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The conflict of interest that is Google

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Renegade:
A number of years ago Google was being abused by the SEO crowd. They reacted and put an end to a lot of it, it not most.

However, given the amount of effort that Google put into that, and the time since they obliterated it, it is fair to say that if it is in the SERPs now, then it's there because Google wants it there.

Now, given that there are a large number of sites that screenscrape most of their content, I can only assume that this is because Google allows it. They serve Google ads, unlike the sites that they scrape content from.

Let me repeat that.

The screen scraping sites scrape their content from sites that do not serve Google ads, then they use Google ads.

Let me repeat that again...

The screen scraping sites scrape their content from sites that do not serve Google ads, then they use Google ads.

Hmmm... Some things just make you wonder a bit.

For those out there looking to make a fast buck, there's an easy way that not a lot of SEOs have caught onto yet. This is definitely blackhat stuff, and very relevant right now. It works.

Why does it work?

Because Google would rather give you the same content from a site that serves up their ads than from a site that they will not make any money from.

Now, it is perfectly possible that I'm wrong about the motivation and that Google has simply screwed up massively... But the facts there all point to it.

JavaJones:
I'm curious whether there is conclusive evidence that the "scraped" sites that have Google ads on them are higher ranked because of the ads, or because they *aggregate* content from other sites. If their site content is entirely irrelevant I would not expect them to rank high, and if they do I would definitely view that very suspiciously. But if instead these sites are simply stealing high-ranking content from multiple other sites and aggregating it, it makes sense (although it is a sad perversion of the valuation of content and "relevancy" in Google's algorithm) that these sites would rank higher than the multitude of sites they're stealing from.

I'm interested to see some specific examples of these sites so I can see for myself, both the high-ranking adwords aggregation sites, and the source sites they're apparently stealing from. If all this is going on, then at best it's a weakness in Google's algorithms, and at worse it's downright, straightforward corruption on Google's part. I'd like to know which.

Of course there's always the possibility that Google just doesn't have enough motivation to fix their results since they do in fact make money on these sites, so it could be an error of negligence rather than the even nastier explicit promotion of such sites, but regardless still a morally dubious approach to content ranking and product development/progress (or lack thereof).

Then again if Google started penalizing aggregation sites en mass (assuming there was no easy way to actually single out the true content stealing sites), I'm sure there'd be a big outcry from some major, legitimate aggregation sites. Often times it seems Google is in-between a rock and a hard place as far as how it tunes its search results. They've been sued multiple times by site owners who feel they're entitled to enjoy their high rankings forever, and accuse Google of changing their algorithms just to spite them or to promote something that Google themselves make more money off of. Often times these changes are ostensibly (Google claims) to help combat spammers, so it's always a tricky thing when you start tinkering with "dumb but unbiased" algorithms to try to make them smarter than those gaming the system. There are often civilian "casualties"...

- Oshyan

mouser:
Of course there's always the possibility that Google just doesn't have enough motivation to fix their results since they do in fact make money on these sites, so it could be an error of negligence rather than the even nastier explicit promotion of such sites, but regardless still a morally dubious approach to content ranking and product development/progress (or lack thereof).
--- End quote ---


i dont think they have to engage in explicit promotion of these sites -- in fact they probably have a weak effort to occasionally go after the worst offenders.  but that's just standard operating procedure for corporations and government programs and every other organization that has an incentive to look the other way when abuses are occurring.  this isn't a superhero comic with arch villains whose goal is to destroy mankind.

google is making billions off of these sites hosting their ads -- these sites are the geese that are laying the golden eggs.   i return to my hypothetical example above - while it's important to make an occasional public showing of going after such sites, it's also important to their business model to never make any drastic changes that would substantially decrease their revenue stream.

JavaJones:
I think it's rather presumptuous to conclude that these sites account for a significant portion of Google's revenue. Do you know if there are any statistics about that? Maybe someone has done studies?

- Oshyan

mouser:
that's a good point, i have no idea what share of their revenue comes from where.  would be nice to know.

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