OOMSYSTEM

  What is meant by 'search engine spam'?

  When ever we talk about Search engine optimization at times we always come up with one question "Is this Spam?" .When ever this question is raised we actually try to find out answer related to "Is this wrong or Unethical?" and one thought comes to our mind "Is this going to harm our website?" The fact is that none of the spam techniques and methods are wrong or unethical in the true sense. Any technique and method becomes wrong only when we make use of that method and technique in the unethical way. For example , If a page is related to one thing but when user visits it it redirects to some other thing then it is unethical to do so.

In Search Engine Optimization the one thing that is considered as wrong or unethical is the hidden text. these hidden pages contain highly search engine optimized content which is only for search engine spiders but not for normal users. These hidden pages contain content full of keywords. This is so as to get higher ranks in the search rankings. Such pages are hidden from the users because it would not make much sense to the visitors and will not go with the design of the page.

what is true about these Search Engine spam technique is that they do not hurt any body. But they are used to help people. This helps the page to be ranked high in search engine rankings for the actual topic. If the pages are ranked high the users can easily get the relevant data they are looking for. The user will be happy to get the relevant data and the search engine will also be happy because he has directed the user to the relevant site.

So the conclusion is that we can not say wrong, immoral or unethical with any of the so-called search engine spam techniques and methods. Some of such techniques can be considered as good ,moral as well as ethical. but when search engines redirect the visitors to some other page they are actually making use of cloaking.

the reason why such techniques are used by the people and various site owners is because they want to get good rankings in the search engine. We can not say that there is some thing wrong in using these techniques. some search engines suggest them as the techniques of improving page ranking of the sites. So we can say that none of the method is solely wrong it only depends on how we use the method or technique.

even though i have told that most of these Search engine Optimization methods are not unethical and are harmless but some of the search engines do not consider them as good and if they find that some person is making use of such techniques then hey may penalize the page or even the whole site.Pages and sites are not often penalized. It depends on the nature of the 'offense'. Thus search engine keep a keen look so that their user are not affected adversely by these methods and techniques.

But search engine do not have such methods which can spot these unethical techniques and only rely on people which report them