Now that Bing is officially a major player, it’s time to ask some important questions. Are Bing video search results delivering a winning performance? Does Bing match searcher queries with relevant results? For advertisers, what is needed from an optimization standpoint to make your video standout among a search crowd?

Let’s use the popular music group “Black Eyed Peas” as an example. After conducting a series of different searches with the band name being the basis of the query I observed the following:

Query 1: black eyed peas. Images of the band were among the top positions, while the video results were at the bottom of the search results page along with a search volume/popularity graph, which is something new and different to the search world. I’ve yet to determine the full impact/effectiveness of the search popularity graph. If anything, the graph can reveal and/or validate the popularity of a searcher’s query and show other popular musicians Bing users are searching for(e.g., Metallica). However, when clicked through, this option only offers a video link on the sidebar, not a video thumbnail on the main page, which in my opinion is a shortfall, given the online video demand as well as the musical nature of the query. This is another opportunity to connect with the proactive video-seeking audience.

Query 2: videos black eyed peas. The video results were the last listing on the first page of the search engine results page.

Queries 3 and 4: black eyed video peas and black video eyed peas. The first page of results did not deliver any inline Bing video results for either query, though there were text-only links to videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites.

Query 5: black eyed peas video. Inline Bing video results were in the top position.

Now what can we learn from this small example? Also, does this example apply to other types of queries? Well, it appears that Bing delivers top ranking video results based on an intuitive, logical query structure. For example, the keyword “video” delivers high ranking at the end of a query vs. at the beginning or in the middle of a query. I performed similar tests with other types of keywords, not just music-oriented keywords, such as “Chicago Bears” and “Apple iPhone,” and had a similar experience.

However, the logic is only one observation; it also seems that the keyword density of the terms also play a key role in the ranking. In the listing above, all of the MySpace videos include “black eyed peas” and “video” (twice) in their title tags.

Using GoRank, a free SEO tool, you can analyze the keyword density for these terms within the MySpace URLS, and discover that the word “video” has an average density of 3.74% and the phrase “black eyed” has an average density of 3.21%.

These are solid percentages that indicate Bing places a great deal of value on the words appearing on the page. Therefore, advertisers should ensure that they are including valuable content within their title tags, descriptions, etc.

On the other hand, the YouTube page does not contain any instances of the word “video”, but the phrase “black eyed” has a density of 14.17%. This is due to YouTube’s practice of showing links to related videos, and all of these links contain the phrase “black eyed.” Bing may give YouTube default visibility for search queries that contain the word “video” even if the word “video” does not appear on the YouTube page.

Another interesting thing to note about Bing video search results is that once you click on a video thumbnail result you may have a different experience depending on the source. For example, the “Black Eyed Peas” YouTube video opens a pop-up video while the MySpace video is played directly from Bing. By using pop-ups and hosting other videos, Bing encourages the searcher to stay on the Bing site, an attempt to increase retention rate and further interactions with Bing. Additionally, Bing allows a searcher to play video snippets directly from the search results, which is another way to entice searchers and encourage more interaction.

As announced this past July, Bing and Yahoo! are joining forces in the search world. After the deal finalizes, Microsoft’s MSNbot (showing up in referrer logs as either msnbot/1.1 or msnbot/2.0b) will be the crawler for both Yahoo! and Bing. This means it will be doubly important for advertisers to optimize their video assets for the bot and Bing’s search algorithm. According to comScore’s September 2009 U.S. core search engine rankings, Microsoft sites make up 9.4% of search engine share, while Yahoo! makes up 18.8%. Once these search houses consolidate under the same technology, they will make up nearly 30% of the search share, taking on powerhouse Google, (64.9% of search engine share). It’s up to Bing to prove to searchers, specifically the rising pool of video searchers, if it has what it takes to deliver the most relevant, useful results that can stack up against Google.

