This day in search marketing history: January 7

The Spam Clock

in 2011, startup search engine Blekko launched a spam clock that estimated 155 million spam pages had been created since Jan. 1 of that year. Blekko said 1 million spam pages were being created every hour.

How bad was Google’s spam problem then? Big. But as Danny Sullivan pointed out at the time, it was hard to judge whether Google’s relevancy had actually decreased, because:

We expect more from Google than we do in the past, searching for things we might not have in previous years

We don’t remember all the successful searches, focusing on when things go bad.

We probably don’t do a comparison check on Bing or Blekko to see if they performed better, nor do we use those services on a regular basis to understand if they’re also “failing” to the degree we might feel Google does.

Our expectations of Google are higher.

Read all about it in Blekko Launches Spam Clock To Keep Pressure On Google.

In about a month, Google would start making moves to correct its perceived, growing relevancy problems with the Panda Update.

I don’t even want to think about how much spam has been created since the start of this year – especially with the explosion that is ChatGPT.

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

Selecting better KPIs for your business: What to consider and how to bolster your most important metric

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

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2013: Why You Need To Complement Your In-House Team With External Expertise by Eric Enge

2013: My 3 Mobile SEO Resolutions For 2013 by Bryson Meunier

2013: Five Steps To Successfully Navigate Negative Online Reviews by Neg Norton

2013: A Search Marketer’s Guide To Google Display Advertising, Part 3 by Matt Van Wagner

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2009: Considering In-House SEO? How To Ease Into In-House SEO Smoothly by Jessica Bowman