Is Adsense Killing Google?

from the flipping-it-around dept

Last Friday, the Motley Fool had an interesting article that's getting some discussion about how Google is killing the internet. The argument is basically that Google killed its own golden goose of Adwords, with its introduction of Adsense contextual advertising for other sites. Once that began, so began a huge (and ever growing) industry of creating totally bogus sites whose only purpose is to run Adsense ads and collect money. Because of this, the author feels, the internet has become so cluttered with crap, that basic things like search are no longer particularly useful. That's a bit extreme, and while the article claims Google's overwhelming position atop the search leader boards makes it impossible to "self-correct" that seems unlikely. If advertisers feel they're getting bogus clicks, they're going to start to opt-out of buying ads on content sites. The real issue is that there still hasn't been a great competitor to Adsense. However, that may be changing. Yahoo and Microsoft have been planning such competitors for ages (Yahoo's been testing one such competitor). Amazon has talked about coming up with its own Adsense competitor as well. However, it seems like the real challenge is much more likely to come not from a copycat offering, but from something that provides a different and better experience. eBay, who is increasingly competing with Google, is getting set to launch an offering that will let people put auction content directly on their site, allowing the site owners to make money from successful transactions. It's a recognition that there's more to monetization than just Adsense. However, in the meantime, with so little competition, the vicious circle of the Google search/advertising machine could be chipping into its own armor. As more bogus sites put up more Adsense, and then try to game Google, does it increasingly hurt Google not just from advertisers getting pissed off at worthless clicks, but also worsen Google's organic search results? So far, it hasn't seemed that way, but it's interesting to think that Google's own success in helping others monetize websites could cause it additional problems as well.
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  • identicon
    Jonus, 12 Jun 2006 @ 4:10am

    Ummmmm...

    You do realize that your very own host, TechDirt.com, uses AdSense in the way that you criticize. As I type this, I can look to the right to view AdSense ads about a "Free Adwords Secret Guide" and "Want to Make Money Online".

    I agree that there are a bunch of bogus sites out there trying to turn AdSense into $$$. However, there are also a lot of quality sites out there with no previous way to cash in on their content and AdSense provides an easy and nice way to do it.

    The problem is enforcement of the TOS. Google AdSense has strict policies and guidelines. There are people out there taking advantage of AdSense and until Google ups the ante on policy enforcement, there will be webspam.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Scooter, 12 Jun 2006 @ 4:40am

      Re: Ummmmm...

      No, Techdirt does not use adsense in the way that it is critisizing.

      Techdirt is a website that has a lot of interesting content, adsense helps support it through ad revenue.

      What it is talking about is when you google something looking for a relevant website, and all you find is page after page of websites that have no real content.. only a bunch of adsense ads.

      I think that google should crack down on these bogus sites a bit more in order to preserve the quality of google and make the internet a slightly better place

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      EdB, 12 Jun 2006 @ 1:00pm

      Re: Ummmmm...

      You see ads on the right? I see "Techdirt CI", and empty box called "Sponsors" and "Related Stuff". Maybe I'm not seeing your internet because I use Firefox with the NoScript extension?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 13 Jun 2006 @ 12:56am

      Re: Ummmmm...

      I use Firefox. I don't see the ads of which you speak. IE is for noobz!

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    j.a.m., 12 Jun 2006 @ 4:55am

    your right!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    j.m.s, 12 Jun 2006 @ 5:00am

    why is it their fault

    I don't see why this is google's fault - they come up with a business that works for them and other worms leach on and try to make money from it.

    whether it be google microsoft yahoo you will always have the leaches who can't make money and will always try the easy money scam.

    google cannot be responsible for other people's actions.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Xanthir, 16 Jun 2006 @ 3:13pm

      Re: why is it their fault

      They're not quite saying it's Google's fault that this is happening (or at least Mike isn't, I haven't RTFA). They're saying that this is an interesting unintended consequence of Google's actions.

