Spamdexing

In computing, spamdexing (also known as search engine spam, search engine poisoning, black-hat SEO, search spam or web spam) is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. It could be considered to be a part of search engine optimization, though there are many search engine optimization methods that improve the quality and appearance of the content of web sites and serve content useful to many users. Search engines use a variety of algorithms to determine relevancy ranking. Some of these include determining whether the search term appears in the body text or URL of a web page. Many search engines check for instances of spamdexing and will remove suspect pages from their indexes. Also, search-engine operators can quickly block the results-listing from entire websites that use spamdexing, perhaps alerted by user complaints of false matches. The rise of spamdexing in the mid-1990s made the leading search engines of the time less useful. Using unethical methods to make websites rank higher in search engine results than they otherwise would is commonly referred to in the SEO (search engine optimization) industry as "black hat SEO". These methods are more focused on breaking the search engine promotion rules and guidelines. Not only this, there will be all that much risks for a website to get penalized from Google Panda and Google Penguin search results ranking algorithms.

Common spamdexing techniques can be classified into two broad classes: content spam (or term spam) and link spam.

The earliest known reference to the term spamdexing is by Eric Convey in his article "Porn sneaks way back on Web," The Boston Herald, May 22, 1996, where he said:

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