Over on the Yahoo Search Blog, An Interview with Tim Converse touches on some of the things Yahoo does
to shape relevancy and fight spam. A key part is coming up with a way to automatically classify documents across the web, include those that would be considered spam.
But don’t get too excited — no secrets on what exactly makes up spam are disclosed.
By the way, those who need an eye-opening experience to what spam is should check out the What Is
Spam? session at SES Chicago later this month. Tim Mayer from Yahoo is a veteran of that session from when we offered it several conferences ago and returns as part
of the panel. It’s designed for those who are worried they might “accidentally” spam a search engine.
Expect Tim and the other panelists to show you some you some egregious examples of spam, resting the minds of those who fear a simple mistake will get them banned.