This is so long overdue, it shouldn’t be news, but it is good news, so we must offer some comment. Google recently announced that, when they decide to penalize or ban a website for apparent infringement of their guidelines, they will contact the website owner, tell them that they have banned their website and why. They are actually going to talk with their customers. Well, good for Google!
Andrew, with Traffic, a weblog that preaches ’search engine elightenment’, is one of the first from the search engine/SEO community that I have seen actually come out and question Yahoo’s paid inclusion scheme. Although he makes and discloses several very good points, I would disagree with his final conclusion that maybe this is a way to pay for the cleansing of organic search. The oxymoron here is clear—paid inclusion with PPC and organic search? There is absolutely no excuse for this Yahoo tactic to mislead the consumer about organic, natural and free search. The consumer will find out, one way or the other and the real judging will begin.
Link: Traffick - Internet Search Enlightenment: Yahoo Paid Inclusion: Is this Story Authentic?.
degree
Another class action lawsuit has been launched against Google over click fraud allegations. Unfortunately, one of the Internet’s dirty little secrets, click fraud must be seriously addressed and marketers need to start asking more serious questions. One of the problems that exists today for most marketers, is that no one in the marketing world or the SEO space is willing to take the issue on. To do so will get you branded a whiner and just not a smart marketer. After all, Yahoo and Google are winners right? They have built successful brands, er stories right? Let’s not get caught up with issues like disclosure, accountability and metrics for advertisers. That’s just not something a smart marketer does. She’s too busy finding her next great story to tell. Sheeesh!
Check out the news story…
Link: Google sued over ‘click fraud’ in Web ads - Yahoo! News.
Aaron Wall of SEObook.com, has posted an interesting rant about a recent article by the East Bay Business Times and their concern over the fact that search engines do not label ads properly. The article points out that both the FTC, Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Reports, have led the criticism of the search engines and that the problem is not really improving. In fact, it is probably getting worse. I will suggest that there is little hope advertising on search engines will ever be properly designated and here’s why…
There has been a lot of talk recently about reports that are critical of the major search engines and their tendency to keep the consumer in the dark regarding ’sponsored’ advertising. This issue is much more serious than simple disclosure. There are billions of dollars at stake and both consumers and advertisers are, for the most part, unaware of the real under belly of PPC (pay-per-click), click fraud, affiliate scams and paid inclusion. We have been documenting our research into this specific issue for the past year and will begin an indepth series on our findings starting later this month. The information we will be providing is critical to every marketer who has a vested interest in their search engine postings, PPC and the consumer’s failing faith in organic search.
Link: Report Suggests Paid Search Disclosure Could Be Better.
Interesting. Very interesting. Yahoo! Search has just let the cat out of the bag. What they want us to believe is relatively simple. They have this great, new, all dotcom idea, to help keep organic search true to its roots. They call it MindSet. Really? We tried the beta site and found it more than wanting. Do a search for just about anything and when you slide the bar over to ‘research’ you often find that many of the sites in the first 10 are commercial and worse, affiliate or Google Adsense websites that offer zero relevance or value. Smoke and mirrors kids, smoke and mirrors.
It has taken a long time. The major search engines haven’t done much about it. In fact, they are still living behind those ivory covered towers, with impunity and without marketers demanding a human connection to the all powerful ‘editors’ at the directory and organic search level. The SEO’s have given up trying to even pretend that they care about the issue and, unfortunately, many of them have joined the more unscrupulous ones, to build more link farms and affiliate the search engines to death.
To the rescue, at least as a first step, Stanford University’s InfoLab has released a technical report as a 22 page PDF. Lot’s of algorithms make it look pretty official, the substance is still to come. Stayed tuned…
Link: New Technical Report from Stanford Discusses Link Spam.
Recent Comments