Google exec in BBC story makes much kerfuffle about search engine spam as an "arms race."
In keeping with this month's light posting sched., let this be the first of several anti-spam posts sprinkled into the light fluffy mix for the month:
Spam-Fightin' Sub-Folder #G-Traffick-0001: Spammers Share Revenue with Google
Two words: "AdSense sites." One part of Google creates and fosters an atmosphere where there is a financial incentive to create sites with AdSense ads on them. For those keeping score, close to half of Google's ad revenue, which makes up 97% of Google's total revenue, comes from AdSense. (That's a bit misleading, mind you -- the revenue share or "cost of revenues" is much higher on the AdSense side than on Google Search and search partner sites, so what it seemed to do in addition to giving Google the opportunity to place code on a lot of websites was to give them the "top line" heft that made Wall Street go ga-ga.) To best monetize those sites, of course the spammers will want to, well, spam the Google index full of pages containing AdSense ads. That adds up to "revenue on autopilot" at very low cost with no risk. What hacker wouldn't jump on that bandwagon? Indeed, the "pros" at this game will be better at fooling search algorithms than your garden-variety spammer, so after Google clamps down on linkspam, they'll already be onto the next tactic, snapping up pre-aged domains, links, etc. Meanwhile, good sites get caught in the crossfire, because there is so much bad stuff out there that the effort to catch it creates false positives. (Yes, I do understand not all sites showing AdSense are spammer-driven.) As the Google exec implies, the potential outcome is that search results turn into a yecchy mess.
So while the AdSense gang cheer the site-builders on, the "other" (search) part of Google then marvels at how tough the spam problem is, after they've helped to fund and indeed romanticize the AdSense-monetization-via-SEO effort. As one commentator pointed out, AdSense has become a kind of allowance for high school kids. 1999 all over again.
Isn't this self-inflicted pain, at least to some degree? From the standpoint of the moral high ground, as well as from a practical standpoint, Google must reconsider the extent of its AdSense program. They tie their own hands and give themselves less incentive to boot out these kinds of sites when - let's face it - the money acts as a pleasant buffer against the "problem" of users leaving Google for other sites. AdSense code also offers Google data on surfing habits, en masse.
Until Google curbs its addiction to AdSense revenue, their anti-spam efforts will probably lack teeth and conviction.
No, that won't mean there won't be other ad programs out there... but if those programs were run by other companies, you'd think Google would stiffen its stance against these crap sites, rather than being wishy-washy on them in practice.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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