Google, Submission AdSense and NoFollow Letdown 104
John Battelle is reporting on his blog that word has leaked about a possible new API from Google that would allow sites to distribute AdSense earnings to individual members based on submissions or participation. From the article: "To toss a bit of cold water here, however, I've never seen UGC sites as the least bit driven by money. They are driven by pride, the desire to be first, reputation, whuffie. But dollars? That often screws it all up. I guess we'll get to see soon enough..." Relatedly many users are calling the 'nofollow' tag "Google's embarrassing mistake". Justin Mason is just one of many to take a look at the current status of nofollow and what may still be in store for that particular tool.
THIRD! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:THIRD! (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot the affiliate links in your post (Score:4, Insightful)
I just tried this.. as proof of concept (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=187119&cid=15 4 38203 [slashdot.org]
Then I added an amazon affiliate link at the end of it. I earned $5 yesterday because somebody clicked on the link, then browsed to other items and purchased something. See, the link doesn't even necessarily need to be a related product, but obviously better if it is (otherwise you don't get modded up).
I don't know how long something like this could be sustained
AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:5, Insightful)
Google like to run anything on autopilot and pure technology - no human contact and no problems please. So this will be another Google technology I will ignore, because I can't stand the company and it's current attitude behind it. 'Don't be evil' should be renamed into 'simply ignore everyone'.
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:3, Interesting)
When I attempted to contact google about this they said they will not provide information that could give away their IP methods. They give you the chance to defend against being shut but give you no informati
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:1)
You do understand that this is the "Law of the Land" here in the USA now...
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:1)
Absolutely. It's fully matured about 20 years late, but not bad by prophecy standards (I think the w3c covers that, right?).
It's SO worth repeating...
war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength
war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength
war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength [online-literature.com]
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:2)
Apart from that being pure FUD except in massive conspiracy theories in the tinhat crowd, it IS apparently true for Google.
"Do no evil". Well, guess that's out the Window.
What the hell is this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Along those lines and speaking of fraud, I was researching a web promotion group, which promises high page results (and seems to deliver too) and I found the most peculiar thing. Take a look at this [google.ie]. If you look at the results there, there are hundreds of links from sites like 6246.u2mme6.info, but if you look at the code for these sites, they aren't as such links. The pages don't load in a browser because of an iframe to a non existent site, but if you download the pages via httrack or one of those, you see the a page of bizarre code. An example of that is here (you'll have to look at the page source to see it, I don't know how to show it in slashdot)...
Spain Car Rental Airport Alicante Car Hire Spain Malaga Faro Car ... [pconaa.info]Cheap San Diego Car rental. City Car Rental San Diego: San Diego Airport Car ... Cheap Dallas Exotic Car Rental  " Dallas Fort Worth Airport Car Rental ...r port-car-rental.htm Cached [qrfju7.info] - Similarpages [s2uigg.info]
http://www.pro.ie/marketing-ireland/every-ai
Has anyone got any idea what is going on here, or how that might affect their page ranking? Should I report them to google?
Re:What the hell is this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Without looking at the sites in question, it sounds like they're detecting the Google spider user-agent and feeding it false information --- which is strictly against the rules. I suppose you should report them, but I don't know if it'll do any good.
When browsing through the lower rent neighbourhoods of the internet, it's sometimes interesting to set your browser's user-agent to rep
Re:What the hell is this? (Score:2)
Re:What the hell is this? (Score:2)
Re:What the hell is this? (Score:2)
Re:What the hell is this? (Score:2)
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:2)
#1 Slashdotted, check if that coral thing helps you:
http://taint.org.nyud.net:8080/2006/05/31/111003a
#2 Reading from blogspam from a blog which will be soon spammed by
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:2)
http://taint.org.nyud.net:8090/2006/05/31/111003a
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:3, Informative)
There is more information in this posting to the [coral-announce] list [nyu.edu].
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:3, Interesting)
And I don't want to hear, "oh but I don't see a solution, so they must not be working on y". Bullshit. The issue of ClickFraud is not an easy one to solve. And if you think you can solve it... Then open your own Ad company and put google's ad division out of bu
Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help' (Score:1)
Individual Share of Ad Revenue (Score:2, Funny)
I really don't see a problem with this.
Re: (Score:2)
And you thought the karma whoring was bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer to *quietly* reward top posters on my sites by offering them paid gigs, but only after they've proven themselves.
