What the hell is a MOZ?
Moz is a service that no one asked for. A variant of the old Google "PageRank" engine ideologies where just like that system is bases your 'domain authority' off of an obscure pyramid scheme of "more important" domains to prove your worth. MOZ isn't the first to try to 'rank' the internet. There was WOT (Website of Trust) which had it's own issues with legalities. And of course there's the Amazon Giant in the corner "Alexa" which quietly monitors everyone's website traffic if you want them to or not.
Read on to dive deeper into my diatribes.
What is your problem with Alexa, MOZ, and all of these SEO guys?
The problem that we have with these servers is the simple fact that we didn't ask for their services. We didn't ask for them to monitor us, Rank us, or quietly judge us from their self-made soap-box that they prescribed themselves on the internet.
The business of MOZ is to involuntarily rank the importance of every website that exists on the internet. You can't opt-out from scum-bags like these people because they just say that all of the information collected is publicly accessible just like Robo-callers going through the telephone exchange system. Their other business is after they deemed your website unworthy they try to offer services that "help boost your score."
This is SEO racketeering at its finest party people!
Even when you're ranking is good on one of these services it actually does MORE DAMAGE to a website where-as if you didn't rank at all! Because there are spammers that view the "top 1-million internet websites" as some sort of fucked king-of-the-hill game that they need to get their crappy advertisements onto as fast as possible. Currently, we receive a rate of 100+ spam ads and we blame sites like Alexa/Moz for instigating such a disaster.
Where does this website fit in throughout all of this.
Back when MOZ first started they had their usual Pyramid Scheme "Domain Authority" ranking and that was pretty much it. Now one thing you have to keep in mind with firms like this is they feel the need to constantly move the target higher and higher until they're almost tripping over their own policies and rule-sets.
Google has done it with PageSpeed where they demand that website owners meet specific and restrictive criteria of metrics in order to be ranked well on their search engine or get blasted into the dark ages. But in true Google form of
"Do as we say and not as we do."
Their sister company YouTube can't even pass their own PageSpeed metric with the most hurtful scores in "Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)" which if you read into it indicates our deceiving your site can be with GUI icon placement decisions. To which to PageSpeeds credit it's right! Unless you're rocking U-Block, Ad-Blocker Plus, the experience of browsing videos on that site is horrific.
Getting back to MOZ it appears they now have introduced a NEW "Spam Score" and according to their site my site has "23% Spam".
Where is this mythical 23 percent spam that exists on my site?
We honestly thought that we were doing a good job keeping sites AWAY from us! However, MOZ is "Thinking Different?" we suppose? Lets find out.
Let the people of MOZ explain to you plebs how the internet works.
Here’s a rundown of the 27 signals that (according to MOZ) used to determine if your site is affiliated with spam or not. Buckle in your seat belts because we'll be responding to each of these 'rules' that they've defined.:
(1) Low number of pages found Our crawlers discovered only a small number of pages on this domain. This is not an inherent problem, but many spam sites have small numbers of pages, hence the correlation.
Exactly what is an acceptable amount of pages found in the eyes of MOZ? 10? 100? 1,000? 10,000?A website with 10 pages can have as valid information as a website with 10,000.
(2) TLD correlated with spam domains This domain's top-level domain extension (e.g. .info, .cc, .pl, etc) is one that many spam domains use.
"Top Level Domain" after the website's name. For example, ours ends in a .com mockingly.
So, now MOZ is going to punish people for using exotic TLD names because the root TLD's (.COM .NET .EDU .MIL .GOV) are full?
Fuck you MOZ.
There's a reason why multiple TLD's were made in the first place. One part country representation (.tk, .io, .ru) One part diversity.
There was even the "xxx" TLD that came up which made total sense. That people in the porn industry want to let the world know exactly who they are.
So now someone can purchase a ".party" address and not have to pay some shitty cyber-squatter thousands of dollars for a .NET they've been sitting on for 15 years.
MOZ is being a real group of dicks for punishing and discriminating against web-masters for not using what they seem is the "Right" TLD.
(3) Domain name length The length of the subdomain and root domain is similar to those used by spam sites.
My domain length is 8 characters. So you're going to compare and contrast people because other spam sites have an 8 character domain? So is having a length of 3 characters or less is the standard MOZ? Spend millions and MAYBE we don't deem your site as spam? Kind of elitist. Painting a broad brush by punishing people over the length of their site name is kind of baseless.
