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There are different levels of search spam. Some search spam involves creating spam on sites you control. Some spam involves injecting links into third party sites, hacking sites, infecting computers, phishing attempts and so on. Where does search spam cross that line and become "evil." That is somewhat of a debate, but Danny Sullivan is coining the term "craphat" in order to differentiate between "blackhat" and "whitehat" SEO. Because, many believe that "blackhat" SEO is not necessarily "evil" and that some people who consider themselves "blackhat" go to extremes that make some "blackhats" not want to be considered blackhat anymore. Which is why I think the industry hats and colors are melting a bit.
Danny created a Sphinn thread to discuss this topic, the topic of "craphat" SEO. How does Danny define this work?
Real crap? Automated link drops. Anyone who runs a blog, look at the shit that your comment filter catches automatically. It’s a crap harvest. Manual off-topic link drops, like we delete routinely here. Gibberish pages that say nothing and serve no purpose either than to get a rank and shove some Google AdSense ads at the top of them. Or one of my favorite examples, or not so favorite because it’s so sad, how a memorial site that Mike Grehan did for a friend got covered in link spam, adding to the further stress his widow was already under.
Danny thinks the industry should "try to stamp out." But being a realist, Danny knows "it won’t get stamped out," but adds, that it "doesn’t mean we shouldn't try."
Spam is getting worse and worse by the day and people are going to extremes they may have never thought they would go to. Matt Cutts discussed this in detail with his Virtual Blight video.
How can we make a difference and help prevent this type of stuff? Can we?
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
