Search Engine Optimization Poisoning Way Up In '10

alphadogg writes "Cybercrooks continue to abuse the Web, boosting their ability to produce what's called search engine optimization poisoning so that individuals making use of search engines such as Google's increasingly are ending up with choices that are dangerous malware-laden URL links. Some 22.4% of Google searches done since June produced malicious URLs, typically leading to fake antivirus sites or malware-laden downloads as part of the top 100 search results, according to the Websense 2010 Threat Report published Tuesday. That's in comparison to 13.7% of Google searches having that outcome in the latter half of 2009, says Patrik Runald, Websense senior manager of security research."

Comments

Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem...

[drunkennewfiemidget]

At least in my case, I've found that google's search results have gotten progressively more useless over the last 2-3 years.

I search for a linux issue I'm having, the only hits I get are ubuntu users in 2004.

I search for applications for my wife's phone, it's almost 100% adware sites, and 0% useful download links.

My google search usage is going down steadily. If I want to know about a company/famous person/whatever, it's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.

Info on movies, actors, etc? imdb.

Looking for directions? Mapquest. Google maps has gotten me lost on countless occasions. (By doing such things as telling me to get off a highway by crossing the meridian, and exiting on the onramp for the opposite direction.)

I don't know whether it's just me, google has thinned out the effort going into their searches in favour of their (many) other endeavours, or if they're just not evolving as fast as the assholes who want to try and monetize my searches for completely unrelated shit.

Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem...

[melikamp]

IMHO, the trash in the Google search is mostly due to spammers: the people who game the page-rank. I agree with eldavojohn: everyone is doing it these days, and the "news" sites are especially notorious. The line is very blurry. I know a dude who works for gather.com, and they are doing it by inserting "keywords" into their news articles. This is not the same as using a botnet to generate traffic, but the goal is the same.

May be the future of search is Bayesian filtering? It is doable even right now: have a local program load 1000 or so Google hits and unleash on them your own personal filter. Everyone heard about spam/ham filtering, but the math and the algorithm extend naturally to any finite number of categories, so a user can create categories such as "spam", "science", "shopping", "blog", "porn", train the filter, and enjoy truly personalized search results. Google is obviously loosing to rank gamers, they are way too smart and too quick to adapt. But a personal Bayesian filter could take the raw index with 90% spam and select results relevant to YOU, while slashing the amount of spam by a couple of orders of magnitude.

My Thunderbird filter works like a charm: in the last year I've had 1 (one) false positive and what feels like less than 5% of false negatives. I think it will work just great on Web pages.

Um, I am resubmitting this, since it's not appearing. Sorry if it's a dupe.

Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem...

[jhigh]

It's probably a combination of the two. Google search results are definitely becoming more useless, and I think as more and more people become familiar with the Internet, their behavior patterns will evolve to reflect this. I think it's not just more specialized web sites like imdb cropping up, but user familiarity with the existence of these sites. As the Internet becomes more and more a part of our daily lives, web sites advertise on television, etc., it's only natural that average users are becoming more familiar with specific web site offerings and foregoing the extra step of typing a search into Google. The (potential) down side to this is what happens when a new, better web site crops up that may be infinitely better than the one that we're all familiar with. For example, once the world became accustomed to using Microsoft Office exclusively because that is what they were the most familiar with, it has become increasingly difficult (if not damn near impossible) for any other product to break into that space.

Is it possible that we will see similar things happening with web sites, where inferior sites are getting all of the hits simply because they are what people became familiar with early on?

Re:Google Can Ban Sites, So...

[Antony T Curtis]

Probably because malware organisations have discovered an ancient and dark evil who would further their cause ... for a price.

They're called: Lawyers.

Re:Search engine rankings for legitimate sites

[theskipper]

Speaking of ehow (Demand Media), here's a great article about how they're junking up the SERPs. It's not just small time link farms, it's industrial strength pollution backed by hundreds of millions of dollars.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/

Google is going to need to take a firm stand. And they most likely want to do it desperately now that there's some real competition. But it's a tough nut to crack and they certainly don't want to upset their applecart (i.e. ad revenues).

JS:DR

[PPH]

Article requires JavaScript: Didn't read.

Need to vote or rank results...

[seanvaandering]

They really need to create a ranking system for logged in Google users so people can vote down spammy links. Could be based on the frequency of the reports. Anything in first ten results with more than 100 negative votes per hour, automatically get removed and placed into a holding queue for a Google employee to review. If it's discovered to be spam, automatically penalize the URL in all results and remove it. Hosting companies will never want to host spammers, because all their good customers will go running to the hills. Just a thought..

Re:Useless Search Content

[TheRaven64]

Not necessarily. Google Scholar will only find peer-reviewed papers (not very competently, and omitting much of the information required to find where it was originally published), but I find reading researchers' blogs often turns up more interesting stuff. It often takes 1-2 years between doing the work and having a journal paper published (and another little while for Google Scholar to notice it), so a blog post from a decent researcher about his or her current work will tell you stuff now that won't appear in Google Scholar results for 2-3 years.

Wiki for info

[HalAtWork]

The reason you're going to Wikipedia for actual information is because the site is structured to eliminate anything that isn't factual information. You're just realizing that the web is a bunch of crappy cross-linked blogs and syndicated content behind ads/paywalls. Soon you'll be hitting podcasts for editorial content instead of the ad-laden multi-click regurgitated PR between top 10 lists that make up most sites.