It is possible to believe that search engine spammers are the same as everyone else. This is unless you are a spam detection algorithm.
Last week’s ACM SIGIIR conference in The Netherlands featured an interesting paper titled “Know your Neighbors”: Web Spam Detection Using the Web Topology
This article describes a spam detection method that analyzes the link structure and content of web pages to detect spam. Or, as the abstract says, “In this paper, we present a spam detection method that exploits the link dependencies between the Web pages and the content of those pages to identify spam.”
This impressive diagram is found in the paper:
This graphic depicts a small portion of the web. It shows domains that have more than 100 links between them. Black nodes indicate spam, while white nodes indicate non-spam.
The majority of spammers cluster together in the upper-right portion of the middle section. Here is a magnified image of that section.
Other domains can be found in spam clusters, or non-spam groups. This is a typical spam cluster. It shows how spammers who engage in nepotistic linking may appear to a spam detection algorithm.
This is just one way to research spam detection. However, you don’t have to be a clairvoyant to see that major search engines include similar components in their ranking algorithm for a while. Search engine optimization professionals avoid using unnatural linking patterns, and site owners are advised to do so.