In our 2nd class session we
discussed the importance of getting ranked toward the top of the first page in
Google's search engine. However, our discussion was underpinned by what I thought
was a safe assumption: all the advertisements and SEO techniques were being
purchased by legitimate business.
It was reported recently that
Google earned millions of dollars over at least 20 separate cases in which
advertisements were placed in Google by financial scammers. For example, one scamming
firm, London Capital & Finance, paid Google roughly $25 per ad and tricked
the largest search engine into running its fraudulent ads which collected over
$300M from 12,000 investors before collapsing.
Google’s code of conduct has been
enforced to remove over 3 billion fraudulent ads in 2017 alone – however, many bad
actors are able to slip through and fool the largest search engine. One victim
of the fraudulent charges spoke to both the problem and offered a potential
solution saying “We all assume Google is safe and use it every day, but it’s
not the case. It should now invest the money it has made off the back of these
people into a better system.”
If Google is unable to stop the
proliferation of bad actors on its search engine, the company will lose the
trust of searchers and open up new opportunities for competitive search
engines. For now, that doesn’t seem to be a effective way to stop every bad
actor – so be careful and critical out there folks!
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