Microsoft has pointed a finger at Internet advertisers for fueling and funding junk websites. A group of Microsoft researchers has published a paper entitled "Spam Double-Funnel: Connecting Web Spammers with Advertisers" in which they outline the problem of search engine spam.

Junk websites and web pages are an integer part of the much larger spamming environment. But search engine spamming, while still being a limited phenomenon, threatens to take proportions. The Microsoft researchers have identified companies and techniques behind search engine spam. In this regard, junk websites and web pages are built and designed to attract legitimate traffic but only serve advertisements and nothing more. The technique behind the practice is intimately tied with manipulating the results returned to user queries via search engine optimization.

"Spammers use questionable search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to promote their spam links into top search results," reads a fragment of the Microsoft research paper. Microsoft's final goals with this paper and initiative are to provide a way for the operators of search engines to perfect their ranking algorithms, for legitimate website owners to manage spam doorway pages and for advertisers to identify syndicators that implement search spam techniques and use junk pages. For this, Microsoft has focused primarily on redirection spam.

"We propose a fivelayer, double-funnel model for describing end-to-end redirection spam, present a methodology for analyzing the layers, and identify prominent domains on each layer using two sets of commercial keywords - one targeting spammers and the other targeting advertisers," is also presented in the abstract.

Microsoft revealed that at the basis of the search spam phenomenon is a small group that builds false doorway pages and then collaborates with web-based operators to redirect traffic. The Redmond Company aims to deliver the necessary level of education in order to prevent users from clicking on spam links and ads.

"Ultimately, it is advertisers' money that is funding the search spam industry, which is increasingly cluttering the web with low quality content and reducing web users' productivity," the paper concludes.