Akademik

(SPAM.deks.ing)

pp.

Repeating a word dozens or even hundreds of times within a Web page. Also: spam-dexing.

— spamdexer n.

There's also "spamdexing," which involves repeatedly using certain keywords — registered trademarks, brand names or famous names — in one's Web page. Doing this can make a Web site move to the top of a search engine list, drawing higher traffic to that site — even if the site has nothing to do with the search request.

"What will happen is you'll do a search for Bank of America and you could be diverted to a third-party cloned site that could steal your personal and confidential information," said MarkMonitor CEO Faisal Shah, explaining that in this example, cyber criminals could embed the Bank of America name in hidden areas of their site to make this occur.

— Julie Howard, "Boise firm helps big ones keep their Web sites safe," The Idaho Statesman, January 7, 2003

The World Wide Web is a portion of the Internet that provides easy access to photo-quality graphics. That sheer volume has spawned the growth in the past year of "search engines" that lead Internet users to Web sites containing key words or phrases in seconds. The engines themselves are reached via Web sites.

The problem arises when site operators load their Web pages with hundreds of extraneous terms so search engines will list them among legitimate addresses.

The process is called "spamdexing," a combination of spamming — the Internet term for sending users unsolicited information — and "indexing."

— Eric Convey, "Porn sneaks way back on Web," The Boston Herald, May 22, 1996

The repeated word is usually indicative of the subject matter of the site. Repeating it so many times is an attempt to Web search engines into thinking the site is a good representation of that subject. Note, however, that most major search engines are hip to this trick and will not rank such sites high. In fact, many search engines will remove such sites from their indexes.