Spamdexing is a technique employed by “Black Hat“ Search Engine Optimisation companies to improve the ranking of their client’s website. And I suppose it’s no surprise that many of the clients of these SEO companies are somewhat unethical people, and their sort of Internet Business is at the unsavoury end of the moral scale.
Spamdexing can be divided into two rough categories. “Content Spam” changes the way a Search Engine logically looks at a web page. “Link Spam” is generates links to, or between pages that have no relevance or direct value. Both these Spamdexing techniques have their clever ways of deceiving the Search Engines into promoting these dubious websites. They all direct unwary searchers and people in Online Jobs, away from what they were searching for, and into websites that endorse services or products that nearly all people have no wish to see. We can chat about the subtleties of each of the aforesaid methods, but there is a basic problem with internet search engines.
Like it or not, any system is open to misuse, and Search Engines are no different than numerous other systems created for public use. Nevertheless, I do think that the designers of the World Wide Web, the e-mail systems and the search engines etc, all had a fairly naive or at least a benevolent view on who would make use of their products. This is not a criticism as such, asnuisances like Junk Mail have been slipping through our letter boxes for years. If morethought and more controls were in place earlier in the life of Search Engine technology, would Spam be around today?
Hard to say, Google is in the end, an Internet Business that has operating expenditures, personnel to look after, and investors that stipulate a return on investment. They have to abide by rules and regulations on hiring, firing, political correctness, ethics, taxation and and so on. Google have produced a first class product that millions of individuals use each day, whether they Work From Home, work in an office or just use it for personal purposes. They are engineering better algorithms and endeavouring to halt the tide of spamdexing and other Black Hat techniques, but look what they are facing.
There are thousands of people occupied in illegal Internet Business. They are in every realm[/spim] in the world. Many businesses poorly paid, Work From Home and can be thrown away at will. They can invest time and money to have unscrupulous web developers working entirely for them. If you count up all the individuals who are in Online Jobs, selling and promoting illegal or immoral products, then it would overshadow the resources Google has. Pragmatically all we can really count on from Google is that they continue to revise their algorithms and perhaps review their principles regarding the ranking of websites.
The courts are another alternative. Legal actions range from individuals utilising the small claims court for damages up to £750, to individuals being imprisoned for a few years. But for every charged spammer, thousands go undetected or hastily reconfigure their characteristics. Anyone who connects to an internet link can Work From Home sending spam to all and sundry. Generally people who are in Online Jobs related to spamming and spamdexing have modes of disguising their messages and concealing the location of their websites. This is relatively easy to do. So as long as the barrier to entry, for illegal web activities is low, then it will stay as a very attractive preference for illegal and shady businesses to use.