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."
Link To Original Article
Microsoft Tracks Down Mass Fake Web Pages
Linear Mode
