Forum Moderators: mack
Anyone brave enough to type "cheap tickets" in a search engine can find a plethora of one-page Web sites designed to drive traffic to other Web sites and generate click-through advertising revenue.Three out of every four unique Blogspot.com URLs that appeared in the top 50 results for commercial queries were spam, the study said. Blogspot is the hosting site for Google's blogging service. Blogs created for marketing purposes are sometimes referred to as "splogs."
Deja Vu - nice study - I liked it the first time I read it nine years ago in 1998 when Altavista said near the exact same thing. Pokemon forever!
By exposing the end-to-end search spamming activities, we hope to... encourage advertisers to scrutinize those syndicators and traffic affiliates who are profiting from spam traffic
A good start would be for Google to disable/reject Adsense on these sorts of spam sites. That might diminish their influence.
The use of javascript redirects (which is what I assume that these hijacked blogs are using) makes hitting the "Next Blog" button in the Blogger toolbar very dangerous. It wasn't how I found these blogs, but with the proliferation of redirecting spam blogs, this toolbar button is just a very bad idea.
G has two large competitive advantages relative to MS:
First, they have the largest market share and the corresponding benefits of consumer habits/momentum, etc. However, this advantage is partly negated (in the unique case of MS) by the fact that MS enjoys a 90%+ share of the operating system and browser markets -- with all of the corresponding benefits of consumer habits/momentum, etc.
Second, G has better data, better search specialists, and has created better algorithms, which collectively give it a much stronger ability to combat spam.
The more spam that exists, the more substantial advantage number two is in protecting G from the threat posed by MS (as well as other Search Engines).
Succinctly stated, G greatly benefits from the existence of spam -- the more spam out there, and the smarter the spammers are at tricking the SE's, the more G benefits in comparison to MS and Y, due to it's larger data base, better algorithms, and other technical advantages.
Succinctly stated, G greatly benefits from the existence of spam
Yes.
Here's the evil part: they are profiting financially from the Adwords revenue from spam pages displayed as search results by their competitors.
They get to look like they are clean, by having less spam in their SERPs than the competition, while at the same time profiting from the spam displayed by others.
At they same time, they are a major producer of spam (by proxy) by permitting it to go unchecked in their blogging operation.
And, whether they choose to use it or not, they certainly have superior information to be able to filter their own spam from their SERPs. (For example, they know which blogs were posted from the same IP addresses, and since most users are careless about cookies, by the same user even when users are on dynamic IP addresses.)
If the competition closed-up shop tomorrow, betcha the spam would increase dramatically in the Google SERPs.
Microsoft may have inferior technology. But I believe they have the moral upper hand.
Google is engaging in the moral equivalent of a racer dumping an oil slick or tacks behind their car... It's funny in a cartoon. It's pathetic in the real world.
Microsoft may have inferior technology. But I believe they have the moral upper hand.
Something you don't hear every day. Sort of like "Hand me that piano." ;)
I off to track topsearch10 ip ranges and deny from in .htaccess
[edited by: Keniki at 2:20 am (utc) on Mar. 22, 2007]
Really great thread. Someone has recently started posting about a phrase that contains a key phrase very important to me. I got my first google news alert notification about this post a couple months ago and I probably get a new one 4 times a week with the exact same post of (mostly) nonsensical text.
Yeah, I get that too. Funny, I notified G about the blogspot spam (complete with spammy javascript redirects, obvious copyright violations, and just about every spammer trick in the book) and guess what? Months later, we still see the spammer postings happening. It's hard not to be suspicious when G (sometimes) doesn't seem to do anything about the obvious spammer patterns.
