Update

Bottom line:
Prstorm aka Reffy is buying ads from Google via Adwords. Since this is spam software, I don’t think they should be allowed to. E-mail spam software is expressly forbidden in the Adwords policies, and I think that policy should either be amended to include any spam software, or the existing rules should be interpreted that way.

Dump prstorm from Google Adwords!

————

I was looking for prstorm in Google, and found populinx.com. It’s got links to link popularity sites.

What isn’t immediately clear, is that these are affiliate links. The real links are hidden in javascript.

So, here we go, tracing the path the clicks will take:

The link on the page is to:
/search/redirect.php?sid=5733eb3c3f25c04e2657&id=5165191&t=017320&forward=http%3A%2F%2Fpagead2.googlesyndication.com%2Fpagead%2Ficlk%3Fsa%3Dl%26ai%3DBYmVzMn-QQtGoNbLOSYvmsbgFgJKACtDdhaoBwI23AfDIIRAIGAgg3fz3ASgKQMAVSIw5qgEGaXNwX3VzsgEEbnVsbMgBAdoBGGh0dHA6Ly9udWxsLy0yODQzNDMyNjQ3ZOgBAQ%26num%3D8%26adurl%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.prstorm.com%2Faffiliates%2Fidevaffiliate.php%253Fid%253D119%26client%3Dca-sedo_xml&pos=8&r=0.03&surl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.PRstorm.com
Which gives a 302 redirect to:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=BYmVzMn-QQtGoNbLOSYvmsbgFgJKACtDdhaoBwI23AfDIIRAIGAgg3fz3ASgKQMAVSIw5qgEGaXNwX3VzsgEEbnVsbMgBAdoBGGh0dHA6Ly9udWxsLy0yODQzNDMyNjQ3ZOgBAQ&num=8&adurl=http://www.prstorm.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php%3Fid%3D119&client=ca-sedo_xml
Again a 302 redirect to:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/adclick?sa=L&ai=BYmVzMn-QQtGoNbLOSYvmsbgFgJKACtDdhaoBwI23AfDIIRAIGAgg3fz3ASgKQMAVSIw5qgEGaXNwX3VzsgEEbnVsbMgBAdoBGGh0dHA6Ly9udWxsLy0yODQzNDMyNjQ3ZOgBAQ&num=8&adurl=http://www.prstorm.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php%3Fid%3D119&client=ca-sedo_xml
Which leads to a 302 redirect to
http://www.prstorm.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=119
Which again does a 302 redirect to the index page of
prstorm.com

So my question is, why is there no communication between the different departments of Google? Because the search engine will waste absolutely no time banning all domains where Reffy or permutations of Reffy is advertised. It’s spam software, and Google dislikes spam immensely. But they allow spam software vendors to buy Adwords?

And why is there no Adsense publisher ID in those links?

GoogleGuy, where are you when we need you?

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 at 6:55 am and is filed under Preachy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.