Search Advertising Gatekeepers The Pending Online Security Wars

iEntry 10th Anniversary

RSS

Contact

Search, Advertising, Gatekeepers, & The Pending Online Security Wars

By: Aaron Wall
2007-06-27

As email filtering gets better many of the true scammers of the web are shifting to distributing adware on websites. As terrorism is used to help politicians push their agendas, fear marketing and the concept of security are only going to grow in importance online as well.

Search, Advertising, Gatekeepers, & The Pending Online Security Wars

Google vs Microsoft

Google already highlights some websites that might distribute malware in their search results and promoted research showing that Microsoft computers were twice as likely as Apache servers to distribute malware. In addition Google bought GreenBorder, perhaps to help them make an anti-virus / anti-spyware software program.

GreenBorder's Ulfar Erlingsson moved over to Microsoft Research. Microsoft is also pushing a suite of integrated anti-virus and anti-spyware service.

All Search Engines Link to Scammers

In May McAfee did a study on the safety of search results, noting that the paid search ads are far more likely to scam consumers than the organic listings by over a 2 to 1 ratio:

The improvement in search engine safety is primarily due to safer sponsored results. The percentage of risky sites dropped from 8.5% in May 2006 to 6.9% in May 2007. However, sponsored results still contain 2.4 times as many risky sites as organic results.What is spam? What is a scam? Whoever is the trusted source for those limits gets to shift markets overnight. Google shows warnings near organic results leading to bad sites, but you never see that warning on an ad. The fact that the ads are over twice as likely to lead you to a scam as the regular search results shows the value of being trusted as the security police.

What People Forget About Efficient Ad Networks

Up to some point efficiency comes easy, but after you get to a certain point increased efficiency comes in the form of hidden risks, hidden costs, and outright fraud. It is a reflection of the nature of capitalism. Many of the tools that aim to protect you are hypocritical beyond belief. For example, SpamArrest, an email spam protection service, ironically spammed people via email.

How Valuable is Security?

As data collection gets more aggressive, and ad networks sell ads to scammers, being the company that is trusted for security is a big deal from a financial standpoint. Calling something unsafe gives ad networks another chance to monetize the user experience.

In the past Microsoft incorrectly labeled one of my sites as a phishing site.
My girlfriend just got a new laptop, and at the top of her IE browser was a huge Norton banner stating fraud monitoring is on.
Verizon recently launched a service that redirects typos so they can cash in, just like VeriSign tried to do.

How to Protect Yourself From the Security Wars

Use a short memorable domain name on a common TLD, so few capture typo traffic intended for your site
use home grown software if possible
keep your software updated
place community and interactive parts of your site on isolated domains or subdomains if they are known to get cracked (like PHPBB)
only link to trustworthy sites (if you have a community section keep it clean as well)
build signs of trust (links, subscribers, usage data)
minimize the amount of cursing done on your site or it might get flagged as being pornography, like mine recently did...as noted by an SEO Book reader who sent me this image from the Kansas City airport

Comments

Tag: Search, Security

Add to

Del.icio.us |

Digg |

Reddit |

Furl

Have a bookmark! -

About the Author:
Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, a dynamic website offering marketing tips and coverage of the search space, free SEO videos, and free SEO tools. He is a regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and publishes dozens of independent websites.

Do you have a search site?
Submit it free to the internet's best search industry directory. » Click Here

Search Engines
Google, Yahoo, MSN...

Search Marketing
Marketing, Budget, Planning...

Pay Per Click
Bid, Price, Quality...

SEO Companies
Optimization, Manage, Company...

SEO Tools
Track, Search, Create...

Analytics
Statistics, Counter...

» Submit your site for FREE «

More...

Get Your Site Submitted for Free in the World's Largest B2B Directory!

Email Address:
* URL:
*
*Indicates Mandatory Field

Terms & Conditions


Titan Quest Forum	Nintendo Wii	Graphics Forum
Halo 3 Forum	Mac Software