General discussion
Googling my Name = Tons of Spam Sites
Mon 25 Feb 2008 09:07:27 PM UTC — boehrbFor months now I have been desperately trying to win back my own name. Somehow, some time ago my name must have been added to one or more spammer's index terms.
Now when I search for my full name (Brendan Boehr) on Google I get 257 hits, of which roughly 90% are pure, unmitigated spam. See for yourself. It's the same story with Yahoo (308 hits) and, to a lesser extent, MSN search (62 hits).
I've been actively reporting the sites to their host domains (e.g., freehostingz.com, 0catch.com, fr33webhost.com, mycyberway.com, etc., etc.). In this way a few of the pages have been removed (but are still indexed for the moment, apparently). I have also reported many or all of these sites to Google - at first I did this manually using Google's spam report page, and then I started using the excellent Spam Report Firefox Plugin.
I feel like I'm fighting a hopeless battle. I don't want potential employers, associates or peers to find only misleading spam should they Google my name. My name is itself pretty rare (I have never discovered a single other "Brendan Boehr") so why it would be a spam target is beyond me.
Does anyone have any advice? Is there anything more I can do? Is my case hopeless? Is there a way to get Google to care about my problem?
Re: Google spam
Tue 26 Feb 2008 07:29:43 PM UTC — SamiUnfortunately, I'm not sure if there's anything you can do besides reporting the spam sites to Google. I certainly know what you mean, I've had companies push their software to unsuspecting users by buying Google ads using my name as a keyword... not really nice.
Do you have a website? If
Wed 27 Feb 2008 07:10:47 PM UTC — RobDo you have a website? If so, maybe I could link to your home page from some of my sites to see if I could get you a better google rank or something.
I do indeed have a website
Wed 27 Feb 2008 11:50:00 PM UTC — boehrbThanks Rob! I know that increasing my Google Rank isn't a permanent solution, but having a better rank may win most of the battle.
I have a blog that i started just recently. If you'll please excuse the blatant attempt to boost my search ranking, click here: Brendan Boehr. There isn't much content there yet but i intend to post frequently whenever i have time (which is not right now).
There is also a website that i made a few years ago for my father, who's a home designer and watercolor artist - Bruce Boehr at http://www.prairiescapesonline.com (the website is kind of crude, but i didn't know what i was doing back then. I like it anyways :). I should probably include my name somewhere on that site...
And thanks to Sami as well. I appreciate the feedback. If anyone comes up with more potential solutions i would love to know. I'll spread the word too.
Google United Kingdom show WOT ratings
Thu 06 Mar 2008 09:11:03 PM UTC — AntkinFirefox 2.0.0.12 and WOT plug in
I'm a Googler
Hi
I am a big fan of Google. Google UK is set as my home page. Since I down loaded the Firefox plug in WOT for Firefox 2.0.0.12 I have found that Google displays the WOT rating on every page. It's great just like a traffic light, Red for Stop, Yellow for caution and Green for go. I have two web sites of my own one has been rated as a good site (Green) and the other has a question mark against it as unrated, I do hope that this will also change to a Green for good web site in the near future. My partner In North Yorkshire has a web design web site that has a question mark against it so I have introduced him to Firefox 2.0.0.12 and the WOT plug in.
Antony
A Perkin Web Design
A WOT user for three weeks
Internet Search Settings
Mon 17 Mar 2008 07:43:24 PM UTC — boehrbHi Antony,
It's interesting which sites tend to show up with warnings and which don't. Sometimes the warnings don't seem to be descriptive at all, unfortunately. I guess only WOT users can rate websites. Yesterday i was reading about the whole "anonymous vs. Scientology" phenomenon and i noticed that nearly every official Church of Scientology had low WOT safety ratings.
Brendan