SPAM Sites Infecting Revolution Health And Kosmix

SPAM sites are becoming a major problem in the health sector and something needs to be done to weed out the garbage that's out there.

You would think that you could trust major health portals like Revolution Health and vertical search engines like Kosmix that focus on health as one of their main areas of expertise to protect people from SPAM. But sadly they're not doing a good enough job and spammers are taking over their search results and tarnishing their credibility.

Here are two examples of searches I just did on Revolution Health which features Kosmix searches after their own search results. To illustrate the issue rather blatantly I did one search on the drug Viagra.  And a second search on the topic of Hair Loss. You'll see how the results are filled with SPAM sites:
 

No matter what health topic you are searching on, any credible health site should make it their mission to only deliver high quality results.  It's bad enough these black hat spammers even exist.  It's even worse when health sites with so much promise like Revolution Health let them infest their site.

Comments

[Saumil Mehta]

Thank you for your comments and feedback. I'm the product manager for Kosmix's Health vertical.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that spam is a major problem across the web and that nobody (including Kosmix) has nailed the solution. In a perfect world, this issue wouldn't exist and I look forward to Organised Wisdom's take on this problem.

I would also argue that some of results you pinpoint above use a fairly vague definition of web spam. Let's get down to the specifics of it:

Viagra: I'll be the first one to admit that the results you display above aren't the most relevant. We continue to work on search quality and will use your examples for feedback.

But simply because a site sells viagra does not make it spam. These sites are not domain parker pages or adsense-only pages. They *do* have content. Check out 4viagra.org for example. There are several sponsored links on the site, but there are also pages that provide useful information.

If you have other comments, please send them my way.

[Matthew Koll]

How curious that you chose to attack Revolution Health in your posting. You must realize that Revolution Health’s own search on Viagra,
http://www.revolutionhealth.com/search/results?src=global_header&ww_category=search&q=viagra
does not suffer from this problem at all, but rather returns a rich and relevant collection of articles from authoritative sources such as The Mayo Clinic, Alternative Medicine Magazine and Healthwise, news from sources like Reuters and Healthday, expert reviewed drug information, and treatment reviews from real users.

The “spam” you allude to is all contained within the Kosmix result set which we present below our own search results. We do that in order to provide our users with comprehensive and balanced information. We are very proud of the high quality original and licensed content we have assembled on our site. We also recognize that a “walled-garden” approach would not be in our users’ best interest, so we also show search results from the rest of the health web.

Kosmix, like Google and other web search services, has a continuing challenge in fighting spammers and others who try to unfairly influence their results. Even though web search results are not totally immune to such influences, we at Revolution Health think the inclusion of web search results is a net benefit for our users. We are happy to work with anyone we can to reduce spam and improve relevance.

Matthew Koll
Revolution Health

[Unity Stoakes]

Saumil and Matthew:

Thank you both for providing thoughtful responses to this issue. My intent is not to attack either Revolution Health or Kosmix as we happen to think both sites generally do a very good job and provide a great service for health seekers. But as you indicate this is becoming a bigger problem.

The real challenge as Saumil points out is how to help users get the best possible links on a given topic. It's not just providing results that have "information" on a topic. It is certainly a constant battle beating both Spammers (or aggressive marketers). I do not agree that all sites that simply sell a product and provide "information" are useful or helpful to people. I do agree that not all sites that sell a drug or a product should be considered spam sites so you make a great point. In fact, I will do a post later to clarify what we consider to be a SPAM Site and how to tell the difference in our opinion.

Matthew, I do not agree that Revolution Health should not be responsible for the search results being featured (even below the fold) from 3rd party sources. That just doesn't make sense. It isn't about creating a "walled garden"...it's about providing the very best, credible, quality information to people who need it. Revolution Health provides great content resources on these topics, but I don't agree that the additional links provided as search results (not sponsor ads) provide comprehensive or balanced information. If you want to provide a link to sites that sell a particular product, why not feature those in sponsor positions or simply link to 3 very credible resources that sell the product?

We're all in this fight against spammers together.