The Problem Of Demoting Spam On The Internet: Yahoo!’s Trustrank Approach

TrustRank is an attempt to counter the web spamming activities that threatens to deceive search engines’ ranking algorithms. It propagates trust among web pages in the same manner that PageRank propagates authority. However, tests would show that the combination of trust and distrust values have greater ability to demote spam sites than with the use of trust values alone.

The Assumption

A link between two pages holds an implied conveyance of trust emanating from the source page to the target page. Pointing to a link is a vote of confidence from the source that the target is able to provide content that will be of value to the user. It basically revolves around the ideal set-up that good sites only point to similarly good sites and will not knowingly refer people to spam sites. These good sites hold the trust of people which is then used in propagating trust through the link structure of the web.

TrustRank hopes to use a set of highly trusted seed sites to help in demoting web spam. The approach assigns a non-zero initial trust score to these seed sites while assigning initial values of zero to all other sites. A biased PageRank algorithm is used to propagate these initial trust scores to the outgoing sites where good sites are expected to get a decent trust score while spam sites are likely to get lower trust scores after convergence.

The possibility of a page pointing to a spam page increases as the number of links increases. It has been proposed that the trust score of a parent page be equally split among the children pages. There is the question as to the logic of having different trust scores for children pages in cases of multiple parent pages. TrustRank provides a solution by simple summation which has been not quite effective in curtailing the spam site’s efforts to raise their ranking.

The conveyance of distrust emerged as a natural extension of the conveyance of trust between links. Distrust may be an indication of lack of confidence to a source page due to its linkage to an untrustworthy page. Thus, when a link with a known spam page is established, the trust judgment of the source page cannot be considered valid.

TrustRank as it was originally conceived, proposed that trust should be reduced as we move further away from the seed set of trusted pages. However, the limited number of seed pages makes it impossible for the whole web to be touched by propagation. A well performing algorithm is needed to produce trust judgments at least for a larger fraction of web pages.

The seed sets used may not be able to sufficiently represent the different topics of the web. TrustRank tend to show a bias towards larger communities which can be remedied by the use of topical information to divide the seed set and calculate trust scores separately for each topic. The use of the pages listed in well-maintained topic directories can help in resolving the coverage issue. Seed filtering may be done to remove low quality pages or even spam pages that may inadvertently been included in the pool of seed pages.

Much work is being done to come up with methods that don’t rely heavily on human judgment for identification of spam free pages. As it is, searchers are highly challenged to locate pages that would serve their needs and not those that are intended for high ranking in search engines. Sites that do not provide any value to users are just too many to be ignored.

Semantic Cloaking on the Web

Semantics is the study or science of meaning in language that takes words and compares them with other words or symbols and determines the relevancy and relationship between them. Semantic cloaking is the practice of supplying different versions of a web page to search engines and to browsers. The purpose of the content provider is to hide the real content of the page from the view of search engines. The difference in meaning between the pages is supposed to deceive search engines’ ranking algorithms. Cloaking is one type of search engine spamming technique that makes it possible for non-relevant pages to occupy top ranking in searches.

Search engines are used by people when they need to find the most relevant responses to their search. It is typical for users to view just one page of results thus sites are hard put to compete for the top rankings particularly for popular queries. Increased traffic to a commercial website is equivalent to more profit.

Reputable content providers work hard to come up with high quality web pages to get their desired high ranking. Unfortunately, not all content providers hold the same view. These are the people that would try to reach high ranking through manipulation of web page features used by search engines as basis for their ranking algorithms.

Ranking algorithms assumes that page content is real. This means that the content seen by search engines is identical to that seen by actual users with browsers. With the use of the web spamming technique of cloaking, different versions are successfully supplied causing a big amount of confusion and disappointment for users.

Cloaking falls under the page-hiding spam category in search engine spamming techniques. Some cloaking behavior is considered acceptable. Cloaking is of two types – syntactic and semantic. Syntactic cloaking includes all situations in which different content is sent to a crawler and real user. Semantic cloaking is an offshoot of syntactic cloaking which employs differences in meaning between pages to deceive the ranking algorithms of search engines.

