Over the past two weeks, I’ve been the target of another massive spamming campaign, brought about by my blawg being “sold” by some SEO spammer to those who believe that the way to your pocketbook is through the introduction of paid comment spamming. 

Who is doing this?  It’s websites from chiropractors to used care lots, pepper mills to puppy mills, incest rape videos to law firms.  These are businesses that pay some marketing scoundrel to build their search engine optimization juice by placing worthless, link-infected comments, dozens at a time, hundreds a day, all with one goal in mind.  Get on page one of Google.

The sad reality is that we all behave the same, looking for something we need on a search engine and clicking on the links on the first page.  It’s convenient, and the products are staring us in the face, and there’s a lingering belief that the reason they appear on the first page is that they are the most popular, and hence best, website for the product we want to purchase.

What’s dawned on me is that there is an awfully good chance that the reason these products and services are found on the first page is that they’ve been busy paying SEO spammers serious money to get them there.  Instead of reflecting quality of service, or fairness of price, or popularity of product, it reflects that they are the worst, lowest scum around.  By clicking on those websites that come up on page one, we fuel an industry of lies, deception and abuse.

We are the incentive system for spam.  We may hate it, but we cause it to exist and thrive.

As I was deleting the spam comments that have clogged SJ over the past two weeks, and caused the many problems with comments that some of you have written to me about, I briefly stopped cursing the absurd fawning comments in broken English tempting me to leave them there to flatter my fragile ego and considered what could be done to stop these animals.  It was then that the Fifth Page idea came to me.

While it would take a fraction of a second longer, an eternity in iPad time, rather than start clicking on those websites appearing on the first page of Google, if we went to the fifth page and started there, it would undermine the incentive to engage in SEO spamming to raise the profile of some misbegotten website whose appearance on page one is only due to its paying former Russian collective farmers to sit at computers all day long and spam the living crap out of others. 

Start on page 5.  Ignore page 1.

We are all aware that our Google searches bring up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of websites spread across more pages than can be shown at the bottom of the screen.  What makes anyone think the businesses on page 17 aren’t just as good, if not better, than the businesses on page 1?  Sure, there will be some websites, some businesses, who appear on the first page because of true organic merit, that their service or product excels, but we already know these big names by virtue of their inherent worth. 

On the other hand, if you search for doggy toe clippers, or some similarly unusual items, chances are that the website you come up with on page one is there because they’ve invested a tidy sum in spamming.  Is that the sort of website you want to do business with?  Is that the sort of person you can trust, the one whose placement is due to lies, deceit and abuse?  Is that the sort of conduct you want to encourage by doing business with those whose business plan is to spam?

We need to address the problem of massive SEO spamming, and for those of you who have never had the pleasure of a thousand new spam comments greeting you in the morning, let me tell you it’s unpleasant.  This isn’t one or two, or even ten, but literally hundreds of worthless comments whose sole purpose is to scam consumers by jettisoning websites to the top of Google. 

Sure, this is the longest of shots, changing behaviors that encourage such spamming, even if it involves a mere fraction of a second and one additional mouse click.  But if it defeats the incentive system for SEO spamming, maybe it would be worth it.

If nothing else, it would free up my mornings to write posts about drug collars rather than delete spam comments about flea collars.

Update:  In an early comment to this post, “Palatandnob” wrote:

You certainly have some agreeable opinions and views. Your blog provides a fresh look at the subject.

There was a link to a website that does “the very best hosting.”  “Palatandnob” must love me a lot, as he left similar comments to another dozen posts.  Is this who you want to give your credit card number to?