A Moldovian blackhat successfully indexed and gained rank (since dropped due to the maelstrom of publicity) for over 5 billion junk pages (example) in just three weeks—duping Google, along with Yahoo and MSN. The junk pages are also covered in AdSense ads, leading Email Battles to speculate that they significantly contributed to recent measures/allegations of click-fraud.
Battelle adds that “5 billion pages is the entire size of the Google index just a year or so ago. The last claim, before they stopped MAKING claims, was 8 billion…think about that.”
While junk results are frequently a problem in Yahoo and MSN, the news here is that Google indexed more of the low quality sites faster. While the attention is warranted, to be fair, a concluding judgement should note that this is also a function of Google generally indexing more pages, faster, as Ana’s Lair writes. See the original, weekend post from Monetize, which kindly provides a how-to guide for future blackhat reference.
(via Melanie)