I came across something really strange today. Doing a search on Google.com for Free Ringtones I saw a page with a url that started docs.google.com/, a page held on Google’s servers.

This result has appeared from nowhere to hold 4th place probably based on the fact that Google believes that pages from Google are to be trusted and will always score well in its own results.

Google Docs and spreadsheets is a beta program allowing people to create and share their work online. I doubt they gave much thought to this being abused and used to spam their own search engine.

The text on the page reads:

“Limited offer! Free Ringtones! Get free ringtones for any phone! It Is All Here! Huge range of Free Ringtones! The largest Selection of Free Ringtones! Thousands of Free Ringtones! Download Free Ringtones right now! The latest ringtones!

>>>Free Ringtones — click here <<< ”

When you click on the link it takes you via a redirected home.aol.com page to what looks like a set of 20 different affiliate links.

This page even looks like a set of Google results in that the fonts and colours are very similar to what you would expect to see on Google itself. The big giveaway though is apart from there not being a Google logo, the sponsored links leading to searches for “Penis Enlargement Pills, Buy Viagra, etc.

How long before we see docs.google.com returning results for those search terms as well?

Posted in Search Engines