Long long before in web years, before there was spam filters in email, our inbox was mostly filled with spam. Now thanks to spam filters, we are able to see the main email in the inbox.
Is this the story with web search today? Article spam, content farm, 10 articles on how to tie your shoe, how to build a brick wall, watch the above Big Think video on Spam!
Lot of talk of direct or primary spam in search results, i.e. links of sites ranking high on search engines which are of poor or spam quality pages. But I see the real issue, and bigger one to deal with, is of secondary spam, which are good sites or web pages maintaining or trying to manipulate their position to the top by submitting spam articles to many article and other related websites, just only to give their main site or web page a boost of some link juice through some aptly placed keyword links. Worst even, is these operators resort to article spinning where they try to fool and trick search engines by producing tons of other articles spun by re-arranging words and/or structure of the sentences used and combination’s there of. Search engines have to really get smarter here, and this is easier said than done.
There is a fine fine line with black-hat and white-hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, with a lot of overlap, what is right, wrong or evil is left for lot debate. Read the case of penny links in the New York Times article - The Dirty Little Secrets of Search. Another high profile article on Overstock.com was posted on the Wall Street Journal - Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics.
Also, what about search engines turning a blind eye to secondary spam as detailed above, because these sites or web pages are used by the search engines themselves profit for the clicks through link advertisements placed on these pages. So, we really need some separation of search and ads, if you may, to really keep the objective or intent of search engines clear.
On a philosophical side, the real issue here is something higher - human nature. Can search algorithm get smarter than human nature. Again, my friends, victory is just an illusion, as human nature is always trying to be victorious. Now that gets into programming human nature?
