Spam is generally a term that is used for unsolicited email messages. Spam can
also refer to the garbage being thrown at the search engines in order to eek
out a higher ranking. Like many other "black hat" tactics, search engine
spam might work in the short-term, but eventually will get the site penalized
or de-listed from search engine indices.
1. Forum and Blog Spam
Link farms were a quick and dirty way for webmasters to get links back to their
own websites to exploit the back-linking advantage that Google gives. As
Google got wise to that tactic, webmasters started to turn to forum and blog
spam. Forums and blogs are targeted to a specific niche or subject matter.
Links coming from blogs and forums are certainly relevant. However, spammers
exploit the ease by which the public can enter their own comments. Instead
of contributing for the betterment of the community, they simply add entries
laced with their URLs.
2. Directory Spam
Directories such as Yahoo and DMOZ are hand-sorted directories that rely on
humans to actually include and categorize links. Because of this, other search
engines viewed directory listings as a more valuable type of backlink. Webmasters
then began spamming directories, trying to get multiple entries and other devious
tactics. As a result, directory listings don't carry the weight that they used
to, which is unfortunate for those who were legitimately included in them.
What's more, some search engine optimization firms still charge clients to
have websites submitted to directories that are otherwise worthless.
3. Mini-Sites
Mini-sites are similar to leader pages but on a grander scale. Spammers would
create a host of websites, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. Each website
is specifically focused on a particular topic, but ultimately its job is
to funnel traffic to the main website where all the sales would occur. Each
site is interlinked with each other, creating an artificial back-link and
page rank system. Complicated inter-linking strategies are used to simulate
normal linking activity on the web. In other words, one site would link to
a second but not the third. The second site would link to the fourth and
fifth, but not the first, and so on. The whole point of this exercise is
to make the main page more important to the search engines. This tactic was
penalized by Google recently. Search engine optimization firms were penalized,
and their entire client lists were banned from their index.
4. Email spam
Not to be overlooked, email spam has played a role in search engine spamming.
The unscrupulous webmasters email their links to innocent surfers to try
to get them to click on them. With the rising popularity of desktop search
appliances, this type of spam is being used more and more. Use of this tactic
is every bit as unethical as an ordinary email spammer.
5. Tag spam
Webmasters will sometimes stuff their HTML code with tags that are not visible
to the web surfer. These include style tags, meta tags, noframes tags, alt
tags, comments tags, and http-equiv tags. An alt tag, for example, describes
an image for users who choose not to view graphics while they surf. Many
search engine optimizers stuff key words into alt tags and some of the other
tags. While this practice is not as egregious as some other forms of spam,
many still use this tactic improperly and unethically. However, there seems
to be a downward trend in the misuse of tags.
6. Site submissions
While not technically spam, there are search engine optimization firms who
charge clients a fee to submit their sites to the major search engines. The
fact is that most of the desirable search engines do not charge anything
to be included in their indices. Manual submission to search engines isn't
even a viable strategy anymore, as there are better and more efficient ways
of getting a site listed than manual submission. For example, a link on a
site that Google spiders regularly will be followed by that spider and will
eventually index that website. You shouldn't need to pay anyone anything
to submit your site to Google.
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