Oh, that this weren’t true. Last week, Yahoo made news by disclosing that it had quietly dropped support for the meta keywords tag. As a long time hater of that tag and the insane questions it has produced, I was thrilled! But today, I see conclusively that Yahoo still supports the tag.

The test was simple. I placed a unique word in the meta keywords tag on the home page of Search Engine Land. This word — xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk — generated no results on Yahoo when I looked earlier this week. Today, when I searched, it brought back the Search Engine Land home page. Thus, Yahoo indeed indexes the content of that tag. (And to be clear, I looked before writing this article. In short order, this article itself, along with others, will appear because they’ll make use of that word).

During the session last week at SMX East, when Yahoo said it no longer supported this tag, several in the audience said they didn’t believe it. I was kind of struck. You’ve got a search representative flat-out saying they don’t do something, but no one wants to believe them? How things have changed. Sure, I can see distrust on some controversial issues (such as whether Google really does not count nofollowed links out of Wikipedia). But why would Yahoo lie about something like meta keywords support?

To be clear, I don’t think Yahoo was deliberately lying. The representative was probably confused in some way. Similarly over at Bing, despite them NOT supporting the tag (it’s not mentioned here) and never having done so since they launched their own search technology, they recently blogged much advice about using the tag.

As I commented about this:

That reads like someone got a copy of really old SEO advice and decided to put it out there regardless of what Bing actually does. I mean, my head hurts, but not everyone cared about commas or not. And no one had this 874 character limit. I mean, if you went over, it was no big deal. And the don’t repeat more than 4 times? According to what. Microsoft never, ever had its own guidelines like this.”

It’s a good reminder to the search reps. In many ways, you occupy god-like status on issues relating to SEO. Everything you write, everything you say will be fully believed by some. And if you’re not correct, you’ll confuse people and cause others to lose faith in you. If you don’t know, don’t say — or qualify: “I’m not sure” or “I’ll check on that.”

Postscript: Yahoo’s sent me this:

What changed with Yahoo’s ranking algorithms is that while we still index the meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.

Words that appear in any other part of documents, including the body, title, description, anchor text etc., will take priority in ranking the document – the re-occurrence of these words in the meta keyword tag will not help in boosting the signal for these words.  Therefore, keyword stuffing in the keyword tag will not help a page’s recall or ranking, it will actually have less effect than introducing those same words in the body of the document, or any other section.

However, when no other ranking signal is present, unique words that only appear in the meta keyword tag section of documents can still be used to recall these documents.

Search conferences are an excellent opportunity to connect personally with representatives from Google, as well as Yahoo and Bing, for advice and assistance with SEO issues. With our SMX East search engine marketing conference starting tomorrow in New York, I thought it was a good time to list my personal thoughts on the right and wrong way to approach them.

I’m not a search engine representative, but I know a number of them and have talked with many about the interactions they have with people at conferences in the 10 years I’ve been programming such shows. I think my tips will help, and perhaps they’ll inspire actual search engineers and representatives like Google’s Matt Cutts to put together his own.

1) Catch Them At A Session: Looking for a search engine rep? Check the agenda, and find the sessions they’re speaking at. Remember, not everyone from Google deals with SEO issues. Don’t go to a panel on paid search and expect the Google speaker to address your SEO issues. Find an appropriate session that’s dealing with SEO. At our show this week, such sessions include:

• Ask The Search Engines: Best Practices Edition
• Duplicate Content Issues: The Search Engine Edition
• Maps, Maps, Maps! (Local Search SEO)
• Pumping Up YouTube (YouTube SEO)
• Universal & Blended Search Opportunities (SEO into blended/vertical search)
• CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & SEO
• Meet & Eat Networking Lunch Tables

Other shows have similar sessions specifically about SEO issues. Review a show’s agenda. Read the session descriptions to see if they involve SEO. Look for sessions with the major search engines represented, and you’re on the right track.

2) Make Your Problem Relevant For Everyone: Often search panels have an open Q&A period. If you’re having a particular SEO issue, that’s an opportunity to get your question in front of a representative. It’s fine to talk about your specific issue. For example, if you feel you’ve been penalized, ask how you or others can request a review. But….

