Google's Thin Affiliate Report / Spam Recognition Guide Leaked on
Purpose?
You've probably seen the "leaked
report" called the Spam Recognition Guide for Raters. So did a Google employee
really break a non-disclosure agreement by revealing this report to the public?
Is it real? I'm not so sure.
By now you've probably read that Google has
allegedly hired international university students and are paying them $10 an
hour, to check search results and report any spam they
find.
http://www.google.com/jobs/eng/test.html
Who
knows... maybe even you can apply as a Quality Rater, but don't get too excited,
it's only a temp job. Volunteers in the SEO community will be taking over
soon.
You've also probably seen the
"leaked report" called the Spam Recognition Guide for Raters. So did a Google
employee really break a non-disclosure agreement by revealing this report to the
public? Is it real? I'm not so
sure.
There's not a whole lot of new
content in it, as I've seen many similar reports in the past. One notable
difference was that this report targeted the auto site generators that scrape
content from OPD, and have little in the way of original content. The report
states that sites which are set up specifically to capture AdSense revenue are
deemed, "Offensive."
In addition, there
is no official author of the paper, but they do appear to have English as their
second language, or it was not properly edited for grammar before it was
issued... which would be unusual for Google. But like any "secret" leaked
report, there are no names, email addresses or physical addresses on the paper.
Only certain "Offending" urls get
mentioned.
The last I saw, the webpage
containing the document was still live... even a month later. So let me ask
you... if it really was a "sensitive" document, wouldn't Google's legal team be
on the ball and make them take down the link by now? Wouldn't the hosting
company - under the digital millennium copyright act - have been notified of a
copyright violation... or something?
Ok,
in case you were busy and missed it, you might be able to catch it
here:
http://www.searchbistro.com/spamguide.doc
Or
if that's gone by now go to the root url and look for the June 5
entry.
One thing's for sure, it's not the
original document. It's the third version and it's been copy 'n pasted many
times. The original was created on May 24 2004 and it was saved at precisely
5:30 in the afternoon. Then on June 5 2005 it was converted it into an RTF file.
A certain Natasha D. is credited as being the
author.
How do I know this? Just drag any
Word doc into a text processor like Ultra Edit or BBEdit and you'll get all the
"hidden" underlying info that Word and other RTF editors normally hide,
including author, when the file was saved and revised. Sneaky
huh?
So is it a fake? It could be. But it
doesn't matter. They're good guidelines for affiliates anyways. If you pay
careful attention to these guidelines while you create your pages, you'll stay
out of trouble.
Ok, what do I think about
all this? Well, I love a good conspiracy
theory.
So in my opinion, the thin
affiliate document was leaked on purpose. This was to get a new volunteer army
to report AdSense TOS (terms of service) violations on auto generated sites. The
general public and the SEO community now have the guidelines, and they know what
to look for.
Plus, the squealer or spam
"reporting" mechanism is built in. Your AdSense ID is the trigger. Go take a
look... your AdSense ID is embedded in comments when you click on the link that
says "Ads by Google."
Hmmm... Conspiracy
theory.. or brilliant viral marketing? You
decide.
A few weeks after this secret
report was "leaked", here's what Matt Cutts of Google had to say, according to a
friend of mine, who attended the Webmaster World
event...
""If you run into a site that is
guilty of AdSense spam or is a Scraper site, click on the "Ads by Google" link
and fill out the comment section of how the site violates the terms of use for
AdSense. The publishers ID will be incorporated into the report and they are
aggressively canceling accounts. He showed an example that is one of the biggest
spam pages I have seen.
Basically the
person used a program to make the page and the publisher left statements such as
"the first paragraph should repeat the keyword four times...". But the worst was
that the links on the page were referenced to his hard drive and had his name to
which Matt asked, "Is 'Robert W' in the audience?"
Be careful with your AdSense sites,
Google is cracking down hard and now you have hundreds of new volunteer "police"
ensuring that scraper and spam sites get
removed.""
So was it really a secret
report that got "leaked" or was it an attempt by Google to save a lot of money
by hiring the SEO community for free, to be able to identify and report
spammers? Think about that for a
second...
If you were a really smart
marketer, and wanted word to spread like wildfire, you'd create these anti-spam
guidelines, then whisper them into the most popular SEO forums as, "So top
secret that someone broke their non-disclosure agreement." Then at the following
event - the Webmaster World Conference - a few weeks later, tell people
"exactly" how to report the spammers.
One
can only wonder. And I'll leave you to come up with your own conclusions. But
like I said, fake or not... These make excellent guidelines for any affiliate.
They'll help you stay on the good side of Google, their temp army of paid
students, or their "new" volunteer army of spam police in the SEO
community.
Posted: Fri - July 15, 2005 at 07:50 PM