Some *real* search engine manipulation/hijacking

[elfismiles]

The devil doesn't care. Google plays both sides of this subversive game:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115400

The Internet has a secret society. Anyone can join. It supports hidden messages. Those who want to belong need only download and install a special toolbar from Google that works in either Firefox or Microsoft Explorer (IE).

The toolbar, called Sidewiki, which launched in September, provides a venue for venting and posting derogatory comments on virtually any Web site that only those who install the toolbar can read. And although many realize that Google never intended that the toolbar be used for evil, some believe the Mountain View, Calif. company's innovation could create a nightmare for marketers and Web site owners if they choose not to download and install the tool.

The first thing this reminds me of is Augmented Reality tech like the glasses in THEY LIVE and in William Gibson's VIRTUAL LIGHT and the art projects in his last book, SPOOK COUNTRY.

The term "Geohacking" has been coined by William Gibson in his book Spook Country, where artists use a combination of GPS and 3D graphics technology to embed rendered meshes in real world landscapes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

... and all the cool new iPhone apps could take this tagging to the "real world"...

[Zap]

1 in 3 Kids Think Top Search Rankings Most “Truthful”

http://searchengineland.com/uk-report-1 ... hful-27428

[f.n.disinfo.agent]

This is really interesting. I just finished reading Stephenson's Anathem and he tracks an interesting parallel to exactly this.

***Possible Spoiler, But Not Really--Nothing Related in Any Way to the Plot of Anathem***

Anathem is a work of speculative fiction set on a world analagous to Earth. On this planet, Arbre, society created the reticulum (or ret for short), and analogue to the internet (net) here. Stephenson goes off on one of his wonderful tangents describing a period in the history of the ret where it became overrun with "crap" (a technical word in the book).

Apparently, over time, the amount of information on the ret eventually becomes corrupted: bad duplication, lack of sourcing, etc.--just the gradual trend towards entropy catching up with a technology not quite equipped to handle it. Companies spring up to help collect, sort, authenticate the data.

Some other companies relaize that they can post "crap," nonsense pages of text or videos of snow, and then sell filters to the authentication companies plus individuals which remove the "crap" they uploaded from any information searches.

Then companies spring up which post "high-level crap." Instead of just nosnsense texts, they post texts where 99% of the information is true, and one or two sentences are completely false. Then they sell filters to everyone to filter out the crap that they posted.

At this period in the ret's history, it becomes almost imposssible to differentiate authentic or accurate information from not.

Totally applicable here.

[Wombaticus Rex]

At this period in the ret's history, it becomes almost imposssible to differentiate authentic or accurate information from not.

Totally applicable here.

Indeed. At all periods of the net's history, it has been almost impossible to differentiate between authentic, accurate information and crap.



Stephenson is pretty awesome, but that book is just too big for my current work schedule.

[Wombaticus Rex]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... this/full/

The News Corp. billionaire is threatening to pull his newspapers’ content from Google searches. Douglas Rushkoff on why it may take a real conservative to save journalism from the free Web.

As unlikely as it sounds, Rupert Murdoch may end up being our last best hope for a peaceful solution to the Internet’s war on professional journalism. A man who many blame for commodifying, globalizing, sensationalizing, and cheapening news is considering taking a stand against a force even bigger than himself: the Web link.

In an interview with Sky News Australia over the weekend, Murdoch challenged the Cardinal Rule of the Internet by suggesting that information wants to be expensive: “They shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep. It costs us a lot of money to put together a newspaper.”

Murdoch is talking about more than simply charging for access to the online versions of his newspapers, which The Wall Street Journal and a few others have been doing successfully for years. Railing against “content kleptomaniacs” like Google, Microsoft, and Ask.com—which effectively syndicate News Corp. content without paying—Murdoch even suggested he might put up walls that prevent the stories in his papers from appearing in Google searches at all.

LMFAO @ Rushkoff cheerleading for Darth Vader as usual.

The Internet is waging "war on professional journalism" -- what a pathetic fantasy.

Journalism is a profession that sold out so totally they police their own prison and eat their own young.

A friend of mine who I sent this to said "Rushkoff is become more mainstream every day." I laughed pretty hard at that.

Douglas Rushkoff has never been remotely "counterculture" -- we were just nice enough to let him hang out.

