Webspam

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Content created to manipulate search engine rankings by adding irrelevant or deceptive data
2. Material designed to deceive search algorithms by including unrelated or spammy information
3. Information intended to distort search engine results through the use of irrelevant or false entries

Etymology: "Webspam" is a plain compound: "web" joined to "spam," meaning junk content spread across the internet. The "spam" half is the more colorful one. It was borrowed as a trademark name for a canned meat product, and its later sense of unwanted, mass-sent messages came from a 1970s comedy sketch in which repetition of the word drowned out everything else. Attaching it to "web" points to the same idea of unwanted material flooding a space, here the pages that search engines index. The term describes pages built not to inform but to manipulate rankings, such as auto-generated articles, stuffed keywords, or networks of sites that link to one another to inflate their apparent importance. Its meaning follows directly from combining the two parts, so the compound needs little further explanation.