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Microsoft Tracks Down Mass Fake Web Pages
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article on New York Times, Microsoft researchers have discovered tens of thousands of junk Web pages, created only to lure search-engine users to advertisements. While most of us have run across them from time to time, the company researchers have found the pages are deliberately generated in vast numbers by a small group of shadowy operators. By following the money trail, Microsoft researchers were able to track the flow from big-name advertisers to search engine spammers. Many use Google's blogspot.com to set up spam doorway pages. 'The practice has proved to be a vexing problem for the major search companies, which struggle to prevent both spammers and companies specializing in improving legitimate clients' Web traffic -- a field known as search-engine optimization -- from undermining their page-ranking systems. Surprisingly, the researchers noted that the vast bulk of the junk listings was created from just two Web hosting companies and that as many as 68 percent of the advertisements sampled were placed by just three advertising syndicators.' The report is available at Microsoft Strider Search Ranger project page."
Time to time? For mee it seems like more than 50% when I scan the search results. Maybe less, maybe more, but certainly more than "time to time". For many of my searches, I may not find anything truly relevant until the second and third page. People have learned how to play Google to the point where more and more Windows Live is starting to give better results (scary!).
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It works because you don't realize the size of this thing. They're talking about millions of fake pages here, lots of them pointing at other fake pages to raise their pagerank so they can in turn point at yet more pages. You would think Google would have someone seeking these kind of sites out and applying a discount on their domain though (although when that happens the spammers just move on anyway).
I read the internet for the articles.
... but you can get sued for libel if you're wrong.
We Build Beautiful Websites
That's incredibly naive. You don't honestly think that all companies work at 100% efficiency do you?
The scummiest part of it all is that some of the pages in question will be on domains that someone let expire and someone else immediately snatched up. They get their PageRank from the sites that linked to the formerly legitimate domain. And if that was your domain name, and you only let it expire accidentally, well, sucks to be you. :(
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I just finished reading how much the Strider group at M$ has accomplished and how, and it is rather amazing. They lifted the covers off of typo-domain squatters exploiting Google's programs, a progressive honeypot setup that detects which levels of XP are attackable by different mal-ware attacks (up to and including reporting zero-day exploits if the latest "patch hardened" machine is exploited], and now this project. Even better, they are publishing the "how", and any OS (AKA Mac OS or any of the Linux distros) could benefit by using similar approaches on even more machines.
So -- from an admitted open source advocate -- here's a rare kudo to the giant in Redmond for keeping a "white hat" and his group -- and letting them work.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
It is also more effective. How many times do you click on ads? Now how many times do you click on search results? 'nough said...
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
I think it is funny timing how we turned down a $73k/month in advertising last night from one of the top three spam supporting syndicators. They were seeking a $1.16 per average click through.
I am very glad I read the detailed report from end to end. We seek value in advertising, not spam, but it is very difficult for well meaning companies to figure out which is which. You shouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to differentiate the deceptive tactics/companies from the valid ones. I guess most forms of fraud end up being abstractly similar to this scheme in the end though.
If something smells fishy don't eat it.
JohnE
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