"Spam is an Arms Race" - Douglas Merrill/Google

[glengara]

Linkspam - not often featured on the BBC front page, are we in for a rough ride?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5140066.stm

[Chris Boggs]

haha when you say "we," are you refering to yourself as a spammer?

Interesting article and once again the topic of search is inhabiting "top" news outlets. A few interesting quotes in which Merrill seems to admit being behind in the battle, for now. In my opinion, however, this article jumps around a little too much instead of focusing on one search-related topic and getting any real answers.

[glengara]

*are you refering to yourself as a spammer?*

Of the non-practicing variety ;-)

Haven't looked at the reporters form, so he may just have been fed all that linkspam info, it does look directed at press/public though, which is why I'm wondering if it's laying the groundwork for something....

(added)

Hmmm.... Darren Waters
BBC News Online entertainment staff (2004)
BBC News entertainment reporter (2006)

Linkspam as entertainment? Well I suppose it beats watching England ;-)

[vayapues]

It is probably just my sleep deprivation, but the article seemed choppy, and hard to read. Or maybe it is because the English speak English so funny. (or is it us who speaks English funny?)
Still... It is an interesting read. Personally, I hope that we spammers are in for a rough time. Getting to the top is fun, but if too many spammers get to the top, we all suffer in the end, as users turn away from search.

Also, I think you need to define spammer. Any SEO could also be called a spammer. It is the ones who get their useless scraper sites to the top that are nothing more than a bunch of ads that I would like to see "hit hard". Those of us creating unique content, and useful websites, but still in the end making an income off of the ads inserted, should be left alone, imo.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

If SEO is a "multi-million dollar industry which [are] trying to fool search engines." are PR agencies a "multi-million dollar industry which are trying to fool news medias"? Maybe. But who cares ...?

Any kind of media can and do get manipulated. That, in itself, dosn't have to be a major problem. The problem is A) The medias try to make us, the readers, believe that they allways show quality when in fact they are all, very often, "manipulated" somhow to show what they did) and B) The users believe the medias.

The last part, in my mind, is actually the worst part. With the growing amount of information, from all sorts of sources, the average human being can get access to, we all need better skills to sort quality from the oposite - truth from lies. No media will ever be perfect - not media will always speak the "truth" (as you see it) - it's up to you to sort it out.

Search engines have made search profitable. As long as it is profitable to be listed at the top of those engines creative marketers will keep trying to get there - any way they (or maybe I should say "we") can. It's marketing.

If they really want to remove spam, then ban all commercial sites

[toolz]

Webmasters need to ensure that thier content is vetted to keep link spam in check. A lot of webmasters also seem to be using the nofollow tag to their own advantage in keeping PR within their own sites and not sharing it out as they should.