Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Also there is a "dirty" feeling associated with doing that, mainly because I am a publisher, reporting another publisher, feels like a the tell tale in school.
On the other hand I strongly feel for helping out the network through which I am making a good living, and advertisers whose good is also mine.
Perhaps the dirty feeling will go away and more people would report violations if Google creates an ethical TOS version explaining cause and effect in friendly plain non legal English, morally outlining why each breach is unethical or dangerous to the well being of the network, for frankly there are some vague ones in there.
It might still feel bad reporting violations, but perhaps a little less than it does now.
Examples of vague ones that I wouldn't report:
1) The use of Referrals as alternate ads
2) Having more than one referral ad for same product per page
3) The whole "calling undue attention to ads" business is beyond my simple intellect.
4) ADD YOUR OWN HERE
This is not a call for TOS change, but a call for better communication.
This thread was originally intended to suggest for TOS violations to be made as clear as a broken link is in some areas, by removing the vagueness through samples on the AdSense Blog for example, and recruit more publishers towards reporting clear violations, which should speed up the cleaning of the system.
Yes, I understand that and tend to agree.
Basically, I took issue with the post by "nutmeg" (not incredibill) about not really understanding whether the site violated Google's TOS or not, but still reporting them because it looked guilty.
His/her attitude was reminiscent of a famous but failed military saying that might translate to "Report Them All, Let Google Sort Them Out"
But, G's job is to "sort them out" and it seems, from hearsay, that they choose to ignore the vast majority of reports anyway.
I actually wish they'd make reporting easier.
Er, yes you did actually:What about the grief you put them through and the possible loss of revenue while they are down.
Convenient to leave this part out wasn't it?
What if the Google employee reviewing the site has the same lack of knowledge?
Please note the "What if" .. an obvious supposition.
Darned ethical of you the respond in this manner.
But that's not your responsibility, you report them to people whose job it is to determine whether anything untoward is going on.
I don't need a lesson in responsibility. I have a fair idea what MY responsibility is.
Where others are involved, my responsibility starts with making sound judgements and tempering my actions; not making assumptions and taking premature actions that can cause harm if my assumption is incorrect.
In the case of Google and TOS violations, my responsibility is to not report anything unless I am 100% sure the website is violating the TOS.
Your responsibility may be quite different.
[edited by: old_expat at 11:51 am (utc) on Sep. 1, 2006]
We shouldn't report that guy who's been standing outside the bank for half an hour because, hey, the police might be bad at their job and wrongly accuse him of something. Let's just walk away.
I did you a good deed by leaving out that quote.
What about the grief you put them through and the possible loss of revenue while they are down.
And what about the grief of the people that try to earn a living the honest way?
What about the grief of the advertisers getting ripped of their money by dishonest adsense publishers? And not all of them have a million dollar budget they can pour out on advertising. And many of them certainly cannot afford loosing money because some people for example write: "click the ads - support my site" above their ads.
After all the money does not come from Google but from many often small businesses advertising.
We've seen the same kind of anger expressed in Webmaster World threads about reporting scrapers and black-hat SEO. Why? Surely we don't have any "support this site with your clicks" violators, scrapers, black-hat SEOs, etc. in these forums? :-)
What about the grief you put them through and the possible loss of revenue while they are down.And what about the grief of the people that try to earn a living the honest way?
In the supposition that I alluded to, the person who was reported was not necessarily guilty.
The person I responded to stated that they did not know for sure whether a site had actually violated the TOS.
Is it that hard to understand that being sure about what you speak is a more responsible position to take than reporting someone for a maybe?
I wonder why some members become furious over the very idea of TOS violators being reported to google.
EFV, if you are pointing this at me, you are way off base. I am not furious about TOS violators getting reported. It doesn't make much difference to me either way.
I have an opinion. I express it.
I do tend to get a bit peeved when someone mis-quotes me.
We've seen the same kind of anger expressed in Webmaster World threads about reporting scrapers and black-hat SEO. Why? Surely we don't have any "support this site with your clicks" violators, scrapers, black-hat SEOs, etc. in these forums? :-)
If this part is referring to me, it's just plain dishonest and you know it. Show me one thread where I have ever supported black hat SEO, fradulent clicks or scrapers.
What about the grief you put them through and the possible loss of revenue while they are down.
Tough luck. Google's not going to nuke them on just my sayso and if Google does a review based on my report and decides there is reason enough to suspend or kick them out of the program, then that's their lookout, not mine. And if I were to break or bend the rules, I would fully expect to be subject to the same treatment.
