Blekko Bans 1.1 Million Spammy Domains Via New Algorithm

Search engine Blekko says they’ve banned some 1.1 million spammy domain names from their search results. The banned domains are the result of a new algorithm the company has developed that looks at both poor quality content as well as the types of ads that the domains include along with the content. It’s part of their ongoing war, they say, against content farm and other very low quality content. It follows an action earlier this year where they banned twenty content farms from their results.

They’re calling the new algorithm “AdSpam.” “One of the strongest signals that a page is spam is aggressive participation in self-service
online advertising networks,” says the company. When they compare low quality sites (based on existing signals) and see lots of keyword based ads alongside that content, it’s very likely to be blocked.

“Domains with low quality content plus keyword ads are “machines that print money,” says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta. “Machines that print money will be exploited.”

Blekko is processing around 1 million search queries per day and has 500,000 unique monthly visitors, he says.