Spamdexing 90
Article spinning
Article spinning involves rewriting existing articles, as opposed to merely scraping content from other sites, to avoid
penalties imposed by search engines for duplicate content. This process is undertaken by hired writers or automated
using a thesaurus database or a neural network.Link spam
Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit.[6] Link spam takes
advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher rankings the more other highly ranked
websites link to it. These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the HITS
algorithm.Link-building software
A common form of link spam is the use of link-building software to automate the search engine optimization
process.Link farms
Link farms are tightly-knit communities of pages referencing each other, also known facetiously as mutual
admiration societies[7].Hidden links
Putting hyperlinks where visitors will not see them to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a
webpage higher for matching that phrase.Sybil attack
A Sybil attack is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent, named after the famous multiple personality
disorder patient "Sybil" (Shirley Ardell Mason). A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain
names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs (known as spam blogs).Spam blogs
Spam blogs are blogs created solely for commercial promotion and the passage of link authority to target sites. Often
these "splogs" are designed in a misleading manner that will give the effect of a legitimate website but upon close
inspection will often be written using spinning software or very poorly written and barely readable content. They are
similar in nature to link farms.Page hijacking
Page hijacking is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the
original to a web crawler but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites.Buying expired domains
Some link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and
replace the pages with links to their pages. See Domaining. However Google resets the link data on expired domains.
Some of these techniques may be applied for creating a Google bomb — that is, to cooperate with other users to
boost the ranking of a particular page for a particular query.