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A broadly accepted definition of spam would be any web page that falls outside Google's published guidelines. A more tangible definition of spam would be any page that contains items that are designed to appear more relevant to a search engine algorithm that would not be considered more relevant to a human editor.
Most of us know why spam sites exist. It is safe to summise that the primary motivation is monetary. Either through affiliate relationships, or self-deployed expansion, spam is used to attract more usership and ultimately greater financial rewards for the spammer.
It is clear that the above stated goal of spammers can only be successful achieved if enough users are clicking, buying or taking some relevant action which produces a profitable action for the spammer. Any successful affiliate knows that in order to entice a user to perform the required action, an appropriate target sponsor must satisfy the following three properties
The above three properties all surely must constitute worthy aims for webmasters, particularly those who do generate income from their sites, to aspire to. There is of course some content that whilst of high quality and relevance, would be difficult to market successfully as commercial content due to standards of the surrounding publishing community (such as university research), or the common-good responsibilities of the publisher (such as government sites), or due simply to insufficient interest amongst users.
Consider a site that does not possess all of the above three properties and does not fall under the definition of spam above. Most SEOs would know that in order for such sites to be highly ranked in Google, these sites would need sufficient respect through links from other sites. Apart from links of a commercial nature (such as through Yahoo's or other paid listings), these links would typically come from other sites who believes the linked site contains relevant free information useful to the linking site's audience.
The vast majority of free information on the Internet is not subject to community or commercial standards, comes from a mixture of personal experience or opinion, or the public domain, or is sydnicated content or content that has been "adapted" from other copyright content. The first two sources whilst sometimes useful or at least "entertaining", yield content that is often prone to error, heresay, obsoloteness, rumor or simply rewords widely available content. The use of the third source implies duplication of non-unique content and the fourth suggests illegal activity. This information is subject to no commercial, and often no legal standard having been offered for free with no guarantees to users. Anybody who has used one of the popular file-sharing systems on the Internet knows very well that relying on the content traded through these systems is prone to major reliability, security and legal problems.
How is this free, unregulated content superior to highly successful commercial content? Is the goal of search engines to be a sort of unregulated Kazaa of the web?
In summary, below is a collection of benefits to the user and the Internet community as a whole of "spam sites" as compared to free content not subject to community standards.
I think webmasters who complain about spam need to take a cold, hard look at the content they offer on their websites and evaluate how their content and/or their clients' content compares in terms of benefits to the Internet community as a whole against that of commercially successful sites who are the destination of many affiliate sites the call spam.
If a spammer can direct a user more quickly to a quality commercial site than a site offering less-than-quality content, which site is providing the greater service to the user community?
[edited by: Bottler at 12:10 am (utc) on June 4, 2003]
But, still, "affiliate" does not equal "spam" - all kinds of sites can use spammy techniques.
I like that better :) in fact I'll venture to stretch it out a little bit...all search engine aware webmasters, one way or the other are using spam techniques.
Cheers ;)
I agree with this. From the use of the word 'spam' in this thread, and from my basic knowledge of SEO, I believe the only difference is intent.
The basic goal is the same -> optimizing for (read: fooling)the search engines.
One guy's motivation is, "haha, this'll fool them good and mo money fo me" -
the other guy's intent is
"Well, seeing as how the search engine algorithms aren't human, they may not appreciate my website as my human readers will, unless every nuance of human critical thought processes, intentions, emotions, artisticness (sp?), foresight, and a whole bunch of other drivers is captured and stuck into the algorithm.
So I'll make sure and put stuff in special just for the bot".
The problem, as I'm sure everyone has guessed, lies with the fact that the Google algorithms are NOT human, and never will be, so we'll always be spammers :)
If an SEO was hired to review a site, and all the pages were untitled, putting good, descriptive titles in is good SEO and it is encouraged by the search engines.
If all the anchor test is "click here", then they are doing everyone a favor by fixing that up. Same with submitting to directories where that site belongs.
Suggesting that a site develop new, unique content instead of just making copycat pages is also good SEO and encouraged by the SEs. It is also good for the user.
Nobody is trying to fool the search engines. Everybody is using 'what works' with the search engine.
IMO, whenever you do something that is beyond the content of your site, that is considered search engine manipulation. When you try to manipulate your position in a search engine then by strict definition you are spamming the search engine.
Take for example a newbie to web site publishing. Does this person care about meta-title? Does meta-title somehow prevent the users to access his/her site? The meta's are there for easy identification to automated queries aka search engines.
The same newbie, after writing a good paragraph for his/her article, provides 'click here' to the second page of the article. Does this hyperlink confuse the user as to what the intent of that hyperlink? Do we really need to change 'click here' to 'Widget - second page'?
H1 - the ugliest html tag(w/o css). If there is no algorithmic value to this tag, would you use it? Now everybody is bending backward to use H1. Why?
If tomorrow, somebody have observed and verified that Google is penalizing pages that uses CSS file as opposed to embedded in a page. I bet, everybody would embed their CSS in their pages, regardless if that would bulk up the page.
If AltaVista publicly announce that anybody using keywords in their internal anchors links would be penalize for spamming. I bet a lot of us here would ignore it and risk being penalize by AV when it worked great with Google. What does it makes us, AV spammer?
All these stuff; backlinks, metas, h1, etc.. Does it somehow effect the content of our sites? Are we optimizing these stuff to enhance our user experience or to please the SEs algo?
