[sigh] More SE pollution. Or at least that’s the allegation. There will be no “piling-on” in this post. And I think I’ve got a positive solution so please keep reading, but first some history for those new to this story.

Phil Ringnalda noticed something odd with some advertisements running on various O’reilly sites and blogged about it. It reminded Phil of the Wordpress search enging gaming debacle but this more reminds me — and a few of Phil’s commenters — of the syndic8 advertiser playing the PR game mess. I interviewed Jeff Barr about the Syndic8 ad situation in great detail for those who want to delve deeper into why sites are seduced into advertising deals that they might not fully understand or agree with. It happens to smaller sites and bigger sites and really all types of sites.

Tim O’reilly responds and points out the key differences between what Matt did with Wordpress vs. what is happening with O’reilly:

WordPress was hiding non-visible links to advertiser sites on the WordPress site in order to drive up advertisers’ PageRank without that being apparent to anyone. What we’ve been doing is different in the significant respect that the links we sell for advertisers are clearly visible on our site, with link keywords that match the content of the destination. There may be cases on other sites where hidden link farms are being used solely to game the search market, but on O’Reilly sites, these are all visible links — just like any other paid text ads.

What Syndic8 was doing was in open sight too and I said then, and say again now, that spam is still spam is spam. If the content being linked is garbage, it’s still garbage that can find its way into legitimate search results. O’reilly says he has gone through and will talk to the thirdy party company they are using (3Genius) about removing any content being linked that is “overly deceptive” that he discovered.

I got this same “it’s not us, it’s the ad agency we use that slipped it by” story from Jason Calacanis when I challenged an intrusive ad on a Weblogsinc site. I believe Jason, and I believe Mr. Oreilly that neither would have run these type ads if they looked at them closely. They can’t be expected to approve every ad personally, but in organizations their size with the revenue being grossed, they must expense this to somebody to do that for them. They must have people that cruise through their ads and code — ad compliance officers, if you will — that ensure the ads being run aren’t bogus and preying upon the website’s SE value and relevance.

Google could help this by allowing Adsense advertisers to submit an IP address to ignore clickthrus from so that Adsense advertisers could legitimately click on suspicious ads and add to their block domain filters (or report to Google). If anybody from Google (Matt Cutts?) is nearby and could put this in the suggestion box that would be helpful. For all I know, I’m running adsense ads to scams right now on this blog that I absolutely, positively don’t want to run. It’s impossible for me with the budget and money being made at this site to check adsense ads (and I never have checked one of the Adsense ads run here), but the ones that don’t pass the smell test, well, it would sure be nice to be able to click thru on them and check them out without raising Google’s: “hey, they are clicking their own ads” filter. I repeat: I’ve never clicked any of my own ads, this is just something I’m concerned about, especially after reading this O’reilly situation (which has nothing to do with Google, BTW).

But forget Google Adsense for a moment because it isn’t really practical to expect small publishers like us to check every ad Google is targeting and running on the site. That’s what Google is making the big money for and they should be the compliance officers. However, when a website starts taking direct ads like Matt/Wordpress did, Jeff from Syndic8 did, Jason/Weblogsinc did and O’reilly is doing, that’s where the checks and balances really would come in handy.

So, one solution for bigger publishers and those who make deals with advertisers directly is to hire an ad compliance officer and makes sure h/she combs your websites looking for coding issues that could be blackhat SE tactics, illegitimate ads, etc. Make sure his/her IP address is declared to all advertisers so his/her clicks are never counted and there is never any commissions/sales revenue generated from that activity.

Furthermore this Ad Compliance Officer could blog about his/her experiences and note what types of ads were removed (names don’t have to be mentioned), code that was squashed, or comment spam that was rel=’nofollow’d, etc. This person could also become pro advertising for those companies who do make exciting, useful ads that are effectively presented and targeted. This person would have his/her position fully disclosed. So it’s a chance for additional advertising opportunities by pointing out the good ads from the bad ones. I don’t believe that anybody objects to an advertisement that is well suited and of interest. Especially when this advertising pays for the ‘free’ content. The converse is put the good stuff behind a protected gateway and charge a membership fee. O’reilly already does that with Safari, so there isn’t much stopping them from their other ventures.

This Ad Compliance Officer seems like a good position for say $50k a year for somebody out there. Seem too high? Think again. The good will lost over a PR scandal because these ad mistakes aren’t discovered, disclosed, discussed and debated is worth at least that. That is, for the businesses that are large enough to afford expensing someone to do this job.

The alternative is to look like you were trying to slide something by, to be labeled a blackhat SEO, spam abetter … or worse. Virtual tarred and feathered. Which brings us full circle to O’reilly and their offense — if it can even be deemed as that — well, it sure raises a lot of intriguing questions about how to deal with advertising on one’s website(s), doesn’t it?

Ad Compliance Officer. Has a ring to it. Think about it.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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