Syntactic cloaking may be acceptable in cases such as web servers using session identifiers within URLs for copies sent to browser and no such identifiers for copies sent to crawlers. This is in effect being used by web servers to differentiate their users. Search engines may interpret these identifiers as a change in the page. The cloaking behavior that needs to be penalized is the semantic cloaking.

There are various proposals on ways to counter the problem. One proposal suggests the comparison of copies from both the browser’s perspective and the crawler’s perspective. It may be necessary to get two or more copies from each side to be able to detect cloaking. Another suggests a two-step process that would require fewer resources. The first step implements a filter by use of heuristics to eliminate web pages that cannot demonstrate cloaking. All the pages that have not been eliminated will go through the second step for inspection. Features are extracted from about four copies and a classifier is used to determine whether semantic cloaking is being done or not. However, the reality remains that no ideal solution has been arrived at to effectively curb semantic cloaking. This is a technique that should not be practiced by anyone who wants to maintain good business ethics. The practice continues to undermine the search engine’s attempts to provide users with the actual information they need.

About the Author:
Danny Wirken
www.theinternetone.net
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Link Spam - The Seedy Underbelly of Web Marketing

Link popularity has been the main technique for search engine marketers for at least the last few years. Some marketers have become so obsessed with link popularity that they have resorted to automated techniques to help them acquire one-way links. Some examples of link spam methods that are still being exploited are:

Guestbooks - In a woebegone era people placed simple scripts on their websites, with the hopes of getting feedback from their visitors. A great number of these scripts are still in existence. A web spammer will identify a guestbook because of its' footprint. Millions of these guestbooks have been abandoned and are not monitored by their owners. For this reason, automated guestbook spamming has been rampant. An interesting thing about Guestbook spam: some of them can even be spammed too death. Since many of these are old CGI scripts, they can't handle the volume of spam messages, and end up crashing. At that point the Guestbook will live on until the domain owner removes it.

Blogs - blogs became even more popular than guestbooks. they've been installed by the millions and abandoned at 90% rate. Blog software prior to 2005 had a default setting which allowed comments to be published without prior approval. It also allowed live html, so these blogs are out there still begging to be spammed and many are each day. What ends up happening is they get so many outgoing links that the page becomes a massive size, and at some point the page may even have trouble loading.

Forums - a frequent victim of webspam. Since almost all forums allow users to submit material without pre-moderation, web-spammers will attempt to post to them. The good news about Forums is that are usually not abandoned like Blogs or Guestbooks, and usually someone will come along and clean up the mess. This isn't always true, but it does happen quite a bit.

Any form on the internet that allows html is vulnerable to webspam attack. Without some sort of moderation it's impossible to ensure that malevolent html will not be inserted. if you don't pre-moderate the form, make sure you receive email notifications whenever the form is submitted. If you don't at least check the form often, it's inevitable that you'll be spammed by one of the numerous bots on spam duty.

Search engines introduced the rel nofollow tag in order to deal with the rising tide of link spam. All popular blog software comes with the nofollow in place, so the main risk of Webspam is to legacy blogs installed prior to 2005. Nofollow essentially tells the search engine that the link is untrusted. In essence it says this link was entered by a person other than the website owner, so treat it with a grain of salt. Forum software makers have also been quick to add nofollow to their core technology. The fact of the introduction of nofollow gives great insight into how much trouble search engines were having with the enormous load of link spam. Basically they threw their hands up and admitted defeat. Nofollow has had an enormous impact on Webspam, but there are still an awful lot of blogs and forums out there that haven't been patched.

Link spam appeals to certain web marketers for obvious reasons. It's a scalable and free solution to building link popularity. Web marketers who automate the process can quickly vary their anchor text between 'runs'. This will give them a wide variety of links from a broad spectrum of websites located on diverse IP addresses. This is normally a sure-fire recipe for success for virtually any website. By simulating the link popularity of a popular website, the link spammer is able to fool the search engines into assigning it higher rankings. The manipulation of link popularity has become a major issue to all of the search engines. Each will offer more and more attempts at reducing this threat, but unless search engine rankings are based only on on-page variables, it will always exist.

