Spam SEO pages used to be very easy to spot: no Javascript, no style sheets, no images, etc. and usually just a single link. They only text on the page relevant to the spam was generally a set of short paragraphs, as shown below:
 |
| Typical old-style SEO spam page Recently however, these pages have been changed to look more like a regular web page. They look like a web page taken out of a news site, with multiple columns, images, links to legitimate sites, Javascript, etc. You have to look closer to realize that the text does not make sense - words are cut in the middle, images are not related to the content, and the style is not quite right (misalignment, overflows, etc.) |
 |
| New style of SEO spam pages on the hacked site brooklyngoesveg.com |
These pages are much harder to recognize as computer-generated spam. At first glance, they look like legitimate pages. Fortunately, spammers still use the same type of URLs. The screenshot above was taken from hxxp://www.brooklyngoesveg.com/xmlrpc.php/?showc=williams+syndrome, where the search term "Williams syndrome" is part of the query string.
Another common layout for spam pages mimics MTV's website:
 |
| Spam page looks like MTV's site |
Spammers and attackers are constantly innovating to stay under the radar. This is another step to hide their malicious intent from the search engines.
-- Julien
