What is search engine spam. Search engine spam What falls under search engine spam

Website promotion in search engines ah is the #1 task for any webmaster and optimizer. After all, the number of site visitors and, ultimately, the profit brought by this site depends on high positions on queries. You can achieve good positions in the search by permitted or unauthorized methods, the latter include search spam, or as it is called in Google- webspam.

If you open the "License to use the Yandex search engine", then clause 3.7. this license outputs the definition of search engine spam as follows: « Search spam"are attempts to deceive the search engine of the Service and manipulate its results in order to change the position of a particular website in the search results. Websites that use "search spam" may be downgraded in ranking or excluded from the Service's database due to the inability to properly rank them.“Thus, Yandex regulates webspam as cheating PS and manipulating search results, without saying exactly what manipulations are meant.

Google Corporation has in its composition the well-known department Webspam Team, commanded by the well-known Matt Katz and this department is engaged in the fight against search spam. One of the latest creations of this department is the Google Penguin filter, which has made a lot of noise since the spring of 2012.

Google refers to webspam, among other things, the following things:

• doorways
• Hidden text and hidden links
• Link exchange schemes
• Masking and hidden redirect
• Pages filled with irrelevant keywords
• Pages or domains with almost the same content
• Link exchange schemes

For all this, the site can be lowered in ranking or even thrown out of the search databases. Google recommends that you report sites using illegal search spam methods via this page. It is possible that in this way someone gets rid of competitors in search results.

From the above, it can be understood that web spam is the manipulation of content and links in order to obtain high positions. There are a lot of web spam methods as such, and it makes no sense to list all of them in this article.

spam rate

When ranking sites, an indicator such as the spam ratio of an individual web page and the entire website is used. This coefficient is constantly recalculated depending on the incoming data and affects the ranking in conjunction with other factors.

Link spam

Link spam most often includes:

• Creation of sites (grids of sites) specifically for links
• Link Exchange
• Junk links from comments
• Unmoderated links
• Links hidden
• Cross-cutting links not related to the subject of the site
• Purchasable links with key entry
• Links for manipulating PR and TIC

Text search spam

Text search spam most often boils down to keyword spam

• page text
• headlines
• meta tags
• links
• the presence of a cs in the domain
• etc.

In conclusion, it should be said that search engines have always been set to fight search engine spam and this fight continues to this day. Moreover, the success of the search engines in this matter is visible to the naked eye. But what methods of promotion to choose for your sites, it's up to you.

Rand Fishkin on anchor text and the future of links

Spam in SEO

Search engines are notoriously reluctant to try to influence their algorithms. At the same time, for example, Yandex itself in its webmaster guide describes ways to improve site ranking. It cannot be said about these methods that they lead to manipulation with the issuance. But if each of them is somewhat strengthened, then the so-called. search engine spam, or spamdexing.

In I have already mentioned some of the "dark" moments search engine optimization, leading first to the rise of the site, and then to its sharp fall or even disappearance.

With search engine spam, it’s about the same, but it cannot be specifically attributed to black hat SEO, because. some of his methods only lead to pessimization (deterioration in ranking) of the site and, and not to its complete death. In addition, many webmasters and so-called. SEOs use spamdexing unconsciously (either from a lack of experience, or from its overabundance).

Spam on the Internet

Perhaps it is worth clarifying the concept a bit. spam generally. Initially, the English word "" meant receiving unwanted letters to yourself on email. As a rule, the content of such letters is commercial in nature with an offer to join a company. Or a classic example - "Give us your personal data so that we can send you $ 1,000,000"

Well, over time, all unwanted and unnatural messages (for example, in social networks communities and forums) began to be classified as spam. In other words, these are messages with a desire to deceive and gain benefits.

What is search spam

It is logical that spamdexing is an attempt to deceive search engines. The license to use the Yandex search engine says:

Definition of Yandex for spam

Such methods can be classified as very tough, from the field of black SEO - creating doorways, cloaking, hiding text, and softer methods:

• Inclusion in keywords and description meta tags huge number keywords and, or words, in general not related to the content of the page (but very popular for search queries). Therefore, by the way, it has lost its meaning. Possibly at present crooked use Keywords will not lead to negative consequences for the site, but you need to be more careful.
• Oversaturation of texts articles. This clearly hints to search engines about the presence of search spam.
• Same as in previous paragraph+ "cramming" all these words and phrases into accent tags (bold, italics). Directly tells search engines about spamdexing.
• Link spam. Everything is simple and clear here - getting unnatural links to your resource. A good link, from a search engine point of view, should be a recommendation to visit a particular site. And if this site itself tries to get for itself, and even not always in “beautiful” ways, then it spams. Of course, it is practically impossible to push to the TOP (it is possible, but for a long time) without external links, so you need to get external links wisely.
• The new trend in search engine spam - impact. It is carried out in several ways: 1) Using programs that emulate user behavior in search results 2) Attracting users so that they show interest in some site for a fee, for.

Ultimately, to deceive the user.

Main types

• Unrelated to the content of the page, but popular in search queries words in the tags "meta keywords", "description", for example " sex», « freebie". As a result, search engines began to analyze not only special tags, but also the text of the site itself.
• "Pumping" the text with keywords - an artificial increase in the frequency of a keyword or expression in the text and (or) the use of HTML markup elements (h1-3, strong, b, em, i) to artificially increase the weight of the keyword.
• "Invisible text" - text that is invisible to the page visitor, but indexed by the search engine. Applies the text color that matches the background color, 1 pixel text, blocks of text, with the style "display:none".
• Link spam - links that "wind up" the parameter "link popularity" and PageRank of the site. Since search engines, when answering a query, are guided by the number of links available on other sites on this resource, then there was an idea to somehow increase the number of such links:
  1. Create small websites free hosting, register them in in large numbers subject directories and from them to refer to the main one.
  2. Take part in the link exchange.
  3. Buy links for money.
  4. Link spam from guest books, blogs, wikis, etc.

