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Who put all this spam in my Google search results?
The Google search page appears on a computer screen in Washington on Aug. 30, 2010.
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Vivek Wadhwa is a writer, big tech thinker, and academic affiliated with Harvard Law School, UC Berkeley, and Duke University. He recently noticed that the Google, which accounts for two-thirds of all searches in the United States, was filling up with a whole lot of junk sites. These are what's called "content farms". Maybe you've seen sites with names like eHow that have a whole lot of words but not a lot of real expertise. They exist mostly to lure you in, make you look at some ads, maybe even click over and buy something. Wadhwa says that the students he works with are increasingly frustrated as the amount of web spam seems to be increasing all the time.
We talk with Wadhwa about that. We also check in with Matt Cutts. He leads Google's efforts against webspam and says it's an ongoing effort. He thinks things are largely getting better in the fight although he admits that the spammers have made some gains in recent months.
Also in this program, we hear about a new dating site called Heartbroker. When you sign up, you pick some of your Facebook friends to evaluate you based on several attributes. That information is then digested and shared with both you and your potential dates. Your friends are kept anonymous. This story is filed under 'O Internet What Hath You Wrought?'
There's also the problem of what I call "flooding," creating lots of web sites that contain no useful information on a particular topic in order to make it harder for users to find the results they are looking for.
I first noticed this when searching for a telephone number to track down some criminals (telemarketers). There are few really useful websites for this, but 95% of the results are bogus and almost certainly set up by telemarketers to prevent people from finding the truth.
I now filter these out with a user script.
I've worked on contract for a company that provides text content for the eHow website, and I take it somewhat personally that you are so dismissive of the articles featured there. The content provider (Demand Media) has strict guidelines that authors must adhere to, including general creative guidelines such as the direction and unifying theme for a piece as well as more specific guidelines related to word count and most importantly the veracity and verifiability of the author's sources. Yes, the content is generated by a "content farm," but if it is relevant to a search query and it answers a Google user's question, then I hardly think it counts as "spam."
Clearly I am doing something wrong. I have not had much in the way of google spam. I dare say lots of it exists, but I refine my search criteria (or just look for weird stuff). I tend to use more words rather than fewer, include people's names when possible. I never click on sponsored links either,
So I am not sure I know what the big deal is about.
Perhaps I am being permanently spammed and don't realize it!
Thanks for the story on Heartbroker. One correction: Your friends don't remain anonymous, you get to see and approve each testimonial. What you don't get to see is how they rated you on the 5 attributes - no one sees this.
The main reason for involving friends is to give a broad picture of who you are as a person. It also helps other singles know that you aren't married or a criminal (as many as 10% of online dating site users are scammers, according to Forrester Research). By doing this we can improve match quality and increase user security.
Craig Robinson
CEO Heartbroker
I switched to Bing a couple months ago. Google has more problems than spammy websites. Now they include news, places, maps on the right....and FINALLY search results down at the bottom. The search results used to be the MAIN content of their pages, now Google has filled it with crap (not to mention the instant search updates that are distracting, and autofill trying to guess what I am doing). Bing's interface is far cleaner and gives me results for searches instead of a bunch of bells and whistles that do nothing but get in my way.
