Search Engine Optimization Poisoning Way Up In '10 175
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."
Link to Actual Report and My Many Gripes (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought I would find this in the NetworkWorld article. Boy was I mistaken. As I switch between the two pages of the article, I am presented with "Whitepaper" links to reports that then navigate me to a 'page1234' at accelacomm.com where it asks for all my personal information. In the middle of the article (with no indication this has nothing to do with the article) is a link to another NetworkWorld article titled 'Royal pain: British Royal Navy site hacked.' Shouldn't that go in the 'Related Content' section that is also in the article with links to how I can 'bail out my budget'? Oh look, they've hyperlinked phrases in the article that just direct me to another NetworkWorld article and at the end I get directed to their security section. Might they take a chance and link to the source of the information that they are considering an authority on SEO poisoning? So you know, I can judge for myself and further inspect the report? I mean, I'm not asking them to drive across town to get a quote from the mayor
Sorry to rant for so long but it amuses me how a news article about SEO poisoning is obviously taking some questionable routes to up their own stats -- maybe even manipulate Google page ranks? Oh but that's just good old wholesome Search Engine Optimization -- it's those pesky cybercrooks that phish for my home address, not the "esteemed" online news sources we should criticize that ask me to enter it into accelacomm.com when I'm trying to read the news (and I'm not accusing accelacomm of being a scam, just annoyed at the principle).
Search engine rankings for legitimate sites (Score:5, Insightful)
The annoying thing is when sites that have legitimate and interesting content are ranked nowhere near the spammers.
Many legitimate and useful sites are far and few between. You have to bookmark them because it's doubtful you'll find them again with Google (page 20 or something).
Re:A serious question here... (Score:1, Insightful)
that's like asking if carjacking works on armored cars, when most people drive mopeds...
Useless Search Content (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
google totally sold out and lost their mojo.
I get link farm sites from the first page that SHOULD be weeded out. I search for tech things and get mostly 'buy this!' crap sites.
google chooses to do this. they could do better (they did, once) but now they are no better than any random search engine. worse since their UI is less direct and more junk oriented. we have seen google do a lot of auto-things (animation, auto scrolling of text ads, auto complete, auto-think!) and none of it is really welcomed by the user community.
its just what we all predicted. google would be a golden child for a few years but then it will fizzle out.
its ONLY because of habit that many people still use google. but they are not any better than the rest, these days, and their search seems like a paid service for all the wrong 'content suppliers' (I use that term very loosely).
I wish altavista was back. I miss the old days.
Google Can Ban Sites, So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
The main thing saving Google's ass these days is that 90% of the time they can just throw up a Wikipedia result in the top-5, and usually that's good enough.
Re:Search engine rankings for legitimate sites (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like a very very familiar discussion. Specifically, we had this exact same problem about 10-15 years ago when search spammers had learned how to game results on Yahoo and AltaVista with stupid meta tags and repeating the same words over and over to increase their ranking.
Google figured out a way to get around that problem, which produced a massively better search engine. It sounds like the search spammers are now figuring out how to game the Google results, so in another year or two we'll be right back in the big mess that Internet search used to be.
Re:Search engine rankings for legitimate sites (Score:5, Insightful)
I think PageRank is ultimately some of the problem, though I hear they've been de-emphasizing it (but it hasn't fixed my searches). When I search for band lyrics, I want the lovingly crafted fan site that's been accumulating information on that band for the past 10 years. When I search for reviews, I want that site too. I don't want mp3lyrics.com for lyrics or allmusic.com for reviews or whatever. But the problem is that each of the good fan sites is a separate entity (which is one reason they're good): one's at joydiv.org, another one's off some person's university webspace, another one's on free hosting somewhere, yet another one's at brainwashed.com or synthpunk.org or whatever. So they each rank lower than mp3lyrics.com or allmusic.com, which have mediocre info for every band on the planet tucked away under their single pagerank unit.
Same with non-music stuff. You're never going to find the person with a great page on blueberry pies; instead you'll get a recipe from eHow.
What are they searching for? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is not clear what search terms produced 22% malicious URLs. That seems like a high number to me. If you search for "photoshop crack" or "keygen" you're going to get WAY more malware than searching for "fuzzy bunnies".
While I agree that more spam and malware sites have gotten into Google listings, I don't think the problem is quite as dire as the article makes it seem for the typical Google user.
Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen a couple of Slashdot journal writers who try to manipulate SEOs and page hits by getting to get you to click through their media merchandising blogs if you want to see the story they are journaling about. They should be marked as spam, because that is what they are.
Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
we have seen google do a lot of auto-things (animation, auto scrolling of text ads, auto complete, auto-think!) and none of it is really welcomed by the user community.
None of it is welcomed by you. Most of it can be turned off with a few clicks.
Google actually dose things fairly well compared to most companies. I can choose simple and clean or bleeding edge cool stuff. Never once have I searched for something Microsoft related and got the first 3 links pointing me to Googles competing products.
Google is not perfect and I would not trust them with my child but I trust them and like them more than Bing or Yahoo.
Hmm... really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really?
I rarely bother with results beyond the first 20 or so. IF I have to dig deeper, either I munged the search terms, or I'm digging for a specific item I couldn't build a specific search for. Either way, I'm wondering how what percentage of search returns in the first, say, 30, were malware.
And I wonder about the definition of 'malware'. But let's trust that.
How about a small effort, along the way, to clean up the fake links? If I search for a term that even tangentially matches a product, I get search results that invariably include Bizrate and other so-called shopping or pricing sites. And sure enough, Bizrate in particular has an actual product listing about 20% of the time for me. The rest of the time, it did the SEO thing to make it look like it had a listing, when all I get is a 'we don't have any right now, but how about these?' or 'come back later'. Argh. Abuse. Perhaps fraud. I hate them so much I ignore them even if they DO have the product.
Google doesn't care, though. They get paid anyways.
Feh.
Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem... (Score:1, Insightful)
The strangest thing is how the number of Google search results per search phrase has decreased. Often when I try to get back to a specific webpage but can't find it in history, I google part of the page title or text. This used to work more often than not, now it doesn't. And Google doesn't even respect the + operator any more. It tries to "spell correct" all words (replace by more popular neighbors) even when I explicitly tell it not to. They got it backwards. Rare words in queries should be boosted because finding them by other means is more difficult. Frequent words in queries should be given less weight. And please, Google, don't be so patronizing. Just look for what I entered. If I misspelled it, that's my problem.
Re:Malware/Spyware isn't the only problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
I see lots of complaining but no alternatives being offered up: Anyone.. Ferris... Anyone...