GreenguyandJim Fighting Zango

[jayeff]

Originally Posted by monro

How does Google and other search engines react to this?

I suspect right now that Google & Co are more concerned with click "arbitrage": which is when you locate keywords which are cheaper on Google (for example) than somewhere else (say Adsense), buy them on Google and then redirect visitors to an Adsense landing page, instead of the content they imagined they would reach.

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/07/...ty-update.html

It's good to see a variety of ways emerging with which to combat Zango. I just hope people don't lose sight of the reality that Zango is only one scumware company out of many and that most of the solutions to date don't offer a way to recover the income we potentially lose to scumware, because the infected surfer still cannot reach the targets we intend him to reach.

We should protect our sites to the maximum extent possible, but we also have to increase the pressure on our industry to adopt professional standards. The scumware issue surely illustrates that "ethics" is not just an abstract concept which must always play second fiddle to making money. By definition, scumware only allows a small number of people to profit while everyone else is effectively mugged and the whole of the estimated $20 billion a year which the scumware providers make is being scrubbed off affiliate and sponsor profits, because they do not create sales, only divert them.