Spamdexing

Spamdexing denotes a set of unfair practices for manipulating search engines to allow indexing of content that would otherwise not be considered relevant or of high quality.

The term comes from the combination of the words “spam” and “indexing.”

Techniques include keyword stuffing, the use of hidden text, cloaking, and gateway page creation. In this view, spamdexing is a subset of Black Hat SEO that focuses on indexing manipulation techniques, while black hat tactics are broader and aim to improve a site’s ranking in SERPs.

Search engines such as Google actively fight spamdexing by constantly updating their algorithms to detect and penalize sites that use it.