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Google AdWords And Ethics Issues
trystanu writes "The Washington Post reports that Google 'will stop accepting advertising from unlicensed pharmacies that have used the Internet to sell millions of doses of narcotics and prescription drugs without medical supervision', following both Yahoo and Microsoft's similar moves last month. The head of Google's U.S. AdWords branch maintains it's not just for the money but that they want their searchers to have the ads most relevant to what they're looking for. It's quite clear some advertisers are using the front door to spam Google rankings. Are some of the 100,000 advertisers now signed up for Adwords tarnishing Google's image at a delicate time?"
Plenty of sites block or blocked porn in one form or another. They have the right to refuse money from anyone.
Or so I would hope.
a bad idea. One of the reasons I know many people use google is purely because it's unfiltered and unrestricted. Millions use Google every day, changing anything major now could spell catastrophy.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
I was making some nice coin from those online perscription affiliate programs...
Notice how there are very few if any AdWords when searching for "goat" or "goatse".
What's gotten into the GoogleBot recently? For four days in a row, a site of mine is visited by various GoogleBots (three or four different IP addresses) every hour, sometimes even more frequently. The bot always gets robots.txt (which doesn't exist) and the main index page, but nothing else. What's going on?
They're going to exercise more care about who they sell ad space to, not excise the sellers from the results. Two totally different things- and it's the ad space sales that they have to take actual responsibility for, since they're being paid...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Of course this is tarnishing google's image. This is basically the same thing that has happened to every single search engine. Yahoo was a great search engine in its time. They started getting millions of hits a day, and they decided to sell space on the site. Then, yahoo sold ranking on the engine, and you start having skewed results. Finally, People stop coming because of the pop-ups and bad search results. This isn't a great position for google.
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
This is big pharaceuticals leaning on them to try and limit the ability of people to shop for perscription drugs outside the US and (gasp!) actually pay a fair price (and a price they can afford) for them!
You're using her as bait, Master!
This actually helps bolster my confidence in the teetering giant. I've been interested myself in signing up to run google's adwords for the launch of my next portal; this helps establish that they ARE sensitive to the needs of the people who really count on them. It doesn't matter who did it first; what counts is that google IS doing this. I respect that.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
And not the government, and it has the right to dictate whatever it feels is appropriate for itself. It's not stopping you from buying from unlicensed pharmacies, it's simply saying they won't allow them to advertise there.
....Porn ads... ( allow me to get my asbestos pants on real quick ) ... Sure, its fine an dandy for people to not be able to get prescription meds, but you can do a search for 'free movies" and get bombarded with adword ads for all the pr0n you can ever need. if their trying to look out for the good of its users, little timmy doesnt need to see "finding dildo" when he's trying to get "finding nemo"
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
My guess is that they're doing more aggressive checking on linkfarms, with multiple passes to verify what's going on.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
"Pingular Is A Worthless Shit-Eating Karma Whore"
Hmm. One out of three isn't bad.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Nowhere to them claim to be unfiltered or unrestricted. They don't take ads for a number of other categories including guns. They also filter out sites they feel are fraudulent in trying to gain higher pagerank. So, where is this unfiltered and unrestricted Google?
The phrase search
"to be or not to be"
produces 2 incorrect results out of the first 10.
Notes:
It does not work. Check all of the first ten results: two of them do not contain the phrase
Putting a + in front of the phrase does not make it work
The search was done using quotes.
It is not a matter of "they are indexing millions of pages: give them a break". Altavista also indexes millions of pages, and it has no error results in its returns on phrase searches.
Google should fix the bugs in the search engine before worrying about ad words!
If someone is going to be stupid enough to attach a big red light to their forehead saying "Hi, I'm doing something illegal right here!", why not let them hang themselves?
Now that people are starting to exploit googles' page ranking system on a regular basis and since google is having to bow to legal pressure and thereby lose their outsider "street cred"...they're in the exact spot that yahoo was in in 1999.
All they need now is a half-assed web hosting service.
How many times are we going to see this repeated online until we learn that a jack-of-all-trades really IS master of none?
I'm am deeply sickened that Google names these companies as being legitimate. These are the companies MOST responsible for spam these days, not to mention getting drugs in the wrong hands. The affiliate programs run by these drug companies are nothing short of a license to spam on their behalf. The drug companies deny responsibility because they "can't control the affiliates". Bull.
These drug companies are scum. And Google is culpable by so emphatically stating that these companies are legitimate. Google had better watch who they decide to defend.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Illegal and unlicensed pharamacies - is the label they want to slap on Canadian pharamcies? It seems to me that they're doing Americans a favour by selling them at prices they can afford better. What a disgusting rip-off the drug market is. And you thought the RIAA and MPAA are bad.
It means Google is likely updating your main page in its index every day (or so). It's a "good thing" in most people's opinion. Bigger size even have deeper fresh-crawls. Do a search for your site, and see if it comes up with a date by it.
