for many years. You just don't notice the "spam" until you get into keywords that do not bring up a lot of results. Sellers need to get smart about placing well for the keywords they want and beat the spammers at their own game. Reporting spam is not a long term solution.

[grayhorseemp]

I hate to disagree sun but this is something new.

People who are buying google adwords are being specifically targeted. Their content harvested and the spammers are getting the benefit of the adwords.
_________________
Connie

[bystander]

In the spirit of removing spam from Google I submitted the following sites and more to Google's spam report. They are all doorway domains hosted on tias.com servers with duplicate pages with redirects to tias.com.

example:
doorway: http://junkyardjewelry.com/
duplicate: http://www.tias.com/stores/thejunkyardjeweler/

This is a violation of Google's TOS and I'm sure the individual that reads the google spam report will concur.

sample sites for query: [url]http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=tias.com.com+-site%3Atias.com

tinsignsusa.com

harborbazaar.com

antiquelinens-lace.com

captainhucksbooty.com

stricklersports.com

sewing-machine-manuals.com

junkyardjewelry.com

baydreamersilver.com

prototypevintage.com

antique-silver-gifts.com

valstarvintagecollection.com

jnl-2.com

dannysteeandtime.com

antiquesaccents.com

glasshaven.com[/url]

[sun818]

> People who are buying google adwords are being specifically targeted. Their content harvested and the spammers are getting the benefit of the adwords.

Huh? I thought this was about affiliates re-packaging eBay content and sellers are mad because TIAS content is not placing as well as the "spam". When did AdWords come into the picture? Before eBay - it was with Amazon. This type of activity has been around for a long time.

colorfulpast - I suggest not include a clickable URL next time. Webmasters can check their logs and come join the discussion (i.e. bystander).

[colorfulpast]

sun818 -- I changed the site names in my post as you suggested.

Can anyone explain why the new crop of spammers are using dot orgs for their site names? That fake minister showed up like days after Google cleaned house (temporarily) last fall.



Phil -- there has actually been a change in the results in searches for my test of roseville vase (no quotes) this week. The first two pages now show among the spammers a listing for Ruby Lane, GoAntiques, and a TIAS store. The first result is an appraisal from COUNTRY LIVING instead of the spammer who was #1 before.

There is so much spam now that I have to agree with the post Nancy made about Google becoming unuseable. Even I am having trouble finding stuff I am personally seeking without being buried under it. I know what is going on, but if I was just Jana Q. Public and clueless about the search engine wars, I would just write off Google now and not come back. If you are looking for anything that might be for sale, you will be buried under the spam.

This isn't just an impact on antiques sites. What are other types of online merchants doing about this problem? You know, the ones who sell housewares and clothing and stuff like that? Their products are being messed with as well.

Jana

[online-merchant]

BYSTANDER -- had you bothered to check those links, you would have found that those for my domain do not go to TIAS. And haven't for some time. You are seeing old listings.

Gee, thanks for filing a false report.

[erthlng]

I don't think this is just a TIAS issue. It's become an industry wide issue. Both Rubylane and Goantiques and I'm sure many other Web sites are seeing what is going on and some of their concerns have been mentioned on this BB. It's turned many of the search engine results pages into a mess of old and duplicate listings from eBay. These eBay affiliates have also hijacked content from other Web sites so that they can drive more users back to eBay.

As an example, do a search for Roseville vase of Google. As of this post, two of the top 3 listings are from an eBay affiliate. There is no indication that the content listed is from eBay. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll see that they have also pulled content from other Web sites to enhance their page.
_________________
Phil
President, TIAS.com Inc.
http://www.tias.com
The Webs largest online Antique & Collectible Mall.

[sun818]

roseville vase - 21,800 results. It is not hard to dominate through spam when you have such a small result set to work with.

Spammers don't place well using the same method for online gambling where you have over 4 million results to compete with.

[erthlng]

Understood, but we deal in a market where we have limited quantities of very specific items and that is the way that people search for them online. Because of this these spammers are having a tremendous affect on the listings with their spam.
_________________
Phil
President, TIAS.com Inc.
http://www.tias.com
The Webs largest online Antique & Collectible Mall.