p2pnet - rss feed: Google blacklists
p2pnet news | Advertising:- Amost exactly two years ago, with zero warning, Google stopped p2pnet from using Adsense.
"Forbidden - Your client does not have permission to get ********* from this server. Client IP address: xx.xx.xxx.xxx," said a notice when someone tried to use the Google search bar on p2pnet. "The website you’ve just visited has tried to provide you with search results from Google. Unfortunately, the site violates our terms of service so your search could not be completed."
Then, "It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s)," said an email. I had done no such thing but, "We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account."
"In this kind of circumstance, wouldn’t it be both fair and good business practice and customer relations to, perhaps, simply withhold payment, contact the alleged offender and get to the bottom of things before deliberately publicly humiliating him or her?" - I asked at the time.
But that was the first, and the last, we heard from Google, despite repeated emails to a number of senior people asking how the company had arrived at this Draconian decision.
Guilty without trial, in effect. And Google still owes p2pnet the amount outstanding, whatever it was, when it took Adsense down.
But that’s not all ‘Do No Evil’ gets up to.
"What is the impact on a website of being ‘blacklisted’ by Google?" - asks Robin Goad on Hitwise, going on:
"Recently the insurance comparison website GoCompare.com faced precisely this dilemma after the search engine picked up on irregular inbound links to its site, causing it to plummet down the rankings.
"We are currently seeing a seasonal peak in searches for ‘car insurance’, and the term has increased its share of searches by 31% since the week ending 29th December.
"Before it fell out with Google, this was good news for GoCompare as the comparison site had established itself as the top website within Google’s natural / organic listings for the term.
"However, since being ‘blacklisted’ it has dropped down the listings and, at the time of writing, is currently on the seventh page of listings - i.e. well outside of the top 10."
Google giveth, and Google taketh away.
Without notice.
Also See:
stopped p2pnet - Google yanks p2pnet ads, February 1st, 2006
Hitwise - What happens if your site gets ‘blacklisted’ by Google?, February 13, 2008
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February 14th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
This is true with google across the globe.
A popular consumer advocacy site in Japan “Akutoku Shouhou Maniacs” (a site devoted to the exposure of online, phone, door to door, religion scams), has been facing much of the same problems. This site is compiled of several message boards to help and warn against scams, from the simple pyramid schemes to cults masquerading as sports clubs. It also has a repository of links to news articles related to scams, a sort of a anti-scam version of P2Pnet :).
Several years ago, one of the posters at the message board ran about the cult backing of a well known Ramen restaurant chain, and about how the proceeds were going to the cult. The poster, who was an ex-employee of the restaurant, explained that upon receiving his first paycheck, he was told that they expected him to donate a large portion of his paycheck to the organization (read “cult”).
Upon hearing of this post, the organization resorted to making multiple posts under different names, discrediting the ex-employee, and saying that the restaurant was in now way related to the organization (sound like a familiar tactic to anyone?). This was later disproved when a different post reviled that the leader of this cult, also was on the board of directors for the restaurant chain.
To make this long story short, and to the point, the cult ended up trying to use a lawyer to remove the post, and give them the IP address for the poster, and the site refused, and even faught them in court about it, only to win. Then Cult later lodged a complaint to Google, that the site made false accusations, and Google blacklisted the site, without any warning or even fact checking of their end.
The site’s owner tried repeatedly to be taken off the black list for over 2 years, and finally gave up trying (He now has a sister site that re-directs the users to the main site).
The point is, unless you have political or monetary power, Google will treat you like a pile of year-old rubbish, at a drop of a hat.
But that is not to say that I don’t use google, but it still is scary that people can use them to censor sites that they don’t like.
Just my two cents
February 15th, 2008 at 9:10 am
hopefully wikipedias new search engine will be better.