Google's Need For Freshness Sours Search Results

Every so often SEO professionals produce a list of what they believe to be the top factors influencing search engine rankings. The latest update to this a million links targeting Ford-related search queries in order to dupe searchers landing at targeted destination pages into paying to download phony security software.

These blackhatters were astonishingly successful at getting at least ten (I stopped looking after ten) full pages of search results to point to malicious web pages, despite the pages’ obvious spamminess and relative youth, despite very suspicious machine-generated URLs resolving to Polish domains, despite that all but the first result were largely irrelevant to the query (a search for Nissan motor parts brought back Nissan door part results, etc.).

They were able to do so, in part, by dropping multitudes of links into comments sections and discussion areas of current and trusted websites and forums. I think the blackhatters were so successful precisely because of Google’s current need for freshness in the age of the real time live Web.

They didn’t create link bursts from telltale link farms and paid directories, they created them, complete with buzzy anchor text, by piggybacking on Google’s inherent trust of social media. As a result, the targeted webpages take over the search results, and the average user, trusting Google more than they trust their own analysis of what should be obvious spam URLs, get directed to harmful sites.