JLH Design Blog

Matt Cutts just outed a spammer using a text box to keyword stuff his pages. It’s more of a defense of Google’s non-editorial process of indexing sites based on their value rather than the views espoused on the site. A fine notion and well within Matt’s rights as a figure head for the company he works for.

The story leads us to believe that the site in question has been banned from the index solely on the fact that Google discovered its dirty little tricks. It’s also a warning to other webmasters to not use such tactics as 1) you may get yourself banned and 2) you may get publicly called out for it.

It’s a great little story, and we all sit and stare in awe at the great Google algorithm that can’t be so easily confused by a text area keyword area. But can it? Doing a search for an odd keyword combination in the text box ["poem grade powerweb"] (screenshot) gives us the following eight sites that use the exact same text box:

realimmortality . com
incrediblecures . com
eternallifedevices . com
superiching . com
liveforevernow . com
achieveimmortality . com
curecancerpill . com
immortaldevice . com

So yes, keyword stuffing is bad and you may get banned for it, but it also works. Whether or not Google can algorithmically find it is another question as Matt’s example is surely not a good one to prove that it can.