About the Author:
For more information on building link popularity, please visit Sootle.com
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Create A .htaccess File Without Referral Spam

At present, there is a growing nuisance for users and administrators alike of sites that ruin web servers and more particularly, blogs. This nuisance is being referred to as comment, trackback and referrer spams. Various solutions have been proposed with some being applicable to even two of these forms of spam using a single solution.

What is Referral Spam?

A referrer request-header file allows the client to specify the address (URI) of the resource from which the request–URI was obtained. It is a way for an HTTP client to send in the headers, the URI of the page that sent them there. This is especially handy for a site administrator to provide insight as to where the traffic on his web server is coming from. It is also depended upon by the most popular web server log analyzers in providing statistics on the most common referrers.

The HTTP Referrer: header is very useful but it is also completely arbitrary. Any web browser or HTTP client is free to send a forged Referrer: header with any request to a web server. Spammers have taken advantage of the fact that there is no provision for authentication in SMPTP and have used the existing openness to specially craft request with their website in the Referrer: header.

Most people will find it difficult to understand why someone would bother spamming something which only the site administrator will see in the logs. One probable motivation pinpointed is the boosting of search engine ranking. Another is simply to show-up in any stats published by the site. If a site being spammed runs a web server log analyzing software, access to the URL in the top referrer's section is handily obtained by the spammer.

A serious consequence of referrer spam is that the process is often performed via an HTTP "GET" or "POST" request which retrieves the entire body of the document being spammed. A 30k document, for example, will have all the 30k transferred across one's Internet pipe. This results to not a small amount of traffic in the web server which could be very costly since bandwidth is not cheap.

Referrer spam wastes CPU and disk space and can be a source of endless annoyance to server operators. It is being actually fought by search engine developers thus its initial effectiveness in boosting a site's ranking has been considerably lessened. However, the problem persists and much has to be done to conquer it.

Some recommended practices in countering the threat of referral spam include the non-publication of referrers by bloggers, inclusion of the page in robots.txt when referrers have to be published, use of the rel="no follow" attribute and gathering a cleaner list of referrers using JavaScript and beacon images. Some bloggers have begun fighting referrer spammers at the .htaccess level. Others have even taken steps to automate this.

Blocking Users by Referrer Notes

A very useful feature of .htaccess is the ability to block users or sites that originate from a particular domain. When there are tons of referrals from a particular site with no single visible link to one's own site from the said site, the referral probably isn't a legitimate one. The other site is most likely hot linking to certain files such as images, CSS file or other file. The blocking access by referrer in .htaccess requires the help of the Apache module mod rewrite to be able to make out the referrer first. There is a fear that spam would still come in even as .htaccess continue to grow. Blacklisting certain referrers in .htaccess is another option, the effectiveness of which has been greatly diminished due to the ease by which spammers are able to register thousands of domains and rotate them as quickly as they are blacklisted.

The .htaccess generator to prevent people from certain IP addresses, domains or even countries from gaining access to a site or to specific folders can be used. The full IP address has to be typed to block a specific IP. The use of a partial IP address is required to block a range of IPs. Blocking a particular domain can be done by typing the domain without the www. The tail extension is to be typed when blocking a country.

There is no limit to the entries that can be added one at a time. The "add" should be checked after each entry while the generated code is to be copied and posted into a plain text file. This file is then named .htaccess. The "." Before the file name should be noted as well as the absence of any tail extension.

If there is already an .htaccess file in the root of the docs directory or the folder where it is to be applied, the generated code shall be added to the end of the current .htaccess file, taking extra care not to disturb the existing code. It will then be uploaded in ASCII mode.

The rel = "no follow" solution

A coalition of blogging and search engine companies have joined together to support an HTML attribute designed primarily to combat comment spam but have high potentials as well for effective use against referral spam. This attribute is known as the rel ="no follow" is being praised by many bloggers as the ultimate solution for the prevailing problem. The idea is simple enough with the hardest part being the matter of convincing the major players such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN to agree on it.

Tagging a link with rel ='no follow" attribute would prevent any contribution to the site's PageRank. This means that comment and referral spammers will not be rewarded for their illegitimate activities on websites that implement the attribute. The problem gets solved partially but this solution is unable to end it.

