At "Ashmanov and Partners" we study the phenomenon of search spam – the methods and technologies reducing the quality of search results and interfering with the operation of search engines.

Search spam is a text, URL, technology, program code or other web elements created by the web-master for the sole purpose of promoting the site in search engines' results, and not for a fast and reliable search based on complete and authentic information.

The experts check Top 10 results of search queries on a regular basis, marking the sites which, in their opinion, contain elements of search spam. The collected data is entered into the informer. It shows the percentage of sites marked as spam in the overall number of sites that appeared in Top 10 of analyzed queries.

The source of information on the spam status of a given URL is the data of the anti-spam lab of the company "Ashmanov and Partners". The following categories of search spam are used:

* doorway – definite spam: doorways, leading the user to other pages,
* spamcatalog – definite spam: spammer catalogues,
* spamcontent – definite spam: spammers' stolen content,
* pseudosite – definite spam: site disguised as corporate (pseudo-company),
* catalog – catalogues,
* board – bulletin boards,
* domainsale – domains for sale,
* secondary – secondary, stolen content,
* partner – any partner programs,
* linksite – link support site,
* spamforum – forum containing spam,
* techspam – technical spam,
* searchres – search results
* cj – circular jerk

An aggregate indicator is the share of spam sites in the search results. The best search engine has the lowest indicator. This determines the order of search engines in the informer of the analyzer.