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MS Research Automates Search Engine Spam Hunt
Barbie Dollar writes "Researchers at Microsoft are working on an ambitious new project to hunt down and neutralize large-scale search engine spammers. The project, called Strider Search Defender, automates the discovery of search spammers through non-content analysis. The project integrates technology from two previous Microsoft Research prototypes (Strider HoneyMonkey and Strider URL Tracer) and promises a new approach to removing junk results from search engine queries."
Sure, preventing search engines from indexing blogspam posts is great. Maybe that's the first step, but it's not going for the root cause - the botnets that run the apps that post/email in the first place, and the compromised webservers hosting order sites.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Sure, preventing search engines from indexing blogspam posts is great. Maybe that's the first step, but it's not going for the root cause - the botnets that run the apps that post/email in the first place, and the compromised webservers hosting order sites.
These are not mutually exclusive goals. If you take away any incentive for spamalizing content (meaning, not only does it not boost your search placement, it penalizes you), then much of the pressure to run botnets and crack servers goes away.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
First, do not be so skeptical. Have you noticed how well Outlook 2003 spam filtering works? I realize the algorithm is different, but based on results, I have to say that it is probable that Microsoft will succeed with reasonable effectiveness.
Second, what business rationale is there to give away a competitive advantage (after spending millions to get it) in the very competitive search market, where, by the way, Microsoft is not the market leader?
So, if by some miracle, they actually discover a way to hunt down and nuetralize the search engine spammers, what are the odds that they share this information with other Search Engine companies?
Their purpose is to make their own search engine more effective for users, thus generating more traffic for them. A nice side effect would be that Yahoo and Google, etc., would feel more pressure to integrate similar technologies into their own engines. As usual, competition produces the best results.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
All major search engines have been doing this for quite some time. Google is probably the best hunter of them all and the most recent update, which occured on June 27, banned a large number of spammers who had billions of sites indexed. Unfortunately, the war on spam is quite difficult. They spammers are working with non-content pages but it is a matter of time before they start generating non-jibberish content to spam with, too.
Hopefully, Microsoft's approach will give some effect and push other operators to work harder on preventing the web spam.
Amusingly, you're most likely getting affected only if you're searching for penis pumps, pornographic content and gambling.
Full Tilt
How the fuck did a post from somebody who clearly hasn't even read the ''summary'', let alone the article, get modded up "Insightful"? Mods, just because a poster has a low ID doesn't mean their posts are always worth reading.
For reference:
(a) What does shutting down Windows boxes have to do with searching for search-engine spam?
(b) How does search-engine spam "find" you?
Could it possibly be that you saw the word "spam", and your brain shut off while you wrote a nonsensical post that might just have made sense in the context of an article about email-spam zombie computers, but is totally irrelevant in the context of search-engine spam?
I installed Bad Behavior a few months ago on a community website... for three days.
During three days I logged a lot of actual (and logged in) users being blocked... then I tried to spam my own site by using opera and a fake user-agent + elite proxy and I had no problem doing that...
So yes, I guess it has the qualities required to be a good microsoft product.