      I think as the engines get smarter it'll gradually weed this crap out, though.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    ebay sucks, 12 Jun 2006 @ 5:11am

    eBay will be WORSE

    As far as I know, the eBay affiliate programe is already up and running. Users can post their auctions to their own pages or to parked domains. eBay pages flood google searches already, anyone searching for a particular tangible item knows this and knows what a pain in the ass it is - mainly because ebay pulls their completed listings after two weeks, so the page that says it has a search term in it, most likely does not.

    People are parking domains with eBay affiliate garbage as well. Just like they do with the adsense ads. And it's worse because the links do not give you any information an any item, merely links you to a page on ebay where there is an item listed with the search term in the title.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    JustMe, 12 Jun 2006 @ 5:33am

    I am glad to see I am not the only one annoyed by the "dead" Goodle ads. eBay is a major abuser of this.
    I advertise with Google and the crap ads keep pushing my ad deeper and deeper down the list. It ends up costing me more to advertise with Google because I have to increase the cost per click rate just to move my ad up the list in hope it will be seen (and then clicked).

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2006 @ 6:28am

    Google sucks because they help China abuse human rights. No way I could ever advertise on a site where the corporate mentality is to help countires like china tighten the noose on their people.

    So that leaves only other sites anyway, Adsense or no.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      JM, 12 Jun 2006 @ 11:21am

      Re:

      Bringing limited information to an oppressed people is better than leaving them in the dark. It's the Chinese government that's at fault not Google. If you want the Chinese government to change, boycot ALL Chinese goods. I for one think it's sad that so many people think blaming Google for the oppression of the Chinese people is somehow insightful.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 30 Jun 2006 @ 10:00am

      Re: Wake up moron

      If you shop at WalMart you also support that mentality.
      If you shop at Best Buy you also support that mentality.
      If you buy groceries you also support that mentality.
      If you typed this on a keyboard you also support that mentality.

      Everywhere you look there are Chinese good in the US. Don't think for a minute that anyone in the supply chain that got it to your local store is standing up for anyone in China. All the supplier wants is low cost labor at any cost.
      Go ahead and boycott Google for developing a filter... me personally, I'm just gonig to buy more Google stocks.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2008 @ 1:55am

      Re: You don't know China

      Please go to China first and then speak. You have been brainwashed by your government and media like CNN.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    VStar, 12 Jun 2006 @ 6:30am

    They are working fast and hard...

    to clean up the junk because they know it only hurts them. The problem is that for every one they stop there are many more new ones. They are also working on the bugs in Adsense so that only good ads get through. It may take some time for their fine tuning to help but it is in progress.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    gnome, 12 Jun 2006 @ 6:34am

    No, not Ebay, please

    You see, they do have quite a nasty record with PayPal.... Wouldn't trust them for the world...

    Anyway, great post, and quie an interesting take at GoogleAds.

    Cheers

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Shrikant Joshi, 12 Jun 2006 @ 6:38am

    Wasn't there a study on these lines?

    Some private agency (I don't remember which now) conducted a study on Google search results and found something called the F-factor. The results were published on ZDNet and were the center of major discussions for about a week.

    Anyway, the study was done by tracking eyeball movements and mouse clicks and the survey found that there was a disctinct F-shaped pattern in the eyeball movements and the clicks.

    The result was that Organic Searches were more trusted by the users and the Sponsored listings were almost ignored. Well actually, the sponsored listings received as much attention as the 10th listed organic Result.

    My take on the entire thing? Well, if the sponsored listing gets only as many clicks as a #10 organic search result. Why pay for the listing then? Surely, one can manage a #10 on the Organics?

    Maybe my theory is flawed, maybe there's a huge glitch in my reasoning. But in my defense I'll say that I don't usually click the Sponsored listings. I'd rather check the #10... But then, may be I am stupid.

    Regards,
    Shri.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Jitendra Patil, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:06am

      Re: Wasn't there a study on these lines?

      You're right...I usually don't click the sponsored links and I can get required information from other listings.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Petra Mitchell, 12 Jun 2006 @ 9:23am

      Re: Wasn't there a study on these lines?

