Too spammy for organic, but we'll take your adwords dollar

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Sep 21, 2007

There is something about this search result that bothers me. Here we have a Google search for "text link ads" and oddly enough www.text-link-ads.com doesn't show up first, or even in the first 3 pages of results I checked.

Oh, but they have the top position in the sponsored results.

Please forgive me for another Google whinge post, I know I'm guilty of a few of these lately. Google, sorry if I have the wrong impression here, but someone has to keep you on your toes.

Penalties

I would say the site has had a penalty applied to it. It's a large and popular site which doesn't show up for it's own domain name, so clearly it has an algorithmic or (more likely in this case) a hand penalty applied. This lowers the relevance of Google's organic index, because users specifically looking for this website can't find it in the results.

Naughty, naughty, naughty

So the site has been naughty (If I had to guess I would say it was paid link related). The site is so naughty that Google is prepared to lower their relevance to protect searchers from seeing a spammy site such as this. Fine.

So why then is it allowed into Adwords? Surely if this was about the user, then the user doesn't want to see the "spam" site in the organic or the paid results?

Getting paid to link to spam

Yeah, I'm pretty sure anyone will lower their quality threshold if the price is right. I'm pretty sure for a million dollars you could get Wikipedia to list "The top 10 cheesiest mesothelioma websites" on their homepage, and I'd do it for considerably less than that (open to offers above $100 - hehe).

And so does Google. The above example is a website which they themselves have classified as "too spammy for our index", yet they will link to the site for a couple of dollars a click.

Where am I going with this?

In summary, Google is a profit making company (shock!). What I'm saying is that Google will do things they don't want to do in exchange for a few extra bucks, which makes them exactly the same as every other profit making company on the planet.

I guess this post is hardly world-changing, nor indeed reveals anything we didn't already know.

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Tags: sponsored links google adwords adwords spam

Comments

Michael - Sep 24, 2007

Well, your right, Google has to make some money here. Frankly I'm happy they do it this way. The problem I am specifically talking about it certain vague search phrazes. I could punch in a specific work like ART, and my site my not be ranked anywhere near the top 3 pages. WHY? I think most it this has something to do with the algorithm, but what if the website is brand new, has very little text, uses flash, or has no backlinks?

I think Google is smart enough to know when a site is too spammy for top position spots. Exactly like in this Case. The Website won't rank highly because they don't have any Text on the Landing / Home page.

As I have read over and over again for years that TEXT on the home page gets you ranked (Especially in Google). So in this type of case, how does a site get ranked number one on the Rankings without... having a age developed site, good solid original home page text, or thousands of backlinks? Buy it!

But, this doesn't mean I will click on those links because I see the ads, so whom ever is really number one, I think your safe... for now.

Harvey - Sep 24, 2007

Sure, now that you mention it, the homepage is pretty poorly optimized for "text link ads". But I don't think this is the problem. I think even if they used "text link ads" in the title, H1, meta tags and several times in the body content it wouldn't make much difference, as it smells like a hand penalty.

I have no problem with dodgy sites being kicked out of the index, but surely if they are unworthy of being in the organic results, they are unworthy of being in the sponsored results right?

Definitely a case of "Don't be evil (conditions apply)".

Grant Davies - Feb 5, 2008

Yes, I would say it is a hand penalty given out by the majority of the 20,000 human editors google now uses.

Also you have to remember Google doesn't like people selling or buying links, so obviously they will hit the sites that offer this service pretty hard.

Allowing them to bid in AdWords makes little sense to me though. However google do have shareholders to please as well as the users.