Re:And you thought the karma whoring was bad... (Score:2)
that doesn't work for long. Pretty soon people will find out you do that. Of course when they find uot what your giving, they waont care anymore...;)
Easier click fraud (Score:1, Insightful)
I know of sites that already do this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine it at work @ Slashdot though: 5+ Funny == 5+ bucks.. I could get into that..
Re:I know of sites that already do this. (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine it at work @ Slashdot though: 5+ Funny == 5+ bucks.
Unfortunately the current rating of your post is 1. No dinner for you tonight. You'd better get cooking on some funny answers, if you don't want to skip breakfast too.
Re:I know of sites that already do this. (Score:2)
Re:I know of sites that already do this. (Score:1)
Where's me five bucks?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I know of sites that already do this. (Score:1)
You can make money on Slashdot by posting (Score:3, Interesting)
Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:5, Interesting)
There are three main reasons nofollow has failed to stop webspam:
What nofollow could have been useful for is a simple "I don't endorse this link" statement so that you can link to sites you dislike without adding to their fame. But applying it to all user-supplied links in blog comments, slashdot threads, wiki pages, etc. diluted its meaning, and as a result, diluted its usefulness.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:5, Informative)
From the comments of TFA:
pudge said,
May 31, 2006 @ 4:54 pm
I implmented nofollow for Slashdot. And I did it not primarily to reduce comment spam which our moderation system and other tools handle pretty well already, as Slashdot gets very littler comment spam but to reduce the effects of comment spam on search engines. If you post with a comment bonus (which you can get with high karma), you get no nofollow attribute, because we figure, chances are, your links will be useful to the search engines.
I didn't know that about the SlashCode, but it makes sense.
The type of person who blasts multiple sites with automated software isn't likely to spend time building up karma on (multiple) Slashdot accounts for his SpamBot to burn.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:2)
Right, they'll just hijack old, abandoned accounts [slashdot.org] to spam from.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:2)
Anyone who posts relatively frequently on Slashdot will show up near the top of Google's search results for their username.
Hell, I'm the #1 search result for my User ID
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:3, Informative)
Nofollow was a hare-brained idea from the start, cooked up over a couple of apparently drunken [msdn.com] (or perhaps stoned) nights between developers at Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:2)
Heh. I know what you mean. I just re-read your post and followed a pingback to my own comments [hyperborea.org] and realized that I said pretty much the same thing last year that I posted above.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment spam that affects page rank is Google's problem. Comment spam that doesn't have anything to do with page rank is not Google's problem. Google provided a mechanism to bloggers to eliminate a nuisance caused by Google's page rank algorithm. At that point, comment spam is no longer motivated by Google's page rank algorithm.
This blog entry is nothing but sour grapes that Google didn't solve their problem for them.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:2)
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe this is the case. Comment spammers have a tendency to write scripts to bulk submit comments to particular locations across multiple hosts like /submit-comment.php that correspond to popular weblog software. You can't just "blast comment spams to the entire net", you need to target particular implementations.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:2)
Sorry, that was shorthand. Sure, they have to "target" Movable Type, MediaWiki, etc., but they're still blasting comments to the entire install base for each CMS.
And when those implementations have nofollow, there's no point (at least for pagerank purposes).
So, please tell me why comment spammers continue to blast comments to blogs powered by WordPress, which has had nofollow built in for 1.5 years and nee
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:3, Informative)
Because, like you pointed out, pagerank is not the sole motivation for all spammers. I was quite clear in saying that there was no point for pagerank purposes.
I agree that at least some comment spammers are motivated by things other than pagerank, but I do believe that at least some of them are just after pagerank, and I believe nofollow moves them on to lower-hanging fruit (i.e. other websites that hav
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:1)
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:1)
Incorrect. I've written various message board scripts, and spam bots hit those even though they are nowhere near popular enough to show up on spammers' radars. There are plenty of generic comment spam scripts out there, that will just look for suitable s and POST them.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:1)
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:2)
What NoFollow was designed to do, I suspect, was ensure that Google's Pagerank algorithm wasn't exacerbating the problem. Page rank may have have only been a marginal driver of comment spam, but Google was attempting to ensure that that particular margin was removed.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:1)
But that's exactly what nofollow is for. While you may only want to "nofollow" links for sites you hate, many sites use it for all external links they don't specifically endorse.
