Cloaking: Survey Says?
Last Updated on Monday, 12 December 2011 01:10 Written by a2e Monday, 12 December 2011 01:10
In the below video Matt Cutts states that “there is no such thing as white hat cloaking” …
… yet Google is testing a new ad unit where users have to fill out a survey before they can view the content.
How long until the surveys include something like:
- did you vote in 2008
- what presidential candidate did you vote for
- how do you feel about issue x
- how strongly do you feel about your opinion on x
Then after the survey: “Thanks for your feedback. Candidate y supports your views on issue x.”
Advertisers then get a report like: “in Ohio, 84% of the 289,319 swing voters with an average household income between $32,400 and $67,250 think issue x is vitally important and have a 6:1 bias toward option A. They respond to it more strongly if you phrase it as “a c b” and are twice as likely to share your view if you phrase it that way. The bias is even stronger amongst women & voters under 50, where they prefer option A by a factor of 9:1.”
Couple that ability to flagrantly violate their own editorial guidelines with…
- knowing user interests (and many other pieces of vital information)
- search personalization
- ad retargeting
- quality-based ad pricing / selective price gouging
- arbitrary editorial discrimination
- active investments in various content channels
- let us scrape your reviews or you die bundling
- offering online safety tips & labeling anything Google can’t get away with doing as something like malware in the search results (or spam in the editorial guidelines)
- political donations
- the ability to define or redefine any word or phrase as convenient & selective enforcement of defusing Google Bombing
- the “I know what you searched for last night” factor
- enhanced search yield from pushing desirable illegal ads & using that increased income to help buy marketshare to further reinforce network effects
- relevancy algorithms that can overweight content sources that Google profits from (eg: YouTube + ebooks) to create additional economic yield from search
… & Google is in an amazing position politically.
It is thus not surprising to see how politicians have a hard time being anything but pro-Google, as they are the new Western Union.
This isn’t the first time Google experimented with cloaking either. Threadwatch had a post on Google cloaking their help files years ago & YouTube offers users a screw you screen if they are in a country where the content isn’t licensed – yet they still show those cloaked pages ranking in the search results.
“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
It is common knowledge that you shouldn’t mix business and politics, however if one looks at history, many of those who gave us those sage words did precisely the opposite – and often illegally so – selling us down the river.
What is so obnoxious about Google’s survey trial is that a big site that was hit by Panda was hit because they used scroll cloaking & didn’t let the users get to the content right away. Googlers suggested users didn’t like it & voted against it, and then roll out the same sort of “wait 1 moment please” stuff themselves as a custom beta ad unit.
And today Google just announced that they might create an algorithm which looks at ad placements on a website as a spam signal outside of Panda:
“If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,” asking publishers to consider, “Do they see content or something else that’s distracting or annoying?”
On the one hand they tell you to optimize your ad placements & on the other they tell you that those were not optimal & are so aggressive that they are spam.
For a while there was a period of time where you could use something like “would Google do this” as a rule of thumb for gray area behavior.
In the current market that won’t work.
“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” ― Ansel Adams
As ad units get more interactive & Google keeps eating more verticals the line between spam vs not will keep blurring.
Perception is everything.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” ― Oscar Wilde
Bill Promises To Censor the Internet
Last Updated on Tuesday, 1 November 2011 02:30 Written by a2e Tuesday, 1 November 2011 02:30
The PROTECT-IP bill is making its way through the halls of the United States government, and besides an unfortunate name change, the bill has been altered by the House of Representatives in such a way, it would essentially allow the government and/or various corporations that feel infringed upon the ability to censor the Internet in whatever way they see fit.
Perhaps that last part is wrapped in some hyperbole, but then again, after reading portions of the updated bill, as well as some of the reactions to it, it’s pretty clear that, if passed, the American public could soon be using a very different version of the Internet than what we’re used to. The sad thing is, besides a small section of informed reactions to the bill, very few in the American public seem to know and/or care about the implications of PROTECT-IP, which, thanks to input from House of Representatives, now goes by the unfortunately-named E-PARASITE Act.
http://www.webpronews.com/protect-ip-gets-name-change-promises-to-censor-the-internet-2011-10
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Google ad deja vu with ‘remarketing’
Last Updated on Thursday, 25 March 2010 05:46 Written by External Post Thursday, 25 March 2010 05:46
Google is giving its customers more chances to reach their audience, which means you won’t be seeing things if you’re wondering why that same ad keeps appearing. “Remarketing” is , the new ability for Google advertisers to target customers who have
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Zune Facebook app update: it works now
Last Updated on Thursday, 4 March 2010 12:15 Written by External Post Thursday, 4 March 2010 12:15
Microsoft’s long-awaited Facebook app for the Zune HD may not have waited long enough. After , users immediately reported problems with the app’s ability to pull down content, as well as a slow performance in general. The Zune team quickly and promised
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Photos: Google Earth – explore Mars and the ocean
Last Updated on Monday, 1 March 2010 03:45 Written by External Post Monday, 1 March 2010 03:45
Google 5.0 brings a host of new tools to its users, including the ability to explore the surface of Mars and the bottom of the ocean.
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Utah Considers Warrantless Internet Subpoenas
Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 02:30 Written by External Post Wednesday, 24 February 2010 02:30
seneces writes ‘The Utah State Legislature is considering a bill granting the Attorney General’s Office the ability to demand customer information from Internet or cell phone companies via an administrative subpoena, with no judicial review (text of the
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Google Apps get Group collaboration
Last Updated on Wednesday, 9 December 2009 09:15 Written by External Post Wednesday, 9 December 2009 09:15
Google Groups collaboration features have been added to Google Apps, giving business and educational users the ability to share documents, videos and other materials and communicate to a group via email or a web interface. Google Groups already has these
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