I ran across this a few months myself while searching for bicycle info. Note that this is completely different than the spam content (SO, eFreedom, etc.) issue.
I wanted to learn more about the bianchi infinito and what I found was a number of web stores selling bicycles at impossible prices. I mean oscommerce or zencart or whatever instances of legitimate looking web stores. Then when you look closer they're mostly in Indonesia and in order to complete the purchase you have to bank wire the money.
I think it's spilling over from alibaba and similar sites where 99% of the vendors are scams. Now those vendors are creating whole ecommerce web presences to make their scam sales.
The stores I saw didn't usually make the first page of results. Usually third or fourth. Sometimes second. Anyway I was a bit shocked out how many fake stores there were and how they ranked as highly as many legitimate bike shops.
I think I would be interested in having the option to filter out all search results for shopping sites. There already is Google Product Search for that.
I wanted to learn more about the bianchi infinito and what I found was a number of web stores selling bicycles at impossible prices. I mean oscommerce or zencart or whatever instances of legitimate looking web stores. Then when you look closer they're mostly in Indonesia and in order to complete the purchase you have to bank wire the money.
I think it's spilling over from alibaba and similar sites where 99% of the vendors are scams. Now those vendors are creating whole ecommerce web presences to make their scam sales.
The stores I saw didn't usually make the first page of results. Usually third or fourth. Sometimes second. Anyway I was a bit shocked out how many fake stores there were and how they ranked as highly as many legitimate bike shops.