(4) Domain name contains numerals Like many spam sites, this domain name contains numeric characters.
Although we don't have numbers in our domain name this is another baseless accusation. Numbers are a valid methodology for domain registration and here you are punishing web-site owners for using it. Numbers have meaning such as the area code of what town you grew up in. The year of which you wish to discuss your topics. Discounting numerical websites as spam is a shitty thing to do MOZ.
(5) Google Font API Present This domain does not use special fonts (e.g. Google Font API). Lacking this feature was common among spam sites we found.
Ever think of the far-out concept that maybe not everyone should use Google Fonts? Or Google for that matter? This site serves its own fonts. And checking the licenses and each font that we serve here we have permission to serve those fonts locally. Why should I have to contact an external server to request fonts when we could serve them faster as the DNS has already resolved to our site?
(6) Google Tag Manager Google Tag Manager is almost never present on spam sites.
Perhaps there's free thinking web designers that don't feel like suckling on the tits of Google. Fuck tags. Stop thinking with google.
(7) Doubleclick Present The Doubleclick ad tag is almost never present on spam sites.
Whoa! You're going to deduct points off of a site like ours because we don't host Doubleclick without ever considering the notion that Doubleclick is the very core of spam?!? They will link your site to spam! Do you want spam on your site? Because this is how you get spam onto your site!
If you think that being aligned with an ad-agency somehow makes you legit. Then you are so far disconnected from reality it's amazing your company hasn't gone bankrupt.
(8) Phone Number Present Spam sites rarely have real phone numbers present on their pages.
Fair ball MOZ. Where's yours?
I'm on your contact page and I don't see any indication of a phone number. Why is that? Oh, we can tell you why. It's because if you put your number up then you're going to get SPAM!!!!
(9) Links to LinkedIn Almost no spam sites have an associated LinkedIn page, hence lacking this feature is correlated with spam.
You probably have one of those MOZ because you hire people on the daily.
Guess what?
Not everyone needs to hire people. On top of that it is incredibly easy to fake a LinkedIn. By tipping this information to the public you are literately telling spammers how to avoid your own system. Good job.
(10) Email Address Present Email addresses are almost never present on spam sites.
I would say refer to my answer in number 8 AND we're now going to call you hypocrites MOZ because you use a contact form just like we do.
You're telling people that in order to not be flagged as a spammer site that they must provide an e-mail address so that spammers can add it to their list of Robo-mailers and decimate their mail servers.
I've yelled at Google for doing this and now we're going to do the same to you MOZ."Do as we say and not as we do." It not an acceptable answer.
(11) Defaults to HTTPS Few spam sites invest in SSL certificates; HTTPS is often a good trust signal.
This is one of the very few things we kind of agree with MOZ on but it really has to deal with what you are doing on said website. Now we got our HTTPS because users are commenting on our system. If the website is static, it's personal. And there really is no user input. Then HTTP is totally fine. The only reason why MOZ is saying this is they've been drinking the same Kool-Aid that Google is with their browsers getting angry for users visiting standard HTTP sites.
(12) Use of Meta Keywords Pages that use the meta keywords tag are more likely to be spam than those that don't.
First, the search engines want you to use meta keywords and now it's a bad idea. Make up your mind.
(13) Visit Rank Websites with very few visits in click-stream panels were more often spam than those with high numbers of visits.
Are you referring to your own internal service? because "Click-stream panels" isn't a thing anywhere else on the net. This one we're a little confused on.
(14) Rel Canonical Utilizing a non-local rel=canonical tag is often associated with spam.
We would almost say this is unnecessary. Rel Canonical is something to help out search engines identify duplicate content. If you don't really have duplicate content is it that relevant? We don't know on this one.
(15)Length of Title Element Pages with very long or very short titles are correlated with spam sites.
Do you want them long or short?!? What the hell MOZ! Make up your mind! Oh, wait you want us to "sign up" to get that answer. On second thought. I don't care anymore.
(16)Length of Meta Description Pages with very long or very short meta description tags are correlated with spam sites.
So lets just not have meta anymore? Problem solved. You'll probably increase the 'spammer' meter because they're so short that they are missing. Again, there is just no winning with you guys.
(17)Length of Meta Keywords Pages with very long meta keywords tags are often found on spam sites.
See number 16 on this list.
