Mediarun Search Marketing News

Google is being 'outflanked' by nefarious search engine optimisation experts

July 13th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

Professional online criminals are increasingly turning to nefarious search engine marketing tactics as they vie to get growing numbers of unwitting web users to dodgy - and potentially dangerous - sites.

According to security firm Sophos, the trend of using black hat search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to spread malicious software is nothing new, but it shows no signs of going away.

The firm's US lab manager for technology security Richard Wang believes that search engines like Google and Bing are constantly being outflanked by tech-savvy cyber crooks.

Speaking to the Financial Times (FT), Wang said: "The advantage that the bad guys have is that they can leverage other people's networks.

"They have a larger reach than a legitimate organisation."

Sophos claims that the sophistication of attacks means that content posted by unscrupulous individuals can often be hard to distinguish from the real thing. And if search engine optimisation for dodgy content is carried out effectively, the malicious downloads can have equal or better prominence than their legitimate counterparts.

Wang told the FT that the result is that the internet is becoming a less safe place to be as a result of the malicious attacks and black hat search engine optimisation tactics being adopted.

Recently search engine expert Daniel Solden told Reel SEO that companies should be as wary of spamming their way to the top of Google with video content as they would with standard output.

He claimed that black hat website optimisation can have a huge adverse impact on a firm's search engine marketing strategy - as well as its reputation - so only white hat techniques should be adopted.

Solden claimed that even SEO grey areas should potentially be avoided, as in the future they could easily be considered to be black hat techniques.

Meanwhile, Google recently claimed that it had to juggle openness with the desire to protect internet users from cybercriminals by keeping its search engine algorithms inner workings under wraps.

The search giants comments come shortly after the European Commission announced it was investigating Google for "anti-competitive behaviour".

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