> And why the actual FUCK is @GoogleAds accepting these scam artists' ads for a business that they already have a knowledge box for?! Google KNOWS what the real

> And why the actual FUCK is @GoogleAds accepting these scam artists' ads for a business that they already have a knowledge box for?! Google KNOWS what the real KIIN restaurant is, and yet they are accepting payment to put a fake KIIN listing two slots ABOVE the real one. For the same reason a Yelp result shows up as the second item on the page: Google's never (to my knowledge) had a policy against advertising on keywords associated with another firm. It is, in fact, a common way to get out in front of a company that is riding on brand-name recognition; advertising 101. ... but Google is having a recurring problem that users can't tell ads apart from organic results anymore, and if they don't do something they're at serious risk of losing reputation on search (which is in a precarious place right now). My recommendation would be to go back to yellow-boxing ads. (ETA: If Mr. Doctorow is meaning the emphasis to be placed on "scam artists", as in "Why can't Google tell these are scammers"... I guarantee when Google goes to that page they don't see a scam site. Masking is an old tactic. It used to be the case that Google had good countermeasures against masking, but as of late it seems like something has gone amiss with their ability to detect scams reliably, or volume has saturated their capacity, or it was always this bad and we're just in a media cycle right now... Insufficient infromation for me to be able to tell).