      Here is the author of the study summing it up, although it doesn't draw the conclusion you described. The author does frequently mention "banner blindness" in his columns, and has speculated that users would develop the ability to ignore any other common advertising techniques, but I can't find anything saying people specifically don't notice sponsored search results.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    kjpweb, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:01am

    AdSense and AdSense Spam

    Spamsites are not JUST a problem for Google - they distort the results for every search engine.
    As long as these no-content sites are indexed undetected they will thrive.
    Cracking down on them is in the interest of everyone (ok - maybe not in that of the perspective SpamSite owners) but I sure hope that the bots of all major search engines will become a bit smarter to eliminate this annoyance.
    So will AdSense kill Google? Naaah - as long as other SE's are fooled by Spamsites I don't see that happen.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:15am

    "Maybe my theory is flawed, maybe there's a huge glitch in my reasoning. But in my defense I'll say that I don't usually click the Sponsored listings."

    Most people don't, but enough do to make it worthwhile for compaines to advertise.
    Google really needs to review and change some policies on what constitutes acceptable page content for AdWords. An organic search listing that goes to a page full of Adwords ads and other crap doesn't do anybody other than the page owner any good.

    As an AdWords buyer I bailed out on the content network a long time ago. Too many low quality clicks and just not worth the grief.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Ozdachs, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:42pm

      Re: Opting Out of Content Network

      I pulled my clients ads from the content network in August, 2004 . Some of my clients sites had had bursts of double or triple their normal monthly "hits" for no apparent reason, and these hits resulted in no noticeable increase in contacts from prospective clients.

      Google's response to my inquiry about the surges and the suggestion of fraud was "prove it or pay". In response, I stopped all advertising at AdSense sites.

      Until G can improve its fraud detection, it's probably limiting its AdWord revenues, but I don't see that they have hurt the organic search results.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:28am

    People still see ads on the web?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    rijit (profile), 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:31am

    RE: AdSense and AdSense Spam

    Well Google will have to pull a rabbit out their butt for this one I think. It will take more than a few restrictions to get all of it cleaned up, may even take a complete redesign on the back-end of the program. Could be very time consuming but if Google does it first, clean up the spam sites, I think it would put Google over the top in users minds and cement them on top for another few years.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    claire rand, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:43am

    'report bad link'?

    google needs to add a 'report bad link' icon on the search page, if enough people click it the page gets flagged for someone to look at (ranking etc remains unchanged until it is). thus its possible to highlight spam pages...

    naturally only the spam pages high enough to get page views are thus 'rated' thus the rubbish no one sees anyway is ignored cutting the work load down.

    oh yes and some sort of system whereby a page that has recently been 'human reviewed' after being highlighted is immune for a while would be helpful to cut work down even more.

    to help cut out spam bots 'reporting' each other to clog the system up you get a 'report page' asking why your reporting the site (the code behind which changes every few days, with a broadly similar appearence to fool bots). e.g. you can report whats wrong with the page.

    the first search engine to crack the 'rubbish pages/spam pages' problem will do well.

    i.e. a way to filter out pages of links, and other rubbish unless you want to see them.

    also allows you to specifically *include* such link lists in your search etc.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    dan mayer, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:55am

    it does hurt search

    these fake google adsense sites are starting to show up in search results on google, worse yet they use crawlers and copy the entire content of a competitors site onto there own, they copied my entire sites content and spammed the hell out of it, and beat some of my own search results.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pope Ratzo, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:57am

    A successful competitor to Adsense would be a system that allows users to opt out of getting ANY advertisements whatsoever.

    The notion that splashing billboards all across the Internet was inevitable seems to me to have shown a lack of imagination.

    It might help to remind each other that there was a time when there were no advertisements on the Internet.

    Are great technical advancements, such as myspace, worth the overarching sadness of having every single location on the web now befouled with sales pitches?

    It didn't have to happen this way.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:03am

    The Value of both.