3) Do Your Homework: In the example above, asking how to get Google to review a penalty is a terrible question. That’s because if you’d done your homework, you’d have discovered that Google has tools to tell you if you’ve been penalized as well as to request reinclusion. Don’t ask what you can find out online. Make your questions count. In the situation I’ve described, you should have already checked to see if a penalty has been reported and filed a reinclusion request if so. If you’re still having problems, THAT’S the question you put to the rep. “I’ve done all that Google advises, but I still think I’m being penalized. What do I do next?”

4) We Can Talk About That Offline: If you give a search rep a stumper — like the above “I’ve done everything you say, now what” question, you might have stumped the speaker. Almost inevitably, they’ll still want to help. That’s not just for good PR. They actually do discover problems within their own systems by investigating site owner problems. If you’ve stumped them, you’ll probably get a response along the lines of “Let’s Talk About that Offline.” Congrats. You just won a golden ticket for special attention. Hang on to that, you’ll use it after class.

5) Move On, Already: If you haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer, don’t keep hammering away. Asking a short follow-up for clarity is fine. But not letting go of an issue, and continuing to ask, ask, ask loses you friends in the audience plus the sympathy of the rep. If you’re still not happy — and you didn’t get the “let’s talk offline” invitation — then simply say you’d still like to know more, but perhaps you both can follow up offline. Watch the look of relief that will flow across the search reps face. And get your business card ready….

6) See Them After Class: When the session ends, the representatives typically stick around to answer some additional questions. This is a prime opportunity. Sit up front, so that you can immediately get to the stage ahead of the inevitable rush. Usually, speakers will remain in their seats at the speaking table. Just line up right in front. Don’t go onto the stage. Don’t be that person. No one likes that person. If you weren’t at the front, eventually the reps will have to leave the stage. Let them. Often they’ll move out of the room, so that another session can begin, but they may linger in the hallway. That’s a sign they’re still willing to take questions. But if they start to move — if they give subtle hints like “I’d love to stay more, but I have to go,” hand them your card (more prep on that in a minute) and let them go.

7) Be Brief: It’s your big moment. The rep’s all yours. So tell them your issue. Be brief. Explain the situation clearly. Imagine you had to tweet it in 140 characters. Listen to their response. If you have a follow-up, also keep that brief, and keep it to just one. You’re not alone in wanting access. Don’t be a speaker hog.

8) Leave Your Diagram At Home: Is your problem or issue so big that you’ve drafted a diagram? Forget it. Seriously, don’t show up with a convoluted diagram of how you want to cross link 50 different sites car rental sites, each one targeting a different US state, but you’re worried there might be a spam issue. Diagrams scream out that you’re overthinking your SEO efforts. They scream out you’re not someone with a question that can be dealt with in a few minutes. And they make search reps want to run screaming from you, trust me. If you’re thinking SEO that much, you don’t want a search. Instead, find one of the many good SEOs who are speaking. And consider booking a consultation with them. It’ll likely be money well spent.

I also ran this point past search conference speaking veteran Matt Cutts, who added:

It’s true that a diagram on the fly is probably a warning sign, but I welcome people who have thought hard about an issue and walk up and say “The spam report form only allows N characters, so I brought you this in-depth report.” Or “I wanted to give you this reconsideration request where I documented all the ways we’ve tried to clean up our site.” I don’t mind taking printed material and carrying it back to the team to check out.

That said, handing over a 25 page report is probably still overkill :)

9) Your Business Card Is Your Friend: Got a complicated question? Again, tell the rep what the issue is briefly, but say you understand that it might take more time than they have now and ask if they’d like to contact you to learn more. Then give them your business card with a short summary of the issue on the back. Move along. You’ll be appreciated for having been reasonable, and people who do this DO get follow up contact. If you were one of those “let’s talk offline” folks, say that. Literally say — “you wanted to talk offline about my issue. Please contact me when you’re ready.”

