Classification of Search Engine Spam
An article that I wrote quite a few years back, kind of outdated already, original posted at Qool Venture
A lot of unethical search engine marketers have developed plenty of methods to get higher position in search engines. However, most of them are considered as spam. Below are some example of the techniques :
1. Use of Unrelated Keyword
To gain top positioning in search engines, many spammers place unrelated keywords in their web pages which is nothing to do with their actual content. For example, many people put the words “sexâ€, “online gamblingâ€, “loan adviceâ€, etc, in their meta tag in order to get higher position and better search result just because it is a popular keyword.
2. Keyword Stacking / Keyword Stuffing
In order to get higher keyword density to boost a web page’s relevancy in the search engines, spammers tend to use the important keywords repeatedly. For example:
Web hosting, website hosting, web host, cheap web hosting, cheap web hosting, cheap web hosting, cheap web hosting, cheap web hosting, cheap web hosting, cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap
This type of text can be placed in any HTML tag, including the title tag, meta tags, body tag and so on. It can also be placed inside invisible layers and the <noframes>, <noscript> and <input type=â€hiddenâ€> and <img>. For example, many unethical search engine marketers create a small, transparent image called space.gif, blank.gif which is 1×1 pixels in size. Then they put a series of keywords in the alternative text of the graphic image, which can be shown as below:
<img src=â€space.gif†alt=â€web hosting, website hosting, web host, cheap web hosting, cheap website hosting, cheapest web hosting, WEB HOSTING, WEBSITE HOSTINGâ€>
No matter where this type of text is placed, it is still considered spam because it is clearly written to boost relevancy, not giving any benefit to the users.
3. Hidden Text
In order to appear at the top of search results, the web pages must contain enough key phrases that users might type in the search engines. However, this is very hard to implement without affect the original design. One way to place the key phrases on web pages without changing the look and feel of the site is to hide the text or make it invisible, this can be implemented in the following ways:
Using same color for text and background, with <font> tags, graphics and other CSS techniques.
Using hidden text in HTML forms tag <input type=â€hiddenâ€> even though a web page does not contain a form.
Placing keywords inside a <noframes> tag even though the pages does not contain a frameset.
Using hidden layers in style sheets, either by placing layers on top of each other or by placing the layers outside the browser screen.
4. Tiny Text
Many spammers understand that hidden text can be penalized, so they often put the keywords at the bottom of the page. They format the text with an extremely small size and in a color that is very similar to the background, so that it is difficult to read by the users. Although tiny text is visible, it is often considered illegal.
5. Artificial Link Farms
In order to increase link popularity, many spammers try to create multiple web sites linking to each other. Free-for-all (FFA) web sites are an example of artificial link farms. Link popularity is not solely depends on the number of links, but quality of links. Link farms cannot provide quality links to boost your link popularity, and linking to them might causes you trouble also, as you might be penalized because of participating in a spamming network.
6. Page Swapping
Page swapping can be done by submitting an optimized web page to the search engines, and then replace it with another one after it gain the top position of search engines. Page swapping is a difficult practice to maintain, because no one knows when or how often a search engine spider visits a site.
7. Redirects
Another way that spammers switch web pages is by using a redirect. A redirect is HTML coding, programming, or scripting that is placed on a web page so that page visitors are sent to a different URL after a specified period of time, often zero seconds. One of the most common ways to redirect is which looks like the following:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.frederickgoh.com>
With redirection, spammers create an optimized page for a particular keyword phrase. The optimized page, with the redirect, is submitted to the search engines. If the optimized page gets a top search engine position, anyone clickling the link to this page is automatically sent to a different page called a destination page. The destination page does not contain the same content as the optimized page. In fact, the destination page often does not contain the same keywords as the optimized pages.
To combat this type of spam, many search engines do not accept pages with any type of redirection other than the HTTP 301(permanent) redirect. Most of the time, the search engines list the destination page, not the page that contains the redirect.
8. Mirror or Duplicate Pages
Spammers duplicate or slightly modify a web page. Then, the spammers submit to a search engine hundreds or thousands of pages with only tiny modifications. For example, two pages might have identical content and different title tags, and two other pages might have identical content and different meta tags. If any of the submitted pages rank well for a specific keyword phrase, all the pages wilth slight modifications can dominate a search engine’s top search results.
9. Doorway pages, gateway pages, and hallway pages
Doorway page companies generally create thousands of pages for a single keyword or keyword phrase. All these pages are fed to the search engines, often through the free submit pages. Because doorway pages are built specifically to rank, the search engines indices are essentially polluted with web pages containing unnecessary information. Doorway pages are not very pleasant to look at, and they often contain so much gibberish that they have to be cloaked.
10. Cloaking
Cloaking is a technique of feeding search engine spiders one web page and feeding all other end users a different web page. All the major search engines consider cloaking to be spam. The only time that search engines accept cloaking is through a trusted feed program.
11. Domain spam and mirror sites
Domain spam is the practice of purchasing multiple domain names and building sites with identical or nearly identical content in them. The purpose of utilizing domain spam is to get multiple listings in directories to achieve link popularity and more traffic. The resulting link popularity in the directories helps boost search engine visibility.
