Microsoft, researchers take aim at 'search spammers'
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
Anyone brave enough to type "cheap tickets" in a search engine can find a plethora of one-page Web sites designed to drive traffic to other Web sites and generate click-through advertising revenue.
They're an irritant to users and another way in which the Internet is being abused for profit. But a new study by a team of Microsoft and University of California researchers has shed light on how so-called "search spammers" work and how advertisers can help stop the practice.
"By exposing the end-to-end search spamming activities, we hope to ... encourage advertisers to scrutinize those syndicators and traffic affiliates who are profiting from spam traffic at the expense of the long-term health of the Web," wrote authors Yi-Min Wang and Ming Ma of Microsoft Research and Yuan Niu and Hao Chen of the University of California in Davis.