Just because it's "Top 10," doesn't mean it's actually any good.
Where a website ranks in a search page matters a lot: About a quarter of all searchers click on the first link and very few click through to page 2. Search engines even capitalize on this fact by selling ad space that sits at the top of search results, usually marked with the word “Ad,” before serving up organic results.
While the major search engines don’t share their exact criteria, there are entire industries built around trying to figure them out — and then game them. Because most consumers think that the best rises to the top when it comes to online search (and, to some degree, that’s true), skilled scammers can take advantage of the system. They utilize search engine optimization — or SEO — to either push subpar products up the rankings or to serve up straight up scams.
Here are some tips on how to spot a scammy search result.
Scam: The deal looks too good to be true.
The Avast Threat Intelligence Team did a deep dive on how scammers were gaming search engine results to deliver malicious links that either steal financial information or get a searcher to download malware. One of the top ways to identify a scam like this is if a deal just looks too good to be true. Do you really think people are giving away iPhones? Or all expenses paid trips? Or anything else that feels very, very tempting — and very unlikely?
Another example of a “too good to be true” scam is when a company offers a significantly lower quote than every ..
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