Microsoft Mounts Effort against ‘Webspam’
Jul 17th, 2006 • Posted in: NewsREDMOND, Wash.
Microsoft is taking aim at a common, legal, widespread, but shady practice that taints results from search engines: so-called webspam or blogspam, seemingly legitimate comments sprinkled by the millions throughout various websites, designed to fool search engines into believing that a spammer’s website is mentioned or linked to very frequently.
The result of webspamming is that the spammer’s ruses result in search engines reporting the spammer’s site high up in the list of rankings. According to the Washington Post, another variation on this theme, called blogspam, uses phony comments in blogs, discussion boards, and guest books that, if clicked, employ stealthy redirection techniques to trick the viewer into viewing a spammer’s Web page.
Microsoft issued a report on the two new methods of Web pollution last week and introduced a defensive program called Strider Search Defender, which, according to PC World, automates the discovery of webspammers.
The experimental program tracks down spam sites and matches them with sites that link to them, scrubbing them from search engine results, ZDNet reported — effectively causing the spammers to self-destruct because they are identified by their own spamming.
PC Magazine notes that some research indicates that a whopping 93 percent of all blog comments are spam, and that almost any Web search will turn up junk results manipulated by spammers.
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