Search Engine Spamming and its Control

In this world of competition, search engine ranking has placed web masters under extreme pressure. They have to do all they can to gain visibility in search results. In order to gain visibility, some have treaded the wrong path, which has resulted in their websites being marked as spam.

Generally, pressures come from many issues, for example, branding restrictions, style guidelines, legal issue, navigational needs, etc. However, the fault is that the search engines love contents and the engines are designed based on some rules and constraints. To overcome the strategy and constraints for search engines, many businesses use increasingly ruthless tactics and tune ups, which leads them into dishonest territory to gain visibility and highest rank value – which is against various search engine algorithms.

Now the question is what can be done to gain relief from being listed as spam, if you suspect that you have been penalized? If your website has clearly been banned, then there are a couple of things that you could try out:
1. Open Google.com and check Google Search result;
2. Go to Google site and hit your URL in the search box. For example, http://www.expressorissa.com. Refer figure 1.
(Note: Here the domain is unavailable or spammed domain)

Observe in figure 1 that Google states that there is no information available for this URL. It means that the URL no longer exists in Google’s database. (Note: Sometimes people think that they have been banned in ranking and cannot find their website)

Note: You can download Google toolbars, if you have not yet installed it on your Internet browser, from http://toolbar.google.com. Now perform the search again. Figures 2 and 3 indicate whether your website has been banned or not.

Banned:



Not banned:




If your page was removed manually from a search engine index because of spamming, it is likely that the engine will not comment on the reason for removal. They will not even give you a list of practices that can result in your removal.

Some of the malpractices identified as search engine spam include:
· Cloaking: When one page is displayed severally to search engine crawlers to achieve a good ranking, but a different version of the page is made available to the search engine users. This sometime involves changing Meta tags after a search engine positioning has been achieved.
· Spooling/Redirects/Meta Refresh: A Meta refresh tag permits visitors to be taken automatically to a different page. When this functionality is being used to take users to content that is unrelated to their search, you are bound to get your website into the wrong list! Search engines are suspicious of pages with a fast Meta refresh rate as well as those pages that use JavaScript for redirection. Use server-side redirection if legitimate redirection is required.
·  Domain spamming: Identical sites found under different domain names to increase search engine traffic, also known as mirror sites.
· Tiny hidden text: To hide texts, some use background colors for concealing key words.
·  Deceptive title and tags: Setting up pages/links for the sole purpose of deceiving search engines.
·  Over-submitting: Using the add URL form to submit hundreds of deceptive pages.

If you get caught trying to intentionally spam the search engine with any of the above tactics, you can expect the penalty of your links being removed from the engine/s. Remember, spamming is not worth the temporary benefits!

Search engines have many ways to detect spamming, including the so-called spam filters. In case you are even able to around the spam filter a few times, others might report you (especially you competitors).

One example of a spamming site:

http://www.thespammingsite.com used several types of spam to achieve strong results.
· Mouse-activate redirects;
· Hidden table cells stuffed with key words within <H1>tags; and
· Links from artificial websites.

End users saw a different page than the one indexed by the search engine. The aforementioned tactics tricked the search engine and, as is the case with all instances of spamming, eventually lost control of the product it served to search users.

There are various other tactics that are considered as spam, including:
· Publishing Empires;
· Wikis;
· Networked blogs;
· Forums;
· Link inside No scripts tags;
· Dynamic real-time page generation;
· HTML invisible tables cell;
· DHTML laying and hidden text under layers;
· Homogeneous mechanic generated websites;
· Link stuffing; and
· Link farms.

Getting Back

If your website has been removed from a search engine database, the first thing to do is to clean your web pages and send a request for a re-inclusion. For example, in the case of Google, you may post your request to help@google.com. There is no guarantee about if and when it will re-include your site. If everything is OK and in order, your site may still be able to make a comeback in the next Google refresh.

Guidelines before requesting for re-inclusion
· Check your pages and links;
· Ensure that there are no technical problems with your server;
· Check for any robots.txt files that might turn away search engine spiders;
· Check if you are using any dynamic sites, which are not programmed to be search engine friendly;
· Ensure that if you use frames or Flash/Active-X objects, it can be hard for the search engine to index your site; and
· Do not forget that search engines love plenty of relevant text as well as unique content and tags if your site is to be correctly indexed by Search engines.

The best way to relieve from being listed as spam, or in any event, is for you to keep contact with the search engine owners in writing. Also, make an attempt to contact them over the phone. Admit your mistake and give a sincere promise that it will not happen again.

Search Engine Contacts

Listed below are some of the major search engines and their editorial content guideline, along with contact information:

1. AltaVista: Go through their submission policies, which will help you understand the rules. If you use their contact email, include “Search Engine Manipulation” in the subject line. This should put you in touch with their spam reporter.

2. Yahoo: Go through “How to suggest a site”. This provides the basic information about what Yahoo! expects from you. Email yahoo customer care for further assistance.

3. MSN: Will answer most questions on do’s and don’ts or email their spam reporter for help.

4. ODP-DMOZ: It provides content to several patterns, including Netscape, Google, AOL, HotBot, Lycos and Pandia. See their guidelines or email any category editor for advice. A list of editors appears at the bottom of every ‘category page’ with ODP.

5. LYCOS: See their web master resources for information. There is also a spam report email address to which you can write if you have inadvertently made a mistake.

Signing off:

SEO professionals should go through the policies and guideline of various search engines for spamming control. Be honest; admit if you made a mistake. Keep in touch through letters, follow up with phone calls and be sincere in your request for readmission into the database.

The author is a software engineer with eTechnoverb Pvt. Ltd. He is available at: sashikanta@yahoo.com.