alt Hacker NewsGoogle's only taking the greedy approach. Spam sites on top, spam sites use google adsense, people click spam sites, they click google ads.
It works great, until it doesn't. But that's a problem for the next CEO.
Google's only taking the greedy approach. Spam sites on top, spam sites use google adsense, people click spam sites, they click google ads.
It works great, until it doesn't. But that's a problem for the next CEO.
iunno, I used to rank pretty well for things in my country like "$company's tech support number". Unlike every $company, my page had a nice clean URL like whatever.tld/Tech-Support-Number-for-$company and I'd just list of their phone numbers with a few paragraphs about how $company is shit. Maybe 50kb total.
Meanwhile $company's page was company.tld/234897234982-029823749823742-2340823492 and 3 pages down was a phone number if your browser didn't choke on the javascript.
For ISP ones, I recommended people print a copy so they can call if they can't get on the internet, which kinda backfired when a major ISP changed their tech support number (!) and it redirected to a toll-free squatter's sex chat line.
Turns out $company really hates it when you call their call (cost) centres.
I had maybe 50 pages for our different oligopolies and averaged $500/month revenue on adsense, so GOOG's cut was $250/month.
Today, for one $company, the first 9 results are different pages from $company.tld, each unhelpful with a phone number in their own way, and they don't run adsense!