In one of the midterm readings, Professor Sweet assigned a reading about Google’s spam policies. I found this specific article very interesting and insightful. So, I wrote down all of the terms the article referred to and an easy definition to make more sense, and I would like to share them with you! I hope it’s helpful!
Cloaking: Advertising for something the site is not actually about
Doorway Abuse: When multiple sites and pages are created to rank for specific or similar search queries
Expired Domain: When a domain that is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate rankings by hosting content with little value to users
Hacked Content: Content placed on a site without permission (ex. code injection, page injection, content injection, redirects, etc.)
Hidden Text and Link Abuse: Placing content to manipulate search engines and not be easily viewable by human visitors (ex. color matching, hidden text, zero opacity, etc.)
Keyword Stuffing: Filling a page with excessive keywords or numbers to manipulate rankings
Link Spam: Practice of creating links for ranking purpose (ex. buying or selling links, excessive link exchanges, exchanging goods for links, etc.)
Machine-Generated Traffic: Practice of sending automated queries to Google
Malware and Malicious Practices: Any software designed to harm computer
Misleading Functionality: Intentionally creating sites to trick users
Scaled Content Abuse: Many pages generated for primary purpose of manipulation
Scraping: Practice of taking from other sites
Site Reputation Abuse: Third party content published on a host site mainly because of already established ranking signals
Sneaky Redirects: Act of publishing content with affiliating links
Thin Affiliation: Practice of publishing content with affiliating links
User Generated Spam: Spammy content added to a site by users
Legal Removals: Valid copyright removal requests
Personal Information Removals: Significant volume of personal information removals
Policy Circumvention: Engage in action intended to bypass google spam policies
One Response
That’s a lot of spam, great summary!