Checkout the AdWord listing on Google for Red Rabbit, Tom Clancy's latest book.
It's pretty dicey here in the UK (are AdWords regionalised?)
Do you have suggestions for a better search engine than Google, one that does not censor content like this, but works well and indexes as many pages?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
as the first result.
I wonder if this is part of their new "responsibility"?
I'm glad to see google join the ranks of wal-mart in protecting Americans from themselves. We Americans are too dumb to control our bodies and protect ourselves from perverted music. With the combined talents of big government and private industry we will live the virtuous lives as God intended.
I was trying to find personal accounts of side effects of a particular drug that I was taking. I wanted to know if other people were having the same experience as me, not what the drug's manufacturer said the side effects were. Any search containing the drug name produced hundreds of links to online pharmacies, making it very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Does this mean I think they should ban these advertisers from the Adwords program? Not really - if they want to pay to advertise, then fine. But I do think that something needs to be done about the overloading of search results like I experienced.
I could kill you, sure, but I could only make you cry with these words
I don't think the problem of buying cheap drugs from Canada/Mexico is the whole piece. Counterfeit drugs are a real problem. The are plenty of mail order drug companies that have been featured on TV. Quite a few politicians are still supporting state programs that import from Canada and/or mandate discounts from the Big Drug Companies. From an ethical standpoint, I find the prices drug corporations rake in on their patented drugs more revolting than the RIAA. My impression is that the drug companies spend more money on marketing than they do on R&D, despite their B.S. excuse that mandatory discounts will cut their R&D budget.
YUCK!!! I hope you brush your teeth with bleach after meals if that is the case!
Quite the opposite, actually. "Canadian" is what many illegal and unlicensed pharmacies are calling themselves -- in many cases, so-called "Canadian pharmacies" consist of a website run off a server in .us, and a bunch of people in India shipping the drugs. The Canadian government isn't happy about the country being given a bad name, but since these organizations don't conduct any business in Canada, it's hard to take action against them.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Perhaps the government should be looking at why it is that we have so many painkiller-addicted people in the first place. We have a $ystem that encourages doctors to pump people full of pills, rather than take more time-intensive solutions such as actually developing a long-term plan to treat the underlying sources of pain and illness.
Incidentally, if Rush Limbaugh knew what he was doing, he could have used these sites instead of having his housekeeper run his drugs.
There goes my sex life. Where am I going to buy cheap Viagra now?!
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
"have used the Internet to sell millions of doses of narcotics and prescription drugs without medical supervision"
You mean those things actually deliver you drugs without a prescription?!?! Why the fuck didn't anyone tell me they were legitimate? I could've stopped buying expensive, tainted street opiates and got real shit! I might have even saved enough money to pay my Internet bi%*DU)) NO CARRIER.
all that spam only clogs the engine, and most of it are really crappy pages.
for a while, whenever i do a search, i haven't found relevant results on the first search page, sometimes the second will have something useful. specially when searching for hardware or manuals for devices.
it's really REALLY annoying.
*shower*
"Which ones are the incorrect results? They all seem somewhat related to the phrase"
I was not searching for something "related" to the phrase. I was searching for the phrase. That is the way to use search engines: does the page have it or not? According to Google's own discription of how it works, the bogus results should not show up.
"And if I make a link using the words "to be or not to be" then Google takes that into account."
Yes, it takes it into account in ranking results. However, by its own description of how it works, it is not supposed to add irrelevan results to the returns based on linking.
"It's how a site like Micrsoft.com ended up as the #1 match for Hell for a time."
Right now, the top 10 returns for "hell" are all accurate. Google only has the problem once you try to search on phrases.
Given this query:
It does not work. Check all of the first ten results: two of them do not contain the phrase
As an AC pointed out, the results you speak of (this and this) probably show up because other pages link to the pages using the exact phrase "to be or not to be". Heck, "to be or not to be" is the second "erroneous" result's domain name.
who cares, we know who is who's bitch around here.
"Heck, "to be or not to be" is the second "erroneous" result's domain name. "
No, it isn't. The domain name is something different.
If I search on "now here", it is an error to give results that say "nowhere". Google has admitted that this is a bug, anyway.
Here is Google's own description: "To enter a query into Google, just type in a few descriptive words and hit the 'enter' key (or click on the Google Search button) for a list of relevant web pages. Since Google only returns web pages that contain all the words in your query...." It does not mention relevance.
I wonder why they don't add a filter, then, that knocks out the irrelevant results like this that do not contain the phrase.
Or maybe they can fix their own help pages that say that Google only returns pages containing the words you are looking for.
What's to prevent a malicious person from generating a script to 'click through' on ads from random searches? It doesn't cost the malicious person anything, but it costs the advertisers dollars every few clicks. What would google do to separate the real users from the malicous person. Or even worse what would they do if the script became distributed?
