Big problems in the search engine world

Something big is about to happen.

There are major issues with CSS spam and the use of stylesheets for a new kind of cloaking. And even more pressing is the numerous reports of 302 hijackings. Unscrupulous sites are using 302 redirects to blast legitimate sites out of the search results. This can happen in as little as one day. And it’s not new: the problem has been around for years, but now it’s hit critical mass – sites are hijacking all of the sites in the Open Directory (ODP) and Google is most definitely being directly affected.

I don’t know what will come out of this, but one thing’s for sure: search engines are going to change in a big way, and soon.

What change can they make? As long as there is a commercial component to the web, people are going to take advantage of search engines. I don’t know how relevant results can come out of a sea of sites including hijacker sites that perfectly imitate legitimate ones.

References
http://www.utterbollocks.com/2005/03/all-of-earth-dot-com-302s-dmoz.html
http://www.tonyspencer.com/mt/archives/2004/12/tracker2php_pag_1.htm
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/28612-22-10.htm
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/2002
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/03/23/1446237.shtml?tid=217&tid=1
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/28650-1-30.htm
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/28329.htm
http://clsc.net/research/google-302-page-hijack.htm