    Personally I look at the organic listings primarily, but it adds some credibility to a site when you see them listed highly in the organic results, and the paid results.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Marcos, 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:04am

    Google and China

    Stop this nonsense that google infringes on human rights by helping china. The content for american and european google is censored ALSO. Try advertising gambling related stuff on google, or sexual related stuff.

    Freedom? Chinese are freer than us in some respects. Have you heard of the movie fearless or New Police Story? Did they come out in the theatres where you live? Talk about censorship.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Doug, 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:04am

    This problem is getting much bigger

    Don't know who - but someone did a video on these "junk" sites which serve up nothing but Ads, no actual content. This is a major problem for Google - as the traffic landing on these sites is skyrocketing. Currently, several of these sites actually get more traffic than starbucks.com...

    http://www.socialpatterns.com/google/adwords-adsense-arbitrage-video/

    I've landed on some of these pages before. Specifically, I remember landing on a site that proclaimed to be an "automotive" specialty search engine. Interestingly enough, entering in keywords for "pizza" and "sex" in that same automotive search engine yielded reulsts as well. So it's a generic ad-serving engine, which has several different faceplates that they snap onto it, based on the domain names they've registered.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    rijit (profile), 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:07am

    RE: Pope Ratzo

    "It didn't have to happen this way."

    You are absolutely right, it could have been much worse. Thing is, with broadband just now starting to become mainstream there was not was to deliver the interactive type ads. Now that broadband is getting widespread we should end up seeing new ad types and such. The other main reason ads are billboards is because it is a tried and proven method. Works on highways, in magazines, on TV, etc. So why try something new that would take research, money, and time when you can just put up a billboard on your site and start making money?

    I would say the one who comes up with the next great advertising scheme will be the one who wins the spam wars problem.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Brian A., 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:46am

    You'd think..

    someone would come up with a search engine that allows you to rate results on how useful they are. I've seen this many times on individual sites, so I don't understand why this couldn't be applied to search engine results. Call it a social search engine or web search 2.0 or whatever. It needs to be done.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Andy, 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:47am

    I dont get it

    Can someone please explain to me how eBay is even remotely in competition with Google? They don't have any of the same services, why do I keep reading this in these headlines? Is one writer just copying what the other sais?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Bryan Duvall, 12 Jun 2006 @ 9:01am

    ARE YOU CRAZY?

    I am sorry people but this is IGNORANCE. Goto.com -> Overture.com which is now Yahoo!Search.com INVENTED this technology. Google just followed in its footsteps...PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE get your facts straight! Everyone in the world tried to make fun of what Goto/Overture/Yahoo! was trying to do at the time until we started making real money...then everyone and their brother tried to jump on the bandwagon...GOOGLE ETC....while Google might be taking it to the next level lets give credit where credit is due..Ted Meisel, Dan Morefield, Paul Ryan and Scott Sullivan and teams from 1994-2003 RULED Internet Search, that's the truth!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Joe blow, 12 Jun 2006 @ 9:16am

    The article is true.

    For whatever reason, Google search results have become less useful. Google is turning from a library or education kind of search engine into a commercial or storefront search engine.

    I have been using the internet since from when it first really began to take off. Google was great for finding all kinds of unique things. About 3 or 4 years ago I noticed the search results were starting to get cluttered. I did not get the satisfaction from searching that I did before.

    Now, I can search for an explicet 3 word term and the first reply at the top of the search is some commercail ad that contains one of the 3 search words. I might have to go to page 2 or 3 before I find a match to all 3 search words.

    What the heck is that all about? Before, if you keyed in 3 search words in Google, the first reply contained all 3 keywords and was probably exactly what you wanted.

    Using Google now is like going to the library, then having to force you way thru a crowd of people offering things you do not want until you finally make it to the doors of the library to where the information you really want is kept.

    I can only see it getting worse in the future.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Yes, 12 Jun 2006 @ 10:05am

    Ad Block

    Firefox ad blok plugin FTW.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    anonymous coward, 12 Jun 2006 @ 10:21am

    1.) Build a search engine that ignores pages with adsense ads.

