Search Engines to increase action to detect and penalise spam SEO techniques

Internet marketing consultants may like to consider revising their search engine optimisation strategies as new research has revealed that spammers are increasingly affecting the industry.

Findings from Symantec MessageLabs' latest study revealed that average spam levels throughout the year reached 87.7 per cent, although highs of 90.4 per cent were seen in May.

And in February, messages with hyperlinks were sent to a number of big search engines that were responsible for a lot of the recession-based spam at this time.

This suggests that search engines will now be working harder in order to distinguish between rogue and quality content, which in turn may make it more difficult for online businesses to appear in results pages.

And Econsultancy's Meghan Keane agrees with this sentiment, noting that, for spammers, reaching the top of the search results page - however briefly - "can be a huge win with little effort expended".

"2009 was the year that the threat landscape sharpened its skills, rather than just relying on large spam runs and malware attacks," Symantec MessageLabs' senior analyst Paul Wood remarked.

He added that developments in technology, as well as more sophisticated and efficient variants had been seen and, over the last 12 months, more than double the amount of spam campaigns appeared on the web - 21 million.