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May 3, 2005 8:20 AM
WSJ Discovers Referral Spam
Over at the WSJ (free link) Lee Gomes notes how spam clogs up SERPs, and then realizes that the major engines are to blame for it:
...a kind of schizophrenia exists at search-engine companies. Half their engineering staff is busy trying to keep useless pages out of search results; the other half is busy coming up with tools that make it easier for people to create and profit from the useless pages in the first place.
He's right, of course. We all have seen the crap that lards up results, pretending to be "services" of one sort or another. Is it spam? Well, it's clearly affiliate- and AdSense-driven sludge. At best, it's gray. But it's funny, lately I have to say that the big guys are doing a pretty good job of trimming this stuff out of their results. Gomes notes that he found these sites while looking for home repair information.
In setting about on these projects, I naturally planned to use the Web as a resource to not only bone up on topics like roof repair, but also to find experienced and honest local trades people to hire. How lucky we are, thought I, to be able to do spring cleaning in the age of broadband.
What I actually found online was a different story. No matter what I searched for, I ended up with a distressingly large percentage of what might be called second-generation Web spam.
In fact, I've been doing the same kind of searches, and on Google anyway, I've found that the index is surprising clear of spam for searches like "roof repair," "new deck," and "window replacement." I found pretty good results on Yahoo for these terms as well.
Hat Tip: Andy.
- Posted by John Battelle on May 3, 2005 8:20 AM
TrackBack
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference WSJ Discovers Referral Spam:
» The Fine Line Between Search Engine Spam and Content from Genuine VC
In Monday’s WSJ article “Web sites that exist only to sell advertising," Lee Gomes complains how spam is clogging up search engine results pages and goes on to blame the major search engines themselves for the problem. He writes, “It's... [Read More]
- Tracked on May 3, 2005 2:12 PM
» Wall Street Journal On Search-Funded Spam from Search Engine Watch Blog
I've written before on the ironic situation of Google AdSense funding some of the spam Google has to eliminate from its indexed. Syndic8 Gets Outed for Spamming and WordPress Caught Spamming After Enlisting To Fight Spam are two close up examples, as w... [Read More]
- Tracked on May 31, 2005 4:12 AM
» Spam + Amazon = Spamazon? from SiteAdvisor blog
As we all know, it’s only a matter of time before every great new internet invention starts getting hijacked by spammers, scammers and other disreputable characters. First it was Usenet and email, now it is blogs and search engine results.... [Read More]
- Tracked on January 7, 2006 2:59 PM
» Spam + Amazon = Spamazon? from SiteAdvisor blog
As we all know, it’s only a matter of time before every great new Internet invention starts getting hijacked by spammers, scammers and other disreputable characters. First it was Usenet and e-mail, now it is blogs and search engine results.... [Read More]
- Tracked on January 7, 2006 3:34 PM
Comments
I thought this line was interesting: "This is not the search spam of the early Internet, where you would search for "Disney" and instead get a sex page." I think most search engines are doing a better job with that type of spam, but they also need to be looking forward to what people will be trying next.
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