10) Don’t Expect Their Contact Information: You can a search engineer or representative for their business card or email address, but don’t expect it nor insist upon it. Search reps tend to be rather protective of their information, mainly because once they help someone with a problem, they sometimes find the same person then decides they’re a well to tap for any issue in the future — and they just don’t have the time to do one-on-one like that. There’s also an issue that if they give their contact details to someone, that person in turn might give it to a friend, and so on. That leads to another tip. If you’ve been trusted enough with a search rep’s contact details, don’t start handing it out without permission.

11) Fess Up & Clean Up Your Mess: If you think you have a penalty — and are pretty sure why, such as for buying links or having spamming content, be sure to have done everything you can to clean things up before asking for help. And fess up to everything you’ve done. Nothing will lose potential support more than having a rep hear your “I did nothing wrong” story, take the time to investigate your issue and then discover plenty of evidence you were knowingly violating guidelines.

12) Hallways & Other Encounters: You’ll find reps outside formal sessions, such as just wandering in hallways, having lunch or sometimes at their company’s booth, if they have one on the expo floor. All the rules I’ve mentioned above apply. Be brief, have a business card ready, etc. If they’re working a booth, ask away — that’s what they’re there for. If you catch them outside a booth, be polite. If they’re walking, don’t try to stop them. They’re probably going somewhere. You might ask if you can “walk and talk.” If they say yes, keep it brief. If they look at all uncertain or say it’s a bad time, don’t try — give them a card. If they’re talking to someone, don’t interrupt. Stand off in view, so it’s clear you’d like a moment but not so close that you’re eavesdropping.

13) Let Them Rest: Reps often attend parties and networking events. It’s fine to approach them at these times. But be especially brief. Ask if they have a moment, and stress you’ll be brief because you know they’re out trying to relax. Because, you know, they are. The reps are human, and after answering a huge number of questions in a day, sometimes they need a break. Have that business card ready. Another tip. Don’t talk shop. You’re at a social event. Socialize about something other than search. You’ll have a nice conversation and perhaps build the foundation for future talks about search.

14) Don’t Monopolize: Don’t monopolize a search rep’s time. For one, there are many other people trying to talk to them. Similar to Mike Arrington’s advice on how to interact with speakers at a conference, if you see the rep looking around a lot, they’re probably aware of other people behind you also wanting a chance to talk. Also to Mike’s advice, don’t assume that trying to spend as much time as possible with the rep will make for a better relationship. It can have the opposite effect. Many SEOs do form good relationships and even friendships with search reps, but these don’t happen because someone tried to force it.

If in the end, you don’t get time with a search rep, don’t be offended. There can literally be over hundred or more people trying to catch them over the course of a conference. You might also have unlucky timing, catching them as they’re trying to prep for a panel or perhaps when they’re trying to catch up on work back at home base (just like everyone else, they have jobs with needs that don’t wait just because they’ve gone to a conference.

There are other ways to contact reps, of course. Google maintains an official group for webmaster issues, as does Bing. Google Webmaster Central has a variety of tools allowing webmasters to diagnose their sites, as does Bing Webmaster Center. Yahoo has advice and a support form here. Representatives also frequent forums such as our Sphinn social news site and WebmasterWorld. Check those out, if you don’t have an opportunity to meet a rep in person.

Finally, there are plenty of panels where you’ll find search representatives from the paid search side of the house. I haven’t covered advice for these reps primarily site owners and marketers dealing with paid search issues often find it much easier to get help. You’re paying for those ads, so the search engines put plenty of routes out there (and kudos for them putting so much out on the “free” side, as well). Still, general courtesy and tactics above outlined for search reps on SEO issues apply to paid search reps, as well. Heck, it’s good advice for approaching any speaker.

Rand from SEOmoz posted a 17 minute interview with the Bing webmaster team from Microsoft. In the interview he talks with Eric, Rajesh, and Alessandro from Bing about topics including market share, the Yahoo deal, SEO for Bing, Bing webmaster tools, and the Bing IIS Toolkit.

