Online Criminals and their SEO
Online criminals have taken to utilizing SEO techniques, by which legitimate websites use key words to boost their rankings on Internet searches, to make their websites rank organically high in the search engine results. By doing this the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN Live, are delivering natural search results to these sites which when visited trigger the installation of rougueware onto the unsuspecting searchers computer.
Rogueware is fake software that doesn’t do what it pretends to do, such as fake virus scanners that inform the user that they have been infected by the following viruses, and should they wish for them to be removed now by this virus scanner they will have to provide credit details for the one off purchase. Of course once the purchase is made, the ‘scanner’ no longer reports any viruses present.
The online criminals are including popular misspelled keyterms, page titles and content based around keywords such as "Obbama" and "Gogle," as well as words taken from Google Trends Labs. By targeting these terms the aim is for search engines to naturally deliver unsuspecting internet users and exploit their fears of viruses and trojans.
Research has indicated that the installation rate of these programs is between 7-12% whilst a further 2% will purchase the software. At 1.8 million unique visitors over a 16 days period these schemes are netting anywhere up to $10,000 USD per day.
SEO really does work and it can be used for good and not so good means. If used correctly the boost in business revenue and brand exposure can be huge.