US Patent 9819568 Spam flood detection methodologies

A computer-implemented method and system are provided in which characteristics of a website are analyzed to determine whether the website represents a potential source of spam content. The analysis can include generating a characterizing signature of a webpage containing a content item, and obtaining an occurrence count for the generated characterizing signature. The characterizing signature is derived from formatting data of the webpage. When the obtained occurrence count is greater than a threshold count, the content item can be identified as spam content, and flagged as spam content.