If there is a solution to search engine spam, no one's going to reveal it, according to experts at the MIT Spam Conference 2007 on Friday.
Nothing is going to change while there is money to be made off things like AdSense, Google's service for ads, according to speakers and audience participants debating the issue. On the other hand, the search engine that does come up with a working solution will want to keep that trick out of its competitors' hands.
"If you can't solve search engine spam, and the other guy does, your search engine is done at this point," said Bill Yerazunis, chairman of the annual MIT Spam Conference.
The situation seems to have led to a clam-up in the spam research community.
"You've heard our lead speakers about blog spam and search engine spam and that's going to get more interesting, but here's the thing. I put out the call, but I am not getting a lot of papers on search engine spam because, I think, independently companies think they have a profit in the solution," Yerazunis said.

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