There’s a new kind of blackhat affiliate spam or at least this is the 1st I’ve heard about it. It occurs when search engines allow users to edit search listings. In this particular example we’re zeroing in on hotel searches on Yahoo Local.

Affiliate Map Spam

Now on the local listing page above the url shows, so the Marriott or a user may notice something is odd about the link. However check this out. On the Yahoo search results page (not Yahoo local), where they show the map results, the link that says “Official Site” (with the green check mark that implies it’s the real deal) appears to be a direct link to the Marriott, but isn’t - it’s a CJ link that redirects to the “Official Site”. (The SEL article below says it redirects to 2 different CJ links before resolving at the Marriott and I wasn’t aware CJ links resolved twice so maybe the affiliate is even double dipping somehow?)

Technically IMHO, even though the listings above are on Yahoo, it’s Marriott’s listing and it should be Marriot’s direct site link. The affiliate is scamming a commission they don’t deserve. An article at Search Engine Land calls it theft and asks not only if this could be considered a crime the affiliate could be prosecuted for, but whether Yahoo or other search engines could be considered “complicit in any potential crime” as well, because they allow public editing of the search results.

A New Scourge For Yahoo: Affiliate Mapspam “There’s a new species of mapspam that’s particularly obnoxious: affiliate mapspam, first reported at the eClick Performance Blog. With the search engines’ new open policies allowing even non-owners of businesses to edit local business listings, unscrupulous affiliates take advantage of a loophole by editing unclaimed hotel records, changing the URL so that it first points to an affiliate tracking link, and then ultimately redirecting the searcher to the hotel’s official website. This tactic earns the affiliate a referral fee for any reservations made. The affiliate interjects themselves, invisibly to the searcher, between the end user and the hotel, for sole purpose of collecting an essentially unearned profit…

…Additionally, this type of affiliate spam raises a number of ethical, legal and technical questions for Yahoo and any service that allows this type of trade.

* What mechanisms do the search engines have in place to protect these hotels?
* How much has it cost the hotels to date?
* Should the search engines have more readily available reporting mechanisms?
* Who really is at fault and has a crime been committed? If so what crime and in what jurisdiction?
* Are the search engines complicit in any potential crime?
* Should there be government regulation of online business listings to address this sort of practice?”

Calacanis accused affiliates of “polluting the web” well now they’re polluting our maps too. But Jason, it’s not the average honest affiliate that’s polluting the web, it’s blackhatters. Different breed IMHO!

Hopefully someone at CJ will see this post and take the appropriate steps.