Learning About Web Spam

I've just read two excellent papers that discuss search engine spam, what it is and how it can be detected. They were facinating reading. I learned about then from Gary Price's post on the Search Engine Watch blog.

The two papers are:

Web Spam Taxonomy (PDF)
By: Zoltán Gyöngyi, Hector Garcia-Molina.

Abstract: Web spamming refers to actions intended to mislead search engines into ranking some pages higher than they deserve. Recently, the amount of web spam has increased dramatically, leading to a degradation of search results. This paper presents a comprehensive taxonomy of current spamming techniques, which we believe can help in developing appropriate countermeasures.

Web Spam, Propaganda and Trust (PDF)
By: Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Joe DeStefano

Abstract: Web spamming, the practice of introducing artificial text and links into web pages to affect the results of searches, has been recognized as a major problem for search engines. It is also a serious problem for users because they are not aware of it and they tend to confuse trusting the search engine with trusting the results of a search.

I recommend reading both of these papers.