Spam alert! A Sherpa reader, who requested to remain anonymous, just phoned me to say his company's Web site's search engine rankings have been hurt because competitors have spammed the search engines pretending to be from his site. As search engine optimization (SEO) experts will tell you, many search engines, will actually drop your site from their results if you've submitted it repeatedly during a short time period (such as once every few weeks). Unfortunately search engines don't offer any security precautions to be sure the person submitting a site actually works for that site, or an authorized SEO firm working for that site.