Mediarun Search Marketing News

Does Firefox update signal end of black-hat SEO?

August 13th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

Black-hat search engine optimisation techniques have been in and out of the news a lot recently. Much of the focus has been on the criminal gangs behind the recent raft of search engine spam attacks. Black-hat SEO techniques are increasingly being used by cybercriminals - as opposed to bedroom hackers - to direct web traffic to malicious websites. The ultimate aim of the majority of these attacks is to pilfer web users' personal data - including bank details - and use them to defraud them of their hard-earned cash.

The recent Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report highlighted the size of the problem. After conducting thousands of web searches on popular search engines - including Google, Yahoo and Bing - the firm found that many of the top results were actually links to websites that hosted malware.

This seismic shift in the goals of malicious search engine marketing has caused a number of internet security firms to ramp up their fight against the practice, with companies like Barracuda Labs and Norton Security dishing out updates to security software.

One such firm, Zscaler, has released a new browser-specific security tool, which it claims slashes the risk of Firefox users clicking on links to sites riddled with malware.

The firm's Search Engine Security tool could be a boon for cautious web users and works by disguising where link requests have come from - as the majority of malicious links are only delivered when cybercriminals' malware detects a request from a leading search engine.

It is unlikely that the new security tool will bring an end to black-hat search engine optimisation techniques, but it could make it more difficult for malware authors to get internet users to click on malicious links. And the security tool - or at least a similar application - is likely to be ported to all web browsers.

The increased effort by security firms to stamp out black-hat search engine optimisation, as well as highlighting the importance of being cautious when browsing the web, shows that any SEO agency using such techniques is likely to have their search engine marketing efforts undermined.

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