Google Requests Help Fighting Malware : Natural Search Blog

Google Requests Help Fighting Malware

This last week, I whined a bit about Google results containing many links to malware sites, due to them making use of well-known black hat tactics. InternetNews.com is now reporting that Google is asking for assistance from the altruistic public on fighting the malware offenders. Google’s Security blog requests more assistance on fighting the bad guys, noting that they’ve improved in the past year, citing the warnings they pop up when users click on a link where they’ve detected possible malware.

Here’s one suggestion I have: allow users to personalize Google so that if malware’s been detected, the links don’t appear in the SERPs at all. You could set this as a default setting for all users, and then allow those who desire unscreened results to just opt out of that.

If you’ll ban sites for getting overly aggressive at optimizing themselves to be found, why would you keep sites that may be deploying software to make zombies out of user’s PCs?

The request to help is one more good method for fighting malware, especially since sites can start deploying malware at any time, even right after Google has spidered them. However, I’d still be interested in hearing why a number of apparently legacy black hat tricks were able to work in the first place, which enabled this particular attack to have some teeth. Just last week, Matt Cutts noted another case of easy black hatters which they’ve recently caught.

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Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 12/02/2007 | Permalink | Email | Print