Last week, a 43-page internal Google document detailing guidelines for the company's search result "quality raters" was leaked online. It details exactly what qualifies as Web spam, and as SEO pro Aaron Wall points out, much of Mahalo fits the bill. Content copied and pasted from other sites? Check. Lots of AdSense ads and affiliate links? Check. Mostly links to other sites? Check. Anything left after that stuff is removed? Not really. Google doesn't differentiate between human-curated link farming and automated link farming. And a pagerank demotion for the domain would also affect the "how to" content Mahalo shifted its focus to, leaving founder Jason Calacanis and his investors to depend on traffic generated by Veronica Belmont obsessives.

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