Domain Name Spamming

The other day I was surfing the web and found a site with a very long and awkward domain name. The name consisted of six words separated by hyphens, and was definitely not something that anyone would take the time to type into a browser.

It was something like "david-sam-silly-sammy-whatever.com".

This seemed a little strange to me, as I tend to choose domain names which are more intuitive, a name which might be typed by someone. For example, this type is called "internet-tips.net" (I only used the hyphen the non-hyphenated version had already been purchased by someone else). The name is short, describes the website perfectly and is easily remembered.

By far most web surfers find web pages via search engines and directories (and to a lesser extent via other promotional structures such as webrings, top lists and reciprocal links pages). In actuality, very few hits on most web sites come from a person entering a URL in the address line of a web browser (of course, the exception are the highly branded sites such as Google, Amazon and so forth).

This directly implies that the actual domain name that is chosen is almost completely irreverent to getting people to your site. It can be argued that the domain name is important for other reasons (brand recognition, professionalism, making a person want to stay on your site, and so on). It is not, however, all that important to get people to your site in the first place.

So then why would someone go to so much trouble to create URLs which contain hyphenated words? 

In addition, it's also common for people to purchase more than one domain name for a site. Quite often this makes sense: to reserve a trademarked name, a misspelling or an alternate spelling of a brand or name, or to reserve all of the alternate domains (.NET, .COM, .ORG, .INFO and so on), which prevents other companies or individuals from competing in that manner.

Thus, the next question is why purchase so many hyphenated names? Some sites (especially casino, adult and money-making ones) have literally thousands of different domain names, all of which go to exactly the same web page.

There are many reasons for doing this, some of them valid and ethical (such as attempting to capture a few more hits from an alternate spelling which might be entered by people in the address bar of the browser). Sometimes, however, the reason is to spam search engines.

You see, the domain name is used as one variable for search engines to determine the topic (or topics) of a page. It's not a huge variable (no more than, say, the TITLE or DESCRIPTION of the page) but it can make a difference in rankings, especially in a highly competitive business. The domain name might mean the difference between a number 10 position and a number 8 position, which could translate into thousands of dollars in revenue.

For example, you might have a casino page which has a domain name of "loving-pamela-anderson.com". This would be considered search engine spam, as the domain name has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the site (and there are probably quite a few of them as well). The purpose of this domain name is to deceive a search engine into thinking the page is about Pamela Anderson, and thus catch a few hits from people who are looking for "information" about this woman.

That's a pretty obvious example of search engine spam, and the only way to judge whether or not the domain name is spam is to ask the question "is this domain name attempting to mislead the search engine?" If you had exactly the same domain name for a site which was about Pamela Anderson, then the domain name would NOT be spam. In fact, it would actually be right on target in informing visitors as to the exact topic of the site.

But what about if you had the domains "loving-pamela-anderson.com" and "iwantpamelaanderson.com", both of which called up the same page. Would that be spam?

Again, it depends upon how the page is presented to the search engine. You might, for example, have done some research and determined that people do, indeed, type "iwantpamelaanderson.com" directly into the address box. Thus, you want to capture those additional hits (after all, a domain name is not very expensive).

To do this would spamming the search engines, you must create your site on one domain name, and the other domain name (or names) simply do a 301 redirect (meaning permanently moved) to the actual content. This tells any search engine spider that the additional domain names are merely that and not something else. You should also not submit those additional domain names to the search engines and you should not link to them.

Some webmasters take this into the realm of spam by creating a unique page for each of these additional domain names. These unique pages all contain links to the main page. The purpose of this is to artificially inflate the page rank of the main site by making the search engine think that many different sites have linked to the main site. 

To make this succeed there are some important considerations.

• It's best to put the different domains on different IP addresses (and different subnets if possible).
• The content of each of these "sites" must not be duplicated. It must be unique, at least as far as an automated program could determine. Thus merely shifting words about won't work - you would need to include different words and phrases (and graphics) on each page.
• Each of these fake domains must appear to be a separate site, with internal pages as well as other external links.
• The main site is never submitted to the search engine. Only the fake sites are submitted as it's best for search engine spiders to "find" the main site.

What is the result of all of this work (and it's actually quite a bit of work to make this happen). Well, you can see it in the search engines with some of the very highly competitive keywords which apply to the adult industry, casinos, multi-level marketing and other similar sites. You might do a search on a keyword and find that every single page that matches the search winds up at the exact same page, or to a page which has nothing to do with the term in your search. This is extremely frustrating to searchers.

These industries tend to produce very large amounts of revenue very quickly, and thus these techniques can pay off fast.

Paying off fast is important. The search engines are very knowledgeable about these techniques and will ban these sites and pages as fast as they are discovered. It's not uncommon for a company to spend a month putting this kind of scheme together, pull in millions of hits for a month or two more, and then find that ALL of those domain names have been permanently banned from the search engines. 

Yes, I said permanently. That's why it's a good idea to use some caution when purchasing expired or previously owned domain names. You could spend quite a bit of time and money to promote a web site, only to find that the major search engines will not add it to their results pages (or push it very low on the list). 

So what's an ethical webmaster to do in regards to domain names?

• You can set up as many domain names as you want to direct people to your site. Just be sure that you use 301 redirect pages to let the search engine spiders know what you are doing.
• Don't submit the alternate domain names to the search engines, and don't promote them heavily for linking.
• Don't set up fake sites on different domains simply for the purpose of fooling the search engines.
• Don't link to sites which use these promotional techniques.
• Don't join affiliate programs of companies which allow these techniques to be used to sell their products.
• Research each domain name that you want before you spend any money on promotion. You can use the wayback machine and other techniques to see what information you can find. 

What should surfers do to help stamp out these unethical tactics?

• If you encounter blatant spamming techniques such as this, be sure to submit them to the spam URL of the major search engines.
• Don't spend any money from sites which use these techniques. Vote with your wallets.