This truth is sought to be explained by the fact that it is impossible to reach a 100% adoption thus there will always be an incentive to spam. Spammers essentially do not care whether their techniques are specifically effective as long as they are generally effective. They need no particular reason to hit any site and will do so as their main target is the blogosphere as a whole. It is also quite unfortunate that the resources required to fight spam, particularly referral spam, is far bigger than the resources needed to create it.

Referral spam is an HTTP request. The client doesn't even need to acknowledge the response. All it may need is a simple packet with formatted text.

Spammers take pains to make a request look legitimate. The user – agent string would look very much like MSIE. It used to be that spam came from a single IP but things have definitely gotten more complex since then.

Filtering referrer IPs against spam blacklisting can also be done. Listing the referring URL in any section of a site's web stats should be avoided if the IP is blacklisted. Do not pursue query once a given site is identified as a referral spam host name.

About The Author:
Danny Wirken
http://www.theinternetone.net
Posted: 01-11-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Ethical Search Engine Optimisation Services: Are You Unintentionally Search Engine Spamming?

Many people who have websites are not totally up to date with what is considered to be search engine spamming. Having worked on search engine optimisation for a few clients, I have come across websites that are using spam techniques to help elevate search engine rankings. When I confronted clients about this, they honestly did not know they were using a form of spam nor did they realise the consequences if detected by the search engines.

So what is search engine spamming? A simple definition would be; deliberately designing website pages that offer poor and irrelevant content, and are used to trick search engines into ranking the content highly for inappropriate search results.

People tend to use spam as a way of attracting as many visitors to their website. When caught by the search engines, this will result in a major setback to business. Websites will be blacklisted from the search engines and chances are they will not appear in the index for a very long time.

Not sure if you are spamming? Below are a few common forms of spam techniques that you should avoid.

Doorway Pages - Optimising a single webpage to perform exceptionally well in search engine ranks for a group of keyword phrases (keyword stuffing on the webpage). Once a user clicks on the link, they will be automatically redirected to a completely different website.

Invisible Text - Using text that is not visible to the human eye (having the same colour text as the background colour). The invisible text will usually contain a large number of keywords (keyword stuffing).

Link Farms - Joining community websites that provide large volumes of irrelevant links to your website.

Along with other forms of spam, these techniques should be avoided at all costs. If you are not sure whether your site uses some form of spam, then it would be best to contact a search engine optimisation specialist before it could result in your website being blacklisted.

Past clients who were using some form of spam and were not aware of it, had taken a big loss by having their website blacklisted in some search engines. The road to recovery can take very long and it is one that no one would like to follow. Be cautious!

David Touri works for SEO Sydney http://www.seosydney.com.au/. He is currently working on the Female Vibrators website http://www.female-vibrators.com/, the Mens Sex Toys For Sale website http://www.mens-sex-toys-for-sale.com/, the Strap On Sex Toys website http://www.strap-on-sex-toys.com/, the Gay Sex Toys website http://www.gay-sex-toys.net/ and the Indonesian Girls website http://www.indonesiangirls.net/.

About The Author:
David Touri works for SEO Sydney, who aims to improve search engine placement with search engine placement services for websites in Australia and overseas. For a complete search engine marketing service, please contact SEO Sydney.
Published 05/1/2006
Article Source: http://www.EzinePlug.com

What is Search Engine spamming - SEO Spam

SEO Spam Search Engine Spamming also known as Spamdexing (spamming and indexing) is the practice of deliberately manipulating web pages to obtain high search engine rankings. Spamdexing is used to mislead search engines indexing program and to gain ranking position which they do not deserve.

The spam tactics mentioned below could either block search engine robots form crawling your site properly or get your site penalized in certain search engines/directories. Make sure you are well aware of these tactics before designing or optimising your website.

10 Search Engine Spam tactics known –

Hidden Keywords

Hidden keyword also known as invisible text is the most common form of spam practised on websites. Hidden text or content will not be seen by human visitors and are only meant for the search engines spiders. The purpose of using hidden text is to increase the keyword density of the webpage and also to trick the search engines into indexing the text on the page. Hidden texts are used through HTML format and also using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Keyword Stuffing

Keyword Stuffing is implemented by adding block of keywords/keyphrases onto the webpage. Keyword stuffing is practised to increase the density of targeted keywords, thereby tricking the search engine robots into considering the page to be more relevant for the search phrase.

