AdSense Loop
I've stumbled upon an interesting phenomenon. People are buying Google AdWords links for pages that only exist to sell Google AdSense links.
There was a Slashdot story a while ago about a guy who made an automated blog about asbestos because AdSense considers that an expensive keyword. That is, he's trying to make money with his automated blog.
For the record, I think this is really funny. Double extra funny now that the Slashdotters have given him about twelve million dollars worth of clickthroughs that Google will refuse to pay out.
There were many comments on Slashdot about the practice of making sites targeted to high-paying AdSense keywords. I'd encountered that topic before when I was researching AdSense, but I hadn't actually looked into it in a few months.
So I started googling for some of these words, just to see if anyone else was as creative as the autoblogger.
And what did I find? A large number of sites trying to play the AdWords game by buying one link and selling others. In some cases, amazingly enough, without including any other content whatsoever.
So is it possible to have an infinite AdSense loop?
Theoretically, it should be. ("Infinite" being of course subject to the standard disclaimers about the death of the sun, carpal tunnel syndrom and bankruptcy.)
To test this theory, let's take a little stroll down the AdSense labyrinth.
Our first stop is of course Google, where a search for the legendarily expensive keyword mesothelioma gets us this ad:
Hmm, somehow I thought I already started at the top of the search engines. Apparently not, so:
Now here we have a nearly perfect ad farm. Ten Google ads and just a tiny bit of robot-authored spammy text, including this classic excerpt:
There are Many specialists in this field of Mesothelioma Attorney. Please take the time to research Mesothelioma carefully. While hiring a Mesothelioma Attorney can be costly, you can minimize your expenses by understanding your rights and your alternatives.
I love it when a Roomba can write. Grisham, take cover!
Just for fun we'll follow the first link, taking us on a short detour to another autoblog on Google's very own Blogspot...
...on which the first ad links to the page we're already on:
Uh-oh! It looks like Google beat us to the punch and made a one-stop infinite AdSense loop. And they wonder why they have such a problem with click fraud.
To be fair, we should try the second ad, which points us to an ad farm where someone at least bothered to write (or steal) four whole paragraphs of topical information:
This is interesting. When did Google start hiding the domain names on its ads?
They've also hijacked my context menu, so I can't copy the links to see where they want to take me. Very sneaky, Messrs. Page & Brin! Very un-Google-like of you as well. But I digress, we're here to click:
Welcome to INFO-SCOUTS! This is a classic ad farm with one paragraph of topical text and more of the sneaky Google ads. And of course SCOUTS:
I suppose they need to be that obviously useless and hideously ugly so you click on the ads ASAP instead of trying to use the site.
But hey, what's this? Could it be? It looks like an actual legitimate ad for a law firm:
Yes indeedy. Real live lawyers with an actual web site, clumsily soliciting your actual business.
I love the blue-on-blue menu. Bonjour!
(To be fair, they did fix that after I took the screen shot.)
Not a bad hunt there. It only took us six stops to find some valid ambulance-chasers. And our other quarry, the Infinite AdSense Loop, was pretty-much handed to us steaming on a silver plate.
In case you're curious, here's an informational link about mesothelioma. Scary stuff.
This concludes our romp through Clickyland. If you have any comments, please send them via this contact form.
Kevin Frost, 15 March 2005.