Google Search Engine Results Compromised By Interesting Technique

Today Google took a big hit in my opinion. They allowed a group of scammers to infiltrate their search engine result pages with "Faux Google" search pages. This is how I discovered it.

I was doing some work for Stoneham Ford in Massachusetts and went to Google to do a search using this phrase “Ford memorial day sale”.

Showing up on Google Page One , there were two listings that were very odd because of their sub-domain structure:

• http://2009-ford-memorial-day-sale.futuremark.us
• http://fords-2009-memorial-day-sales.wohviesie.us

Oddly, on Google page two there were these four similar domains.

• http://ford-memorial-day-car-specials.valleywag.us
• http://ford-memorial-day-incentive.upublish.us
• http://ford-memorial-day-offer.ugqualitynet.us
• http://2000-ford-memorial-day.blackmice.us

I actually called Stacey Berlin at home to ask her if she was seeing the same thing. I thought my computer might have been infected with a virus. The good news was that Stacey saw the same thing but the bad news was that the integrity of Google index was compromised.

Is there a good strategy to learn from this? Let's look further.

Faux Google Search Engine Pages

When you click on these links you will see that there is an attempt to make the page look like a search result but when in fact, the entire page is a link farm and a Pay-Per-Click mess. The scheme is using long tail keywords as a sub-domain to a main website that does not have any pages.

Now IF you type in a search phrase in this Faux Google search page and click the “search” button, you will notice that all the search results all change to include your search phrases. Wow, this is a bear trap.

I’m surprised that Google hasn’t picked up on this scheme which looks to confuse the public. I just wanted to bring it you’re your attention so you don’t waste your time clicking on these pay-per-click or phishing scheme pages.

Are Long Tail Sub-Domains Viable?

The technique brings up some interesting thoughts about Car Dealer SEO or general web strategies that include sub-domains with long tail search phrases. If these pages were not a big scam, and a real Ford dealer, you wonder how much organic search traffic the pages would pull.

Should we test long tail sub-domains off our proven, highly ranked websites? I don’t have an answer for this yet since all my sub-domains in the past have been one word. Looks like I have another thing to test.