There is a very good reason why algorithms are not publicize...an exposed algo is the end of a search engine. They could give guidelines all they want but it doesn't mean that those guidelines are the only thing that works with their algo. It's up to us to discover what is not publicize.
Truth is, search engines don't like us, webmasters who studies search engines. We are hackers in a strict sense and this put the search engines in a lot of stress. Once an algo factor is identified and overused by the webmasters this result to a poor relevancy in a search engine serp thus SEs have to tweak/change their algo again. A never ending cycle.
Herein lies the problem for a lot of webmasters. Some of us tend to look at this scenario as to 'what is acceptable and what is not acceptable' to SEs.
When you look it that way then you are looking at it on a moral perspective. Anything beyond Google guidelines or other SE becomes unethical or spammy.
The basic of SEO is simply 'what works and what doesn't work'.
Since everybody is manipulating their position then there is no spam, only irrelevant site. Other than that, as long as your site is relevant to the query how you get to the top is fair play.
Cheers
99% of the people here manipulate the "system" by getting links strictly for the sake of scoring well with Google. Much of the other 1 percent run free sites.
The "SEO is not spam post" by BigDave made my morning. Life must be different in the free backpack genre where massive link acquisition is not required to gain top ranking.
If you are not in any way trying to figure out the Google scoring algo and using that info to your advantage, it is very surprising that you would post in the Google forum at Webmasterworld. May as well post in the content and web design areas if your sites are only for users. Surely, it wouldn't take much reading to figure out how to write a proper web page title :)
Lastly, aggressive se hacking is not some sort of fleeting business. Many of us have been successfull at it for years and have made significant money doing it.
There has been no noticable decline in revenue for us or any of the other businesses we network with. Like ANY business, ours could shrink and die, or continue to thrive and prosper. Judging from the amount of partner requests we get from many industries, the demand for CPA partners is stronger than ever, if anything.
If manipulating SERPS for traffic magically ends tomorrow, we will still be quite pleased with the monetary rewards we have achieved.
Oh, and of course we have a few sites that actually sell stuff as a back up :)
That's it - we don't decide. The SE's define what is spam and what is not, although they do not make the border very clear and explicit. And it's also true that what one engine considers to be spam is not spam to another.
>> have made significant money doing it.
In the case of email, the UCE concept is clearly defined as "unsolicited and commercial". You can still make money on UCE and even significant money, i believe. At least i have a friend that once heard someone on a bus mentioning something he had read about it, or something. In this respect it does not matter if you make money on your sites or not. For-free "informational" sites can cross that border as well.
>> SEO is not spam
No it's not. If "non-webmaster, non-SEO SE users" were to decide what was spam the definition would probably look another way, and the same in the case of "non-SEO webmasters". If SEO's were to decide, would there be such a definition at all?
There is such a thing as spam.
Fact is, we might as well just admit it. The trade "book of secrets" has some techniques that are spammy and we all know it, although our feeling for where that border lies exactly might differ. For some industries and cases, these techniques will even be the relevant ones to use, it all depends on so much. Still:
All SEO is not spam
Turn it around and it still holds. Some "non-SEO activities" are spam.
The pr0n industry is the premiere example and the webmasters and SEO's that operate in specific niches here simply have to use the methods available, as the level of competition is un-paralleled. These things exist, and people make money on it too. Some members of this forum even specialize in such über-competitive niches i believe, and it's their choice. A perfectly valid one, although not all would take that path.
I think it is essential to be aware of what is and what is not spam. And use the appropriate techniques accordingly, ie. not use spammy techniques when they are not appropriate. Appropriateness, in turn, "depends on so much".
I have seen customers in need of "pure whitehat SEO" that have previously become victims of a (perhaps just not good enough) SEO that have employed all kinds of stuff that you wouldn't believe, even in competitive areas. Not only does this damage the client, it also damages the whole "industry".
/claus
There is noting wrong with ltrying to build your site, within certain rules, to try in appeal more to your users. One of the ways that you make yourself appealing to users is to make it so that your site can be found in appropriate places. One of those places is under certain search terms used on search engines.
Conveniently, many of the basics of getting good SE traffic also involves doing things that are good for your user, and for getting your name out there. You should ALWAYS start with the basics.
SEO includes the basics. Those basics are somewhat defined by what the SEs consider acceptable. They are not spam in the eyes of the user or the SEs. They are improving your website in the hopes of getting more traffic and conversions.
Yes, you are manipulating the search results, but simple manipulation is not bad. Ask my girlfriend how much she minds getting manipulated with a box of chocolate. I referred to trying to "fool" the search engines, which is different than trying to tweak things to get into a better position. Write your content and build your pages so that it appeals to the user and the SE, and let the SE judge you on that content. Inappropraite cloaking, hidden text, etc are trying to fool the SE by giving it something that does not represent what the page is really about.
And by the way mfishy, I don't compete in the "free backpack genre" I compete with commercial sites in a multi-billion dollar industry. I have to get on the front page against people that are making money, and hiring SEOs.
Luckily, most web designers like pretty pictures and fancy js menus, and don't much like content. And most SEOs have their "latest secrets" and avoid the real work of getting the basics down and making a stable site.
Oh yeah, even if you are a commercial site, getting links is as easy as having content worth linking to. I've actually demonstrated this to several businesses already, and their "free links" are growing quickly.
Ok, I guess we all just "tweak" things to get in a better position then. :)
