Sounds familiar…

As soon as postal mail delivery started (it wasn’t called smail mail then), junk mail was not far behind. After email, spam quickly followed. With the proliferation of fax machines, the junk fax industry grew rapidly until junk faxing was outlawed and Congress gave recipients a private cause of action (hint, hint, FTC).

Now that Microsoft is jumping into Search, all their resources are already coming up with some sharp observations. For example, Microsoft Search Scientists have estimated that as much as 8% of all web pages are spam. In fact, their top-notch scientists have discovered a web page that dynamically creates text-filled pages and links to a porn site. Duh.

The good news is that MS appears to think that their differentiator in the marketplace is to do a better job filtering out spam. Cool. That’s the kind of competition that Google and, especially, Yahoo need.

Unlike email spam which could be solved in a heartbeat with a law like the federal junkfax law, search engine spam resides on a spammer’s own servers. It only gets into the search engines because the bots crawl and index the spammer’s site. Of course, the search engines are free to “ban,” penalize, or otherwise discourage this behavior. But it’s not illegal (or even unethical for that matter) — depending on whom you ask.

But 8% is an interesting estimate. I hope that doesn’t increase at the same rate of email spam. Unlike email spam, a few search engines with smart people and money have the power to control spam.

The sooner the better.