Someone might have already addressed this, and I'm sure Google has some plan (hopefully) but does anyone know what they might do?
The White House is a very convenient location from which to operate a bid-rigging racket.
Graciously yours,
Richard B. Cheney, President-Vice
...I'm just saying.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I just as annoyed with the stream of penis enlargement ads in my inbox, but there are several legitimate (non-spammer) online pharmacies. I've ordered from medsmex, inhousepharmacy and mastersmarketing several times and I've never gotten any spam from them (nor do they sell narcotics). There are reliable companies out there, and they do often have much better prices than drugstores in the US. If you have to take expensive medication, you can save money by shopping around, but do read customer reviews, and don't buy from spammers.
When I do a search for something (Simcity 4 strategies this weekend for instance), I don't want the first 4 pages to be links to stores where I can buy the Prima guide. If I want that, I'll go to froogle.
And yeah, so what if most users don't know its there. If that's the case, make the first link that's returned say something to the effect of "Were you looking for something to BUY?" If so, click here. You get the idea.
Or add froogle as a tab on the front page, with a bubble that tells users what it is.
Anything to make searches for information return links to just that, not 2000 mom and pop websites that link to amazon.
Next, they should make it possible to report pointless affiliates, along the lines of "Looking for ? Ebay has hundreds for sale! (affil.)" where ebay, in fact has none whatsoever, but isn't at fault because some unidentifiable 3rd party put in the ad.
Some time ago, we tried to sign up for AdWords and were refused because we sell supplies for making fireworks. We don't sell fireworks, explosives, or chemicals; we sell items like paper, string, paste, and equipment used by professional fireworks manufacturers as well as (serious, legal) hobbyists. We don't even sell how-to books or instructions. The reason Google rejected our advertising was not because of the items we sell, but because we market them as fireworks building materials.
Way too many folk look at google thru rose colored glasses. Poor innocent google.
Assuming google shines at all is going too far in my book.
Disagree? Then explain why so many of the links I click on to buy things direct me to ebay, instead of the site I expect. If I cut/paste that link into a fresh window, it goes where it should. And this is just one issue...there is still the problem of sites buying a ranking from google instead of earning like they should. google is crafted, bought and falsified rankings run wild - give me an unbiased search engine/site any day.
Check Amazon.com. check google on both spellings. Look at your "Hop on Pop" for that matter.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I know this for fact since I am working on a system I put together for partners here and in India for selling prescriptions online. Our site is 100% legal, yet we don't have a huge budget, so Google and other search engines were our main hope. However, this looks to have now changed.
For proof of fact that it is big money lobbying congress and the search engines, take a gander at this article (one of many on the subject). Drugstore.com and others are part of VIPPS, which is a 'licensed' group of online pharmacy companies. Getting VIPPS certification is not cheap and has particular requirements.
While I believe in making sure pharmacies are legit and safe, I think this approach is not the best and only benefits the ones who are raking in cash hand over fist.
"...I'm just saying.....
Dennis Kucinich, the Open Source Presidential Candidate [kucinich.us]"
He's more like the open head-wound candidate, based on his nonsensical ravings. If you like the government controlling the entire software industry, vote for him! He's the candidate that could warm even Stalin's cold dead heart.
Last week my ex-girlfriend injested a heavy dose of Vicodin, and I was feindishly trying to search Google to see if she had taken enough to overdose, or what someone would take if they were trying to commit suicide. The majority of results were for no-name pharm retailers selling drugs named "Vicodin Overdose" aimed at people who wanted to kill themselves.
I can see maybe a small handful of these companies being out there to cater in some twisted way (reality check) but to see the majority of these results using copy and pasted information from each other, selling this is absolute garbage.
The companies that try to take advantage of the technology behind a search engine to push such drastic products should be taken off. It was more difficult than it should have been to find the dose that is sufficient to be life threatening, for preventative measures, than it was to punch in some CC#'s and order oblivion.
Thankfully my ex was okay, no thanks to the majority of scum sucking businesses that populate some of Google's rankings.
Anon for a reason.
If Americans cannot find the offshore pharmacies, they will have to pay the inflated prices of American pharmacies. So the Big Pharmaceutical Companies may have paid google to do this. Mo' money Mo' money Mo' money for Big Pharmco...and less for Americans....
Google better watch its ass...we geeks MADE google what it is by being the early adopters who spread the word to the general population.....we can also make google's sucessor.
Is there any decent search engine that does not use google as an input?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
what have Bush/Dean/Clark et al., done to help the citizen as opposes to CorpGovMedia?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
i hate spam and advertisement. even google's seemingly unabtrusive adwords are annoying when i need to do research and need pages to come up fast.
i have found the mozilla firebird adblocking css script to be immensely useful for those who want to try it out, the instructions as well as the script itself is located at http://texturizer.net/firebird/adblock.html
this is by far the greatest adblocker that i have come across, it blocks a vast majority of the ads and works much better than the "block images from this server" feature which was very neat as well.
