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The Dark Side of Paid Search

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the is-the-darkside-stronger-no-no-quicker-easier dept.

Tough Lefty writes "A new study by McAfee's SiteAdvisor Web ratings finds that sponsored results from some of the biggest names in the search engine business contain spyware, spam, scams and other Internet menaces. The key findings were that major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords and sponsored results contained two to four times as many dangerous sites as organic results. Overall, MSN search results had the lowest percentage (3.9%) of dangerous sites while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1%). Google was in between (5.3%). Check the comprehensive study for all the data."

3 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. From TFA... by Foolicious · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Users can't count on search engines to protect them; to the contrary, we find that search result rankings often do not reflect site safety" Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?

    --
    Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
  2. Re:Click on dubious links... by generic-man · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just searched for "Babies" on Google and got this sponsored link in the sidebar:

    Babies
    Whatever you're looking for
    you can get it on eBay.
    www.eBay.com

    Google is directing you to baby sellers! Alert the press this is EVIL!!

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    For more information, click here.
  3. Why Isn't Google Leading In This Area? by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Why isn't Google performing a value added function here of flagging all sites they've spidered for the following malware before presenting them as search results:

    1: Virus
    2: Attempted AdWare installs
    3: Attempted Spyware installs
    4: ActiveX controls
    5: Java required
    6: Anything else that it attempts to install when you visit
    7: Sites that disable, or attempt to, your browser features like Right Click.
    8: Sites that are only redirection sites.

    and most of all
    are you ready?

    9: Sites that make themselves anywhere from hard to impossible to exit from afterwards without, at minimum, killing your browser process.

    Flagging questionable, along with outright bad, sites would protect users, while likely reducing their traffic - which is what they deserve to have happen to them. More than twice I've used the Google cache to read a site's static content rather than risk visiting them directly.

    And while they're at it, add an easily clickable link to tell Google that this site appears gone, or substantially changed from the search result summary and ought to be re-spidered ASAP would be nice too. Enlist your users in identifying bad search results.

    Someone who does all this would have a strong hold on my search business.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."