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Yeah, I love Ars, but Dan is definitely their weakest writer. The article is about scammers buying ad space on google to rank their malware above the legitimate

Yeah, I love Ars, but Dan is definitely their weakest writer. The article is about scammers buying ad space on google to rank their malware above the legitimate google search results. Installing an ad blocker is a great solution.

macintux 4y ago
Typical ad blockers surely don’t filter out Google search results.
- coldpie 4y ago
  The search results are not the problem. The ads are. Ads are placed above search results, so users are more likely to be mislead by them. Installing an ad blocker removes the misleading ads, leaving only the legitimate search results.
  - whstl 4y ago
    Not entirely, unfortunately, at least on my experience. Putting the keyword "download" after the name of software, ebooks, or music will lead into weird websites that distribute malware, and they rank very high. I just tried searching for an old Game Programming book I happen to have. There's two piracy sites, then one site with a "Download" button that gives me a DMG with an executable. Those are above Archive.org, the official github repo of the book and the official website. For music download, I searched some Bowie. There's Amazon... plus a few pages of of weird websites that I have no idea what they are, but look like "paid piracy", they either ask for credit card or give me a DMG which supposedly has a downloader. For software I searched the one I made by the company I work at. There's stuff like Filehorse, Softonic (I don't even know if they're legit), then there's a few which look like those aggregators but end up giving you malware when downloading. That's with ads blocked, and subscription to several lists. In the end IMO this is terrible for small businesses, people will end up distrusting anything that's not Amazon or anything that they try to search organically, or they'll get malware.
    - dvngnt_ 4y ago
      that's slightly different. piracy is a known vector for distributing malware. this is more for general searches or software with no paid option. google should deindex scam sites, but this is easier said than done. however they should NEVER have paid ads for malware as they're directly profiting from malware
  - antihero 4y ago
    Every example in this article is using ads not gaming SEO
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Google is an ad platform the ads are the problems. Installing an ad blocker does not solve the problem. At best it hides the problem. The issue here is you're looking at this as a 'you' problem and not an 'everyone' problem. If you block ads that's not a problem. When everyone does it Google will change how the page renders in such a manner that your adblocker is worthless. And then you're back to it being a you problem. You cannot disentangle the search and the ads any more than you can disentangle being human and needing oxygen to survive.

macintux 4y ago

Typical ad blockers surely don’t filter out Google search results.

coldpie 4y ago
The search results are not the problem. The ads are. Ads are placed above search results, so users are more likely to be mislead by them. Installing an ad blocker removes the misleading ads, leaving only the legitimate search results.
- whstl 4y ago
  Not entirely, unfortunately, at least on my experience. Putting the keyword "download" after the name of software, ebooks, or music will lead into weird websites that distribute malware, and they rank very high. I just tried searching for an old Game Programming book I happen to have. There's two piracy sites, then one site with a "Download" button that gives me a DMG with an executable. Those are above Archive.org, the official github repo of the book and the official website. For music download, I searched some Bowie. There's Amazon... plus a few pages of of weird websites that I have no idea what they are, but look like "paid piracy", they either ask for credit card or give me a DMG which supposedly has a downloader. For software I searched the one I made by the company I work at. There's stuff like Filehorse, Softonic (I don't even know if they're legit), then there's a few which look like those aggregators but end up giving you malware when downloading. That's with ads blocked, and subscription to several lists. In the end IMO this is terrible for small businesses, people will end up distrusting anything that's not Amazon or anything that they try to search organically, or they'll get malware.
  - dvngnt_ 4y ago
    that's slightly different. piracy is a known vector for distributing malware. this is more for general searches or software with no paid option. google should deindex scam sites, but this is easier said than done. however they should NEVER have paid ads for malware as they're directly profiting from malware
- antihero 4y ago
  Every example in this article is using ads not gaming SEO
- pixl97 4y ago
  Google is an ad platform the ads are the problems. Installing an ad blocker does not solve the problem. At best it hides the problem. The issue here is you're looking at this as a 'you' problem and not an 'everyone' problem. If you block ads that's not a problem. When everyone does it Google will change how the page renders in such a manner that your adblocker is worthless. And then you're back to it being a you problem. You cannot disentangle the search and the ads any more than you can disentangle being human and needing oxygen to survive.