Google Dancin'

As a search engine, Google wants to serve up the most relevant results for every search query. As an advertiser, Google wants to display their ads in as many relevant areas as possible.

First, they came out with AdWords, a pay-per-click program that displayed relevant ads in a column to the right of their own search results. Then they came out with AdSense, which allowed content rich web sites to display AdWords advertising.

It is AdSense that has put Google in the catch 22.

Anyone can apply to the AdSense program. Google screens applicants based on the web site submitted with the application.

Once approved, however, the AdSense account holder can then place the ads on any site without having to have each site approved. This has led to a flood of new sites developed for the sole purpose of displaying these ads. (Which, by the way, is in direct violation of the Adsense Terms of Service for the program.)

These sites have no value to the searcher, but have highly optimized pages for popular search terms. Which leaves Google faced with the daunting task of filtering these pages out of their search results.

The hundreds of thousands of sites that exist for the sole purpose of displaying Google’s AdSense advertising are cluttering up the internet. They make more work for all the search engines to develop ways to filter them out of the results, including Google. And legitimate sites are hurt by lower search rank, or worse, being penalized by the latest algorithm to combat this abuse.

Google could put a stop to these sites. First, and foremost, Google could enforce the existing Terms of Service, and terminate AdSense accounts which violate these terms. They could take it a step further and require the account holder to pre-qualify every website before allowing the AdSense code to be used on that site.

If Google succeeds in ridding the internet of these AdSense violators and their sites, results from all the search engines will improve. As an added benefit to Google, click fraud should become all but non-existent, too.

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