Use of Unrelated Keywords

Unrelated keywords is the practice of using keywords on the webpage which are not related to sites content. This method is followed to trick a few people searching for such words into clicking at their sites link.

Hidden Links Hidden links are used to increase the link popularity of the site. These links are hidden from the reach of visitors and are used to fool the search engines. They are usually in the form of small hyperlinked dots.

Redirects

Redirection is the process of taking the user to another page without his or her intervention by using META refresh tags, CGI scripts, Java, JavaScript, Server side redirects or server side techniques.

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are low quality web pages that contain very little content, stuffed with targeted keywords and keyphrases. Doorway pages are designed to rank highly within the search results. A doorway page will generally have "click here to enter" in the middle of it.

Unreadable Tiny Text

Tiny text spam consists of placing keywords and phrases in the tiniest text imaginable all over site/webpage. Most people can't see them, but spiders can and will ban such sites eventually.

Link Farms

Link farms are webpages created solely for search engine ranking purpose that consist of long list of unrelated weblinks on page.

These type of pages/sites are penalised by most search engines.

Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of dynamically generating keyword rich content to the search engine robots, while providing different content to the actual visitors. By cloaking the user will not be able to see the code of the page shown to the search engines. Usually, the cloaking software creates hundreds of web pages that are optimized for a special search term so that search engine spiders get the impression that the website contains a lot of relevant information about a special topic.

Mirror Sites

Mirror sites are identical sites hosted on different domains/website address. By mirroring sites one can build hundreds of duplicate pages with entirely different urls. Intention of adopting mirror sites is to quickly populate your sites pages and also to increase inbound links. Most Search Engines do not appreciate duplication of sites, but some of them are vulnerable to such technique as yet.

About The Author:
Johnsmith
The author is a Writer working with A-1 internet design, which is a professional Search Engine Optimization Company providing effective Search Engine Optimization services, SEM services, and business to business email marketing, online marketing services to promote your business over the web. Get more valuable information at A-1 internetdesign
Submitted: 2006-10-07
Article Source: GoArticles

Better No Backlinks Than Spam Backlinks?

Search engines use many aspects to rank websites, but the most important ranking aspect is link popularity. Link popularity is determined by the number of links to your website and the link popularity of the websites containing the backlink.

Many webmasters try to add as many backlinks as possible hoping this will increase the link popularity of their website and search engine rankings. But you have to be careful. One of the biggest problems of search engines is spam. Search engines have developed intelligent software to remove spam. Spam is determined by checking the content of websites, but also by following links from spam websites. A website which is linked from a spam website is probably also a spam website and could be removed from search engines or could lead to lower rankings. This will be disastrous for your traffic.

Examples of spam websites are:
- Websites only containing keywords, but no grammatical correct sentences
- Websites mainly containing affiliate links or Google ads
- Websites containing illegal content
- Websites using techniques like cloaking to improve search engine rankings
- Web directories which accept all submitted web pages without quality checks

We recommend only adding backlinks to web pages having at least a page rank of 2 and containing content similar to your website. The best way to achieve quality backlinks is by improving the quality of your website. You can easily create many quality backlinks if your website contains unique content and useful services.

About The Author:
Appie Pieterse is a researcher of the Walhello Search Engine and has many years of experience developing search engine technology and ranking algorithms.
Article Submitted On: October 12, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Comment Spam: Allure for the Online Totem Pole

Unless your website is dead and six feet below the virtual ground, you are ever prone to the Internet evil commonly known as comment spam. Comment spam infiltrates every active online website which supports or accepts links from users or participants.

A comment spam is generally characterized with links and no sense, understandably so since its main concern is to be able to take advantage of the algorithm techniques of most search engines in making certain websites rank higher than the others.

Senseless as a comment spam may look at the outset, the makers of these said comment spam are extremely intelligent creatures that are properly harnessing the power of the Internet and its users to generate undeserved income.

Strangely enough, the object of affection of the makers behind every comment spam is not to gain popularity from the people and websites that they are spamming, but rather they use it to get an edge in the totem pole of user access which we know to be called search engines.

