Dare Obasanjo talks about how search engines are in some ways encouraging companies to squat on domain names.
In the short term, it appears that Google (and the others that provide web advertising channels) have as much incentive as the website publishers themselves to encourage more ads–no matter where they appear. Of course, if the ads don’t perform over time, the advertisers will pull back their advertising in the long run. The ad platform providers don’t necessarily want this.
I wonder if there is research, though, on whether the ads on “incorrect” websites produce better search results than those where the user was directed to the correct site. (If so, the advertisers won’t necessarily mind where the ads were actually hosted.) It seems like for a certain class of search queries and ads this might actually be the case. For instance, if a person is searching for information on product X, but mistypes a URL or query, and winds up on a spam site with an ad for product X, it might be likely that a user will click on a product X ad on the page. Why not? The ad is right there. It’s the quickest way to get to what the user wants.
If enough users select ads this way, then it’s not only the “incrorrect” website publishers and Google that are benefitting, but it’s also the advertiser, and at least some significant portion of users. Where would the incentive be to change this–except maybe from the “correct” publishers that are losing traffic. The challenge here is that the publishers don’t provide the money–the advertisers do, so I’m not sure they have enough sway to address the problem.
There is another area where the spam problem is getting out of control–with the search engines focused around blogs. Google’s BlogSearch, for instance, has quite a few “spam” content providers that place simple links to other blog content or optionally copy in whole or in part other blog content and fill the pages with ads. It doesn’t seem right. I’m guessing this trend will end once–if ever–the advertisers come to the opinion that these spam blogs are less efficient for them. One could make the case, for instance, that these mis-directed searchers are clicking on ad links because the searches themselves have failed. A better search engine would improve the search experience so more users could get to the desired results withouth clicking on an ad. If so, the advertisers will save money. Of course, this might mean that the ad platform providers will earn less–but I don’t think so in the long run.
Fortunately, for at least blog search, the spam sites degrade the search experience so much that given enough spam blogs getting through, the more likely it will be that users pick another search engine, which will lead to an obvious drop in revenue for the search engine. That’s incentive enough to address the problem.