4 ms·

Spam is actually quite easy to detect. Email spam has been "tamed" on most mainstream providers - you still get some of it, but nowhere near the amounts you get

Spam is actually quite easy to detect. Email spam has been "tamed" on most mainstream providers - you still get some of it, but nowhere near the amounts you get on the web. The problem is that Google is not incentivised to provide you with good results for multiple reasons: * good results means not only you spend less time on the search results page, but you are less likely to click on an ad. Spam results make the ads more attractive in comparison and may solicit more clicks. * spam sites often contain Google Ads and/or Analytics, so spam results also indirectly contribute to Google's revenue. * websites (whether spam or not) are relatively more likely to pay Google (for ads, analytics, GTM, etc) than end-users, so even a 1% false positive rate on the spam detection would be bad for business, where as feeding spam search results to end-users doesn't affect business at all as long as the search engine is free and there's no good competition Spam results are trivial to detect should there be an incentive to do so: use the presence of ads, analytics or affiliate links as a negative ranking signal. Spam sites can't easily conceal those either because the same techniques they'd use are also used for ad fraud and would be forbidden by their advertisers/affiliates/etc.

johndough 4y ago
Spam has been tamed, but at what cost? I now have to pay for a commercial service to deliver my mail because jumping though all the hoops to get the mails from my own mail server accepted by major email providers is just not worth it anymore.
herbst 4y ago
I've run a email related service for a while. It was a constant battle with spam, scam and infrastructure attacks for more spam. It's not tamed at all, at best it's hidden for a part of the users but in reality there is far more spam than actual emails.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > at best it's hidden for a part of the users But that's still better than the current situation with regards to SEO and web spam?
wizofaus 4y ago
> Email spam has been "tamed" on most mainstream providers - you still get some of it, but nowhere near the amounts you get on the web. Weird, my experience is the exact opposite. Maybe once a week I click on a promising looking web search result to find that it's essentially "spam". But every single day I get multiple emails that are obviously so, and worse, if I don't check my junk folder frequently I miss important emails.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  What email provider are you using? On Office 365 I get barely anything. One a week at best that actually makes it to the inbox, which seems very tame compared to just about any general-purpose search engine query.
  - dagw 4y ago
    On Office 365 I get barely anything Both my wife and I have Office 365 at our respective places of work. I get maybe one spam mail a month into my inbox, my wife gets several a day and we both only use our work email strictly for work. So there is some factor beyond just email provider that makes a huge difference.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    I have O365, hotmail & gmail accounts - O365 I only use for work and virtually never use the address for anything except a few work-related services, plus it's a new address so sure, that's spam free (so far). If MS have actually found a way to accurately filter out spam on O365 they definitely haven't applied the same tech to hotmail/live mail. Gmail's no any better (though I only use that account rarely).
sharikous 4y ago
All of that is because of their monopoly. If people had a choice of good search engines available they would pick the ones with good results. The issue is that it is very difficult and expensive to create a good search engine ex novo. Maybe political action (ideally itself incentivized by the need to get votes) could change that but I don't think things will improve
DebtDeflation 4y ago
The problem has gone far beyond spam of the "doctors hate this one little trick" variety. Have you looked at Google Shopping results (which are now prominently displayed at the upper right of the search results page if it detected you were looking for a product), recently? A significant number of the results are outright fraud from fake websites. During the pandemic when it was impossible to find a bicycle anywhere, you could search for a popular model name and be presented with dozens of purportedly in stock bikes at or below MSRP. Every single one of the listings would take you to a web retailer, based in Asia, that was completely fraudulent. Most of the sites would have been created within the last couple of day (to avoid negative reviews when you searched the shop name) so there was no way that something like PageRank was organically producing those results (and these were not explicitly labeled ads, these were showing up in the Shopping results section where the Knowledge Graph usually went).

johndough 4y ago

Spam has been tamed, but at what cost? I now have to pay for a commercial service to deliver my mail because jumping though all the hoops to get the mails from my own mail server accepted by major email providers is just not worth it anymore.

herbst 4y ago

I've run a email related service for a while. It was a constant battle with spam, scam and infrastructure attacks for more spam. It's not tamed at all, at best it's hidden for a part of the users but in reality there is far more spam than actual emails.

Nextgrid 4y ago
> at best it's hidden for a part of the users But that's still better than the current situation with regards to SEO and web spam?

wizofaus 4y ago

> Email spam has been "tamed" on most mainstream providers - you still get some of it, but nowhere near the amounts you get on the web. Weird, my experience is the exact opposite. Maybe once a week I click on a promising looking web search result to find that it's essentially "spam". But every single day I get multiple emails that are obviously so, and worse, if I don't check my junk folder frequently I miss important emails.

Nextgrid 4y ago
What email provider are you using? On Office 365 I get barely anything. One a week at best that actually makes it to the inbox, which seems very tame compared to just about any general-purpose search engine query.
- dagw 4y ago
  On Office 365 I get barely anything Both my wife and I have Office 365 at our respective places of work. I get maybe one spam mail a month into my inbox, my wife gets several a day and we both only use our work email strictly for work. So there is some factor beyond just email provider that makes a huge difference.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  I have O365, hotmail & gmail accounts - O365 I only use for work and virtually never use the address for anything except a few work-related services, plus it's a new address so sure, that's spam free (so far). If MS have actually found a way to accurately filter out spam on O365 they definitely haven't applied the same tech to hotmail/live mail. Gmail's no any better (though I only use that account rarely).

sharikous 4y ago

All of that is because of their monopoly. If people had a choice of good search engines available they would pick the ones with good results. The issue is that it is very difficult and expensive to create a good search engine ex novo. Maybe political action (ideally itself incentivized by the need to get votes) could change that but I don't think things will improve

DebtDeflation 4y ago

The problem has gone far beyond spam of the "doctors hate this one little trick" variety. Have you looked at Google Shopping results (which are now prominently displayed at the upper right of the search results page if it detected you were looking for a product), recently? A significant number of the results are outright fraud from fake websites. During the pandemic when it was impossible to find a bicycle anywhere, you could search for a popular model name and be presented with dozens of purportedly in stock bikes at or below MSRP. Every single one of the listings would take you to a web retailer, based in Asia, that was completely fraudulent. Most of the sites would have been created within the last couple of day (to avoid negative reviews when you searched the shop name) so there was no way that something like PageRank was organically producing those results (and these were not explicitly labeled ads, these were showing up in the Shopping results section where the Knowledge Graph usually went).