    2.) Place AdSense ads on that search page.

    3.) Profit.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Ron T, 12 Jun 2006 @ 11:37am

    ads

    Time to make a new www and marketing people, agencies aren't allowed. For those that been around since the avent of the world wide web, remember what the world wide web was created for in the first place?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous, 12 Jun 2006 @ 12:08pm

    I agree - Google is not as useful anymore

    I agree with Joe Blow. Searching for something on the internet because of all those bogus sites out there now takes much longer. Google is not like it used to be. I started noticing this a few years ago and it gets worse every year. Now I can put in 3 or 4 specific search words and scroll through a minimum of 3 - 8 pages of search results and still often find nothing remotely related to what I'm trying to find. In fact pretty much these days if I'm trying to find a particular company's website, I'll find it quicker just by trying to guess at what the domain name might be instead of using a search engine because of the extreme pollution of Google's results. And really how much longer will Google be able to make money off of any adwords/adsense/etc if they don't fix their most important, primary search tool engine?!?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    GOogle GuRu, 12 Jun 2006 @ 1:29pm

    info

    can someone put some links up that show these dead sites with google adsense.....

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    john, 12 Jun 2006 @ 2:30pm

    any code search gives classic splog results

    all this started for me around early 2005, when my search for code samples and APIs began to consistently return splogs for the top results

    all the splog site does is go scrape content from a user forum, then re-serve that content but with oodles of adwords around it, and the more people click on the link to browse the splog the more the link rises in the search result, its a rigged game unless u know ahead of time what is/is-not a splog.

    also the splog will not retain the structure of the forum post in terms of previous/next posts or topic so u only get snippets of a forum out of its orig. context, which is useless but serves the adwords game quite well.

    the answer of course is to use a better search engine for what u want, like for code searches use:

    http://beta.krugle.com/

    (dumbazzes had to copy the google vowels!)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Modded up, 12 Jun 2006 @ 6:20pm

    I have been blogging about the sites I report for violating AdSense and YPN's terms and conditions.

    Out of about a dozen sites, not a single one has had their account terminated or suspended.

    It's pretty clear that the ad networks don't really give a crap.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    JOhn, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:24pm

    You're underestimating how far people will go to make money. When you don't have any, all problems in your life become a powerful driving factor to become successful one way or the other. If there's a way for a good service to be exploited, people will do it.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    David Thielen, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:45pm

    Us too

    We stopped content sites about 3 years ago - tons of clicks coming in that made no sense and google insisted that they were legit.

    But it doesn't touch search or click ads on google itself so no effect there.

    thanks - dave

    ps - if you are on digg please vote for free screenwriting software

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2006 @ 7:47pm

    How to report spam to google

    You can already report spammy websites to google:

    Just go to:
    http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

    The best way to combat Adsense "spam" - those bogus sites with zero content and just ads, it to click on the 'Ads by Google' link, you will be shown a page about Adsense. Click on "Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw" then select "Report a violation"

    I know its a bit long winded, but at least you can bring the site to google's attention.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Stupid Fool, 20 Jun 2006 @ 6:00pm

      Re: How to report spam to google

      Report A Violation sucks. Google doesn't do anything. I reported 10 websites that had blatent violations such as asking to click ads. After three weeks ALL of them are still up.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      john_sanko_2 @yahoo.ca, 27 Jun 2006 @ 1:56pm

      Re: How to report spam to google

      Dearest One,

      May this mail finds you in good health and may also the peaceof gracious God be with you,please I have a problem and needs your help, Ihave decided that it good a thing to write you for help. I have a proposal
      for you-this however is not mandatory nor will I in any manner compel youto honour against your will. I am in a state of delinma and your profilepushed me to send you this mail, I am John Sanko, 19 years old and the onlyson of my late parents Mr. and Mrs. Sanko. My father was a highly reputable business magnet (a cocoa merchant) who operated in the capital of Ivorycoast during his days.

