Is this Search Engine Spam?

[Kenai Alaska]

Perform this search on Yahoo and find a page without redirects?
He who finds the site with the most redirect pages wins, what I don't know.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UT...fitting.com%2F

Now try this one

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=htt...sfp&fl=0&x=wrt

Who has the most redirects.
These sites search so well for areas they are in know way associated with that is make me wonder, why isn't everyone doing this?

[sudhani]

why isn't everyone doing this?

1. A question of ethics.
2. Fear of getting banned.

[YahooMike]

The following link has a bit more background on what we consider spam. Also, this link gives you a way to report spam.

help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-06.html

Thanks,

Yahoo! Mike

[Kenai Alaska]

Thank you for your feedback.
First I must say that I was angry when I wrote the first post. One of the site owners is known to me and has no knowledge of the intricacies of web search optimization. All they see are the results. I do not wish to harm them personally. It's the webmasters that write the code and they are the ones that should be held responsible. I also understand that this is easier said than done.

Why I said, Quote:
why isn't everyone doing this?
would have been better said as "How do you stop this."

There are many webmasters working hard to build clean and user friendly websites. I hate to see all there work go unnoticed due to this type of a questionable and deceptive tactic. The funny thing is that the actual websites have the content to search well for there given topics. Why you would try to trick someone looking for something totally different into visiting the site just to have them say "Nope, not what I am looking for" and back out? This seems kind of fruitless, unless you need to boast about your number of visitors. But did they convert to customers? That’s the number that really has substance.

The trick is to attract the people actually looking for your product or service. Burning up bandwidth should not be the goal.
I don't know how much these poor site owners paid for all this trickery but I feel safe in saying it was far to much. It’s the webmasters that are to shame here not the site owners. They were probably duped with one of those “I will get you in the top 10 search engine placement” schemes.
If you could detect these pages and delete them from the SERP’s without deleting the main site, that may stop this tactic from populating the results.
Thank you again for the information.

[ronniethedodger]

The three examples you cited appear to be the TrafficPower trick with the OnMouseOver event. These pages should have been banned by Google already, but it appears they have not yet. I think it may be that they revised the coding by using unescaped eval statements and Google has not caught up with them yet. Only a matter of time though.

[incrediblehelp]

Your right Ronnie. I can't believe these guys get away with this crap still. Just look at the source code of www.edwardsoutfitting.com and you will see links to the pages mentioned above and these garbage SPAM domains:

www.recreation-betting-outdoors-astrology.net
www.ameribackpackers.net
www.montana-fishing.com

These domains have fake contact info on them, but the DNS provider for them is EASYHOSTINGNOW.COM which has contact info from Las vegas, NV which is where TrafficPower is located at.

[Kenai Alaska]

Now these pages have good page rank at google.
To spam or not to spam,
That is the question.

I feel like I am at war with the people I fought to defend. I have not been so frustrated in many years. As a father of two teenage boys, do I teach them to obey the rules and laws or twist and distort them until they fit in with your desired objective.
I’m beginning to feel old as this is beyond my understanding. I am loosing faith in the American people as there seems to be no self respect or self pride when it comes down to making money. Although I have not edited for DMOZ, I did so for Zeal until last June. There is so much of this, bending of the rules, that one has to look at people in a very different light.
Are we getting to the point where a police force is needed to control our online habits?

The following link has a bit more background on what we consider spam. Also, this link gives you a way to report spam.

help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-06.html

I have not only read this but we have it printed out and posted on the cork board at eye level along with Google and Zeals webmaster guidelines. These specifications are very clear and easy to understand. They seem to be written to a sixth grade level so there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of misinterpretation or outright foul behavior.
Do you justify your conduct by saying to yourself, “I’m just in this for the money”? Is this how you want the people you deal with to rationalize their actions?

Dear Webmasters
Let's save the TRICKS for TREATS for October 31st. ~Halloween~