Do link spammers leave footprints?

Hey gang... thanks for the interest.. it is an interesting approach. I wouldn't even say that this is a MS centric approach either as those methods and related ones are fairly common really.

Here's a post that was based on some patents from Google on temporal IR signals;

Spam detection using historical factors - SEO and Internet Marketing blog, news and views

If you're interested in link decay, there is more on the patents here as well;
Link Builders Guide to Historical Ranking Factors - SEO and Internet Marketing blog, news and views

Another interesting post on spam is one a mate put up about paid link detection;
How search engines detect paid links - SEO and Internet Marketing blog, news and views

There is a ton of stuff that you can read on this stuff... I'd search for 'AIR Web' as it has a TON of up to date IR research on a wide variety of spam detection approaches including link spam ( AIR = Adversarial Information Retrieval ).

Understanding this stuff is important IMHO in making sure one doesn't cross the line when link building. Hell, there are even some Yahoo patents that look at excessive reciprocal linking and 2-3-4 way links;

Yahoo on Excessive reciprocal linking - SEO and Internet Marketing blog, news and views

Remember, Google also advises to stay away from 'excessive recips' - so these patents can be handy to understand the mind of a search engineer.

Anyhoo... there's a whack of reading for those with the patience to get geeky with their SEO :0)

Thanks again Kurt for dropping by and for taking an interest...it's always appreciated!