      It is sad to say that he passed away mysteriously in France during one of his business trips abroad on 12th.Febuary 2003. Though his sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been asterminded by an uncle of his whotravelled with him at that time. But God knows the truth! My mother died when I was just 4 years old, and since then my father took me so special. Before his death on February 12 2003 he called the secretary who accompanied him to the hospital and told him that he has the sum of Nine hundred and Fifty thousand United States Dollars.(USD$950,000) left in one of the leading Banks here in Abidjan. He further told him that he deposited the money in my name, and finally issued a written instruction to his lawyer whom he said is in possession of all the necessary legal documents to this fund and the bank .

      I am just 19 years old and a university undergraduate and really don't know what to do. This is because I have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of incessant politicalcrisis here in Ivory coast. The death of my father actually brought sorrowto my life. I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in thisregards.Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded.

      Now permit me to ask these few questions:-

      1. Can you honestly help me as your son? 2.
      Can I completely trust you?

      3. What percentage of the total amount in

      question will be good for you after the money is in your account? Please,
      Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible. Thank you so much.My

      Regards to your family.

      My sincere regards,
      John Sanko

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      john_sanko_2 @yahoo.ca, 27 Jun 2006 @ 1:58pm

      Re: How to report spam to google

      Dearest One, May this mail finds you in good health and may also the peaceof gracious God be with you,please I have a problem and needs your help, Ihave decided that it good a thing to write you for help. I have a proposal for you-this however is not mandatory nor will I in any manner compel youto honour against your will. I am in a state of delinma and your profilepushed me to send you this mail, I am John Sanko, 19 years old and the onlyson of my late parents Mr. and Mrs. Sanko. My father was a highly reputable business magnet (a cocoa merchant) who operated in the capital of Ivorycoast during his days. It is sad to say that he passed away mysteriously in France during one of his business trips abroad on 12th.Febuary 2003. Though his sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been asterminded by an uncle of his whotravelled with him at that time. But God knows the truth! My mother died when I was just 4 years old, and since then my father took me so special. Before his death on February 12 2003 he called the secretary who accompanied him to the hospital and told him that he has the sum of Nine hundred and Fifty thousand United States Dollars.(USD$950,000) left in one of the leading Banks here in Abidjan. He further told him that he deposited the money in my name, and finally issued a written instruction to his lawyer whom he said is in possession of all the necessary legal documents to this fund and the bank . I am just 19 years old and a university undergraduate and really don't know what to do. This is because I have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of incessant politicalcrisis here in Ivory coast. The death of my father actually brought sorrowto my life. I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in thisregards.Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded. Now permit me to ask these few questions:- 1. Can you honestly help me as your son? 2. Can I completely trust you? 3. What percentage of the total amount in question will be good for you after the money is in your account? Please, Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible. Thank you so much.My Regards to your family. My sincere regards, John Sanko

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    MJ, 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:00pm

    Bloggerkit profiled at Techcrunch

    A new interesting revenue sharing tool called "bloggerkit" is profiled today at techcrunch.

    "BloggerKit asks for your Amazon affiliate ID and provides a few lines of javascript code to paste into your template. Each post can then be ended with keywords that will determine which Amazon products appear beside it. Keywords are inserted using something like the following: “bk_keywords:canon camera, apple ipod.” Couldn’t be much simpler"

    Bloggerkit.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    John Schuster, 12 Jun 2006 @ 8:59pm

    This is only true for some keywords

    Adsense for content still can be used to generate interisted traffic to you site cheaply if you bid low provided you are not in a highly competitive field.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    bob, 12 Jun 2006 @ 10:00pm

    ads are not the problem

    The ads are not the real problem, the problem is the current search engines algo's do not work, and can not work based on how they look at the web. We now need a search engine or a means of seperating real content from fluff content. It's really a difficult task. It is already proven that humans also cannot reliably filter website quality.

    The web has grown to a point where it is now about finding quality content versus finding content period. These days when every person and his dog can do a website for pennies, it makes it easy to game a search engine - after all the world revolves around capitalism. My god if people could open a restaurant for the price of a website there would be dozens cooking up shitfood on every block.

