Mitch Ratcliffe has a blog entry on How to get Google to fix BlogSpot.
I think the advice in it is terrible. He suggests: “The solution to the problem it to click gratuitously and never make purchases on the links at blogspot sites and to keep doing so to drive down conversion rates.”
This is called click fraud. Don’t do it. This will do nothing but achieve the following:
- Put money in the sploggers pockets
- Take money away from advertisers. With a bad experience like this advertisers may actually leave AdSense all together.
- Risk your own publisher account. If you have a publisher account and Google catches you performing click fraud they will ban your account
Again, I can’t stress enough that this is a bad idea and would encourage sploggers to create even more splogs.
on October 25th, 2005 at 11:50 am
That is a horrible idea. Not only is it click fraud, it is not going to do any good. Just look how sucessful Flag Day was. Pretty much it was just a handful of existing spam fighters took part. Are people really going to take the time to do something even less likely to show results.
AdSense is used on most splogs, but the real purpose of splogs is to gain PageRank and hits for their real sites. Any ad revenue from splogs is just a plus. If Ratcliffe thinks hurting AdSense is going to solve the splog problem he has no clue what splogs are all about.
I personally wouldn’t mind AdSense becomming less popular with advertisers so it dies off, but that has nothing to do with splogs. The quality of the sites in the ads far too often suck. And as mentioned in SpamHuntress’ comments, if you search for Firefox or Mozilla you get ads to download it from who knows where. There is not enough quality control.
on October 25th, 2005 at 9:08 pm
At no point do I suggest click fraud, what I suggested is that when bloggers receive spam postings they go to the sources of those sites and click the ads there. It would not target legitimate Blogspot (or other hosts that facilitate splogs) publishers, just the abusers. It would not be “random.”
This would create pain for advertisers—it won’t drive them away, because AdSense works—but it will make them demand Google explain why they are getting much lower conversion rates. They will petition Google for relief, which is what advertising customers do (and I speak from experience as a publisher). These kinds of campaigns could be conducted in narrow timeframes by groups of bloggers who are tired, as I am, of cleaning spam postings out of their comments and trackbacks.
Finally, there is a general tone that this is wrong because it is bad business. I am suggesting a political statement, not a business decision. If Google bans me for clicking other people’s ads, they would have to prove I was commiting fraud, which is not the case if I am clicking on ads on other people’s sites. I’m justs surfing. But, frankly, if Google cut off AdSense on my site it would do nothing to my ability to earn money from the site. There are other ad programs that will pay me a few dollars a month, too.
We shouldn’t be so timid about the information environment we live in. Google’s contributing to information pollution and we should act to stop them.
I think you are naive, JoeChong, if you think Google can afford to impose quality controls. It would slash their margins, raising ad prices overall, and prevent many bloggers and publishers from ever being seen by Google searchers.
on October 26th, 2005 at 12:16 am
[…] Mitch Ratcliffe responded to my entry that criticized his How to get Google to fix BlogSpot post. Since I think this is an important issue. I elevated this to a full post instead of the argument getting lost in the comments. […]
on October 26th, 2005 at 2:08 am
There is an option to report the website showing these ads, if you click on Ads by Goooogle.
THAT would probably be an option, for splogs that rely on Adsense. IF Google would yank their account.