Comment spam in huge volumes actually allows the culprits to generate high ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. It helps them generate more revenue from receiving more clicks and having their links displayed all over the World Wide Web for all the people to see, regardless if these people care about what they're advertising or not.

The allure of resorting to generation of a battalion of comment spam actually emanates from the fact that it works. No matter how hated spammers get for being an online pest for websites, they get to earn a lot from it. Even when the growing number of efforts to reduce comment spam is alive and kicking, a lot of people are doing it since it is a very powerful marketing ploy.

While thoroughly extinguishing comment spam may seem to be an impossible feat, there have been various ways created to diminish, if not eliminate the influx of comment spam in various online systems. One way of eliminating comment spam involves completely blocking off all comments. However, this method is very self-limiting and deprives the user the freedom for healthy online interaction. Not all comments are comment spam, and anyone who deprives himself of getting authentic feedbacks for the sake of blocking a spam comment is at a losing edge.

Some companies have already launched their own versions of anti-spam techniques for the benefit and protection of their users. Still, even with the best of the best anti-spam method, a comment spam can still find its way even in the most protected pages. But it is better to have some level of protection than none, so every user must exercise his or her right to have spam-free interactions by selectively seeking the websites which are more protected and encouraging other websites which are not entirely comment spam-protected.

Filters are also used by most systems to purge comment spam, but they need to be updated frequently since these notorious comment spam authors are extremely resourceful people with a knack for taking advantage of every online loophole they could find.

About The Author:
Kistina Robin
Get most updated information about Comment Spam: Allure For The Online Totem Pole
Posted: 02-11-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

SEO and Spam

Optimizing your web site for the search engines can be a difficult and time-consuming process. In addition to all of the tasks you must complete during the SEO process, you also need to conduct extensive research and continue to track your web traffic statistics to make sure your optimization efforts are worth the time and money you have spent. You may be tempted to use some rather unique techniques to boost your web rankings within a short time, but these techniques must be avoided in order to keep your site within the boundaries of ethical SEO. These methods can be considered spam, so learning how to avoid this distinction can save your reputation and help you boost your web site rankings.

Multiple Search Engine Submissions

While you can submit your web site to search engines more than once, submitting your site on a regular basis can have a harmful effect on your web rankings. Many search engines have guidelines for how many times you can submit your web site to be indexed. If you exceed these limits, you run the risk of being banned from the search engine or having your site ranked low in the results because you were found to be spamming the search engines.

Using Link Farms

Link farms are web sites where anyone can submit a link. This sounds like a great idea since links are so important for SEO, but using link farms can result in penalties or being banned from search engines altogether. Because link farms list links without any set criteria, they are not quality links that can help you to improve your page rankings. Some search engines will even penalize you or ban you for using link farms since these farms artificially improve your link popularity.

Hidden Text

Some sneaky optimizers may try to use hidden text on web pages. This is when text is printed in the same color as the background of the page so that it appears that the text does not exist. Search engines are wise to this method and you can be penalized for using hidden text to boost your web rankings.

Mirror Pages and Doorway Pages

Mirror pages and doorway pages are also unacceptable for search engine optimization. Using these methods, many designers would create identical pages, give them different titles, and submit all of the pages to the search engines. Now that the search engines do not accept these types of pages, using them is a waste of time and effort.

Overuse of Keywords

Keywords are very important for search engine optimization, but there are some limits to how many times the keywords can be used in your text. If you place keywords all over your page, you may be considered a keyword spammer and be penalized by the search engines or banned altogether.

Avoiding Spam

If you don't know the ins and outs of search engine optimization, you should consider hiring a professional SEO firm to optimize your site and submit it to the proper search engines and directories. The SEO Team offers a comprehensive list of web design and SEO services for businesses of any size. Visit our web site to find out about our SEO consulting services.

