Search engine spam now an issue

There is a growing online trend of writing to please search engines instead of people, reports Information Week.

Content optimised for successful search results ranges from informative articles to incoherent copy stuffed with keywords, an annoyance that`s being labelled "search-engine spam".

Articles with popular keywords can generate significant traffic for Web sites, giving site owners a financial incentive to host content that will rank near the top of search results. A cottage industry has been formed to help people do this.

Google`s Webmaster guidelines warn against crafting copy for its search engine: "Make pages for users, not for search engines," it reads. Search engines don`t hesitate to remove from their rankings sites violating the policy. But that hasn`t stopped many from trying.

Just as legitimate e-mail marketers feel the backlash against spammers, well-intentioned search-engine marketers may suffer if tricksters persist, says Chris Winfield, president and co-founder of search-engine marketing company 10e20 LLC. "One of the most important things for any search engine is people having confidence and becoming repeat users."

Sony will next year digitise its top 500 movies and make them available for mobile devices including cellphones, portable media centres and the Sony PSP game console, says Sony Pictures VP Michael Arrieta.

"We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like [Apple chief Steve] Jobs did for music, but for the film industry," he says.

Sony will try to leverage the box office successes it owns, such as Spider-Man or Hitch, to lead a trend to be as successful in mobile movies as Apple is in mobile music, reports Ubergizmo.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) may advance the launch of its dual-core Opteron 200 and 800 series processors to the middle of the second quarter, according to sources at Taiwan server makers.

The launch was originally scheduled for the third quarter of this year.

AMD declined to confirm the news but indicated that the release date should be some time in the middle of this year as originally planned, reports PC Pro. AMD also plans to begin offering certifications for its 'Pacifica` virtualisation technology to software developers and systems service providers from April, according to the company. Pacifica will be integrated into AMD`s complete line-up of client and server processors in the first half of 2006.

The Mozilla Foundation is offering a cash prize, or "bug bounties", for users who identify previously unknown security bugs in the open source software in an effort to provide a more secure Internet experience to Web users.

Michael Krax from Germany has received five bug bounties for a total of $2 500 (R15 500), says Mozilla engineering director Chris Hoffmann.

"We developed the bug bounty programme to encourage and award community members who identify unknown bugs in the software."

According to Search Engine Journal, the Bug Bounty programme was founded in 2004 with funding from Linspire and Mark Shuttleworth. Since its inception, the Mozilla Foundation has awarded bug bounties to five participants.