Satisfying the Search Engines - Spam Punishment
One other important item to remember is that search engines are now punishing sites for spamming. "Search engine developers do not like seeing that their search engines are giving unfair advantage to people who play stupid games rather than write coherent pages" (Mann). There are several different spam techniques which have been tried by dishonest page authors. According to Infoseek, some of these techniques are :
- Overuse or repetition of keywords
- Use of keywords that do not relate to the content of the site
- Use of fast meta refresh
- Use of colored text on same-color background
- Duplication of pages with different URLs
- Use of different pages that bridge to the same URL
Sullivan's Search Engines Features Chart indicates what kinds of spam are penalized by the listed search engines (Sullivan, Comparison). Penalization can range from severe reduction in the rating of your site in relation to the user's query, to complete removal from the search engine's index. Severe, repeated attempts at spamming could result in legal action (infoseek).
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By Robert Corfman - 10/11/98