‘Scraper’ Sites Multiply in Wake of Google AdWords Change
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Written By Reprise Media | July 18, 2006 | Share This
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In the last couple of weeks, Google made some significant changes to their paid search algorithm, and it’s already having several noticeable (and some unfortunate) consequences. Designed to emphasize the quality of landing pages (i.e. where your browser will direct you when you click on an ad), the move made life harder for a certain type of junk site. Unfortunately, many junk sites are reportedly unaffected - and even thriving.
Google’s tweak was intended to punish what are sometimes known as Made For AdSense (MFA) sites; these usually offer very little in the way of valuable content beyond spammy-looking search results, but turn a profit running AdSense ads. They’re also a strict Google AdSense no-no, but are difficult to police.
But Google’s algorithmic change seemingly did much of the dirty work, slamming sites with junky landing pages, raising their costs and pricing them off search results pages. Several sites offering useful content were also caught in the blast, however, as documented in this SE Roundtable post, and many webmasters are scrambling to make their landing pages more Google friendly.
At least it’s taking out the MFA’s, right? Yes, but as MFAs fall, so-called scraper sites rise to take their place. Another SE Roundtable post today points to a Webmaster World forum thread discussing an alarming rise in the number of scraper sites, which remove content wholesale from an original source (typically with a program that scours RSS feeds), repost the material on another site and run ads against it. You might even be reading this post on a scraper. Since their content-to-ad ratio is skewed in favor of content (and many even link back to the original source), scraper sites don’t look as junky to Google and so they’re escaping the current algorithmic crackdown…for now. We’re sure that Google anticipated these shenanigans and won’t stand for them much longer. Right?
Topics: Google: AdWords |