InsideGoogle

Affiliate Spam In Google Base

Just spoke with TheStreet.com’s Jonathon Berr about an upcoming article on Google Base (apparently, I’m now “the guy” on Base spam/porn), and he showed me how the product listings on Google Base have become almost entirely filled with redirect URLs to Amazon. Looks like some members of Amazon’s affiliate program are taking over Base to earn themselves some cash.

Now, Google Base’s Program Policies expressly forbid this. Right at the top of the Item Type & Content list, it says:

Affiliates Posting is not permitted for the promotion of affiliate sites or products sold through an affiliate marketing relationship.

You’d think Google would follow the URLs, and if they redirected to anywhere else, or contained Amazon Associates code, they would reject the entries, but they aren’t. This is another inventive way people are wasting away Base, taking advantage of its open nature. I believe I described it as being like “the Wild West”. I’ll link to the article when it hits.

UPDATE: Heh. No quote from me in the article. The section on Google Base spam/porn/referrals has been pushed to the end and limited to two short paragraphs:

A recent review of Google Base found that four of 10 entries under the profiles category during a recent search originated from pornographic Web sites. While these ads are also found on craigslist, on that service they are separated from others with warnings about their content.

Google Base’s products group also features listings that appear to have been redirected by a third party to Amazon.com. An Amazon spokeswoman says the company has no agreement with Google Base to provide listings.

The focus of the article is on Google Base failing to live up to the hype, which is true. Base is a very young service, and I’m sure you couldn’t find anything good on eBay when it launched. As is, Google Base truly is the “Wild West”, as my (apparently unprintable :-)) quote said. Google says you can “put anything” there, but unstructured data is just anarchy. Base will improve over time, and maybe even get an interface one day, and then it will be truly useful.

That, or it’ll be 2006’s Orkut.

December 5th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Base, Services, General | one comment