What Makes A Page Spam?

What makes a page spam?:

  • Hidden text or links – may be exposed by selecting all page text and scrolling to the bottom (all text is highlighted), disabling CSS/Javascript, or viewing source code
  • Sneaky redirects – redirecting through several URLs, rotating destination domains cloaking with JavaScript redirects and 100% frame
  • Keyword stuffing – no percentage or keyword density given; this is up to the rater
  • PPC ads that only serve to make money, not help users
  • Copied/scraped content and PPC ads
  • Feeds with PPC ads
  • Doorway pages – multiple landing pages that all direct user to the same destination
  • Templates and other computer-generated pages mass-produced, marked by copied content and/or slight keyword variations
  • Copied message boards with no other page content
  • Fake search pages with PPC ads
  • Fake blogs with PPC ads, identified by copied/scraped or nonsensical spun content
  • Thin affiliate sites that only exist to make money, identified by checkout on a different domain, image properties showing origination at another URL, lack of original content, different WhoIs registrants of the two domains in question
  • Pure PPC pages with little to no content
  • Parked domains

More at Search Engine Watch

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Written by Shaun Anderson

12 Responses to “What Makes A Page Spam?”

  1. David Bennett says:
    October 20, 2011 at 7:17 am

    Interesting but strange. Wondering why you didn’t just write a short sentence with the link to Search Engine Watch – then you could have avoided reproducing the list?

    • Shaun Anderson says:
      October 20, 2011 at 1:10 pm

      THis post was supposed to be ironic mate lol

      • David Bennett says:
        October 20, 2011 at 1:17 pm

        Totally lost on me. I thought, ‘Hell – he’s talking about valueless pages and he’s produced one – that’s not like Shaun at all – he must be having a busy day with Christmas looming – ah well, better tell him.’

        :-)

  2. John bertrand says:
    October 20, 2011 at 7:35 am

    Redirections are as seen as spam as well.

  3. Asif Khalil says:
    October 20, 2011 at 7:56 am

    can you please explain :-

    Thin affiliate sites that only exist to make money, identified by checkout on a different domain, image properties showing origination at another URL, lack of original content, different WhoIs registrants of the two domains in question

  4. Phillip says:
    October 20, 2011 at 8:37 am

    While reading your post some confusion raised in my mind, you have mentioned about hidden links/texts, then please clarify that when you link an image with a link – then what is this? is it not a hidden link?

  5. Alex Newell says:
    October 20, 2011 at 9:30 am

    Shaun is this a quote from the Raters’s handbook?

    BTW I meant to email my thanks for the link to the link to the Google search which lead me to a copy that had been cheekily uploaded to…Google Docs!

    :-)

    Alex

  6. emedoutlet says:
    October 20, 2011 at 10:22 am

    Thank you for providing lots of information in limited content. Let me know whether Java Scripted tabs with content can make a page spam or not….

  7. David Minton says:
    October 20, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    I would hope by now that the only people doing this (or paying someone to do it for them) know they are playing in then “dark side.”

  8. Joe Hernandez says:
    October 20, 2011 at 5:47 pm

    Once the comments started coming in, it’s no longer spam, since there is now original content.

    A few more comments and this page will be more than 50% original. :)

  9. Michael Hayes says:
    October 21, 2011 at 8:50 am

    Though I doubt a human reviewer would read the comments to decide whether a page is spammy or not.

    Or do Google’s guidelines ask them to take comments into account? ;)