-m
Are some of the 100,000 advertisers now signed up for Adwords tarnishing Google's image at a delicate time?
No. It's Google's own fault for tarnishing its own image. They have control of how they function and others have merely taken advantage of it. Google allowed it to continue until now, when they realized problems were in the making.
But then again, tarnishing its image towards whom? Advertisers, users of Google, the government, or everyone?
If people want to buy pills without a prescription, then by all means let them. What's the big deal?
I've been lookin' at some of those sites lately because I would like some Ambien. I've had sleeping issues for years now and doctors are very reluctant to prescribe them to me because they're "too addictive", which is total BS. They might be, but I don't have addictive personality. The best sleep I've had in my life has been while on those pills. Considering it's my sleep being affected, I really don't see the problem with buying 'em online. It's not like I'm buying Oxycontin and getting doped up.
Who's Google to step in and play the police?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs, which is what these adwords are, is extremely tightly regulated in the US. It was only legalized recently, under strict controls, and is still illegal in many (most?) jurisdictions. Some people think that any DTC advertising is a bad idea.
If you publish an ad for a drug, and the FDA didn't sign off on it first, you're breaking the law. Google is almost certainly required to do this -- I'm amazed that they got away with it for so long.
Kucinich only proposes to make things worse by taking rights away from individuals and corporations and giving it to the biggest least accountable corporation of all: the federal government. It is pretty telling that totalitarian fascists like Chomsky really like the guy.
Fortunately, it is telling that the American public, including the party he belongs to, overwhelmingly rejects him since he does not act in the public interest.
Remember, a dollar for Kucinich is a dollar for Bush-Cheney. It only weakens and detracts from the real Democratic Party candidates.
So, go ahead and really for Kucinich, instead of some legit candidate like Governor Dean. Karl Rove will thank you.
A good pharmacy that sells nice drugs and is reliable?
As one of the blockees of the latest Google Dance and such, it's not hard to find conspiracies and shadows hiding around each dance. The truth is, Google is reorganizing, and that's that. We as marketers and web site designers need to ultimately get away from SEO (search engine optimization) and put more focus on [a] delivering quality content and [b] decreasing our reliance on a single source of traffic. Google is great for finding stuff, even if it isn't my stuff, and I can't fault them for doing what they like. Ultimately, the market will decide - if their results over time become less relevant, than another search engine - even MSN - will take the lead.
:(
Oh, and if anyone wants to consolidate some student loans, you won't find me under "Student Loan Consolidation" any more. We got the axe for that search phrase...
Chris
http://www.slconsolidation.com
Subscribe for free to my show!
no less than 4 popups to read one article. I guess times must be difficult for *them*.
there's no place like ~
Never had that experience. Can you give an example?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
The Canadian government isn't happy about the country being given a bad name
I think we gave up on that when we called Bush a moron.
and make things better for the working man and woman. Kucinich has a long history of Fighting the Powers That Be. He is a true outsider....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
if google is taking the responsiblity to keep a huge number of Americans from veiwing bad ads dosent that now not mean that they are taking responsiblity for bad advertisers that they don't censor? Sounds like one stop liability lawsuits to me.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
One that's propped up by infinite amounts of government intervention to protect bloated ad budgets.
3
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I run a VW enthusiast website that primarily consists of people discussing the modifications of their Volkswagens. However, I do have a forum which "anything goes" and it happens to have pr0n posted once in a while. I ran Google AdSense for a few weeks and then they emailed me stating I had to censor the content or remove the ads. Needless to say, I removed the ads. I respect Google's intentions - most advertisers don't want to be affiliated with "risque" content...and they are just protecting their interests. They were very courteous throughout the issue and I would definitely use them again if I have a site that conforms to their guidelines.
They don't really have much choice in obeying the law. Bullshit. When they go public and have twenty billion, they can ignore the law like the rest of the big corporations do. Or rather, they can use a time-tested strategy which calls for squads of lawyers to engage the regulatory menace from the most favorable venue.
I fear that if Google heads down this path, they will become sucky. Make that more sucky -- Google bombing has become de rigeur for every wanna-be huckster out there. Google is great for ferreting out information (nobody google bombs their links for "p3b-f bios") but not so good when I'm looking for an online drug store or a porn site. And that's fine with me. In fact it's better than fine, it's wonderful. I can find what I need on Google, unless it's something some idiot thinks they can make money on, which unfortunately is a lot of stuff.
Let's say Google has their IPO. Everybody here knows that suddenly facing the need to keep that stock price up will lead to stupid decisions in search of new "revenue streams." Which will lead to banner ads, pop-ups, spam, and all the crap we see all over the portal sites.