[Zap]

Anyone have any idea what these pages are about and how they get onto these domains?

most are seemingly legit domains that seem to have been accessed and had strange directories (named with 5 random characters) and then packed full of pages filled with themes keyphrases ...

Sometimes one of the pages linked from them will redirect to some meh spam site (like thevirustoolbox . com) ... maybe that's the whole point, but for now I'm more interested in how the heck these directories come to live on these sites than I am in figuring out how they are/will be exploited .... (I still need to dig into what sites are linking to these pages, etc)

Anyone have any ideas?

Oh and I've turned off URL parsing, so you'll have to copy and paste the URLs to check em out.

http://2thepointcontracts.com/gycpy/
http://3056clothing.com/jwkqr/
http://are08.victorschelin.se/atpgk/
http://asgardst.com/oqkjh/
http://automotiverepairsavings.com/frosz/ (reported Attack Site)
http://av-dee.com/mpizq/
http://chrisserioracing.com/ikbxs/
http://christsharvestersministries.org/siuod/
http://cineraid.com/jbzdr/
http://damport.com/imnjw/
http://dethleffscaravan.ro/icese
http://e18ent.com/ebhzf/
http://euruni.qualilearning.org/lms/umxa/coxgy2/ - diff URL structure
http://fcmrepresentation.com/ifxze/
http://flisvos-hotel.gr/ytxts/
http://fristaden.nu/peoem/
http://haberci.kahveciyiz.biz/hjssy/
http://ianbloom.com/bkohc/
http://ifluidtech.com/zandy/
http://i-soldiersystems.com/fhnjs
http://jtbarts.com/uboc0/
http://kat-tunworldwide.com/inpyf/
http://landofleo.com/qousk
http://laumcaf.com/cjixj/
http://madbloggen.dk/uieef/
http://mandinasndt.com/qfsaz/
http://maremma-sheepdog.com/dbpzm/
http://morgandale.com/ekadi/
http://newsletter.protein-planet.com/xginc/
http://pilgrims-to-santiago.com/ykydd/
http://refill-shop.net/mbera/
http://skeriketouren.se/uzkue/
http://stylesglass.com/liirg/
http://sunriseconsulting.co.uk/omemx/
http://susiesseafood.com/pdhxt/
http://upsportswear.com/jklxi/
http://zebra1.co.uk/iwcuy/

[Seamus OBlimey]

Mind the gap: Scientist creates intergalactic tube map of the Milky Way

[Zap]

Mind the gap: Scientist creates intergalactic tube map of the Milky Way

Huh, I fail to see how this has anything to do with search engine hijinks at all. If we're going off on a tangent though, I'll add this:

Physarum polycephalum, a gelatinous fungus-like mold, might actually lead the way to improved technological systems, such as more robust computer and mobile communication networks. This revelation comes after a team of Japanese and British researchers observed that the slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo's rail system.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/0 ... ail.system

[elfismiles]

My guess is ... if all of those sites use WordPress it reminds me of a WP hack attack type that I've seen:

WordPress " Support " Auto keyword linking
WordPress " Support " Plugins and Hacks. Auto keyword linking (10 ... shouldn't be an issue, not should searching my Wordpress blog by keyword either. ...
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/246319 - Cached

WordPress " Support " Description keyword meta tags
WordPress " Support " Plugins and Hacks. Description keyword meta tags ... will allow you to add description and keyword meta tags on the same screen as ...
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/262968 - Cached

Anyone have any idea what these pages are about and how they get onto these domains?

most are seemingly legit domains that seem to have been accessed and had strange directories (named with 5 random characters) and then packed full of pages filled with themes keyphrases ...

Sometimes one of the pages linked from them will redirect to some meh spam site (like thevirustoolbox . com) ... maybe that's the whole point, but for now I'm more interested in how the heck these directories come to live on these sites than I am in figuring out how they are/will be exploited .... (I still need to dig into what sites are linking to these pages, etc)

Anyone have any ideas?

Oh and I've turned off URL parsing, so you'll have to copy and paste the URLs to check em out.

[Zap]

Dug into those weird URLs some more today, and it just gets more and more weird. There is some kind of worm that hacks into vulnerable older websites, and injects them with new code.

As noted above, there are the sites that have a directory/folder added, filled with php pages of keyword phrases.

