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.
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"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. Their research will be reviewed at the 16th International
World Wide Web Conference in Banff, Alberta, in May.
The researchers looked at "redirection spam," where a user clicks on a URL but is then automatically transferred to a different
URL or shown advertising content that originates from somewhere else on the Web.
Often, legitimate companies have their advertisements served on questionable sites through redirections designed to "obfuscate
the connection between the advertisers and the spammers," the researchers wrote.
In one example, they traced the origin of advertisements for orbitz.com, a popular travel services site, that appeared on
suspicious Web pages. They uncovered five layers that lie between a legitimate advertiser and a questionable search spam Web
site.
For example, a business such as orbitz.com may buy advertising from a syndicator, who then buys space on high-traffic Web
pages from an aggregator.
In turn, the aggregator buys traffic from Web spammers. The spammers set up the millions of "doorway" pages, designed to show
up high in the search-engine rankings, for such products as ringtones or prescription drugs. They also distribute URLs by
inserting them as comments on users' blogs.
The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.