The damn Fortune article predicts as much: "AOL, eBay, and Amazon--are also drawing battle plans. All are aiming for what they see as Google's weak spot: lack of customer lock-in." You've got to be kidding me. Google is the de facto go-to guy for Internet searches, google bombing notwithstanding. They achieve "lock-in" by... lemme think... HAVING THE BEST SEARCH ENGINE. But I guess simply having a superior product isn't enough. So let's get users to subscribe, then sell their email addresses, and provide them with valuable messages from our partners. Yeah that'll work.
To the brains behind Google: Get rich off your IPO, pull the golden ripcord, sail the world for a year, then get back to technology. Money ruins everything, and it will surely ruin Google.
So does this mean that google will have to switch from web search engine to IM tech and Online games like MS and Yahoo did?
Google has essentially said that they are willing to lie. In making the statement "have the ads most relevant to what they're looking for" they have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the interest of the customer. This is the aggregious error. If say there were a checkbox on the webpage for a non-filtered version and start yahoo-tiered pricing for access, it would be acceptable for all parties.
Is it really so hard to figure out how to make everyone happy?
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
[Please sign here]
Just one example of a site "buying a ranking", or the ebay thing you're talking about, would be enough.
You are aware that AdWords results are different from the normal search results, right? They even come up in little coloured boxes saying "sponsored link".
... yet they have no problem buying drugs from abroad. Yeah, they're REAL patriotic.
Search for anything remotely computer related and they have an ad for it. For example:
Vax - Cheaper Prices
Find prices, tax, shipping, store ratings & reviews for Vax.
www.nextag.com
A few weeks ago when Rush Limbaugh was in the news for his addiction to prescription painkillers, I remember reading a story on the Web (MSNBC maybe?) about his medication of choice, Oxycontin. It was talking about the dangers of unregulated use and so forth...pretty standard health reporting stuff.
The funny thing is that at the bottom of the article was a couple of google search word ads (to be fair, I'm not sure it was actually Google, but same concept) offering the chance to buy the drug the article had just warned us about. Talk about your mixed messages!
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
I wouldn't mind getting some alprazolam, but I always figured it would be so easy to track, and it being a felony and all, buying pills on the net seemed to be a remarkably dumb thing to do.
Do people actually do it and get away with it?
If our politicians actually had any backbone, they'd be trying to solve the problem here instead of importing a solution from a country that has already solved the problem. But that'd piss off some pretty big campaign contributors...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Historically, Democrat money has come from a handful of very wealthy liberals. While Republicans are portrayed as beholden to big business, they only recieve 20-30% more big business money than the Democrats do -- however, the Republicans recieve more in small donations from individuals than do democrats.
The average Howard Dean donation is about $77. That's not a lot of money, but it is a lot of donors, a lot of people that believe in him, his message, his vision, whatever.
i'd love to have a local copy of google before it becomes any more tainted due to policy decisions.
unfortunately i can't imagine a easy way creating a local snapshot of google assuming i have enough hard drive space.
any ideas?
Of course, in general, pharmacists add value to the system -- they advise and help people avoid dangerous drug interactions and such.
When have you EVER gotten any meaningful advice from a pharmacist on anything? Let's assume, that unlike almost every pharmacy I've ever been in, the pharmacist isn't backed up with 100 orders and on the phone constantly.
When I've tried to talk to them, I get two generic answers: "Your doctor will have to answer those questions" and "The PDR doesn't describe any specific drug interactions or side effects".
And not to blame pharmacists, since (A) they don't want to give medical advice, since they're not medical doctors, and (B) they only want to give out "solid", "factual" information.
But, AFAIC, they're just licensed pill counters, they're not really much of a source of information or advice. They have a nicely enforced monopoly on their services, too, which guarantees them work and (education, licensing) helps keep the pool of potential workers small and the paychecks big.
As someone that uses it, it makes my like google much more since the ads are targetted toward the content on my site, but aren't people who are in direct compatition too.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
Not that I completely agree with Googles decision but I would not exactly associate an addiction or chemical dependency to being "dumb". Ideally, you would always make the smartest decision for your own well being but that decision making process gets warped by the addiction. If this was not the case, 99.999% of people using tobacco would quit today.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
How can you tell that the person doing "buisness" with you is a particular race etc? Just because someone types in "Whassup" or "That's Whack" or orders watermelon online does not mean that they are black!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Use this Spam Report Page to tell them what you think is spam.
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
To demonstrate, here's the result for the search you suggest. First 10 are all vendor sites.
Google search for 'Vicodin sleepiness blurred vision rash'
I could kill you, sure, but I could only make you cry with these words
When Dean was elected gov of Vermont, he went to great pains to bend over backwards to appease the bankers, the moneymen, and the PowersThatBe.
Kucinich, OTOH, went to great pains to circumvent, to contradict, to subvert, and to defy, the PowersThatBe.
