Mar 20, 2007

Microsoft research finds sources of search engine spam

Microsoft research finds sources of search engine spam Internet Marketing News and Blog E-consultancy.com

The researchers found that an 'overwhelmingly large percentage' of spam-ads clickthrough traffic came from two IP blocks, meaning that just two web hosting firms are responsible for a large amount of spam listings.

The report refers to this as the 'bottleneck' of the spam double-funnel referred to in the report's title.

In addition, the report found that a small number of ad syndicators serve as middlemen connecting advertisers with the majority of spammers. The top three ad syndicators were involved in between 59% and 68% of the spam redirection chains sampled in the research.

These findings from the report provide the hope that the problem, unlike the more complex issue of email spam, could be solved or significantly reduced by taking action against a small number of operators.