Google and SEO spam

Monday, August 27, 2007 by Dave Winer.

First Calacanis said it, now Scoble is.  

Oh this is such a big problem, Calacanis cried. Google and spam. What are we going to do about it. If the SEO guys have their way every search result will be filled with spam results, and we won't be able to find the good stuff on the web. How can I, Jason Calacanis, smart young dude who wants to be richer than god Mark Cuban, save the world from SEO spam and Google? 

That was Calacanis's pitch, basically. But Google is not filled with spam. When we do a search on Google we get useful results. If the reason for Jason to exist is that Google is filled with spam, then there is no reason for Jason to exist. 

Now Scoble is saying the same thing, but in a more clever way. He says that Google will someday be filled with SEO spam. The problem with this theory is that it is just a theory. Google has been fighting against spammers for a long time. Scoble is predicting they will lose the fight and be overwhelmed and it won't happen to Jason's site and to Facebook and others.  

Maybe he's right, no one knows what the future holds. The Boston Red Sox did win the World Series after all. But if he is right and Google is eventually submerged under a sea of spam, I don't see why it won't happen to the others as well. What happens when Jason hires an SEO guy to edit one of his pages? What happens when the spammers start impersonating people on Facebook? To say that Techmeme is immune where Google is not, is even more ludicrous. Both Google and Techmeme are totally algorithmic. If you can fool thousands of techies, why can't you fool one? 

I know better than to say something can never happen, I'm an engineer. But in my gut, I think the spammers and the search guys are involved in an arms race, and I wouldn't count any of them out.