(18)Browser Icon Spam sites rarely use a favicon; non-spam sites often do.
Is it really that hard to put up a .ico on a website for a spammer? There are sites that can make you a .ico. No graphic arts degrees required. That's a really low bar to determine if a site is 'spammy'. It feels like MOZ is coaching spammers on how to be better at their traits.
(19)Facebook Pixel The Facebook tracking pixel is almost never present on spam sites.
Or perhaps a non-spammer website just doesn't want to suck on Zucc's dick. Facebook is just a fad. It'll go away like every other spammer site. Yes, we called Facebook 'spammers' what are you going to do about it?
(20)Number of External Outlinks Spam sites are more likely to have abnormally high or low external outlinks.
You can't use just the level of external out-links alone without further analyzing where they are going. Depending on the content a web-provider is making if all of the content is original they have no need to link externally and thus you punish them. But if they have to site a lot of different sites which may not hold the same standards as the web-provider THEN you're going to punish him for that? Kind of fucked up.
(21)Number of Domains Linked-To Spam sites are more likely to have abnormally high or low unique domains to which they link.
This is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you determine that links to other sites are spam you there-fore determine our site is also spam until it eventually devolves into a net equivalent of grey goo. Everyone is spam and thus everyone needs to be destroyed.
(22)Ratio of External Links to Content Spam sites are more likely to have abnormal ratios of links to content.
Sounds like we can't have another DMOZ or Curlie project at that pace. Way to throw the ax into human editable lists of websites. Of course, MOZ would like that since most of their system is automated robotic analytics instead of understanding how humanity works.
(23)Vowels/Consonants in Domain Name Spam sites often have many sequential vowels or consonants in their domain name.
This one we know. If you put too few or too many "o"s in Google you'll end up on some terrible site. This one is kind of legit.
(24)Hyphens in Domain Name Spam sites are more likely to use multiple hyphens in their domain name.
We're feeling a little attacked by MOZ because we use a hyphen within our domain name. This is almost as stupid as number 4 on this list. The hyphen is important because without it our site would look like a bunch of jumbled letters which is THEN in violation of number 23 on your list. Basically what you're telling a web-master such as ourselves that we can't please you no matter what we do. So we won't. Again, fuck you!
(25)URL Length Spam pages often have abnormally short or long URL path lengths.
Like numbers 16 and 17 if you leave an abstract value of what is too long or too short how is anyone supposed to know MOZ?
(26)Presence of Poison Words Spam sites often employ specific words that are associated with webspam topics like pharmaceuticals, adult content, gaming, and others.
This is an interesting way of saying that MOZ is engaging in censorship. Since "Gaming" could mean many things. Or what if I was a doctor talking about the various pharmaceuticals out there? What if mentioning these topics on my page triggers a spam warning? Slippery slope you guys going on there.
(27)Uses High CPC Anchor Text Spam sites often employ specific words in the anchor text of outlinks that are associated with webspam topics like pharmaceuticals, adult content, gaming, and others.
Well, we have a "none-per-unclickable." So outside of saying "Same as number 26." yeah. It's a different type of censorship.
Final thoughts.
When you're a dictator it's easy to tell everyone around you that your way of governing is the right way. That is until they're under another dictator that says the same. MOZ is everything that is wrong with the IT sector of America. A group of individuals who feel that if you didn't spend millions to produce your page and thus use their services then your less than a commoner in their eyes. By generating a wall of rules which are either contradictory, hypocritical, or just outright diabolical. These people will probably be responsible for ruining the reputations of many sites for years to come. That is of course until they go under and another predator class American company comes out of the woodwork and consumes them.
In a bizarre fate, we are hoping that our website eventually gets a terrible grade with a 100% spam rating so that the trash spam advertisements would finally stop as they wouldn't want to advertise on a site with such a bad rep. We're not going to put spam on this site because we love you the reader too much. This is why we've reached out to other outlets such as darkweb/onion networks and have received legit traffic that way instead of the barrage of bot-nets.
Sticking to our original assessment in our FAQs and guidelines. SEO marketing agencies are shit. They only want access to your wallet in any way possible. Or if it's lying to you by providing a 'service' or flat out trying to scare you staying you're "This" close from being banned off of the inter-webs. So long as you a web-master keep putting out good content (Or at least what it deemed interesting to YOU) level of content. Then that's all that really matters.
Until next time. That's what server said.
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