    I personally can't find crap for a search because Google for one has so many damn rules and penalties for a website to follow (which are not disclosed of course) that only hardcore gamers and spammers can figure out out to get high rankings. So the good content gets buried. It is a flawed algo. Google's PR is also flawed because its monopolistic. This is why amazon, ebay and bizrate come up for all product searches. To be honest, Googles algo actually caters to large corps and spammers.

    Google has fed the machine that encourages low quality content and low-quality website design. Google has so many conficts of interest going on, its a wonder they have any credibility at all. They make money from ads, so why would they care about publisher quality - as long as the ads are relevant? If a adsense site comes up high on search results is it there because it is relevant or because Google can make more money? And the biggest problem - do poor search results encourage people to click on the relevant ads? If so, then poor results are profitable - and to hell with providing websites with a free ride with organic results.

    Another issue is every country in the world targets the USA for making money online, so a majority of these fluff sites with adsense are made in other countries where a small revenue to US standards is much more in the other country. I can bet that these issues discussed here barely exist in other country search results.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    claire rand, 13 Jun 2006 @ 12:08am

    better filtering

    lob a bayesian filter at all this rubbish. they do well with spam email.. wonder how they would cope with websites?

    a browser ad on that looks at the current page and then 'evaluates' the links on it, maybe highlighting the 'good' ones could work. yes its not exactly going to be fast, but combine it with a degreee of local results caching. result?

    run it on your google search results page... and with luck you'll get back a 'filtered' list with the crap links marked in some way as 'spam', where 'spam' basically means "a site i'm not interested in".

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Sc0rian, 13 Jun 2006 @ 1:47am

    I agree...

    I hate google and adsense, i've had nothing but problems.

    Read here:

    http://site.sc0rian.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1150187836&archive=&sta rt_from=&ucat=1&


    Ben

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Franklin, 13 Jun 2006 @ 7:22am

    back to yahoo

    I stopped using Google last year for two reasons

    1) The company that one of my friends works for banned employees from using google for internet searches (not just the desktop, but any online stuff) because google's terms allow them to monitor the searches from particular servers (e.g. IBM corporate offices) and then mine this information for internal google purposes. Apparently, companies are becoming concerned that google could be using their employees search information to help google compete against other companies. That scared me enough to stop using them for personal stuff too.

    2) Google's results have become so poor for most things that the sponsored links are the only way to find what you need most of the time. I'm not sure if this is because the scammers are faster than Google or because Google is allowing this on purpose because it helps their bottom line. Either way, I'm using yahoo and msn now.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous, 24 Jun 2006 @ 9:06am

    Well...

    I just searched Halo 3 on Google, and the official page for Halo 3 on the developer's website was 4th. Sad, very sad.

    Think that's bad? On MSN search, it isn't even on the first page! I crawled through 14 pages of search results, and it was nowhere to be found. THAT's even sadder.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    David, 24 Jun 2006 @ 9:19am

    What's wrong ?

    What's wrong with adsense ? If you provide good quality content and u have few ads on site to make some extra $$ there's nothing wron with this. Wethey are not all spammers who abuse and make crap sites.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Frank Smith, 17 Jul 2006 @ 2:38am

    Yes Adsence killing Google

    Google's largest Adsense customer is Hitfarm.com, the world’s largest typo-squatting company. Even though most of Hitfarm.com's domain names are just misspellings of existing popular domains or their trademarks, which is overtly outlawed by Google's Terms of Service but terms and conditions hold no value when Google is earning billions from it.
    It can’t get worse, Google has lost all its moral value and this will in long term affect their stock price. But the top three scammers who run Google have already sold billions and billions of dollars in GOOG shares, so they couldn't care less what happens to the company anymore.
    Dancing on the door of hell is Google, how long will the investors be deceived, how far will Google run on its luck. The fatal collapse is a certainty and is very near.
    All these things i have seen at organicspam.com.This website is cool as well as good....:)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    cybernoggin, 18 Jul 2006 @ 7:06am

    Adwords content network value = 0

    There is a reason Google has changed its pricing for Adwords customers in relation to its content network.

