SearchPhilosophy.org » Spamming http://searchphilosophy.org Thoughts about Searching Sun, 11 Nov 2007 03:45:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en There needs a better way to punish Comment Spammers http://searchphilosophy.org/2007/05/18/there-needs-a-better-way-to-punish-comment-spammers/ http://searchphilosophy.org/2007/05/18/there-needs-a-better-way-to-punish-comment-spammers/#comments Sat, 19 May 2007 00:39:57 +0000 EveMedia http://searchphilosophy.org/2007/05/18/there-needs-a-better-way-to-punish-comment-spammers/ I hate comment spammers. Truly hate them. They are the lowest of the low.

Thanks to these jerks we all have to moderate our comments and carefully review new user signups on user contributed sites to try to stop them polluting the community. Once you have a big community of users, they can help with the burden, but for a small site owner it really sucks to have to wade through all the spam posts.

There are some great tools out there to help stop comment spam such as captcha plugins or spam filters like Akismet which work great. However, there should be some better way to punish comment spammers.

It would be great if there was a blacklisting system where you could report spammers and have their sites get reviewed and possibly de-indexed by the major engines. The spam reporting features for Google for example are heavily focused on spotting and reporting spam results in the SERPs. If we could instead report the comment spammers as soon as they start posting, perhaps they could be eliminated before they get any SEO benefit at all.

]]> http://searchphilosophy.org/2007/05/18/there-needs-a-better-way-to-punish-comment-spammers/feed/ Idea: Use the average time to Adwords click to track spammers http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/28/idea-use-the-average-time-to-adwords-click-to-track-spammers/ http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/28/idea-use-the-average-time-to-adwords-click-to-track-spammers/#comments Wed, 01 Mar 2006 02:58:42 +0000 EveMedia http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/28/idea-use-the-average-time-to-adwords-click-to-track-spammers/ In the Algorithm research session at Search Engine Strategies today several panelists mentioned that search engines might use the length of time one spends on a result page to downgrade its relevance in certain circumstances.  If everyone immediately clicks back to the search engine for example quickly after visiting a page, the engines may take this as an indication of user dissatisfaction with the result.

In a similar vein, it seems like one could track the time between when one clicks a SERP result, and when a corresponding ad is clicked on the destination page as a possible indicator of spam activity.  There are so many pages now that are nothing but lifted content designed to get in the SERPs to earn revenue through adwords or similar ad networks.  If very quickly after the average visitor is sent to page, another ad is clicked, this might identify these ad-centric pages and allow for them to be moderated down or out of the results as appropriate. 

This of course is somewhat limited as the engine must match the ads being served to track the time difference.  Also, there is a conflict of interest in these situations, as the engines may themselves be benefiting from the revenue these sites produce.  In the long run though, getting rid of these sites will improve the user experience, and thus improve the value of the ad channel to potential advertisers.   So even if it’s value is somewhat limited, it might be worth trying to put something like this in place to at least guarantee the integrity of the ad network within the serving engine itself.

]]> http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/28/idea-use-the-average-time-to-adwords-click-to-track-spammers/feed/ Are you polluting the web? http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/25/are-you-polluting-the-web/ http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/25/are-you-polluting-the-web/#comments Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:52:32 +0000 EveMedia http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/25/are-you-polluting-the-web/ I think one of the more difficult issues those of us that work in the search marketing field have to deal with is the issue of to what extent our promotion efforts are harming the internet as an open information resource.  Osx86 project wrote a nice article on how hacking contests can lead to a reduction in information sharing for example in a way that impedes technical progress.  The SERP land grab is undoubtedly reducing result quality in many semantic fields as people make more and more crosslinking ad-words sites filled with other peoples RSS info and not much more.  There is money to be made, so ethics aren’t always taken that seriously, however at some point there has to be a kharmic comeupance for spamming your way to the top.  In the end, I worry that all the spam sites out there can lead to a kind of web 3.0 which resembles the gated communities suburban america created in the 80’s and 90’s.  Imagine a total social search opt in web where you have to meet stringent qualifications to enter, and the result set is only a series of approved sites granted access by members.  In a sense this would be great as an effective way to clean up the garbage.  I suppose a safe web - free web hybrid would be possible where you can limit yourself to a trusted set or explore the vast sea of potential junk.  But the more that you scare people into living within their social result sets, the more you impede the rate at which divergent points of view and bodies of knowledge are shared.  So, if you are polluting, all I would say is don’t expect it to work forever, and try to think about what kind of social possibilites you may be undoing in the quest for short term gains. 

]]> http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/25/are-you-polluting-the-web/feed/ What % of Domain Names are held by Speculators? http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/22/what-of-domain-names-are-held-by-speculators/ http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/22/what-of-domain-names-are-held-by-speculators/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:34:15 +0000 EveMedia http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/02/22/what-of-domain-names-are-held-by-speculators/ Whenever I search for domain names, I am amazed by how many are being held for ransom by speculators.  Is there information anywhere about the number of domain names that are owned versus the number that are active sites?  I would define active as those having some content live that are updated at least once per year, excluding parked pages at domain registraton vendors showing only ad content.

Out of curiousity, I went to the Regex Dictionary to see if there were any words matching the patterns com$, us$, de$, at$ etc. that would give you a del.icio.us type domain name.  Amazingly, almost every domain matching these patterns, like Anxio.us, MorseCo.de, and Obnoxio.us were already registered.    I haven’t started looking for the variations like GreatMorsCo.de and WorldofMorseCo.de yet, but I’m sure there are some people buying that garbage up as well.  Thankfully, some of the sites like Obnoxio.us have real content, and some of the ones like Unico.de are functional sites matching the country the domain extension was intended for.  However, there were tons of unhosted domains, or ones like MorseCo.de, which clearly seems like a speculator site. 

I would love to see regulations that limited the number of unused domain names one could register.  Hopefully people will just stop buying from speculators.  Until then, I’ll be sitting pretty on  BuyingABunchOfDomainNamesAndHoldingThem
WithTheHopeThatSomeChumpWillPayYouBigBucksBlo.ws. (Thanks so much Western Samoa!)

 

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