Black Hat SEO, Search Engine Optimization for criminals, is slowly creeping onto thousands of websites in the UK. The sites, which are education or government based, include listings, links, or in some cases complete redirects, to sites selling bogus medical products such as Viagra, Cialis, porn and more.

The goal of the operation is to hijack the reputation of the legitimate site and to, “take advantage of the trust that search engines such as Google place on government websites and by placing a page on these trusted domains can quickly gain top search engine rankings without the effort of creating their own website,” Backup Technology said in an article on the issue.