The sources of most spam blogs - the scourge of legitimate search marketers as well as searchers themselves - have been found, according to the New York Times.
The findings come from research done by two Microsofts search engineers. In a newly published paper, the pair of researchers claim to have discovered that most spam blogs originate from a small group of bad actors. Just two web hosts, they say, are responsible for the majority of illegitimate sites.

Likewise, 68 percent of ads on those sites were served by just three syndicators. The paper reports that over 30 percent of search results for terms such as "drugs" and "ring tone" will be from spam sites.

The report does, however, lay some of the blame at the feet of the advertisers that shell out money to the online ad market. Some of that winds up driving the growth of spam sites, which then clutter search result pages.

Google's Blogspot blogging platform is a major tool for spam site creators, according to the Microsoft researchers.