Search engine spamming exists for almost as long as search engines do and it involves fooling the search engines algorithms in order to appear in searches where they should not be or to artificially achieve a higher ranking in searches.

There are many ways to optimize the search results that search engines approve of, they are coined ‘white hat’ techniques. Most search engines agree on what is an unethical and deceptive practice and call these ‘black hat’ techniques. Industries where search engine rankings are more important like gambling and travel, are generally more pressured to achieve higher rankings as they are a directly associated with higher traffic and therefore higher sales figures.

When is it spamming?

Any search engine optimization technique that is deceptive in any way and aims to attract visitors to a website through misrepresentation can be considered spamming. Black hat techniques include using keywords that are not related to the website, websites that redirect visitors automatically, keyword stuffing and repetition of keywords.

Some spammers repeat keywords in website hundreds of times in order for the website to weigh heavier in searches, they make these keywords invisible to visitors by placing it behind images or making it a similar colour as the background. Other ‘black hat’ techniques include cloaking, hiding text or links and page swapping.

What is being done?

All search engines are very serious about combating spamming as it affects their search results negatively making them less relevant and inaccurate. Should spamming be allowed and no action taken again perpetrating websites, it will not be long before search engines will have no purpose as searches will deliver spammed results that will not satisfy customers.

They are seriously at risk as spamming directly affects the quality of their service and they are spending and enormous amount of time, money and effort to combating spamming. With new programs continuously being developed to detect any questionable programming on websites, search engines are taking action by banning spam websites from the search or simply placing them at the bottom of the list. Internet users are urged to report spam to search engines whenever they come across such websites.

Most search engines have programs online that makes it easy to report abusers and encourage users to do so. They are closely monitoring new trends in spamming and taking action accordingly.

It’s quite simple: stick to ‘white hat’ techniques approved by search engines. These will help you to show up in relevant searches where traffic will have a better conversion rate into sales. Showing up in irrelevant searched might increase traffic volumes to a website but will most likely not result in sales as the user will often leave the site as soon as they realize that it does not offer what they searched for. Consult your SEO expert to make sure you are only using approved techniques and maximizing those in order not to be at risk of being blacklisted and loosing any kind of presence on search engines.

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