You choose.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Why is piracitam illegal in the UK? Anyone know?
Get your own free personal location tracker
This is nothing compared to what Adwords did to all of their advertisers a couple months ago. It used to be where the default type of keyword matching was to take your exact words, and match them in any order across a user's search term. They changed this so that it expands each search term to "related" words, called "broad matching". These related words are usually anything but relevant. Even words which are spelled closely to your target word are included. Worse yet, they don't give a way to opt out of it, and they don't offer a replacement for the old style of matching.
The net result is that you have more people competing on obscure keywords (read: higher cost per click), and these new-found competitors don't even *want* to be competing with you!
And I thought their motto was "don't be evil". Hmm.
Josh Woodward
Blame Canada. No, blame the idiots who stifle free trade resulting in such loopholes as the non-Canadian Canadian pharmacy.
Free trade IS fair trade.
as they do not allow adword advertisments for gun sites.
Add
-buy
to the search to get rid of many of the vendors.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
This is slightly off topic, but I noticed a number of people complaining about the same experience I had... looking for information about a medication and finding pages of online pharmacies rated higher.
:-)
However, I also run a blog (Useful Fools http://www.tinyvital.com/blog) and thus can tell you where those high page ranks come from: link spamming.
I started getting comments in my blog that were a bit odd (some ancient article would get a comment like "nice article" and nothing else). I would check and the associated URL was an online pharmacy. Also, I would get comments that were nothing more than a list of online-pharmacy links.
I delete all of these. I have modified my blog code to make the automated Movable Type automated spamming more difficult, just to find that the spammers using automated means come back to the site where it fails and manually enter the spam. I also modified my blog so the email notification of a comment to me also includes a hotlink to delete the comment. I am considering sequestering hotlinks until I manually approve them, but that's a bunch more Perl hacking and I hate Perl and don't have time
This approach causes the google page rank to be artificially inflated. By spreading the spam across a lot of blogs (and I assume BBS's and usenet), the links do not appear to Google's algorithms to be link farms (i.e. they create a widely distributed link farm that is hard to detect). I wouldn't be surprised if there are comments buried away in Slashdot that also contain these links.
One of my favorite blogs, Samizdata, uses a simple Turing test (an image with a random code in it that you have to enter) to deter automated spam. But this won't stop it all.
I fear that google will end up derating blog links as a result, which would be a big shame (I *like* the high page rank on my blog, and get lots of interesting comments and email as a result).
The only good weather is bad weather.
It's not that google is facing ethichal issues fo blocking unlicensed pharmacies, but how do pharmacies who are not licensed get their drug supply from legitimate pharmaceutical companies in the first place and why is there not regulation in place to block this?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I just saw this from Search Engine Watch. Its kind of offtopic, but pretty interesting. FWIW, Google is entitled to have whatever ToS it likes for its AdWords. For example, they would not allow advertising of weapons, prostitution etc. Of course, if they are removing them from teh main index, thats censorship. But it looks like they might be able to do this using this Commercial Results Filter:
Google Dance Syndrome Strikes Again
By Danny Sullivan
There's been a new outbreak of Google Dance Syndrome, causing some web sites last month to lose top positions for some search terms. However, unlike previous outbreaks, a "cure" exists that makes it easy to compare results from "old" to "new" Google. These comparisons have some marketers convinced that recent changes at Google are designed to boost ad sales, a charge Google flatly denies.
For sites to lose rankings on Google -- or any search engine for that matter -- is nothing new. Search engines are constantly adding and removing pages, as well as altering the algorithms they use to rank pages. However, there's a great obsession with Google because of the large amounts of traffic it can deliver. Of the four most popular search engines -- Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN Search -- Google's results are used at the first three.
Every so often, Google makes massive changes to how it ranks pages. When these happen, they are usually accompanied by complaints from some search engine marketers or webmasters that Google's ranking system has gotten worse. However, judging this is difficult. Often times, those injured by changes indeed point out examples of searches where Google fails in terms of relevancy. However, examples of where Google's new system succeeds can also be found.
My previous article on this subject, Coping With GDS, The Google Dance Syndrome, explores in more depth the difficulties of measuring how well Google is doing after such changes. But unique to this latest change is the fact that there's now a method for comparing "old" and "new" Google, something that's never been possible before.
The Filter Test
Specifically, Google Watch's Daniel Brandt discovered that including a made-up word as part of your search may cause Google to show radically different results. Since his original post at WebmasterWorld.com, hundreds if not thousands of site owners have tried this test. Based on their reports, the "filter test," as it has become known, seems to show how Google previously had ranked things.
Here's an example of the filter test in action and why it works.
1.
Search for laptop rentals. You'll get thousands of matches, telling you that Google knows of plenty of web pages that contain both of those words on them.
2.
