Several of my friends as well as customers have pointed out a specific website that pollutes the SERPS with its spammy tactics when searching for a specific city in Colorado. The website in question is a link farm and sells “advertising”. I have reported the website at least 2 times to Google, but nothing is happening and the website is still ranking on page one while other websites – including the local government – are not showing up on page 1 on Google. In one way this is really frustrating because it shows that Google only seems to care when a) money for them is involved or b) this would be a highly visible search term. On the other side it shows SEO tactics that still work even though Google says they don’t. Let’s take a closer look here.

First of all this website is making false statements. For one Highlands Ranch is not a city or town nor does this website is the official directory of the City of Highlands Ranch.

Let’s scroll down a little bit. Do you see the blue text I marked? Can you read that text? Not only is the text color a clear indicator that it is not meant to be read by humans, the size also shows that humans are not supposed to read this text. On further investigation the intention becomes clear even more. Please click on the image to see an enlarged version and to read the text.

Here is a small exempt from this spammy text:

Attention all search engine spiders: This site features government in Highlands Ranch Colorado, businesses in Highlands Ranch Colorado, schools in Highlands Ranch Colorado, events in Highlands Ranch Colorado, information, groups, associations, community links, and sporting events in and around Highlands Ranch ……

The text ‘greets’ the search engines and then feeds them with keywords the website wants to rank for. We all know that hidden text is going to get you in trouble. We all know that almost hidden text is also being picked up by search engines as SPAM. I guess it really depends on the right color combination to fool the search engines and to feed them the stuff you want without the fear of being detected.

The site is not very well indexed which could be a sign that Google has identified as SPAM, but why is the home page still ranking so well in Google? Doing more research on where the website is linking to, it becomes clear that there is a network of websites of the same kind that pass link juice back and forth. Apparently the owner still makes some good money from Google Adsense?!

If you have a moment of time – please report this website as SPAM to Google: highlandsranchcolorado.net

Link to screenshot of Google SERPS.