In that e-mail was a share customer number, and a link to the Lloyds TSB registrars website, where shares could be sold, albeit on a conditional basis pending formal acceptance of Egg on to the stock market on 19 June.
Since Google ranks results based on the number of Web pages that link to them, cyber-criminals added thousands of links to their pages on forums and blog comment sections around the Web, pushing their pages to the top of the search engine's results.