Search for laptop rentals dhdhdhdhdh. You'll get no matches, telling you that Google knows of no web pages that contain all three words. We already know from step 1 that there are plenty of pages that contain the words laptop and rentals. So, it's really dhdhdhdhdh that doesn't exist on any of these pages.
3.
Search for laptop rentals -dhdhdhdhdh. This should bring back exactly the same results as the search for laptop rentals. That's because we are asking for all pages that contain both laptop and rentals on them (which we know exist from step 1) but commanding Google to exclude any pages that also contain the word dhdhdhdhdh with the -dhdhdhdhdh part of our query. Since we know from step 2 that there are no pages with laptop and rentals on them that also contain the word dhdhdhdhdh, we should get the same results as step 1. Instead we get much different listings.
Why does this happen? One popular theory is that Google is using a new "filter" to prescreen results for "money words," searches where it hopes to sell its AdWords paid listings. You can understand the popularity of this theory by looking at the before and after for that search on laptop rentals. Before, you get mostly businesses that appear to specialize in laptop rentals. After, these are all gone -- r
Over at wrestleview.com, Google's Ad bot was serving ads for cheap Soma next to an article talking about the death of a wrestler, in which Soma was partly responsible.
I wrote an article about this, after which I filed a complaint with Google, and got a quick response from Google.
After seeing something like that, I'd be hard pressed to fight for the rights of sleezy pill pushers to advertise freely online.
best web host ever
"and make things better for the working man and woman. Kucinich has a long history of Fighting the Powers That Be."
The working man and woman overwhelmingly reject his ideas. He has a long history of fighting for the powers that be: his proposals invest a lot more power with the government.
"Kucinich, OTOH, went to great pains to circumvent, to contradict, to subvert, and to defy, the PowersThatBe."
By proposing vast expansive new government proposals? By opposing tax cuts because he thinks the money belongs to the rulers? By wanting higher taxes so the rulers are even more rich and more powerful? By wanting the government to extend its greedy and abusive hand into the people's matters such as health care? No, he is mister establishment, probably the one candidate most dedicated to making the powers that be more powerful and more "be-ing".
No, a man who wants to make the powers much more rich and powerful is not a "Defier".
Dennis is also against worker's rights. He is in strong favor of workers being forced to join unions that are against their interests ("closed shop") and opposes right-to-work. If he really was for the working man, he would stand up for each worker's choice to join or not join a union.
Come to think of it, he is also racist, getting top ratings from special interest groups because of his consistent support for "affirmative action" programs which are designed to punish individuals who don't have the "correct" skin color.
If we can get an man into the presidency who has a record of defying bankers and other ESTABLISHED POWERS, then at least we have a chance....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
You have it backwards. The government regulates and taxes the hell out of corporations. It is clear who has control.
"If we can get an man into the presidency who has a record of defying bankers and other ESTABLISHED POWERS, then at least we have a chance"
If we elect him and he has the government take over the banking industry, we at least have a chance at becoming the USSR.
Kucinich wants the biggest, least accountable corporation to take over everything.
I've seen blogspam that plagerizes whole posts from other authors on other blogs with similar topics! That's pretty sophisticated, and nearly impossible to defeat.
Sort of forgot that aspect of it, did ya?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"citizens get to own govt, but not on CorpGovMedia"
No, the citizens do not. However, you are free to believe what the government wants you to believe, even if it is not true. The fact that the government rules us (not the other way around) is what you are forgetting.
I can choose to ignore Microsoft. I'll have a hassle trying to get my Dell to run Linux, but it can be done. However, if I choose to ignore the government, I might get waco'ed.
The paranoia is incredible at times. From Google Watch to "Google is dying!" posts on Slashdot... Why all the doom and gloom? Let's try to be a bit level headed here and stop the nonsensical posts about how Google is evil and doing everything wrong, oh no, wait, they are doing things right, but surely everything and anything is a sign that it's going to get worse!
Sigh.
Clever signature text goes here.
I run a price comparison site for online pharmacies, I do run a private label online pharmacy (you set your own prices, you host your site, someone else does the customer service and the shipping), and it makes me wonder time to time.
WHY?
Obviously people buy drugs online, and the pharmacies pay a decent commission, so running a fairly complex site with content (like real price comparisons) gives a good ranking, generate clicks, and brings some $$ to the house.
Is it RIGHT? (the right thing to do)
That's what makes me think sometimes. You guys might think that people buy tons of prozac and tons of painkillers to get high on it (eg. abusing substances), however looking at my reports I can see, that most of the products sold are "viagra type", "quit smoking" and weight loss - and I have a feeling, that these people might get a decent doctor's prescription, because they are fat, and they smoke, and they have erection problems, and they are embarassed or just cannot afford US medication prices. No I am not a hero, and I get a commission, but I work hard for it (I do not over-SEO, spam, use doorway pages, trick people into buying something). I cannot deny, I can see painkillers, and I can see anti depressants sold online (though I do not target ads specifically for these), and I have mixed feelings about it:
1. some % of these people buy online because it is cheaper for them (good)
2. some % of these are buying these online because they do not get a real prescription (what do you do if you have pains/depression and you are denied prescription - you go online and get it)
2. some % might be abusing these substances -well about that, i do not feel good, and have no control over it, I can say that these people at least do not use heroine or crack, and if they really want to get these, they can get them "offline".