Then, new to me, there are sites that are also injected with dozens of links pointing out to those pages. The links use the word that the keyword page targets as anchor text, and are invisible - hidden in the code of the unwitting sites' homepages.

Two examples:

http://sfmfiles.net/
and
http://fcmrepresentation.com/

Open them up in a browser - you won't see anything weird. But go to View>Page Source (or Source in IE) and look at the code: you'll see a huge list of hidden links. These all point to keyworded directories, pages like the original ones I posted above.

I randomly checked one of these pages, about "vaccines" to see where else it was getting links from - and found over 160 inbound links, all using "vaccines" as anchor text. All of the sites linking to it use the hidden links method, invisible until you look at the source code.

http://1tre.dk/zjnef/vaccines.php is linked to from the following pages:

http://www.unrarx.com/
http://tnchick.com/
http://www.thocp.net/
http://www.deepred.co.uk/
http://www.historyexplained.com/
http://www.chichi.org/
http://www.digitalsoundmagic.com/
http://www.akomplice-clothing.com/
http://www.plantationchamber.org/
http://www.aqua-adventures.com/
http://www.gulker.com/
http://www.x-traonline.org/
http://www.emint.com/
http://ohbitchpleez.com/
http://www.altacam.com/
http://www.davidsoul.org/
http://www.scoutingvirginia.org/
http://www.tinceiling.org/
http://www.blackjackbuffers.com/
http://www.reillyraiders.org/
http://www.kouroshotelmykonos.gr/
http://www.aipilotshop.com/
http://www.sitenames.com/
http://www.woodstockfolkmusic.com/
http://www.housepro.net/
http://www.buzmob.com/
http://criticalcompendium.com/
http://www.bruceleecentral.com/
http://www.karlkemp.com/
http://www.photobirder.com/
http://www.boulevardflorist.com/
http://www.odysseytransportation.com/
http://www.plasticsurgerytexas.com/
http://www.pet-memorial-markers.com/
http://www.hutsachs.com/
http://www.mcgeespub.com/
http://arieljvan.com/
http://www.dictionaryofsign.com/
http://www.valerielandsburg.com/
http://www.artmonster.com/
http://www.sluka.com/
http://frizzensparks.org/
http://www.keystroketechnology.com/
http://aristide.org/
http://www.doverelease.com/
http://www.specialteamssolutions.com/
http://www.jcmcf.org/
http://www.nivb.com/index.php
http://projectfilmschool.org/
http://www.gothinkblog.com/
http://www.westminsterpc.com/
http://ncmc.net/
http://www.greggy.net/
http://www.chaos-studios.net/
http://www.bataancvl29.org/
http://www.thecivilrightonline.com/
http://deepred.com/
http://www.stmarksmillsboro.org/
http://www.compusaveconsulting.com/
http://www.dat-sa.com/
http://provocativeplanet.com/
http://teamkarma.com/
http://chicagofans.org/
http://www.guapucheros.com/
http://www.andromedaroom.com/
http://usfwi.org/
http://esecaucus.com/
http://www.higginsstudios.com/
http://jokay.com.au/2009/05/20/jos-lifestream-daily-digest-120/
http://agt.id.au/
http://lunardoll.com/
http://cmashmusic.org/
http://www.robgroup.com/
http://www.ditditdot.com/
http://www.longleafcove.com/
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php
http://thericksniderreport.com/uncategorized/was-eaglebank-bowl-half-full-or-empty/
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=57
http://www.prison-fellowship.no/
http://arieljvan.com/2009/08/29/religion-saves-mark-driscoll/
http://nwbm.org/
http://livesaysinc.com/
http://www.gulker.com/about-2/
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=26
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=22
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=51
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=65
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=73
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=67
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=53
http://www.gulker.com/chris-gulker-photo-archive/
http://www.gulker.com/hidden-from-pages-sidebar-list/p2-aka-the-paperless-project/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2008/02/04/microsoft-google-yahoo-and-apple/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2010/01/11/stumping-our-way-through-a-good-full-day/
http://bendigophotos.com/
http://asterisk-cafe.com/
http://windingroadrecords.com/
http://www.craigslistconsultant.com/
http://www.gulker.com/columns/
http://www.gulker.com/nikon-d50-body/
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=52
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=54
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=59
http://www.dishstore.net/index.php?cPath=75
http://www.townofgroton.org/main?cmd=schools-grotoncomm
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2007/08/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2008/01/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2008/04/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2009/04/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2007/07/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2007/12/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2007/01/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2008/05/
http://www.gulker.com/wp/2009/06/
http://www.aardvarkwebdesigns.com/
http://www.clintonstreet.org/
http://www.writinganalysis.com/
http://www.backgame.com/
http://www.asigncompany.com/

The web of sites involved in this operation is insanely vast - the more I dig in, the more the labyrinth of links expands.

What I have yet to find is a target of all this manipulation: clearly, someone is trying to build up authority for a wide variety of keyphrases, presumably to point appropriate pages to some kind of content that they want to rank highly for some combination of the keywords employed. I don't know if the wide variety of keywords is just to have a huge bucket of possible words to bring to bear to undetermined future ranking efforts, or if the massive web of keyphrases simply hides the few that are being used ...

I don't even know if this tactic has a shot at succeeding - in theory, Google would not count the invisible links, and would not give the affected pages any weight - meaning that when they were in turn pointed at a page it should not give a rankings boost ...

Anyway, if anyone else gets curious about this and finds anything new out, let me know.

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^Google is far more complicit in this sort of thing than we give 'em credit for, "we" even including most SEO's who really do think of Google as the "honesty cops" when they're anything but.

Take a look at the recent example of Mahalo...actually, in googling some good links I came across an article that nails it so well, I will not even bother typing out a summary now:

http://www.seobook.com/black-hat-seo-case-study

If you build link equity and are good at public relations you can get away with murder in Google. Scale it big enough and the guidelines simply do NOT apply to you.

Most people who try to "pull a Mahalo" and spam up Google will likely fail because they lack

* the public relations & affiliations needed to attempt to legitimize such a strategy
* the willingness to lie just to get a bit of media ink
* the public relations & media savvy to pull such a major bait and switch without getting caught
* the domain authority to make it work algorithmically

Originally when launching Mahalo, Jason Calacanas claimed that it would be spam free and that SEOs would have hell to pay. Now that he is scraping your content (and adding nofollow to the links to your content) I think he is right. You are losing out on your search traffic because an authority site is "borrowing" your content and outranking you with your own content.

Are the search results going to start filling up with Twitter recycling start ups? What happens when the media gets in on this "what the bloggers have to say" scraping game? Does it even matter who created the content so long as someone wraps it in ads & ranks it?

I don't think we can stop people from being greedy or stealing, but I am surprised Google has turned a blind eye to this process. Is this what they want the web to become?

(And it's not like Google penalized Mayo Shattuck III or anything. They've also been involved in "disappearing" blogs before -- I don't think they're the cartoon Evil Empire people like to pain them as, but nor are they a "good guy" by any stretch.)

[JackRiddler]

Have to do a lot of word searching today for a translation job and this shit is worse than ever. Did you know that if you search for anything that sounds like a real word plus "definition" you get sites titled, "Definition of ____." But when you go there, what do you see? "There is no definition of ____ yet"! But please, have an eyeball of our 38,000 ads. And the respected Merriam-Webster is one of the perps! wombat, maybe you'd know: is at the point yet where these things generate themselves instantly when you search for the fictional word?

Google used to deliver the goods. First hits on a word usually were articles by single human authors who actually had a reason and a qualification to write about the subject. Then Wikipedia started eating up the top spots. Stubs, even. But now that's the good old days. It has gotten exponentially worse with all the site-scraping bullshit and self-generated word salads and dummy sites located at misspelled URLs, etc. etc.

As another example, try searching the name of any celebrity or of any movie title. See how many pages in before you actually find anything that counts as the fabled "content."

[Zap]

Interestingly, the script/worm seems to be changing - over the last few days, every new keyword page I discover (the date they are published is shown in the directories) are combined with a string of numbers in addition to the keywords. 5-digit numbers - maybe zipcodes?

examples:

http://voeler.com/slidi/
http://duelingartssf.com/ultpx/
http://bettersbox.com/kxqik/
http://themagicatchristmas.com/irjtl/
http://cmoney.org/bpalb/
http://darrenstemmerman.com/nsdpn/

I have several a day show up in my various Google alerts, and this is clearly only a tiny fraction of the pages being generated.