Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google’s PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website 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 farms  Involves creating tightly-knit communities of pages referencing each […]

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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. Hidden or invisible text  Disguising keywords and phrases by making them the same (or almost the same) color as the background, using a […]

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Spamdexing is any of various methods to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, usually in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. It is a form of search engine optimization. Search engines use a variety of algorithms to determine relevancy ranking. Some of these include determining […]

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Link doping refers to the practice and effects of embedding a large number of gratuitous hyperlinks on a website in exchange for return links. Mainly used when describing weblogs (or blogs), link doping usually implies that a person hyperlinks to sites he or she has never visited in return for a place on the website’s […]

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Google defends its search algorithm as generally effective and an accurate reflection of opinion on the Internet. They further state that, though some may be offended by the links which appear as the result of Google bombs, that Google has little or no control over the practice and will not individually edit search results due […]

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In some cases, the phenomenon has produced competing attempts to use the same search term as a Google bomb. As a result, the first result at any given time varies, but the targeted sites will occupy all the top slots using a normal search instead of “I’m feeling lucky,” a special button on Google’s interface […]

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The first Google bombs were probably accidental. Users would discover that a particular search term would bring up an interesting result, leading many to believe that Google’s results could be manipulated intentionally. The first Google bomb known about by a significant number of people was the one that caused the search term “more evil than […]

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Keyword stuffing is considered to be an unethical search engine optimization (SEO) technique. Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in content. The repetition of words in meta tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags. Keyword stuffing is used to obtain […]

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Page hijacking Page hijacking is a form of spamming the index of a search engine (spamdexing). It is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. Spammers can use this technique to achieve […]

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On the World Wide Web, a link farm is any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other page in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine […]

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The robots exclusion standard, also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol is a convention to prevent cooperating web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which is, otherwise, publicly viewable. Robots are often used by search engines to categorize and archive web sites, or by webmasters […]

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The search engines’ market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches. In markets outside the United States, Google’s share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007. As of 2006, Google held about 40% […]

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SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either […]

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Getting listings The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for […]

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By 1997 search engines recognized that some webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Due to the high marketing […]

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Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to “crawl” that page, extract links to other pages from […]

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also […]

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