4 ms·

> It's a game of whack-a-mole for sure, but at the end of the day the higher the level of fraud on the marketplace the easier it is to catch, so the scammers ar

> It's a game of whack-a-mole for sure, but at the end of the day the higher the level of fraud on the marketplace the easier it is to catch, so the scammers are somewhat limited in how much damage they do. This is a perfect summary of what is going on. In this case I trust Google because their incentives are aligned with advertisers', and they certainly have both data (from Google Analytics and other sites) and means to distinguish between a human and a bot.

cat199 9y ago
> In this case I trust Google because their incentives are aligned with advertisers Is it? The better the overall search algorithm, the less the need to hack around it by paying for placement.. Some level of 'bad results' helps ensure that ads are needed in the first place, and junk sites provide a ready source of bad results.. Now, when junk sites cause you to lose revenue, the equation gets unbalanced, but that is not to say having the variable equate to 0 is good either, because the revenue would lessen.. Obviously it can't simply allow the fraud because that would make google fraudulent itself, but at the same time they cant just outright ban crappy sites, since there are so many that are only marginally crappy but otherwise legitimate, and could only be unwilling participants in someone else's dishonest scheme.. I would argue that google is attempting to maximize a set of equations here, and since at some point there is a grey area between 'crappy scammish sites' and 'full on fraud', google has some leeway to what extent it polices the grey area, and, further, to some extent can do this at advertisers expense so long as 'the house wins' to borrow gamboling terminology..
- runeks 9y ago
  > The better the overall search algorithm, the less the need to hack around it by paying for placement.. All the things you need are not necessarily known to you in advance. It’s entirely possible that someone has created a new product that no one knows about, and allowing these companies to pay for visibility allows you to discover these ideas that you might end up finding useful. The idea is that when advertisers pay for placement, they better have a useful product (that can recoup the cost), or else they’ll be throwing money out the window.
  - cat199 9y ago
    true, but which likely-related things are shown is also a decision for the algorithm to make, and one which can be skewed in a variety of positive or negative ways

cat199 9y ago

> In this case I trust Google because their incentives are aligned with advertisers Is it? The better the overall search algorithm, the less the need to hack around it by paying for placement.. Some level of 'bad results' helps ensure that ads are needed in the first place, and junk sites provide a ready source of bad results.. Now, when junk sites cause you to lose revenue, the equation gets unbalanced, but that is not to say having the variable equate to 0 is good either, because the revenue would lessen.. Obviously it can't simply allow the fraud because that would make google fraudulent itself, but at the same time they cant just outright ban crappy sites, since there are so many that are only marginally crappy but otherwise legitimate, and could only be unwilling participants in someone else's dishonest scheme.. I would argue that google is attempting to maximize a set of equations here, and since at some point there is a grey area between 'crappy scammish sites' and 'full on fraud', google has some leeway to what extent it polices the grey area, and, further, to some extent can do this at advertisers expense so long as 'the house wins' to borrow gamboling terminology..

runeks 9y ago
> The better the overall search algorithm, the less the need to hack around it by paying for placement.. All the things you need are not necessarily known to you in advance. It’s entirely possible that someone has created a new product that no one knows about, and allowing these companies to pay for visibility allows you to discover these ideas that you might end up finding useful. The idea is that when advertisers pay for placement, they better have a useful product (that can recoup the cost), or else they’ll be throwing money out the window.
- cat199 9y ago
  true, but which likely-related things are shown is also a decision for the algorithm to make, and one which can be skewed in a variety of positive or negative ways