![\"google-page-rank-1024x768\"](\"http:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/google-page-rank-1024x768.jpg\"){kind=icon}
Most everyone is aware of what a major pain spam can be. It clogs up mail systems, threatens security, rips off unsuspecting users, and lays time bombs, just waiting to be triggered with a single click, in our inboxes. In fact, the malaise named for a canned luncheon meat is so ubiquitous that we expect it, as much as we expect taxes, political scandals, and bad Hollywood movies.<\/p>\n
We know that email spam and the Web work together like PB&J, so what if spam took to the road (the Information Highway), taking potshots along the way and making our lives more miserable, without us even lifting a single clicking finger? Well, you don\u2019t have to wait for an answer to that<\/em> postulate, because, as it turns out, those of us who spend precious time and energy making our websites better may be suffering at the hands of the spammers.<\/p>\n And Google. While it\u2019s somewhat speculative, a recent article<\/a> at SEOBook.com entitled \u201cRank Modifying Spammers\u201d unveils the recent discovery of a Google patent called \u2018Ranking Documents\u2019 (if you\u2019re the sort who enjoys losing themselves in a good patent, you can find it here<\/a>). It should be noted that there\u2019s no way of knowing whether Google\u2019s employing the patent in their search engine, but as SEOBook and ZDNet<\/a> surmise, if you\u2019re a betting person, you may want to take odds and lay your money down.<\/p>\n Effectively, what this ranking system does is set the initial ranking for a site, and then react if (or more appropriately, when) the website has been changed. The patent language is, of course, a lot of legalese, but there are some points which make perfect sense, for example, when it states that<\/p>\n During the transition from the old rank to the target rank, the transition rank might cause:<\/p>\n This is a nice way of saying that your site\u2019s ranking by Google may be changed, seemingly in a random manner, until Google decides what your new ranking should be. The implications of this can be disastrous for webmasters and SEO consultants who constantly work to improve site rankings. This from SEOBook: \u201cLet’s say that building links…has had a positive effect. Not so if the patent code is active, as your site may have already been flagged. Google then toys with you for a while before sending your site plummeting to the target rank.\u201d While we can\u2019t know whether or not this patent is actually in play in Google\u2019s algorithms, if you\u2019re seeing fluctuations in your rankings, especially after having changed your site\u2019s content, this could be the culprit.<\/p>\n They also point to other culprits. First is the evolution of the search engine from a \u2018stupid black box\u2019 in the 1990\u2019s to a sophisticated system today that uses cryptic methods and proprietary witchcraft to develop its rankings. Second is the spammer, but in this case, the club is far more inclusive than merely the true<\/em> spammers \u2013 i.e., the founders of the feast. Now, SEOBook claims, the spammer \u2013 the enemy \u2013 is (gasp!)<\/em> us<\/em>. \u201cOf late, Google appear[s] to have gotten bored of maintaining any pretense, and the battle lines have been informally redrawn. If you\u2019re a webmaster doing anything at all that might be considered an effort to improve rank, then you’re a \u2018spammer\u2019. Google would no doubt argue this has always been the case, even if you had to read between the lines to grasp it. And they\u2019d be right.\u201d<\/p>\n Although it sounds like a stretch, if one steps back and looks at the following patent language, it\u2019s easy to see how SEOBook reached this conclusion:<\/p>\n \u201cThe systems and methods may also observe spammers\u2019 reactions to rank changes caused by the rank transition function to identify documents that are actively being manipulated. This assists in the identification of rank-modifying spammers.\u201d<\/p>\n This does<\/em> appear to suggest that anyone who changes a website in order to improve its rankings is being labeled a spammer. As the article points out, it\u2019s the job of the webmaster to improve a site\u2019s ranking, so vilifying the webmaster as spammer does seem unreasonable and to some, maybe even villainous.<\/p>\n Nothing against the big G \u2013 Google probably isn\u2019t the only search engine inclined to consider doing this. But it looks like, once again, we’re paying for the true villains \u2013 the guys filling our inboxes with junk and phishing for our wallets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most everyone is aware of what a major pain spam can be. It clogs up mail systems, threatens security, rips off unsuspecting users, and lays… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[11,9,10,8,7],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-spam","tag-allspammedup","tag-bot","tag-botnet","tag-malware","tag-spam","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1791,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/1791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n