When is spam begin to be called spam? In short what is spamming? The longer I’ve been in SEO land, the more the line between spam and not spam gets blurred. Same with any discussion about what’s blackhat and what’s not. I’ve been doing a bit of SEO for myself but SEO still feels alien to me. There was no shortage of reading material about the topic. I have a dedicated tab for it on my netvibes page.
I had a small chat with somebody I know who’s bent on becoming a better SEO. My stand is that spam is relative. The other camp says spam is spam however you look at it.
Spam is relative because some of us who would consider something as spam may not be seen by other people as spam. I think something becomes a spam if the person doing the spamming intended it to be. Intent is the key here. Why did I say this? Well, somebody I know has been sending me offers (products and services) a lot. As someone who consider himself “in the know” (really?), that’s spam. But my friend on the other hand does not know that he’s spamming me already. I can vouch for his innocence. Why? Because he doesn’t send it to thousands of people but only to a small number of people in his address book. I can’t even put it as unsolicited because I also have his email on my address book.