Here is the video:

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Interview: The Bing Team from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

For over two years now, Microsoft’s search engine has been generating fake information that can make site owners think they’re getting strange search traffic (including porn traffic), when they are not. It’s time for this to come to an end.

The culprit? Microsoft’s “crawler,” the software that visits web pages across the web that go into the search engine. The crawler is known as MSNBot, from the days when the recently renamed Bing search engine was known as MSN Search. When that crawler gathers a web page, it sometimes leaves behind “referrer” information in a web site’s logs — fake referrer information, that is.

Referrer information? That’s a way that a web browser tells a web site the last page it viewed before coming to the site. A better name would be “referral information,” since that’s effectively what referrer data shows — what web page effectively was the “referral” for someone to find your web site.

For example, imagine someone does a search on Google for movies. In their browser address bar, after doing the search, the URL will look like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=movies

Now when they click on a listing in the results, they leave Google and go to another page. When arriving at that page, their browser will report the URL that they came from — the URL shown above. And see the parts in bold — “google.com” and “movie?” Web analytics software like Google Analytics use this to tell from the referrer that someone came from Google.com having done a search for the word “movies.” That’s how those who look at web analytics data can tell the words people use to reach their sites.

Microsoft’s crawler isn’t like a normal browser. Crawlers don’t normally report referrer data. MSNbot isn’t doing searches on its own Bing search engine, then following listings to visit new pages. But despite this, it’s acting as if it does.

Back in December 2007, Microsoft admitted to the fake referrer problem and said it was fixed, after site owners scratched their heads wondering since August of that year why they apparently were ranking for porn terms. They weren’t — it was just that Microsoft said they were in the information MSNbot left behind when visiting. And why do this? The explanation was that Microsoft was trying to fight cloaking, where a site owner shows a search engine’s crawler a page that’s different than what a human visitor sees.

Since then, the referrers keep coming up. Search Engine Land news editor Barry Schwartz has regularly documented when crop up. Reports come out of online forums such as WebmasterWorld or Bing’s own forums. Here’s a short rundown of these reports via Barry’s Search Engine Roundtable site:

• Microsoft Live Search Continues Referral Spam Tests With MSLIVSOP?, January 14, 2008
• MSN Live Sending Odd Referrals — QBHP — to Websites, July 24, 2008
• Microsoft To Fix Fake Referrer Data From Live Search, April 22, 2009
• Microsoft Disables Fake Referral “Feature” Temporarily, April 29, 2009
• More Cloaking Tests In Form Of Fake Referrers From Microsoft Bing?, August 5, 2009
• Bing Classifies Cloaking Detection as “Single Word Query” Issue, August 10, 2009
• Microsoft Claims To Fix Fake Referrals or “Single Word Query” Complaint, August 20, 2009
• Microsoft Bing Still Spamming Fake Referrers In Webmaster Log Files, August 25, 2009

As you can see, the problem is happening again. For its part, Microsoft gave us this explanation:

Regarding the fake referrers issue, the webmaster team noticed glitches in the system which were resolved on August 20th. If webmasters continue to see issues post this date, we encourage direct feedback to bwmc@microsoft.com or via the webmaster forums at: http://www.bing.com/community/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=11.

What further feedback is needed? Shouldn’t two years be enough to solve whatever problems Microsoft may have that are generating these fake referrers.

Here’s another reason to fix it. Referrers are one way that people can determine search engine marketshare. If site owners see lots of referrers from Google, it seems an important search engine. And if Bing is generating a lot of fake referrers, then it makes itself appear to have more marketshare than it really has.

I DON’T think that’s the reason these fake referrers are happening. But it is an explanation others out there might believe, and a further reason to simply stop this behavior.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: After much pushing here and other blogs I write at, Microsoft has said they finally fixed the issue. They didn’t explain why there was an issue, but they did say they fixed the issue. More details over here.

