6 ms·

It's an excessively common scam nowadays that everybody is requiring an eVisa or electronic travel notice. Fun story: Once I was traveling to a country X that

It's an excessively common scam nowadays that everybody is requiring an eVisa or electronic travel notice. Fun story: Once I was traveling to a country X that I was familiar enough with to know that thir governmental services web sites were awfully designed. We're talking about web design that would easily put Geocities to shame. They had recently introduced an eVisa scheme that I have to complete. Out of tirednes and being in a rush, I clicked at the wrong link. It gets me into a shiny, modern web page with nice graphics and a form to complete. I instinctively think "WAIT! This is TOO nice for an official site!". Then I look at the address bar, see an obvious scam-SEO URL, realize my mistake, and go back to search for the real one. Which was as terribly designed as expected.

neom 1y ago
I hear about this repeatedly with South Korea - just googled and sure enough the first result is a sponsored scam site.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. I don't know how there is an excuse for this that's acceptable to any authority. It's their own platform that they seem unable to control. Take some responsibility Google, you are profiting by facilitating evil (even moreso than by regular advertising).
  - ricudis 1y ago
    Nowadays 90% of the "Sponsored" category that I see are scams and clickbait sites The most "innocent" of them are competitor ads trying to convert you from what you're actually searching for. Unfortunately there are no incentives for Google to fix this. Apparently they make too much money out of it.
    - BobaFloutist 1y ago
      The most most innocent just duplicate the natural correct search result.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. The thing I don't understand is why people keep expecting them to. Who even wants Google to be the police? To actually act as a deterrent you need the ability to impose penalties, and for that you need the actual police. All Google can do is close their account, and then there are no real penalties so they just make new ones until they figure out how to beat the fraud detection system. And if you try to impose penalties on third parties for not being able to solve a problem they're structurally unable to solve, all they can do is crank up the false positive rate and mess things up for innocent people. Stop even asking for this. It's a dystopia. Put the actual scammers in prison instead.
    - gambiting 1y ago
      I don't want them to be the police. I want them to give me the thing that I'm searching for first, not whoever outspent everyone else on SEO this year. If I'm searching for "Canadian visa application" then the first result must be the official government website for this. No policing involved - just good old accurate search, like Google used to be known for.
      - fallpeak 1y ago
        You're in luck! If you search for "canadian visa application" the first two results are "Visit Canada" and "How to apply for a visitor visa" on https://www.canada.ca/ https://www.canada.ca/
        phonon 1y ago
        On my phone I get several screenheights of sponsored links, with oh so helpful sitelinks and summaries of each scam site. The fourth result is the legit one.
        fallpeak 1y ago
        Interesting, I'm surprised the results vary so much for a query with such an objectively correct answer. I tested it on my desktop in private browsing mode because I wanted to see whether Kagi was much better, but figured I should report the null result when Google actually did fine.
- yongjik 1y ago
  South Korean internet is dysfunctional enough that it's possible that Google is not showing the correct site at the top because the government site's designer helpfully decided to make the site "secure" by adding to robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: / Source: Worked at Google Korea years ago. Back then, those things were common, and were commonly accepted as a solution to the problem "All your user's profiles are available in plain text, open to public, and searchable from Google!"

neom 1y ago

I hear about this repeatedly with South Korea - just googled and sure enough the first result is a sponsored scam site.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. I don't know how there is an excuse for this that's acceptable to any authority. It's their own platform that they seem unable to control. Take some responsibility Google, you are profiting by facilitating evil (even moreso than by regular advertising).
- ricudis 1y ago
  Nowadays 90% of the "Sponsored" category that I see are scams and clickbait sites The most "innocent" of them are competitor ads trying to convert you from what you're actually searching for. Unfortunately there are no incentives for Google to fix this. Apparently they make too much money out of it.
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    The most most innocent just duplicate the natural correct search result.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. The thing I don't understand is why people keep expecting them to. Who even wants Google to be the police? To actually act as a deterrent you need the ability to impose penalties, and for that you need the actual police. All Google can do is close their account, and then there are no real penalties so they just make new ones until they figure out how to beat the fraud detection system. And if you try to impose penalties on third parties for not being able to solve a problem they're structurally unable to solve, all they can do is crank up the false positive rate and mess things up for innocent people. Stop even asking for this. It's a dystopia. Put the actual scammers in prison instead.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    I don't want them to be the police. I want them to give me the thing that I'm searching for first, not whoever outspent everyone else on SEO this year. If I'm searching for "Canadian visa application" then the first result must be the official government website for this. No policing involved - just good old accurate search, like Google used to be known for.
    - fallpeak 1y ago
      You're in luck! If you search for "canadian visa application" the first two results are "Visit Canada" and "How to apply for a visitor visa" on https://www.canada.ca/ https://www.canada.ca/
      - phonon 1y ago
        On my phone I get several screenheights of sponsored links, with oh so helpful sitelinks and summaries of each scam site. The fourth result is the legit one.
        fallpeak 1y ago
        Interesting, I'm surprised the results vary so much for a query with such an objectively correct answer. I tested it on my desktop in private browsing mode because I wanted to see whether Kagi was much better, but figured I should report the null result when Google actually did fine.
yongjik 1y ago
South Korean internet is dysfunctional enough that it's possible that Google is not showing the correct site at the top because the government site's designer helpfully decided to make the site "secure" by adding to robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: / Source: Worked at Google Korea years ago. Back then, those things were common, and were commonly accepted as a solution to the problem "All your user's profiles are available in plain text, open to public, and searchable from Google!"