By Shari Thurow, Search Engine Watch, Jan
15, 2002
A special report from the Search Engine Strategies
2001 Conference, November 14-15, Dallas, TX.
Those who take extreme measures to rank well on search
engines are likely to be labeled spammers. There are
some clear no-nos, but it is mainly an issue of intent
and proportion. In a session entitled "The Spam
Police," representatives from Google, Inktomi,
and FAST explored the issue of spamming the search
engines.
To determine whether or not a search engine optimization
strategy can be considered spam, Matt Cutts, Software
Engineer for Google, said that webmasters should ask
themselves the following questions:
(1) Does your web page's content help end users?
Tricking end users to get to your useful content does
not count.
(2) Would you perform on optimization strategy if
the search engines did not exist?
(3) Are your pages automated? If so, Google does not
want them in their indices.
"Essentially, we want the best search
results on top," stated Cutts. "We want
to get end users off of Google as soon as possible."
Google takes all spam attempts seriously.
Some items that Google considers spam are:
(1) No hidden text.
(2) No stuffing pages, graphic images, etc. with irrelevant
words.
(3) No doorway pages, multiple domains or subdomains
with essentially the same content.
(4) No "sneaky" redirects.
(5) No cloaking.
(6) Typo spam/cybersquatting (for example www.yahhoo.com)
(7) Identity theft/pagejacking.
(8) Linking to "bad neighborhoods."
All of the search engines representatives made it
very clear about linking to "bad neighborhoods,"
which is creating deceptive links purely to boost
a site's popularity. Though no one can control which
web sites link to you, you have total control over
which sites you link to. If a site links to another
site that is considered a "bad neighborhood,"
such as free-for-all (FFA) web sites, your site can
be penalized.
The email address to report spam is spamreport@google.com
or fill out their form at
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Google also announced a new beta toolbar
which can be downloaded at:
http://toolbar.google.com/go?version=beta&hl=en
.
The toolbar sends a vote to Google to determine whether
you had high quality or low quality search results,
or if you saw good or poor sites.
For more information about spam guidelines, go to
http://www.google.com/webmasters/ .
Tim Mayer, Web Search Product Manager at
Inktomi, presented these common spam practices:
(1) Embedding deceptive and/or hidden text not related
to actual content.
(2) Using meta data that does not accurately describe
a page's actual content.
(3) Fabricating URLs that redirect for no specific
purpose.
(4) Flooding the search results with machine-generated
pages.
(5) Creating intentionally misleading links.
(6) Cloaking/doorway pages not reflecting actual content
of web pages.
(7) Link farming or link spamming
Affiliate programs, Mayer stated, are generally problematic.
Essentially, affiliate programs tend to be "spam
magnets" because the content is the same on all
sites.
Inktomi does accept information pages into their
free index and into their paid inclusion programs.
For example, if a site contains PDF documents, and
you create an information page in HTML with an abstract
of each PDF document, that HTML page is acceptable
to Inktomi.
If you suspect that someone is spamming Inktomi,
email spamcrusader@inktomi.com. This email can also
be used to dispute a spam penalty.
Stephen Baker, Director of Business Development and
Marketing for Fast, echoed both Google's and Inktomi's
sentiments. "Sites that are not meant to be of
interest to people and material repeated in too many
unreasonable places is generally considered spam,"
said Baker.
Baker listed three basic types of spam:
(1) Page spam, which is material that is not intended
to be seen by end users.
(2) Spam stuffing, which includes invisible text or
link farming.
(3) Offensive content, which includes pornography,
hate views, distribution of illegal substances, etc.
"Spam is a serious problem on the Internet and
FAST is committed to identifying and eliminating it
from our engine," stated Baker. "While FAST
doesn't explicitly define what spam is, our policies
are clear and suspect sites will be penalized: any
technique that is used to achieve a higher ranking
than otherwise similar documents or trigger a result
for unrelated queries runs the risk of being considered
spam."
Any searcher who thinks they have found a questionable
result on AlltheWeb or any their portal customer sites,
such as Lycos, should email them using the "contact
FAST" link located on www.AlltheWeb.com.
Site designers and webmasters should focus their
efforts on creating sites with unique content and
getting other quality sites to link to them instead
of wasting time trying to spam the search engines.
Shari Thurow is the Marketing Director and Webmaster
for Grantastic Designs, Inc. (http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/)
She has been designing and promoting web sites since
1995 for businesses in a wide range of fields.
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