Talk:Spamdexing/Archives/2013

Untitled
great page! may need a little more oraganization though

Google Bombing was described incorrectly, fixed!

I would like this page to become the main page for black-hat techniques, while white-hat techniques should be in search engine optimization. We still have lots of work to do in this page. ChaTo 18:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree. This is 100% correct and am glad someone has already pointed this out. White-Hat techniques are standard search engine optimization (SEO) methods, therefore they should be listed in the SEO section. However, due to the fact that Black Hat SEO is not legitimate SEO in the eyes of most search engines, Black Hat SEO should only be briefly mentioned in said article. I would also like to add the following: the title should be changed to Black Hat SEO. Bsanders246 (talk) 05:52, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Changing/Editing the Link Spam Section
The Link Spam section is cluttered and needs to be updated. It seems to be more appropriate to change the title to Types of Link Spam, a change that I will be making now. Bsanders246 (talk) 05:52, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Wiki spam as a separate page
the term Wiki_spam automatically redirected to this page, which had no entry for that term! I added one, but it seems to me there should be a seperate page for that term. I don't know how to make the automatic forward stop.
 * At the top of the page, if there is a redirect there is a small link that says "(Redirected from Wiki spam)" (but it is not an external link like this is... Also, next time sign your posts with "~". Paul C/T+ 04:53, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

= Move Spamdexing to Black Hat SEO ==--180.211.216.122 (talk) 17:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, I vote that we move this page to Black Hat SEO as Spamdexing could be considered equivalent to Black Hat or a subset of it, but I think Black Hat SEO is the more mainstream term. I would have White Hat SEO redirect to the main SEO article. LinguistAtLarge 18:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Disagree. I suggest this page to be called "Spamdexing", and the other page "Search engine optimization". "Black hat SEO" and "White hat SEO" should be redirects. ChaTo 08:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

If this article is going to be taken seriously, at least put it in it's proper place. "SEO" encompasses both "Black-hat" and "White-hat" tactics, called "Black-hat SEO" and "White-hat SEO" respectively. "Spamdexing", at best, is a subset of "Black-hat SEO"... at worst it's yet another fictious hot-word to describe the practice of "search engine spamming" (which itself is a subset of "black-hat seo"), which by the very definition of spamming is not actually possible given the current mechanism by which web sites are spidered and indexed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ethicalmarvin (talk • contribs).

This article comes close to being WP:AfD fodder. It's a neologism and it fails the Google test with almost all of the references to it being links to this article in Wikipedia or it's clones and mirrors or articles attempting to define the word. I didn't see any pages that happened to use the word in the course of talking about the subject in general. For this reason, I strongly recommend that this material be merged into one of those other articles before someone decides to delete the entire thing. SteveBaker 20:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree and vote that this page be moved to be named black hat seo. Spamdexing is much less used apart from being a subset of SEO. I have added a reciderct from black hat seo to here for now. Shabda 15:09, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I rarely hear of the word spamdexing, seems like the more popular terms or blackhat SEO, search engine spam, etc. -Philwiki (talk) 14:11, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Sybil Attack
Some language was redundant. Also, I thought linking to Sibil herself was more appropriate than the generalized personality disorder entry.

should somebody add an entry relating to the nigerian scammers who use guest books to harvest emails? some people may wonder why guyman@mugu.com has left an entry only stating the words "guyman keep off OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO".

