IVR Deconstructed

Three—

A couple years ago, Google got busted in a federal sting operation that involved a convicted con artist, advertising for illegal online pharmacies and a $500 million settlement. Crikey, it sounds like a movie script.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the feds used a “convicted fraudster,” in prison at the time, to pose as a businessman running illegal online pharmacies.

At the request of the feds, grifter David Whitaker set up fake businesses pretending to sell first steroids and human growth hormones and then “prescription narcotics, Prozac and Valium without prescriptions.”

Whitaker recently told the Wall Street Journal that Google’s ad executives didn’t go for it initially, but then they worked with him to try to circumvent the laws governing this type of activity. Oooooh, that’s totally Dark Side.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Most damning of all, Whitaker told the Journal that he made phone calls in which he walked through the illegal parts of his fake Web sites with Google execs, and once told them that one of his clients wanted to become the biggest steroid dealer in the U.S. The calls were recorded.

All this happened two years ago but is news again after Whitaker talked to the Wall Street Journal. The timing on it couldn’t be worse for Google, what with the other Dark Side things on the company’s dirty laundry list in the news right now.

People are jumping on the hypocrisy of it all considering Google’s slogan, which now just seems to be a tongue-in-cheek inside joke—either that or the company just doesn’t operate under the same guiding principles it used to. No matter what, it’s definitely Dark Side. Yoda would never do that.

But there’s still more…

Four—

Google is being roundly criticized left and right all over the newswires and tech blogosphere for changing their security policies and giving their users a take-it-or-leave-it choice.

Basically, Google users have to accept sharing of their information between many of Google’s various products (Gmail, Google+, et cetera). It’s either that or users close their accounts—they can’t choose what information they want to share.

You know who else gives take-it-or-leave-it choices? The Emperor, that’s who…

“If you will not be turned, you…will…be…destroyed.” (In that waaaay creepy voice.)

Don’t do it, Luke. The Empire might have better pay and bennies, but you’re gonna hate the work. Same to you, Google.

It was funny when Google censored themselves for breaking their own rules regarding paid sponsorships. I’m not sure how funny it is that Google employees scraped a competitor’s database to gain a business advantage.

Over the weekend, the head of an online listings firm in Kenya wrote a blog exposing (in detail) how Google had illicitly scraped their customer database and tried to steal their clients.

“Since October, Google’s GKBO [Getting Kenyan Businesses Online] appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners,” wrote Mocality head Stefan Magdalinski. “They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.”

Wow. Are you kidding me? Why on earth would a company as big as Google need to resort to tactics like this against a small competitor in a third-world country just trying to boost local industry?

According to Magdalinski, the whole purpose of his company is to generate online traffic for Kenyan businesses in an effort to bring the country up. It’s free to have a business listing on Mocality, and that’s the general spirit behind the company.

However, it looks as though Google (one of the wealthiest tech companies on the planet) is trying to piggyback on the local small fry.

“When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and Conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue,” wrote Magdalinski.

“I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.”

Again, wow. Stay tuned for how Magdalinski busted Google in a second post this afternoon…

It’s kinda like a high school football coach benching the quarterback for rule-breaking, even though the kid is his son. Yeah, he’s the coach’s son and he’s the starter, but he got caught drinking at a party—rules are rules.

Google has dinged its own Chrome browser in the search rankings for breaking rules regarding paid sponsorships. Weird, but true. If you search “browser,” Chrome doesn’t come up in the organic rankings (it does in a paid advertisement, but that’s different).

According to the Guardian newspaper, Google hired Essence Digital to promote Chrome through YouTube ads. Essence subcontracted to Unruly Media, who hired bloggers to help promote the videos. The bloggers posted the videos, many including the disclaimer: “This post is sponsored by Google.”

That’s all fine, according to the rules regarding sponsored ads set forth by Google (Coach). But it turns out one blogger (Coach’s Son) violated Google’s rules. Coach’s Son included a direct link to Google in the post, which is a no-no.

Here’s what Google’s own Matt Cutts had to say about it:

In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.gooogle.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page.

Isn’t that funny? I love the parts about “someone on the Chrome side” has to jump through hoops to square things with themselves and how Google “won’t trust outgoing links” from their own webpage.

You just don’t see this kind of thing every day. And for those of us dealing with SEO all the time, it’s a breath of fresh air. I mean, you have to take into account what would happen if someone outside the company had made a big media stink about it before Google could rectify things, but still.

It was a tough call but the right one. Nice work, Coach.

The elusive Google algorithm. For individuals working in search engine optimization, this equation can almost single-handedly affect how marketing budgets are put together, how funds are allocated, and how a company’s advertising ultimately performs on the Google Search Network. Companies almost literally live and die by the algorithm, and it is crucial that search engine marketing be algorithm-friendly.

So if this algorithm is so important, everyone knows the ins and outs of how it works, right? Wrong. The reason I refer to it as the elusive Google algorithm above is because no one really knows exactly how the algorithm, or algorithms as the case may be, works. Google has hundreds if not thousands of algorithms that power their search engine and hold that they cannot disclose the ins and outs of its functionality because it would compromise the integrity of the search function.

This leaves companies between a rock and a hard place. Being featured prominently on the Google Search network drives site views, customer engagement, traffic and, ultimately, sales. But how is a company supposed to feature in the first couple of results if they don’t know how the algorithm actually works? It is certainly a catch-22, and even Google has admitted that they tweak the algorithm more than 500 times per year. Yep, that means that this algorithm is tweaked more than once a day for a large portion of the year.

While this certainly adds to the mystique, Google isn’t concealing or altering their algorithm specifically to aggravate customers. Quite the contrary, actually. Google’s main goal in modifying their search equation so frequently is so that the most relevant search results will be generated and displayed. So with that said, search results should be ranked in terms of both how informative and accurate they are, correct? Wrong again.

Just today the New York Times wrote a piece on how to deal with identity hijacking on the Internet. They detailed the example of Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate whose online identity has been gravely compromised. Dan Savage the editorial director of The Stranger has started a website calling him by a not-so-nice nickname (Savage’s characterization is much too graphic to post here, but one need only Google Santorum and the point will be made loud and clear).

This derogatory blog has actually made it to number one in Google’s organic search, calling in to question Google’s algorithm and how it organizes its search results. Google’s main goal is to provide search results that represent the content and information that is available on the web. Any attempts to remove or drop the rank of said website could be seen as censorship, and Google advises those unhappy with content being displayed about them over the internet to get in to contact with the page’s webmaster directly.

As Google points out, they are tweaking the algorithm constantly, which should ultimately ferret out content that is less relevant. So perhaps the problem of identity hijacking is only a minor one that will quickly disappear when Google next tweaks their algorithm. Rick Santorum can only hope.