Excuse me, I might have been off-topic a bit, but let me explain: if google (and other engines filter sites pointing to/or online pharmacies, your mailbox will be full of "get it up in 3 minutes" and "get your happy prozac online" junk. But this is only one side effect, the others will be prices sky rocketing, so all those non-abuser-online shoppers will be forced to find these in other engines, like those only PPC (pay-per-click) engines targeted for online shoppers-> eg. google will loose searches, advertisement money and i think reputation, since filtering is censorship, and censorship is not right.
I believe that substances should be controlled, but in a way that is not only a control over protecting whoever else's business, but serving the interest of the masses. Appearently online drugstores are needed, and as such services google should provide search results for them and whatever is associated with them.
Some of you might think that I am just an other lowlife protecting my business, selling drugs online to whoever wants that, and you might be half right. I am doing it because it is extra $$, because I can do it on my own, because I think it is more good than bad. And beleive it or not, I started it because I needed a project to keep me busy and interested at my boring daytime job as a sysadmin. If they will filter our drug searches, I just walk away and work on something, I just beleive that it is not Right.
PS: google only allows FDA approved medication in their adwords system, so they are already under pressure if you ask me. Feel free to mail me if it is not spam:)
Slackers Guild (shameless plug) ran AdSense banner ads for a time. We told people to click on the products they were interested in. Suddenly, we generated revenue, and Google decided it was too much and cut us off.
Read our articles about it here, here, and for amusement, here and here.
Needless to say, after being owed over a grand and not being paid because Google arbitrarily decided we had violated rules, Google AdWords left a sour taste in our mouths. They accused us of using bots, then when that didn't pan out, accused us of violating some sort of rule by encouraging our readers to--gasp--click on the products they were interested in. Eventually, it dwindled out, and one of us even wrote an ad snatcher for the fun of it.
The really shitty thing during the whole debacle was not only that they were withholding revenue, but how they repeatedly made us out to be the bad guys, claiming we cost them and their advertisers time and money because we gave them a lot of hits. Our site gave their advertisers tons of free exposure on our site. In fact, over a grand's worth.
Not all people who buy drugs on line without a perscription are doing it for "fun". I can't afford to visit a doctor for my condition because I can't afford the full treatment.
I read about my symptoms, did my own research, and found the medications necessary to manage my condition. While the treatment I provide myself is incomplete, it does allow me to have some type of life.
If I did visit the doctor and had it diagonsed, I couldn't pay for the treatment anyway. Then it would go on my medical history which would make getting private insurance impossible. My goal right now is to manage my condition so I survive long enough to get a job that pays enough so I can buy private insurance and then wait the 3 months so my condition isn't a "prior condition".
I hope this gives another perspective to the usefulness of these types of business.
But what we really need is for the FDA or the government or whoever to require anyone selling medications online using a web-server in .us or a werehouse on .us to have a licence.
It may force some people completly overseas but hopefully some of these scum will disappear altogether (along with all the SPAM I get for their services)
correction--citizens get to VOTE on govt, but not on the incestuous combination of corporation, govt and media.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
A while ago I reported one instance of this and the search results got better in just two or three weeks.
"correction--citizens get to VOTE on govt, but not on the incestuous combination of corporation, govt and media."
What difference does that make? If you vote on the losing side, your vote means nothing. If you vote on the winning side, your vote means next to nothing.
At least with corporations you can take your business elsewhere without worrying abou being shot (just ask Randy Weaver* what happens if you just say no to government), and with media you can tune out and tune in elsewhere (since there are thousands of different media voices, and you can become one yourself).
(For the record, few media voices are locked into this unholy alliance. The worst are probably NPR and PBS, which are government-controlled and awash in corporate advertising money.)
* No, I'm not some militia nut, and find that Weaver is a loathesome supremacist. However, that was no reason for government assassins to shoot because his wife was carrying a loaded baby... on her own doorstep).
The CoS sent a DMCA notice to Google for having links to CoS Copyrighted propoganda.
Who is this drunken slut?
Drug deaths are often categorized as 'vehicle deaths', 'suicides', etc. Because that's how the person died. The drug causing them to behave irrationally isn't the cause of death - it was the Junkie crashing into a phone pole.
I gotta don my Nomex Tuxedo first. . .
Ok, if little Timmy is old enough to know how to bootleg movies, he should be old enough to know about the things german movie stars do to farm animals.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad