Google, Submission AdSense and NoFollow Letdown

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.

Comments

Re:THIRD!

[MountainMan101]

Post you VISA card number, expiry date and 3 digit security number, we'll credit you. Please ignore any temporary additions to your statement.

AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help'

[orangeguru]

Before Google cranks out another money making extension it should concentrate more on preventing click fraud AND provide tools for websites using AdSense to protect themselves. I know now several sites now that have been kicked out from AdSense - because of Click Fraud - but Google offers no tools, no insights, no answers and no support for those kicked out. Ever tried to talk someone from Google's 'customer service'? No eMail addresses, hardly any responses, mostly ignorance.

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'

[liliafan]

I completely agree one of my sites got its adwords shut down because of a minority of people that were making fraudulent clicks, their purpose for doing this? To get my adwords account shutdown. Before these clicks started I had almost $200 in my account from valid clicks they started I got shutdown.

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 information on what you are defending against. It is kinda like going to court to defend against charges being brought against you without knowing what the charges are.

Now google is giving site users encouragement to promote click fraud, hey if I write an article for this site and they keep clicking the googleads I will get some of that money....*sigh* Google used to be a good company.

Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help'

[FLEB]

Wha'? Courts? Trials? That is so pre-9/11.

Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help'

[tbmcmullen]

I have a hard time following this "they should do x before doing y". As a rather large company, Google has enough to people to work on both x and y at the same time. So this sentiment that "if they're doing x, they must not be doing y" is stupid.

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 business.

Re:AdSense - ClickFraud and Google's 'Help'

[RemovableBait]

Actually, Coral CDN is now advocating the use of port 8080 instead of 8090. Both will still work for the time being.

There is more information in this posting to the [coral-announce] list.

Individual Share of Ad Revenue

[ackthpt]

I really don't see a problem with this.

This post brought to you by Unlax, when you got the runs, it'll stop you in your tracts!

And you thought the karma whoring was bad...

[malibucreek]

I don't want to imagine the c--p that people will post if they think real money is available. And let's not get started on the click fraud incentive here.

I prefer to *quietly* reward top posters on my sites by offering them paid gigs, but only after they've proven themselves.

I know of sites that already do this.

[iogan]

Like some forums I hang out at. I'd give a link, but I'm not entirely sure it's not against the Adsense TOS, so I'll refrain. But I think it could be a pretty good idea.

Imagine it at work @ Slashdot though: 5+ Funny == 5+ bucks.. I could get into that..

Re:I know of sites that already do this.

[Incadenza]

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.

[DrEldarion]

Imagine it at work @ Slashdot though: 5+ Funny == 5+ bucks.. I could get into that..

Sure, but it goes both ways. -1 offtopic? Pay up, bucko.

Incidentally, that would do wonders for spam...

Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly

[Kelson]

There are three main reasons nofollow has failed to stop webspam:

1. It misjudged the root problem -- page rank isn't the only thing spammers are looking for. This is the main point of Justin Mason's post, if I remember correctly. (I read it at home a few hours ago, before it showed up on ./, and of course now I can't pull it up here.)
2. It relied on near-universal implementation. If even 50% of blogs, wikis, etc. used nofollow, it would still be worth the spammers' effort to blast comment spams to the entire net.
3. It got applied incorrectly, as a blanket label on all links from non-admins.

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

[TubeSteak]

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.

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

[IO ERROR]

I was going to update my nofollow story from a year ago, but it seems nothing's changed -- except that blog spam has dramatically increased. Which anybody could have predicted -- and most people who thought about it for more than a second actually did.

Nofollow was a hare-brained idea from the start, cooked up over a couple of apparently drunken (or perhaps stoned) nights between developers at Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly

[curunir]

While nofollow failed to stop comment spam, that doesn't mean that it failed. On the contrary, it worked quite well. It's only bloggers who still have a comment spam problem that believe it failed. Contrary to the begged question, nofollow was never intended to stop comment spam. It was only intended to stop comment spam from affecting page rank. This is an important distinction.

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

[Bogtha]

It relied on near-universal implementation. If even 50% of blogs, wikis, etc. used nofollow, it would still be worth the spammers' effort to blast comment spams to the entire net.

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. And when those implementations have nofollow, there's no point (at least for pagerank purposes).

Sure, the spammer might just target different weblog software instead, but that deters them from targeting you, and the developers of that weblog software have the opportunity of doing the same as you.

What nofollow could have been useful for is a simple "I don't endorse this link" statement

This was actually suggested before Google implemented nofollow, but for some reason Google chose a crappy halfway measure.

Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly

[Bogtha]

So, please tell me why comment spammers continue to blast comments to blogs powered by WordPress

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 haven't implemented nofollow).

You also have to consider the possibility that some of the spammers continuing to target Wordpress are simply using outdated software. They don't all write their own code, do they? Maybe they just haven't all upgraded to the latest version of SuperSpamomatic that knows about the Wordpress changes.

Re:Nofollow - useful idea, applied incorrectly

[brion]

Nofollow does one thing, and it does it just fine:

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

[darkmeridian]

Google "darkmeridian" and basically any slashdot topic for the last year or so that I have posted in and that thread will pop up. The result of Slashdot's high PageRank, the relative uniqueness of my screenname, as well as my pathetic devotion to Slashdot is really scary.

The Point of the NoFollow Attribute

[paulthomas]

The whole point of the NoFollow Attribute wasn't necessarily to immediately decrease blog-spam -- it was to reduce it's detriment to Google and other indexes.

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

[paulthomas]

I think that is a decision for the managers of blogs and forums to make. I have no financial interest in WOXY.com, and I think it is a little different than selling VAL/UM and PRoZ^ ck. In addition, they offer free streams and free forums.

Re:UGC?

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

I dunno either. I'm gonna hazard a guess and say it stands for "User Generated Content."

You forgot the affiliate links in your post

[ylikone]

Steal insightful content from another site, copy and paste here to your slashdot post, sprinkle in amazon (or other) affiliate links in keywords of your post, get modded +5 insightful, sit back and gain $$$.

Nice Headline

[szembek]

Submitter, poorly-written title and comprehension little

Re:Nice Headline

[Windsinger]

I thought the RSS feed for it had corrputed. This is really bad.

"Embarrassing Mistake?"

[Evro]

I read the linked article on Mirrordot and I have to say it's stultifying. Google added the "nofollow" tag to indicate that its crawler shouldn't follow the links on a given page. Some ignorant people apparently assumed that this would eliminate comment spam on blogs and other commentable media. When it became evident that it won't, it somehow became the fault of Google - their "embarrassing mistake." Spammers will continue to spam forever, there's no reason for them to stop. And this statement is even more stupifying:

Worse, nofollow has another, more pernicious effect, which is that it reduces the value of legitimate comments. Here's how:

Why should I bother entering a comment on your blog, after all? Well, I might comment because you're my friend. But I might also want some tiny little reward for participating in a discussion, contributing to the content on your site, and generally enhancing the value of the conversational Web. That reward? PageRank, baby. But if your blog uses the nofollow tag, you've just eliminated that tiny little bit of reciprocity. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather just comment on my own blog. And maybe, if you're lucky, I'll link back to you.

So people only post on web forums for "greedy" reasons? If that's your motivation then I'm glad you won't be posting anywhere. If your comment isn't worth making just for the point you're trying to convey then I'd rather you keep it to yourself than just post to boost your own PageRank... your post is only marginally better than the spam you're complaining about anyway.

Adsense API is not a new thing

[ylikone]

The AdSense API is not a new thing. It's been around for at least six months and is in wide use by larger publishers like about.com.

http://www.kbcafe.com/adwords/default.aspx?search= adsense+api

Google simply doesn't make the existence of this API public.

You can make money on Slashdot by posting

[ylikone]

I once got $50 from single post. BUT... it was close to Christmas and my list included affiliate links to amazon books and it got moderated +5 Interesting. I haven't been able to do that since... but I haven't really tried either. It was a fluke.

PageRank is the problem

[Momoru]

PageRank itself is the problem. It worked in 98 before everyone knew about it, now that they know the tricks, every search brings up forums and spam instead of the most relevant site. AdSense made the problem worse by letting spam sites turn an easy profit. Surely with all those PHD's there Google can come up with a more modern solution. Otherwise...wheres the next Google? Clusty.com ?

What the hell is this?

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

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. 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 ...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 ...
http://www.pro.ie/marketing-ireland/every-air port-car-rental.htm Cached - Similarpages

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?

[david.given]

Has anyone got any idea what is going on here, or how that might affect their page ranking? Should I report them to google?

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 report itself as the Google spider and see what happens.

Not a Rumor!

[DevanJedi]

This is not a rumor- it was officially announced by Google today. Also, even though the API may have already existed, this allows people to create and manage accounts through the API.

Re:Something I didn't know about Slashdot

[DevanJedi]

Except that now, with two low-quality posts in a row you have risked a lowering of your Karma!

Relatedly?

[ickoonite]

"Relatedly" is not a word. "Belatedly" is.

Consider "In other news", "In related news"...

*sigh*

iqu :|