Microsoft announced that MSNBot 2, which is currently in beta, may be ramped up a lot more and webmasters might begin to notice the new bot in their log files. The new bot has been out there since December 2008, and the useragent is just about the same as the original bot.

New Bot:

msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)

Current Bot:

msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)

MSNBot 1.1 was released in February 2008, promising a more “efficient crawl.” MSNBot 2 is also promising an even more efficient crawl. Microsoft warns:

We are busy working on our improved crawler and plan to ramp up its workload as we move toward the goal of putting it into full production. As a result, webmasters may begin seeing an increased amount of traffic from the new bot on their sites.

There have been some potential errors already spotted. I did notice some reports of MSNBot 2.0 adding pound signs to the end of the URLs. I am not sure if this is a crawler bug or webmaster bug. So be on the lookout for the new bot and if you see any issues, feel free to report them at the Bing forums.

The Live Search blog posted a comprehensive guide on how to determine if your site is penalized in Live Search and if so, what actions you can take to remedy the issue. I’ll highlight some of the key points in this excellent blog post.

• Microsoft said, “most webmasters who get penalized know why it happened.”
• First confirm your site is penalized by validating your site at Live Search Webmaster Tools and then clicking on the Summary tool and then the Site status section. Blocked “Yes” means you are penalized.
• Figure out what you did wrong by using the various tools to see your crawl issues, malware issues, link issue or something else.
• Microsoft then explains various reasons why a “good guy” can be penalized.
• Once you fix the issue then go to this form and fill it out, plus select the “Content Inclusion Request” option and submit. I do wonder why the form is not also built into Webmaster Tools.

For more details, see the Live Search blog post.

Jeremiah Andrick from the Microsoft Live Search team has written a detailed blog post named Getting the right kind of links. In this blog post, Jeremiah explains the issues Microsoft sees with link exchanges and then gives tips on how to get “the right kind of links.”

Those tips include to be the “subject matter expert” in your field, give stuff away as a “free service,” work closely with “industry or professional associations” to get links from their pages, and leverage Social Media. If you are in a linking drought, check out that post and also read through our past link week column.

Recently, Microsoft Live Search added malware warnings to their search results. If a searcher clicks a result that Microsoft has detected contains malware, a popup warns then not to proceed to the site. As Matt noted yesterday, Google and Yahoo! also provide malware warnings to searchers.

How can you find out if Microsoft has flagged your site for malware and how can you let them know you’ve fixed the problem? As part of this update, Microsoft Live Search also launched an update to their Webmaster Center that added alerts about malware. You can generate a report of all pages on your site that have malware on them, see if you link to any external pages that contain malware, and submit a review request once you’ve fixed any issues.

Find out if your site has been flagged

To find out if your site has been flagged for malware, log in to the Webmaster Center (you have to verify site ownership) and access the Crawl Issues tab. Select the Malware Infected issue type and click Search. You’ll see a list of any flagged pages on your site that you can download for offline processing.

The Malware Infected report has been added to the existing crawl errors reports in the tool (File Not Found, Block by REP, Long Dynamic URLs, and Unsupported Content Types).

Request review

If you find that any pages are infected, you can request review once you fix the problem. Microsoft says the reinclusion  process should “take days, not weeks”.  Once they’ve determined that the pages are no longer infected, they’ll remove alert from the search results.

Find out if you’re linking to malware

The webmaster tools also include a new Outbound Links report that lists any external malware-infected pages that your site links to. This is important information to have, as you don’t want to send your customers to infected sites. To generate this report, simply access the Outbound Links tab, choose Show All Outbound Links, and select the Show only outbound links to malware option.

Learn more about malware and how to prevent it

Microsoft has added information to their help center that provides details on what malware is, how to protect your site from it, and steps to take if your site has been infected. This document notes the importance of fixing any security holes in your website that enabled the malware infection.

What about Yahoo! and Google?

