europeforvisitors - 5:19 pm on Jan 27, 2007 (gmt 0)

One obvious "signal of crap" that I see quite a bit (especially in the travel and technology sectors) is:

- A large number of template-based, keyword-driven, computer-generated pages that contain little or no content, and which are waiting to be filled with user content. (Such pages may not be populated with content, but you can be sure that they're filled with AdSense ads, affiliate links, and/or price-comparison logos and links.)

Google could go a long way toward cleaning up its index by penalizing sites that have a significant percentage of "placeholder pages."