Spam is subjective, which means it means something different for me or for Shawn.

And I didn’t know if Shawn disagreed that spam is subjective or not.

I mean it could be anything to anybody really.

You know, I called Shawn a spammer when I came on here. If you ever do a search for a product that isn’t mainstream, like CNET has covered it, what do you get on there?

You get the Shopping.com’s and the big affiliates, and then after that you get the smaller affiliates.

I mean, it’s the biggest pain in the rear to find some decent information, because people like Shawn and other mainstream people are promoting data feeds and using merchant copy.

They’re filling the search engines with spam just as much as I am. Maybe scraping directory listings or whatnot.

So, I guess, ultimately what I was saying is that spam is subjective really.

As I stated on the show, I don’t work with data feeds and I think a lot of data feed sites are worthless, and that they should have a unique value proposition.

So your characterization of “people like Shawn” is completely without merit.

The thing that “people like Shawn” do is to create unique content and play by the rules.

On the subjectivity of spam, I disagree here, too.

An example of absolute spam is the screen shot I included in my post from Mark’s site.

I’ve enlarged the area where keyword stuffing is taking place on that page:

Given that example, I don’t think there is any ambiguity. It’s spam and it serves no function other than to trick the search engines.

“People like Shawn” don’t do this sort of thing.

Perfect example is that screen shot – he’s spamming search engines with an ebook on black hat “tricks”.

And then on the podcast he criticises other people for spamming search engines; and say’s he’s never heard of the ebook and isn’t promoting it.

I think the affiliate gene pool needs an overhaul when I see cases like this.

He doesn’t even have the sense to hide his cheating methods.

I hereby confiscate his black hat and replace it with a dunce cap.