In "Ad and Subtract", the New York Post’s Holly M. Sanders reports (5/23/2007) that Google is "cracking down on dubious Web sites that contain little content but lots of ads". Hallelujah!
These sites, commonly known as "splogs" or "made for Adsense" web sites frustrate the consumer to no end. These splogs and spam sites clutter up the Internet, divert online search results and increase the time to find legitimate information. Moreover, there’s only so much a computer can do and often the relevancy of the ads was in question. For example, the Google programs apparently cannot discern the difference between a structured settlement company and a factoring company. This has assisted the likes of J.G. Wentworth and Novation Capital to each make false advertising claims that it is the leader in the structured settlement industry.
The owners of the sites in question make money in exchange for allowing Google to place "pay per click" ads on their web sites. Some of the sites had jumbled nonsensical excerpts of content from other legitimate sites. The jumbled nonsense often was designed purposely to frustrate so that the consumer was forced to the pay per click ads out of frustration and impulse. This author has personally experienced misappropriation of titles and large excerpts of content from this site used on splog sites. Google has now made an astute assumption that if they did nothing about it, their credibility as a search resource and vendor might be at stake. Bravo, but this should have been done much sooner!
According to Sanders, Google has notified a number of web publishers that they will be dropped from the Google Adsense program starting June 1, 2007.
And there’s more on Google’s attempt to clean "the leaves clogging its gutter". On May 24, 2007 the New York Posts’ David Andreatta reported that Google has taken a digitial stand against plagiarism. Academic paper-writing services will soon be forbidden from buying keyword terms through Google’ AdWords program which will serve to prevent them from appearing in the sponsored link or "pay per click section" of search results.
Things seem to be improving, but there’s alot more to be done. What are Yahoo and other search engine vendors going to do? Blogger Jenstar and others write that affected advertisers will likely regroup in the Yahoo space.
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