Google Poisoning

I have long railed against the notion of “Search Engine Optimization”. I consider it to be nothing more than scam artistry. To try to make one’s living by luring legitimate search traffic to your shady business operation is a very slimy thing to do.

Today, I had a problem getting a workstation to obtain a DHCP address via DHCP relay to a different subnet while using a Symantec Ghost boot disk. I turned to Google, with the specific terms “ghost pxe boot dhcp relay”.

I found nothing immediately useful, but kept paging through the results, hoping for some buried gem. On page 9 of my search results, I saw these (which have been obfuscated and unlinked to prevent additional Google Juice going their way):

Who really thinks that someone looking for Ghost PXE boot information is going to click on a link to a mortgage site? Or a driving instruction site? I know I’ve occasionally been misled by search results to click a spammer’s clever link; but the links above are in no way confusing: they’re blatantly false.

I hate Search Engine Optimization, and I have zero respect for those who pursue it. They make the internet harder to use for everyone in the short-sighted pursuit of their own venal goals.