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MSN to Filter Search Engine Spam?
June 7, 2004

Microsoft announced today that they would be incorporating a new filtering technology into their "forthcoming" MSN Search which will clear the search results of spam.

First of all, we have all heard this claim before, and every filtering system has failed. For every "hacker-proof system" out there, there is a hacker that breaks it. Machines and computers, regardless of their sophistication, cannot match the reasoning and deductive ability of the human brain. What Microsoft is claiming may be true, but for the short term. Spammers will find a way around the system. They always do.

The company unveiled a research project at its Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View which uses statistical analysis to locate spam web pages.

A spam web page is designed solely to fool search engines by linking keywords to web pages that the spammer wants to show up high in the search results.

Spammers are increasingly trying to weasel their way into search engine results, and Microsoft hopes that filtering them out can be one area where its tool can outshine Google's.

In a sample of one billion web pages that Microsoft tracked for the research project, the company found that eight per cent were spam.

Microsoft continues to push the release of the long awaited MSN Search back and it is highly doubtful they will make the July release a reality.