About The Author:
Bryan Garcia and his team of Internet marketing experts have been delivering TOP search engine results by using their unique formula of search engine optimization, Web site development, professional copywriting, and conversion consulting for a combined total of 20 years. Visit http://www.theseoteam.com to learn how your site can get to the top of the rankings.
Submitted: 2006-10-17
Article Source: GoArticles

Content Crazy

Content issues today are very much an issues of either Tasmanian Article Submitters or Productive Elmer Fud Authors. I write this article not because I want to slam anyone. The sole purpose is to put the whole content issue with articles to a screaming halt; I hope. I have read many reports claiming articles have a down side to the Internet, and that beast is Article Spam. One interesting factor, Article Spam really is a larger problem than expected. Article Marketing Spam has more components to it than just the (food) word spam. As defined by Jason Potash in his recent report “Why Many Internet Marketers Are Dead Wrong About The Right Way To Use (And Profit From) Content In 2006 And How They Will Quickly Paralyze Their Businesses As A Result!.”

“Here's what happened: In 2005, the search engine optimization (SEO) community began to take notice of submitting articles as an easy way to generate much needed back links to their websites.

Google was cracking down on reciprocal linking (more specifically, poorquality incoming links generated from link farms or spam sites). Everyone and their uncle began hiring ghostwriters, getting articles produced, and mass submitting them to dozens of article directories. Their back links grew like crazy... so did their rankings, and suddenly their websites had "legs" since hundreds of other “authority” sites were one-way linking to them.

It worked like a dream for a few months... then article spam started to become a REAL problem.

Article directory owners across the world began to feel the pain of watching their weekly article submissions balloon by 400% (if not more).

The problem?

Up to 40% of the new articles they received were pure garbage and had to be deleted on the spot. And even some articles that were pretty good still got trashed because many of them made silly (amateur) mistakes that could easily be corrected.

So, while the article spammers continue to submit dozens of crappy articles per week, the jokes is on them.

Only a handful of their articles actually see the light of day.

In fact, some article spammers even developed custom scripts/robots that go out and plow through article directories and force feed their articles to them a few dozen at a time. Their gameplan is quantity over quality. Keep submitting and eventually a few articles will stick.

Yes, some articles will sneak their way into the article directories. If you take shovels full of cow dung and repeatedly hurl them at a barn door, some of it will stick.” (“Why Many Internet Marketers Are Dead Wrong About The Right Way To Use (And Profit From) Content In 2006 And How They Will Quickly Paralyze Their Businesses As A Result!” Jolt Marketing Inc.)

Now Jason makes a very good point about the quality of reports written. I must make a confession here, I attended a Siena Heights University, in Adrian Michigan and during the course of earning my education I wrote a bazillion and one half papers of all types. I have learned to write and communicate my ideas in written form (I Hope!). Now we are in the techno age, and writing is required from everyone who participates. Basic knowledge of reading and writing is necessary to use the computer. With a good word processor software on a computer to assist in the correction of basic grammatical errors anyone can write respectable article.

Respectable articles require some time and effort to think through what you are writing about. Structuring ideas to text, and formatting to a legible compilation. Now, the hard part is spell checking by using your word processors spell checker. When the writer eliminates all the green and red squiggles under their text, read the article out loud. Reading the article aloud is the easiest method for checking the flow of an article. If an article can be read without problems, you have got the article ready for submission.

Submission is another point Jason makes in his report that creates article spam. Like link spam the search engines do not like to see an excessive amount of back links added at one time. Excessive back links is an unnatural progression to developing back links. A successful strategy is to build your back links slow. I personally choose about 10 links in 1 week. Article Spammers do article submissions in bulk of 1000’s.

The same strategy applies to article submission back links, build slow. Article submission using Article Submitter with greater control of how many submissions you do in a day, and control of the category your article is submitted into. Building your article back links slower, creates a more natural building progression, the search engines will not flag your website as suspicious. Slow submission is difficult in a time when we are so geared to doing all of our tasks fast to get ahead of the competition.

Getting ahead of the competition does not mean submitting 3,4,5, articles a day to the article repositories. How can anyone write 3,4,5, quality articles in one day? I am sure it is possible, but I desire to think my articles through and write quality articles.

In conclusion, the natural way to build back links to your websites, also applies to article submission. Good quality articles require some editing, and a little work but is necessary. Article Spam can be avoided if submissions are done with quality tools, and submitted to a specific number of repositories in a single day.

About the Author:
Duncan owner of the Viral Source Article Extravaganza www.linkbrander.com/go/9814,
Article Source: NewFREEArticles.com