What if the Google employee reviewing the site has the same lack of knowledge?
Also not my problem. I sleep just fine at night.
In the case of Google and TOS violations, my responsibility is to not report anything unless I am 100% sure the website is violating the TOS.Your responsibility may be quite different.
Yep. I'm an advertiser on behalf of clients, who trust me (and pay me) to spend their millions of dollars and look out for their interests - even (in some cases) at the expense of my own interests as a publisher.
The person I responded to stated that they did not know for sure whether a site had actually violated the TOS.
Right. Nobody's going to know that for sure but Google. And nobody's going to make that decision but Google. If they don't think there's a problem with what I'm reporting, they will most likely toss my message in the bit bucket, and no harm no foul - unless a bunch more complaints come in, and they start to take another look.
I have an opinion. I express it.
As do I. And I act on it, too.
EFV's comment was not addressed to anyone in particular and there are numerous posts in the thread (and many others) to which it could apply.
There are enough sites out there that ARE violating the Adsense TOS, clearly and unmistakeably, that anyone who is in the mood to report violations can stay well away from borderline cases and still have lots to report.
Flooding Google with reports of borderline abuse is unlikely to help the cause much. Stick with reporting cases that are clear violations and be sure to explain your concerns clearly.
When people complain that their reports about Adsense violations weren't acted on, I sometimes wonder whether their report was given low priority because it didn't actually contain enough information to be useful to the person on the receiving end.
Analogy: If you reported to the police that there was a suspicious-looking guy in front of the bank, that doesn't give them much reason to give priority to your concerns. If you said a guy wearing a mask was sitting in an idling car in front of the bank while three others went into the bank waving guns, you'd make it much easier for them to identify the problem and respond effectively.
you have would stoop to a spelling flame
It wasn't a spelling flame, for some reason at 2am it seemed mildly amusing yet less so today.
First of all, it's NETMEG
For your edification, THAT is a spelling flame.
Seriously though, back to the topic...
It doesn't matter who reports who as there's nothing you have actually done except raise Google's awareness of a potential situation. It's not like a DMCA complaint where Google MUST take action, this is only a report for their review. Only Google can make the final decision as to whether or not the site violates the rules enough to shut it down or just send a warning to correct the problem, not anyone reporting.
In the long run NOT reporting can be likened to letting the one neighbor on your street get away without mowing every summer letting the grass get 6ft tall, not painting for 20 years, and several broken down cars left sitting around and there goes the AdSense neighborhood, aka the property value of the content network.
Unfortunately, the AdSense neighborhood is in such bad shape with all the MFA spammers and such that the collective power of WebmasterWorld probably couldn't file enough reports in a year to get the situation corrected.
[edited by: incrediBILL at 5:03 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2006]
A week ago I reported one of the worst MFAs out there. Soon I heard back, being told they'd look at it. Today the AdSense ads are still on it.
I'm talking about an absolute garbage site.
Quoting from the WW Terms of Service:
13: Please do not drop promotional urls, signature files, nor specifics that would lead people to your site. Signing your name is fine, however commercialized posts or resume signatures will be edited. We tend to err on the side of caution to protect the integrity of the system. Affiliate based URLs are not allowed anywhere on the system.25: Self promotional URL drops and whisper campaigns are strictly forbidden within the forums and will be edited out.
This is far from promoting the site in question (and it sure isn't mine). It's at antiques dash 101 dot info
Then again, Google may be smart-pricing the site or otherwise reducing its earnings to the point where the owner will fold his or her tent and go home. Or the AdSense team could simply be too swamped in junk-site reports to do anything about the violation that you've reported. We just don't know.
Before I had reported it, searching for the particular phrase I had used brought the junk site up at the top of the search results.
[edited by: Car_Guy at 6:52 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2006]
added:
Google with quotes "antique toys showboat 1962" and enjoy a full list of Supplemental Results, it seems to be a flagged spam phrase.
[edited by: Hobbs at 7:17 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2006]
Flooding Google with reports of borderline abuse is unlikely to help the cause much. Stick with reporting cases that are clear violations and be sure to explain your concerns clearly.
Exactly. I mostly add them to the filter, and have only ever reported extreme cases. My comment earlier in the thread about what constitutes a violation being subjective was in reference to this practice. What you or I might think of as borderline could be viewed differently by another person, and differently again by Google. therefore I only bother when a site is so extreme there is no doubt - as in the case of an example sticked to me earlier in the thread.