Search engines deal with this by creating filters that include sites whose links are not taken into account when ranking.

• Doorways are intermediate pages created to increase the weight of a page in link ranking or to organize a Google bomb. In accordance with the doorway technology, a special doorway page should be promoted in the search index. And already from this page redirect to advertising. One advertisement can have an unlimited number of doorways. Search engines respond by removing sites from their database that have automatic redirects. To which spammers respond with a simple trick: they ask the visitor to click on the “Login to the site” button or something similar.
• Masking, or "cloaking" - analysis query variables, in which the search engine is given the content of the site, which is different from what the user sees.

Consequences of using search spam

• If early search engines could trust keywords, indications of the frequency of updates, then, due to the active use of these methods to “deceive” search engines, later versions of search engines were forced to almost completely ignore these indications, critically referring to each of the pages of the site, which made it difficult to find "respectable" pages with rare content and prescribed keywords. For example, a page with the text of a medieval song and the keywords "Middle Ages, poetry, Eastern Europe", which does not have large quantity links from other sites that do not contain the words "Middle Ages, poetry" in the text are unlikely to be found for these keywords.

Every year the number of sites hosted on the Internet is increasing exponentially. As a result, competition for a place in the TOP is greatly increased (especially for high-frequency queries).

Webmasters and optimizers are forced to use a variety of methods to promote their own sites (their resources) in an ever-increasing competition.

And some of these methods are partially or completely prohibited by search engines.

Many users know firsthand about spam in their site, but not everyone knows about search engine spam.

Search engine spam - what is it?

The common name for prohibited optimizations that some webmasters sometimes use is search engine spam.

This name is due to the fact that search results are spammed with pages with irrelevant content due to the use of dishonest promotion methods. In other words,

search spam is when, at the user's request, content is displayed that does not match this request (according to the user) and which should not be in the TOP (according to the search engine).

The presence of such spam pages in the search results negatively affects people's attitude towards search engines, reduces their degree of trust.

Types of search spam

What falls under search spam? We list its main types.

1. Stuffing content with keywords and phrases

Keys "to the eyeballs" can fill (stuff) the text itself, as well as descriptions for pictures and video files, meta tags, etc.

All this is done in the hope that the search engine algorithm will consider the page more relevant to these keywords. In fact, this method of SEO optimization has not been working for a long time. Webmasters using it are more likely to receive a ban for their site than an increase in its position in the issue.

1. Automatic redirect

This is an instant redirection of users from one page to another.

In this case, when visiting a page of a site, a person is instantly redirected to another site.

Often, the user does not even have time to notice the redirect itself (since it occurs automatically and very quickly). Most often, after a redirect, a person ends up on a page of advertising content that is spammed with links.

1. Cloacae

In this case, for each of the promoted pages, the webmaster creates two versions at once.

• The first version of the page is intended for search engines,
• the second version is for ordinary users.

Thus, cesspools are different content for search engines and for users.

A special mechanism keeps track of exactly who visits the site - a search engine robot or an ordinary person. Based on this, one or another version of the page is issued.

The page for search engines is very carefully optimized, it lacks all unnecessary elements and details, but there are a lot of keywords for search engines. The page for ordinary visitors is made normal, as convenient and beautiful as possible (in terms of design and appearance).

And it seems that “the wolves are fed, and the sheep are safe”, that is, the search engines are happy, and users are happy. But in fact, using cesspools, the webmaster deceives the search engine, which, in turn, does not forgive such things and bans "split" pages.

1. Swap

This term means the complete replacement of the content of the site page immediately after its successful indexing in search engines. The primary task of a webmaster or optimizer using swapping is to fill the page with unique and high-quality content, promote it in the search results and get good traffic from search engines.

Then, after the next update (periodic update of the search engine), the webmaster completely changes the content of his page. Instead of unique content, text appears there, stuffed with keys and links to promoted resources (sites).

It is clear that with the next update, search engines will detect a substitution and pessimize the page. But until then, it will continue to collect traffic (visitors), while being in the TOP for some time.

1. Invisible text and links

• you can use very small fonts,
• you can make the font color and page background color the same (for example, white text on a white background),
• you can use special rules css styles to hide links.
• You can insert single-pixel images into the page containing a link, etc.

How Search Engines Fight Spam

Search engines do not like search spam not only for deceit, but mainly because search spam misleads the user, the user is dissatisfied and therefore leaves (may leave) to look for information on his request to another search engine. Search engines are fighting for their users, so they try not to disappoint him and, in response to his requests, provide only high-quality information.

This approach implies an uncompromising struggle of search engines with search spam. Search engines try to find spam, remove it from their database and punish (ban) such a site or page.

As for the ways to detect search engine spam, there are only three of them.

1) Automatic

In this case, the detection of search spam is carried out by means of search engine algorithms. Based on the signs of this or that type of spam, there is a search for sites that use dishonest methods of promotion, and their subsequent pessimization.

2) Semi-automatic

In this case, the task of search algorithms is to find suspicious sites and pages. The final decision to ban or pessimize the site is made by the moderator () of the search engine.

3) Manual

Here, checking the site for involvement in the use of search spam from beginning to end is carried out by a moderator (assessor). Most often, such checks occur on the basis of complaints received from the owners of competing sites.