Saturday, April 30, 2011

Spamdexing

(Spam Twitter)-In computing, spamdexing (also known as search spam, search engine spam or web spam) is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. Some consider it to be a part of search engine optimization, though there are many search engine optimization methods that improve the quality and appearance of the content of web sites and serve content useful to many users. Search engines use a variety of algorithms to determine relevancy ranking. Some of these include determining whether the search term appears in the META keywords tag, others whether the search term appears in the body text or URL of a web page.
Content spam

These techniques involve altering the logical view that a search engine has over the page's contents. They all aim at variants of the vector space model for information retrieval on text collections.
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing involves the calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is useful to make a page appear to be relevant for a web crawler in a way that makes it more likely to be found. Example: A promoter of a Ponzi scheme wants to attract web surfers to a site where he advertises his scam. He places hidden text appropriate for a fan page of a popular music group on his page, hoping that the page will be listed as a fan site and receive many visits from music lovers. Older versions of indexing programs simply counted how often a keyword appeared, and used that to determine relevance levels.
Doorway pages
"Gateway" or doorway pages are low-quality web pages created with very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. They are designed to rank highly within the search results, but serve no purpose to visitors looking for information. A doorway page will generally have "click here to enter" on the page.
Scraper sites
Scraper sites sites, are created using various programs designed to "scrape" search-engine results pages or other sources of content and create "content" for a website. The specific presentation of content on these sites is unique, but is merely an amalgamation of content taken from other sources, often without permission. Such websites are generally full of advertising (such as pay-per-click ads), or they redirect the user to other sites. It is even feasible for scraper sites to outrank original websites for their own information and organization names.
Article spinning
Article spinning involves rewriting existing articles, as opposed to merely scraping content from other sites, to avoid penalties imposed by search engines for duplicate content. This process is undertaken by hired writers or automated using a thesaurus database or a neural network.
Hidden or invisible text
Unrelated hidden text is disguised by making it the same color as the background, using a tiny font size, or hiding it within HTML code such as "no frame" sections, alt attributes, zero-sized DIVs, and "no script" sections. People screening websites for a search-engine company might temporarily or permanently block an entire website for having invisible text on some of its pages. However, hidden text is not always spamdexing: it can also be used to enhance accessibility.
Meta-tag stuffing
This involves repeating keywords in the Meta tags, and using meta keywords that are unrelated to the site's content. This tactic has been ineffective since 2005.
Link spam

Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit. Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher rankings the more other highly ranked websites link to it. These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the HITS algorithm.
Link-building software
A common form of link spam is the use of link-building software to automate the search engine optimization process.
Link farms
Link farms are tightly-knit communities of pages referencing each other, also known humorously as mutual admiration societies
Hidden links
Putting hyperlinks where visitors will not see them to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.
Sybil attack
A Sybil attack is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent, named after the famous multiple personality disorder patient "Sybil" (Shirley Ardell Mason). A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs (known as spam blogs).
Spam blogs
Spam blogs,are blogs created solely for commercial promotion and the passage of link authority to target sites. Often these "splogs" are designed in a misleading manner that will give the effect of a legitimate website but upon close inspection will often be written using spinning software or very poorly written and barely readable content. They are similar in nature to link farms.

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