When people complain that their reports about Adsense violations weren't acted on, I sometimes wonder whether their report was given low priority because it didn't actually contain enough information to be useful to the person on the receiving end.
Maybe, but whenever I have done this I've always included information such as the search term it was seen on, the ad copy, the reasons I believe it violated the TOS. I no longer bother as they just don't seem to act on these reports. I had a couple of successes with the "Click here to get me rich" ones, but even with these they mostly allow the site to remain unchanged.
Why bother to report at all? is the question I have. I don't see any moral dilemma in doing so - if they acted on reports.
... I have no problem with sex, BTW ...
Whoa - this thread now has a lot more information than I wanted to know...
I think only the initial question brought up the biggest challenge with the TOS which is that they are too vague to really allow anybody to identify any but the most flagrant abusers. The prosecution of "violators" and therefore arguably the *definition of violations* changes with each major update.
edited for author's failure to read earlier posts
Also there is a "dirty" feeling associated with doing that, mainly because I am a publisher, reporting another publisher, feels like a the tell tale in school.
I can see your point, but personally the only dirty feeling I got is when my modification proposal to the AdSense for Search code was rejected twice - while at the same time other sites are allowed to make modifications.
Basically, I edited the code to make it W3C compliant as it originally is nothing close to it. In any case it was a modification of the code, so fair enough. The dirty feeling kicked in when on a daily basis I come across large and famous sites where the code clearly had a little 'tweak' - but they still considered to be legitimate. Not quite fair.
On that basis I would feel absolutely no guilt for reporting a clear violator that uses AdSense on spam sites. As Tropical Island mentioned earlier, such sites should be reported for the sake of the rest of us who remain on the good side.
Apologies for posting quite late on this thread.
I edited the code to make it W3C compliant
See, I would never report that, who cares, that's just housekeeping IMO.
However, my competitor preloaded the search field with keywords to entice people to click the SEARCH box, he got reported in a most, um, innocent way.
"Dear Google, I would love to be able to preload the search field to help a customer like this <link> but wasn't sure it was allowed. Please advise." :)
I just don't see "innocent" and "incrediBILL" in the same posting without a double-take (or should that be a doubleclick?)...
Rgds
Damon
See, I would never report that, who cares, that's just housekeeping IMO.
It crossed my mind as well but despite the insignificance of the change I though I shouldn't take any chances. Still, I believe that this is also a matter of luck. The person in the other end is well ... a person - and because of that it seems natural to be to expect different reactions amongst support staff. Who knows, if I try proposing the fix again it might be approved in the future.
Regards.
Damon, I gave up on anyone understanding what the thread is about a long time ago, almost gave up on WebMasterWorld too, but remembered how much I enjoy its diversity and the wealth of insights down here.
titaneye, willing to bet you that everyone else here hates this kind of people too, but you know what? Them, you and I have the right to be here without name calling, embrace the horror. I don't live with my mother, but if she needs my help I would in a sec, don't know about turning 48 yet (8 more years to go), but here's another bet, by the time I'm there, AdSense will be the least of my worries.
I've embraced my own horrors, junk mail spam, MFA, flies, annoying know it all people, I'll swat one or two along the way, but I won't stop by one long enough to let it ruin my life.
A week ago I reported one of the worst MFAs out there. Soon I heard back, being told they'd look at it. Today the AdSense ads are still on it.
From my own personal experience it takes from 4 to 6 weeks for AdSense to catch up with the reports and actually do something with the offenders.
Everybody just keep reporting the @#$%$#@ who think they can game the system by cheating and stealing. Google will get to them all eventually.
The justifications people use for their practices are ridiculous - in a recent discussion over at SitePoint excuses popped up such as blaming the advertiser for choosing the network they abuse!
Not reading the terms and conditions is not a tolerable excuse. If a site is doing the wrong thing, I will repeatedly report it until something happens.
I particularly target people who's "blending" is so good a user isn't even aware they're ads. I'm not sure when formatting content identical to ads and then wrapping ads around and within became "blending" but it's detrimental to visitors and advertisers alike.
Also on my hit-list are those silly little "myspace layout sites", anyone asking for clicks and any auto-generated garbage content (do a search on [url=http://digg4it.com/">this site[/url] for an example).
The only guilt I have is that other advertisers and legitimate publishers aren't actively reporting these chumps too.
