Microsoft give us a look behind their spam detection system called “Strider Search Defender“. Heh. A rather macho name for applied mathematical geekery, don’t you think?

Microsoft reveal their approach in detecting blog spam. They are using a context-based approach that uses URL-redirection analysis to pinpoint spammers. In the process, they out a few interesting techniques, not to mention sites.

Well, it’s nice to see a search engine being a bit more open It’s also nice that someone is talking about solutions, other than the quite useless nofollow. I suspect they may also have other motives:

“Similarly, advertisement syndicators can detect potential spammers by monitoring those customers who serve ads on a huge number of different URLs through a single account because it is highly unlikely that anyone can generate quality content at that scale”

Gosh! I wonder who they mean….