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

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'

[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.

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.

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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...

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?

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.