Search-engine spamming (or Web spamming) is the practice of attempting to gain rankings in search-engine results by deception.
IEEE's online subscription-content arm, IEEE Xplore, is one of the Web's most prolific practitioners of spamming Google by "cloaking" subscription-only full-text journal articles. IEEE apparently allows the Googlebot to access and index the subscription content, but when Google users follow the results links, IEEE redirects them to a page where they are asked for subscription information or given a pitch to buy the cloaked content. Here is an example of this nefarious behavior:
Google search string: "x-ray" "cable" "150 kV"
Third result: http://ieeexplore. Ieee.org/iel5/6616/17689/00818252. Pdf
Upon following the link, we get the redirect page, whose HTML is as follows:
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Server: IEEE Web Server
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 23:45: 22 GMT
Content-length: 0
Content-type: text/html
Location: servlet/Login? &url=/iel5/6616/17689/00818252. Pdf
Connection: close
It doesn't get any more black-hat than this, folks: blatant Google spamming—coming from what is ostensibly an upstanding organization. Consumers of scholarly literature subscription services should take note of the IEEE's severely compromised ethos and refuse to buy from them until they start treating Internet users with respect.
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