Google Bowling
Anyone know enough to write an article on Google Bowling? 30,000 results on google. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€  04:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Interesting article but is there any other evidence that this problem really exists? If I saw a real example, and a blow-by-blow account of how someone used/fell victim to this technique, I might be more convinced, but I think a lot of SEO experts try to imagine how google algorithms work, and then imagine problems with it, all based on speculation. Maybe writing articles in an autoritative tone like this, is a form of pagerank gaming in itself! -- Nojer2 11:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've done it to my own site, accidentally. I could duplicate it on someone elses site, but I'm tired of spamming. All I did was put links into Yahoo! Bookmarks to others sites which are vulnerable to Cross-site scripting. The XSS itself (the inserted html) contained links to my sites, and sure enough the ranking dropped in Yahoo! until I removed the bookmarks. It would scale well with some scripting Family Guy Guy (talk) 08:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Link spam on Wikipedia
Have a look at what a Wikipedia editor contributed from 2006-06-29 to 2006-07-04. It includes 71 new pages which are nothing but redirects to 2 existing pages. Surely this is link spam! What is Wikipedia policy on that? Rwxrwxrwx 17:46, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Those links have been removed. Rwxrwxrwx 17:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Spam with just numbers
Anybody know what the point of this is? I see this on a number of wikis I work on from time to time and I don't know what it's trying to do. I feel like I should know though. -_- Here's an example: http://wiki.galbijim.com/Help:Writing_pages_on_this_wiki?curid=1297&diff=15434&oldid=15433&rcid=5261

What kind of benefit could those numbers provide to a spammer? They're always different. Mithridates 16:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Historical claims by James Lick
I recently added a claim that the first documented case of Spamdexing occurred on September 5, 1995 and included a link to Refer Madness: An Early History of Spamdexing as a citation. I also added a link to the same at the end of the external links section.

Both were removed as being 'unreliable sources'. I can understand why a cursory examination of the link might give that impression, however the article does contain many confirmed third party references from USENET and the Wayback Machine dating from 1995 through 1997 which support the claims of the article. The article also contains my unedited logs for all of 1995 as well as explanations of why I chose to claim September 5, 1995 as the date of invention and the log evidence to support this.

I have reviewed the Wikipedia entry describing reliable sources and refer to the terminology used there. I am a self-published non-academic primary source. I claim the article has Attributability, Expertise, Corroboration, Age (based on an earlier account from 1996), and Persistence. The weakest part of my claim is in terms of 'Bias' which I am careful to point out and which is balanced by third party historical references backing my claims. My claim to Expertise is based on publications on the topic of spam and abuse for the APCAUCE, APRICOT and SANOG conferences.

In my original citation in this Wikipedia entry I was careful to describe it as the first 'documented' case of spamdexing which I believe is strictly true, as I am not aware of any earlier cases which have been documented. However, I will concede that this claim may still be considered controversial.

I believe that my account otherwise qualifies as a reliable source of the early history of Spamdexing. Therefore I am proposing to add it as an external link as an early history of Spamdexing without additional claims. If the Wikipedia moderators choose to remove the link again then this discussion page will suffice.

--Jlick 05:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Not only a cursory glance, but any rigorous approach to sourcing would indicate that an article by Jlick as a source for claims of being first by Jlick is not appropriately reliable. Appropriate citations would be of respected independent researchers stating that it was the first documented case having looked carefully at everything available. Your selection of entries from usenet, the wayback machine or other resources published on your own website are not equivalent to this.  Please do not add this back without better sources. -- Siobhan Hansa 11:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

James, your website was a very interesting read. Family Guy Guy (talk) 09:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Section structure
Does anyone else feel that the section structure (for want of a better term) could use some work? E.g.: lots of tiny sections, links within section headings, body text that lacks a complete sentence. --Rich Janis (talk) 06:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Cookie Stuffing is not spamdexing
So why is it included? It IS blackhat though, so maybe the name should be changed... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.108.140.87 (talk • contribs)

Subject has become a big issue in recent weeks.
This has become a big issue in recent weeks. Search Google News for "search spam". I won't edit the article myself, because I'm involved in the area, but some updating is in order. A few relevant news articles:

That should be enough to get people started. Thanks. --John Nagle (talk) 07:26, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Local search ("Google Places", etc.) is being heavily spammed. The techniques involved are different than the older techniques for spamming web search. The new spam involves phony locations and phony recommendations.
 * "Content farms" are a big issue.
 * Spam is a major profit center for Google.