It means
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:4, Informative)
1) It reduces the impact of comment spam, forum spam, and wiki spam on the search engines that every web user relies on to get their work and play done.
As a side effect, very wide implementation *could*, hypothetically, one day lead to link spammers giving up on at least some of their spamming in the long run. Cool if it happens, but *not* required to reap the benefits.
Universal implementation is not required; every little bit helps. It's just part of being a responsible web site operator, like avoiding open relay configurations is part of being a responsible mail server operator. Closing open relays doesn't prevent all spam either, but it helps reduce the number of avenues it can creep through and thus helps reduce the impact.
Open comment systems, forums, and wikis are like open mail relays. If you must run one, being responsible about the impact you know it will have on the web ecosystem seems like a very good idea to me. Nofollow is a useful and important part of that impact mitigation.
Does it solve every problem everywhere at once? No. Does it help to do particular things in the real world here and now? Yes.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:1)
Being responsible about the 'web ecosystem' means working to prevent it from becoming a monoculture. Part of the monoculture is Google itself. There shouldn't be 'one big' search engine that everyone uses. There should be multiple search engines. I recently started using a different one for some of my searches and have found the lack of 'spamming' links refreshing.
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:1)
THe web ecosystem should evolve on its own. If millions of people flock to google, so be it. If they decide to use another search engine...that
Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly (Score:1)
Millions of people flocked to AOL. Thanfully, it now looks like that wasn't a permanent comittment on their parts.
The Point of the NoFollow Attribute (Score:5, Insightful)
In this sense, it has probably succeeded. Sure a reduction in spam would have been nice, but this is still a nice first step. People always say spam is primarily an economic problem, so removing incentives is a good way to snuff it out in the long run.
Re:The Point of the NoFollow Attribute (Score:2)
Re:The Point of the NoFollow Attribute (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Point of the NoFollow Attribute (Score:2)
UGC? (Score:2)
Re:UGC? (Score:3, Informative)
Nice Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
"Embarrassing Mistake?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Embarrassing Mistake?" (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:"Embarrassing Mistake?" (Score:2)
No "ignorant people" required. Google was quite capable of claiming that nofollow would prevent comment spam [blogspot.com] on their own.
Re:"Embarrassing Mistake?" (Score:1)
Re:"Embarrassing Mistake?" (Score:2)
I do it to get chicks!
Re:"Embarrassing Mistake?" (Score:2)
And you know what? If you create compellin
Re:"Embarrassing Mistake?" (Score:2)
Many sites already use this (Score:1)
Re:Many sites already use this (Score:2)
Adsense API is not a new thing (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.kbcafe.com/adwords/default.aspx?search= adsense+api [kbcafe.com]
Google simply doesn't make the existence of this API public.
New Google featurette name revealed! (Score:1)
Try the lobster!
Something I didn't know about Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:Something I didn't know about Slashdot (Score:1)
Re:Something I didn't know about Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
I don't care (Score:1)
PageRank is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PageRank is the problem (Score:2)
I was thinking that myself. However, I came to realize that Clusty really only even WORKS because they leech off the search results of Google to begin with. If google goes down, Clusty will be tied to them as well.
Re:PageRank is the problem (Score:2)
The mystery surrounding pagerank is a big part of why people overestimate it. It's hard to say exactly how much of an impact it has, and exactly how it is calculated. How google determines if a site is "linking
Not a Rumor! (Score:4, Informative)
Relatedly? (Score:3, Informative)
Consider "In other news", "In related news"...
*sigh*
iqu
Re:Relatedly? (Score:2)
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/relatedly [m-w.com]
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/relatedly [thefreedictionary.com]
Re:Relatedly? (Score:2)
But I digress...
iqu
(I used a proper
Re:Relatedly? (Score:2)
Now, if you want to argue that it shouldn't be a word, I might be sympathetic. If you want to claim that it's an awkward word,
p.s. (Score:2)
"That's my cousin," said Tom, relatedly.
Re:Relatedly? (Score:2)
But just a point on my choice of reference - I used the Oxford American Dictionary, whatever that is. Given that it lists all my spellings as "chiefly British", and, in my experience, omits certain British turns of phrase, does that make it American enough?
Anyway, I have a
Re:Relatedly? (Score:2)
Re:Google Does Evil (Score:1)