Running an online business relies to a greater or lesser extent on search engine traffic. Be this free search engine traffic or pay per click traffic your business still relies on the search engines to profit and survive.

There's a problem. Actually let me rephrase that and say there's always been a problem. Abusers. Some people have to take shortcuts to profit. No matter how straightforward it might be to actually do some work and then profit from this work they simply can't accept that as a business model. They need the easy, quick, fastbuck way. The model where they don't have to think or research. Just push a button and hey presto instant business.

Who are these people? Search engine spammers. You've never heard of it called search engine spam but you've seen it time and time again. You do a Google search for something and you find a page full of links to casino and holiday sites. Or the site redirects you immediately to another site to buy something. Or even worse the entire website it made up of bits and pieces of text from other websites all muddled together on a page.

Do you enjoy reaching these sites? I didn't think so. Why do those sites exist? For the profit of the owner. The people who design these sites call themselves entrepreneurs and online business people. I hate to burst their bubble but they're spammers.

You don't agree? Ok well are the people who send out junk email spammers? By definition they are because they send useless information to us day in and day out in the hope of making a sale.

Search engine spammers are doing the exact same thing except they're far worse. They're polluting entire search engines with their auto-generated pages of rubbish. Actually finding useful information online now is getting harder because these guys are so deseparate to make a buck they don't mind ruining the online experience of millions of web surfers.

So if you are running an online business or intend starting one then do the entire search engine world and Internet users in general a favor. Do not use these automated content generators. Be creative. Have an original thought. Have an opinion. Write about it with passion. Put it online. Profit will come.