Spam Sites Infesting Google Search Results

The Google Watchdog blog is reporting that "Spam and virus sites infesting the Google SERPs in several categories" and speculates, ...Google's own index has been hacked. The circumvention of a guideline normally picked up by the Googlebot quickly is worrisome. The fact that none of the sites have real content and don't appear to even be hosted anywhere is even more scary. How did millions of sites get indexed if they don't exist?

Comments

Google hacked, sites don't exist, um ...

[icepick72]

Submitter says Google's index has been hacked which could imply the severe case: direct security threat and entry to it, or more likely: managing to get it to index something Google would not want it to index.

Submitter asks: How did millions of sites get indexed if they don't exist?

Okay, I call this an idiot story. Millions of sites come into being and go out of being all the time. What does this statement have to do with anything? It seems like submitter has a lack of understanding how basic Google and the web work, but the story has made it to Slashdot. I think the Slashdot IQ level is dropping because this is a Digg story.

I call Bullshit!!!

[Jennifer York]

Any evidence to back that up? I seriously doubt that a single individual has the ability to make a change on production boxes without a committee of senior managers approving the change.

Google will adjust, find the method of manipulating the page ranks, and close the hole.

Re:I call Bullshit!!!

[Billosaur]

It may not be a question of a single developer making changes, as much as a single developer (or group of them -- safety in numbers) divulging to certain third parties how the algorithms work in the page ranking system. It's very rare any company gives anyone production access to make changes, but then again I've seen that happen too, where something breaks, they give a developer access to patch it in a hurry before the hew and outcry set in, then forget to revoke his/her access. Of course Google is global, so any change would have to propagate through the system vis source control, so tracking it wouldn't be that hard. I doubt any developer, no matter how nefarious, would take the risk.

Re:I call Bullshit!!!

[zymano]

No it's not. Whenever you ask just a computer program to weed out spam , it will always be outwitted by average human intelligence.

There are websites strictly devoted to google ranking.

Let me add this about Google. The google corporation really isn't 100% innovative. Their search uses common links to rank. This has led to evolution of the spammers. They load their pages with links to spam. So my point to slashdot is......

If google is so damn loaded with money and that their search tech uses common user links, why not pay people/moderators for 'quality' links to information?

Re:SEOs

[Tim C]

At the very least GoogleBot could check if there are common blacklist words ("viagra" et al) on the website when identifying itself as IE or Firefox.

So medical supply or information websites shouldn't be indexed by Google?

I know what you're trying to do, but no word is 100% inappropriate. What if someone is actually looking for information on Viagra, or replica Swiss watches, or cheap stocks? What if someone is looking for information on spam?

Check for significant differences in content with different user-agents yes, but banned words? That really doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Wait and see.

[eniac42]

People, its just a blog. If someone has really hacked Google, we will hear soon enough. Otherwise scamming and spoofing the ratings with rubbish sites is a sport thats been going on a long, long time..

Re:Wait and see.

[tbannist]

Actually, it's worse than that. It's a blog that can't provide any actual evidence that anything they claim is true. As far as we know, the entire story is bogus because the blogger has provided nothing to prove that any of his claims are true.

Re:SEOs

[suv4x4]

Which raises the question: Why not have GoogleBot do a check also as a normal user-agent (IE/Firefox/etc.) and see if the page is significantly different than when it identifies itself? At the very least GoogleBot could check if there are common blacklist words ("viagra" et al) on the website when identifying itself as IE or Firefox.

It does. It also detects landing pages mentioned above. Apparently it's something more subtle than what one could think of in few mins on Slashdot, and we'll learn soon enough.

Nutcase conspiracy theory adopters web2.0 version

[georgeb]

Quotes:

"Some searches (very specific phrases, and I won't list any of them right now - Google knows which they are) return results with a large number of .cn (Chinese) sites."

"The .cn sites don't appear to be hosted ANYWHERE." (wow!)

"[...] the Word-Confirm on all of their sites, including the one I will have to use to post this, generate a large number of rogue responses, and the HELPDESK facilities with thousands of consoles and employees each all over the planet watch the responses and other traffic characteristics [...]"

How the HECK did _this_ get on /.? It's a new low, I swear.

Re:I Bet It's a Simpler Explanation

[Arthur B.]

Unless the sites happen to have google ads...

Re:SEOs

[glindsey]

What if someone is actually looking for information on Viagra, or replica Swiss watches, or cheap stocks? What if someone is looking for information on spam? That's a good point. But perhaps combinations of keywords would work -- it's pretty unlikely that you'd see "viagra" and "mortgage" on the same site, for example. If you partner this with checking for significant user-agent differences it could become a pretty good tool, I think.

Re:Calling Bullshit along with this one :Nothing N

[onepoint]

well for those of us whom deal with Google as their lively hood ( I currently run PPC campaigns and do some SEO work on my web sites ), this was a problem.

I spent the better part of a afternoon about 2 weeks ago, submitting my searches to Google asking them too look at these sites.

they were under my key word group and it was driving me nut's.

google-analytics.com

[TFGeditor]

Has anyone ever looked into how google-analytics.com (formerly Urchin) works? This blogger http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/11/prevent-google-analytics-from-tracking.html gives a bit of info--and it does not appear to comply with the Google "do no evil" mantra.

Re:google-analytics.com

[nicolastheadept]

And how is a webmaster simply monitoring what people click on evil? Just because you may be paranoid, it doesn't make Google evil.

Search Engine Pessimisation

[ajs318]

Worse, I think, is the act of spamming blogs with links. The theory is that, the more links there are pointing to a website, the more popular it must be; so, by using commonly-available, spam-advertised commercial software to pollute blogs with links unrelated to the subject matter, webmasters imagine they can improve their ranking without paying baksheesh to the search engine companies.

I have had an idea for a hack to WordPress, which will make all links invisible to GoogleBot (and maybe the other search engines too). This should make it pointless for anybody to spam blogs with links to their site, since the links won't be picked up by search engines. In a nod to Mel, I call this "Search Engine Pessimisation".