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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master
NRT-0105 Tracking Fake Web Page Sources:
Microsoft researchers say they have traced the companies and techniques behind tens of thousands of junk Web pages, created only to lure search-engine users to advertisements. A paper published by the researchers says the links promoting such pages are generated by a small group of shadowy operators apparently with the acquiescence of some major advertisers, web page hosts, and advertising syndicates. The researchers uncovered a complex scheme in which a small group, creating false doorway pages, works with operators of web-based computers who profit by redirecting traffic passed from search engines in one direction and then sending advertisements acquired from syndicates in the opposite direction.
Using questionable or illegal techniques to improve the ranking of a web site in query results is known as search-engine spamming. 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.
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% of the advertisements sampled were placed by just three advertising syndicates. They found that for some key words like "drugs" and "ring tone" more than 30% of the results from major search engines were fake pages created by spammers. The average spam density - a meaure of the percentage of web pages that contain only advertisements - was 11% for 11,000 keywords they used in their research.
The researchers said large advertisers were to blame for a significant share of the spam problem. "Ultimately, it is advertisers' money that is funding the search-spam industry, which is increasingly cluttering the web with low-quality content and reducing web users' productivity."
(news.com.com 19MAR07)
Last Modified: Saturday, 31-Mar-2007 10:33:29 EST