    What I used to see is I had to pay the same amount for the content network (Adsense) as I did for those terms I was bidding on in Adwords. I saw a very low conversion rate with the content network and dropped advertising for the content network.

    Then, Google made a change that allowed an advertiser to define the price they were willing to pay on the content network, as low as a penny (rather than the usual 5 cent minimum).

    Google knows what is going and as long as people are willing to pay anything at all for their ads to show up on the content network, they'll keep it in place.

    Maybe we'll begin to see Google offering 2 for 1's or 10 for one's - 10 clicks for a penny: Then Adsense and content network advertising will be driven into the ground and dropped?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    johnny, 6 Aug 2006 @ 9:27am

    Killing Search Relavance For Sure!

    I am not too up on the adwords/adsense deal but I can see for sure that in the future Google will have to make search more relavant. I have stopped using it all together because half of the results are there for all the wrong reasons. Either they are paid inclusion and have little or no relavance or they are only a result because of their google pagerank. Pagerank is a joke! They use this as a base for results rather than content in most cases! I don't know about the rest of you but I feel like Google is ripping off the Internet and what it was actually design to do. Information - Not popularity! Definitely going to bite them in the ass. Could be a couple years down the road but it will happen. I think Yahoo is the only true and relavant search out there. MSN allows spamming on pages to increase results, Google allows Alexa and Pagerank to increase results but yahoo is true to the idea that content is king!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Aug 2006 @ 5:59am

    EBAY HAS RUINED YAHOO AND GOOGLE
    SEARCH RESULTS AND YOU NEVER GET GOOD RESULTS ANY MORE JUST LINKS TO EBAY SELLERS (seems they are affilates)

    anyway i added the below to my host file so my browser wont take me to the dumb fake results that i have found so far but likely to be a ton more :(

    127.0.0.1 http://www.221loan.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.accrete.net/
    127.0.0.1 http://adfarm.mediaplex.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.agreatserver.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://alliekeaton.net/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.amt-uk.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.boston-labs.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.calypsoemail.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.cbwd.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.ecomputerfair.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.file-rescue.com
    127.0.0.1 http://www.icomputerfair.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.inlandonline.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.jouhoo.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.ramostechnologies.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.mrgauto.com/
    127.0.0.1 http://www.notwar.net/

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Vik, 15 Sep 2006 @ 6:17am

    The death of Adsense

    I just read this report about why so many people
    are struggling with AdSense, and why so many "Gurus"
    are still pushing making money with AdSense courses,
    even though all the profit has been sucked out of the program!

    I'm mad as hell!

    The good news is, this report outlines
    a far better way to make income online.

    I only wish I had know about this last year. I wouldn't
    have wasted so much time, money, and effort, trying
    to win at a game that shouldn't even be played!

    Check it out and let me know what you think.

    Do it quick though, the author is pulling the information
    soon, I think you'll see why!

    Go here:
    http://www.thedeathofadsense.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Hariharan, 27 Oct 2006 @ 4:13am

    -

    It's very useful to me.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    JGMe, 6 Jan 2007 @ 12:11am

    Who cares about Google!

    I could care less if Google crumbles because of Ad Sense. What I do care about is the integrity of the internet. Google Ad Sense or Ads by Google, whatever it's called, is quickly ruining the internet. Fake pages are everywhere!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jamie Boyle, 27 Sep 2007 @ 5:19pm

    Google Adsense is really good

    I do agree with you to a certain extent. I do agree that there are a lot of sites out there with no content what so ever, but lets not forget the ones that carry tons of information that people look for. Google Adsense is a great way to make money as well as provide some good information for people online. I think people should concentrate on the content and the making money aspect of it will come for people involved with Google Adsense with repeat visitors to your site. I wish people would think of content when doing websites, cause sometimes it can be frustrating going to someones site with none.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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