How Shady Developers Are Tricking Google’s Chrome Web Store
Google has rules which don't allow any spam tactics and irrelevant words. Those rules are being broken by developers who create huge lists of unrelated keywords. This makes theirs Chrome extensions pop up in search results that barely match their actual purpose. You can notice that if you search for something and you find a bunch of unrelated tools or imitations. Some of them can even be dangerous.
The strategy that developers use involves rewriting the extension’s description in multiple languages. A developer may write a regular description in English and that is what everyone sees. In hidden parts and fields thousands of keywords can be written. Google’s search engine algorithm then picks those keywords up, and automatically lists the extension higher in the results. Some developers have used over 18,000 such keywords, letting them cheat the search system.
Security researchers discovered hundreds of these extensions, many of them were made by the same small groups of developers. They previously warned Google about this action and it claims it’s aware of the problem, but nothing important has changed. There is no clear explanation of what or when Google will actually do something about this problem. This means we should all stay cautious when we browse the Chrome Web Store. Special red alert is if an extension doesn’t match our search or it contains names that don’t fit. The best way is to choose official or trusted developers, check user feedback and try to find suspicious keywords. If something doesn’t seem to be legit, it is always good choice to avoid installing it.