Spamming Search Engines

Decades ago, spam was something gross that your mother slid out of a can and sliced onto white bread for your bag lunch. Cheap and easy, your mom filled your cupboard with spam whether you wanted it or not. When e-mail became Americans’ primary means of keeping in touch several years ago, the word spam became the catchy term for e-mail you didn’t want, and programmers rushed to can the spam by creating programs to filter out all the junk e-mails and keep your inbox lean and clean.

Well, the staying power of spam can’t be overcome, evidently. The word spam has reared its ugly head yet again, and now it’s being used to refer to the devious practices some websites are using to fool search engine optimizations. Spamming a search engine involves any technique devised to unfairly increase search engine rankings, or methods used to trick web spiders into raising a site’s rank in search engine hits. Dubious search engine marketers the world over are doing whatever they can to earn their money, even if it means tricking unsuspecting Internet users into wasting their time visiting sites that have nothing to do with what they searched for.

People using search engines want them to be relevant and useful—a soft of index to the Internet that will help them find sites that are truly related to the search they’re performing, not sites that have been optimized to seem related whether they are or not. But spamming of search engines results in tons of hits to a search that have ultimately no relevance whatsoever to the information the searcher is seeking. There are many techniques being developed such as cloaking, keyword stuffing, hidden text, and doorway pages that lead to other pages that repeat keywords over and over and over. Some sites artificially inflate their link popularity by running link-exchange programs or link "farms." All of these underhanded practices are designed to exploit algorithms built into the search engine programming.

Search engine optimizing companies may employ a particular keyword density or repeat a keyword over and over to temporarily increase their search engine rankings, or use another method to make their customers think they are getting their money’s worth. Although dubious practices such as the ones described above may initially increase the ranking for a page, the increase will be very short lived and the penalty for engaging in such underhanded practices will have much more of a permanent impact than any results gained by the improper optimization. In most cases, when a search engine detects inappropriate optimization techniques, the site is removed from the search results altogether. The only option for the site owner would be to start over, purchase a new domain, create and entirely new site, and optimize it fairly without using search engine spamming techniques.

If you are a site owner considering using devious optimization techniques just to get a rush of hits before the spam is discovered, be warned that the payoff does not begin to equal the temporary success of your site. But even if you’re using a legitimate optimization approach, be careful what other sites you link to. If they’re using unfair spamming practices and you link to them, you will most likely be penalized right along with them when their dirty deeds are discovered. Stick to ethical site optimization practices and use correct, natural techniques to boost your site to the top of the rankings in search engine results pages. Avoid the nasty habit of spamming, and your site will remain healthy and long-lived, naturally ranking high.