Google has come under fire this month for becoming victim to webspam which spoofs search results. The search giant wishes to assure their users that they are on it and working to eradicate the "webspam" from their results.
Principal Engineer of Google, Matt Cutts describes webspam as the "junk you see in search results when websites try to cheat their way into higher positions in search results or otherwise violate search engine quality guidelines." Cutts goes on to mention in the official blog post regarding the topic, that the amount of "pure webspam" is quite low; however the methods are new and ever-changing.
Instead of simple webspam, there are now, what Cutts calls "content farms." These are the websites which are simply filled up with keywords to match your searches and usually appear shady or try to lure you into some kind of deal or into downloading some software. Google's answer was launching a "redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly." The new classifier indexes pages for certain keywords that typically show up on these content farms and spammy sites, which then flags the site in question and prevents it from getting a higher rank.
Time and time again Google has been accused of allowing sites that purchase advertisements gain higher search rankings, even if they are spammy. Matt Cutts wants to make it very clear that the advertisements websites buy and their search rank have no direct correlation and that the results are pure.
After the stories this month regarding Google's spammy search results, they are taking action to help improve the quality of their product, and hopefully to keep their users from flocking to alternate search providers such as the exponentially-growing search engine, Bing.
Google has introduced new features to help expedite the search process recently, such as Google Instant, and now continue to work to bring pure search results for the information you want.
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