Both Google and Yahoo also offer methods for requesting evaluation once malware issues have been fixed, but neither provide the robust reporting that Microsoft now offers.

Google alerts you to malware issues on the summary page of the site in webmaster tools and provides a sample list of URLs. Microsoft’s report may contain a more complete list of infected pages. However, once you fix the problem and request review, Google will let you know of any remaining pages with issues. Google has also published several blogs about what to do if your site’s been hacked and a how to prevent it.

Yahoo! doesn’t provide this type of alert or reporting in Site Explorer. When I asked about this earlier in the year when they launched “SearchScan Alerts”, they told me:

If your site shows up in that experience, but not in the SearchScan On mode, (all other options such as SafeSearch remaining same) then you can believe that it is due to exploit rating on your site.

Note, to make this work, you should ensure that you keep all other elements of the search experience constant between the test with SearchScan off and on. That is

a) make sure you don’t change any other preferences

b) make sure you don’t change the computer you are searching from in case source IP or other changes affect the query routing

c) make sure you use the same Y! search destination – .com, co.uk etc. because sometimes there are regional rules which cause filtering (for example, france has stricter rules around nazi memorabilia sites etc.)

d) check multiple times across a couple of days. This is important because sometimes there is some localized maintenance going on which might temporarily affect what you see.

Use Yahoo’s SearchScan form (linked to in the search results alert) to request review once you’ve fixed any issues.

Ultimately, search engines want to provide the best possible experience for searchers and don’t want to send searchers to sites that will infect their computers. By providing site owners with detailed information about pages on their sites that are infected, external links to malware, and how to prevent infection, Microsoft is going a step further beyond just alerting searchers to infected sites by helping keep the results free of malware in the first place.

Search engines tell marketers not to spam them. Many search marketers also advise newcomers not to spam. Spamming issues get debated online. But what is search engine spam? What’s it look like? How’s it smell? And why do search engines (not to mention users) hate it? At our recent SMX East search marketing conference, representatives from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo tackled the topic. Below you can learn more about search spam, as well as reinclusion tips for each search engine.

I’ve divided the formal presentations into three parts posted via YouTube, so that you can watch what each particular search engine had to say. Below these is an “all-in-one” video where the presentations, as well as the long Q&A, all are part of the same video.

Search Engine Spam, Part 1: Overview: What search spam is, search engine guidelines against spam and specific reinclusion tips for Microsoft’s Live Search. Presented by Nathan Buggia of Live Search. Also see these resources:

• SMX East 2008: Webmaster Guidelines: October 2008 post from Live Search on spamming issues.
• I’m not ranking in Live Search, what can I do?: January 2008 post from Live Search on how to tell if a site is blocked for spamming. See also this help page.
• Live Search Webmaster Center: Tools and links to advice directly from Microsoft.

Search Engine Spam, Part 2: On-The-Page Issues: Overview of what “on page” spamming is, such as keyword stuffing, hidden text, and cloaking. It also offers specific reinclusion tips for Google. Presented by Aaron D’Souza of Google. Also see these resources:

• Requesting reconsideration of a site: Google’s help page on getting back in if you’ve been banned.
• Requesting reconsideration using Google Webmaster Tools: Google blog post and video on how to request reinclusion.
• Google Webmaster Central: Tools and links to advice directly from Google.

Search Engine Spam, Part 3: Link Spam & Paid Links: Overview of issues about link spam and paid links. It also offers specific reinclusion tips for Yahoo. Presented by Sean Suchter of Yahoo. See also:

• Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines: What to do — and not to do — directly from Yahoo.
• Yahoo! Search URL Status Review Form: How to submit a review of a page you think might be mistakenly blocked.

SMX East 2008: What Is Spam: The “all-in-one” video of the session, including lengthy Q&A.

Also see past articles we’ve covered on the topic in our Google: SEO, Google: Webmaster Central, Microsoft: Live Search SEO, SEO: Spamming and Yahoo: SEO archives.