Identifying & Calling out Web Spam on Search Engine Blogs

Search engines reps have been calling out web spam individually on their sites for some time. Tim Converse used to do it. Matt Cutts has done it plenty of times, Brian White's done it now, too. I believe there are several inherent goals here:

1. Show the web-savvy and blog savvy thought leaders in the sphere (who pay close attention to every search engine rep's blog) that you're smart enought to catch it.
2. Create fear of spamming by illustrating the reprisals you'll take against those who do it.
3. Talk about it because, hey, that's what you do for a living and you want to share.

I think most webmasters place a lot more weight on the first two motivations than the third, but if you were reading a carpenter's blog, you might fully expect that he'd show you a crappy hammer vs. a great one and probably tell you which brands they were. Do we judge SE reps unfairly? Maybe a bit, but that's OK - they get paid (a pretty solid amount) to take the guff, and I think when you talk to them in person, you'll find that they might even take a bit of pleasure in the drama that's created.

Ever since I've joined the SEO industry, there's been a long-held code that you don't out spam. That code existed as solidly for pure white hats as it did for inky dark black hats, and it's an interesting one. I think the reasoning is that we should all stick together because it's an us vs. them kinda world in SEO. Whether that philosophy (and the underlying code) still holds up today is doubtful. I think there are a lot of folks who report spam, both those who are deep inside the webmaster industry and plenty who simply found spam while browsing the search results and want it gone.

At SEOmoz, we don't report 99% of the spam we see, for a variety of reasons:

1. We could spend all day doing it. Once you know the SERPs to look in or the advanced searches to run ("texas hold 'em site:edu" anyone?), it's way too obvious.
2. You'll have a far greater return on your productivity time optimizing your site, building content, getting links and conducting press & marketing than you will reporting your competitors for what looks like a paid link.
3. It's been done before. From talking with reps and reading in the search world online, you get the distinct impression that the search engines know about spam - at least the great majority of obvious spam. They aren't trying to manually throw out sites one by one; they're trying to develop algorithms to find patterns that will elminate spam on a large scale.
4. That 1% of spam that we do report is because we blog about it. When something's really interesting in the manipulation space, we want to share it with everyone - not just because the search engine reps will catch it, but because it often gives insight into techniques we can use in-house and strategies our readers can employ, legitimately, to rank better.

As fascinated as I am by the spam world, I've never wanted to make the quick bucks with it. Some of this can be attributed to fear of the unknown or to my lack of expertise in the arena, but philosophically, I'm not into it. This isn't because I see spam as evil or morally wrong - it's like taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code to keep as much of your money as possible and has about that level of "evil" associated with it from my morality POV. What really keeps me from spam is that it's a short-term solution to the issue of earning money, reputation, building a business, etc.

For those who remember my spam debate with Earl Grey (oh, how I wish he still commented here!), it was all about the long-term vs. short-term. I'm young - 27 years old - and I have the next 3-5 years to build a business that will be sustainable and valuable for the rest of my life. If I were in my 40's and looking to cover my kids' college tuition and pay off my house and buy a place for my mother-in-law, my outlook would be very different. As someone who has 10-12 hours a day to give to my job and loves what he does passionately, I'm seeking something that will build a brand, build a company, build something bigger than a revenue-generation system, but instead something that reaches and helps millions of people.

I'm not saying SEOmoz is entirely altruistic. One of my big goals with the company is certainly to earn money. But, I'd rather have a 10% chance of making $50 million dollars 5-10 years from now with a great idea and great execution and a long-term model than a 90% chance of making $25,000 a month from spamming now, with diminishing returns in the future.

OK - Got a little off-topic there, so back to my original points.

The search engine reps, in my opinion, would do well to call out even more of the spam they find. I think that showing off all the devious networks and telling webmasters that particular paid links or link brokers or spam rings or hijacked pages have been shut down is a good thing. Not only do you get to accomplish your goals of creating fear of spamming (since you're so good at finding it, webmasters would be wise to spend their efforts elsewhere), it also gives legitimate marketers examples of the intelligence and operations of the engines - which isn't a bad thing. I'm of the mind that Matt Cutts could come right out and reveal a rough take on the Google algo and really, he'd be helping Google's index quality, helping legitimate webmasters and sites to optimize and probably not helping spammers at all (or, at least no more than he's helping all the other sites on the web). Of course, he might be helping Yahoo! & MSN & Ask a bit, too :)

What do you think?