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Google's business model requires dodgy advertisers. Google has created and funded a whole industry of AdWords arbitrage, encouraging web spam. That's a big part of their customer base. How often do you see a Fortune 1000 company in a Google ad?

In 2004 and 2005, Google sponsored the "Web Spam Squashing Summit" In 2006, Google turned to the dark side. They started sponsoring the Search Engine Strategies conference, the web spammer's convention. That's when "Don't be Evil" ended.

We track Google ads at SiteTruth, trying to find the business behind the ad. For about 36% of Google ads (by domain, not hits) not on search pages, there's no identifiable real-world business behind the ad. We call those "bottom-feeders". The "John Does" Google is suing fall into that category. If Google kicked off all those "John Doe" advertisers, they'd lose a third of their advertiser base.

Google can't solve this problem because their business model requires web spam.

Google is in the advertising business, not the search business. Search is a traffic builder for the ads. Google's customers are their advertisers, not their search users. They have to maximize ad revenue. The problem is that more than a third of Google's advertisers are web spammers, broadly defined. All those "landing pages", typosquatters, spam blogs, and similar junk full of Google ads are revenue generators for Google. Every time someone clicks on an AdWords ad, Google makes money, no matter what slimeball is running the ad. Google can't crack down too hard, or their revenue will drop substantially. Google does have some standards, but they're low.

Google went over to the dark side around 2006. In 2004 and 2005, Google sponsored the Web Spam Summit, devoted to killing off web spammers. From 2006, Google sponsored the Search Engine Strategies conference, where the "search engine optimization" people meet. That was a big switch in direction, and a sad one.

As we demonstrate with SiteTruth, it's not that hard to get rid of most web spam if you're willing to be a hardass about requiring a legit business behind each commercial web site. Google can't afford to do that. It would hurt their bottom line.

However, cleaning up web search results with browser plug-ins is a viable option. Stay tuned.

When you try the blind search test, the results look very similar. All the mainstream search engines are doing about equally well. There was a period in 2007 when Yahoo was substantially ahead of the others, because they had about fifty special-case recognizers for things like celebrities and movies, but now everybody has that. (And nobody noticed that Yahoo was better for the six months they had a technical edge, anyway.)

Try heavily-spammed searches like "London hotels". All the big guys are still being fooled by ad-heavy redirector sites. It's possible to do better against link spammers, but the big guys aren't trying very hard to do so. Google used to be against "search engine optimization", but some time in 2007 they went over to the dark side and started sponsoring SEO conferences. It's inevitable; Google makes their money from AdWords. Search is just a traffic builder.

It's "Cringeley", so don't take it too seriously, but...

Google has a fundamental problem. It became successful as a search company that ran a few ads to defray expenses. Now it's an ad agency that offers services to build ad traffic. This limits them.

How? You can do a better job at search if you don't have to suck up to the pay per click advertisers. Just throwing out most sites with pay per click ads is a good start. But Google can't do that - that's where the revenue to support their bloated operation (been to Shoreline lately?) comes from.

Google seemed to undergo a big change starting about two years ago. That's when they first started cozying up to the "search engine optimization" people. Google used to view "search engine optimization" as evil. Now they are the major sponsor of SEO conferences. And, of course, they bought DoubleClick, an advertising company so obnoxious that most Firefox users blocked their ads long ago.

Consider Craigslist, which is rapidly destroying newspaper classified advertising. Craigslist has an edge - they're cheap. They only have fifty or so employees, and the owner has no ambitions to become a Fortune 1000 company. This drives their competitors nuts, because they aren't annoying their customer base with ads and nobody can afford to compete with them. They're devaluing ad-supported media.

Some time in the last two years, Google started becoming much more "SEO friendly". There are meetings at Google for SEO types. Google sponsors "Search Engine Marketing" conferences. It's getting a bit embarassing.

Google has to keep growing to justify their P/E ratio of 47 and keep their stockholders happy. That's hard to do when they already have most of their primary market. It's common to see dumb merger and acquisition activity in that situation. Search with occasional ads was a terrific business - doesn't take many employees, moderate operating costs, almost no cost of goods, good margins. The things Google has gone into since search (mail, video, office apps, etc.) don't have those properties, and are less profitable than search, if not outright money drains.

The "search engine optimization" crowd now has a convention.. It's on, right now, at the San Jose convention center. New strategies for click fraud are probably being discussed right now.

All that evil in one place...

I think the point of the article is that attendees of the SES Conference were invited to the Google Dance. I was there as a Googler - and it was alot of fun. Honestly, I don't see why this is newsworthy, everyone was there to have a good time.