Wouldn’t it be ironic if they thieved this post too?

Google-bait is *sigh* what we all do to a certain extent. It comes with the whole website, blog territory. The moment you’re using a keyword on your site or in your content, you’re setting bait to catch Google searchers.

So first thing to note – before any of us get too sanctimonious about this – is that it’s all a matter of degrees.

On the one hand, there are people like you and me who write content for our websites and blogs in order to both add value to a reader’s understanding (like this post) and also to ‘catch’ Google searchers and introduce them to what we do via our content. The fishing rod is our site; the bait is the keywords we sprinkle about.

On the other hand, there are people for whom content is just a device to funnel traffic past Google’s AdSense ads on their (faceless, depersonalised, trashy, spammy) sites. That’s what the naice people like you and me like to call ‘Google-baiting’.

Here are a couple of examples of what Google-baiting sites look like. The first is one that definitely steals content (probably automatically) and adds it to a blog stuffed with AdSense ads. You and I do the old-fashioned hard work, they reap the benefits in Google. If you recognise the content on that site it’s because it’s ours, from here.

The second is also a very familiar style: a blog so stuffed with AdSense adverts that you just KNOW the people behind it have no interest in the content (and have probably lifted it anyway).

What does a Google-baiting spammer look like? We’ll never know, since they never have the balls to be accountable for what they do. They just carry on doing it bedrooms across the world.

But one last thought. Are you really surprised? I’m not. This is the world that Google – and we – created. If there aren’t enough critical thinkers left to draw attention to what it’s doing to knowledge as we knew it, then so be it, we’re getting what we deserve.

No – but it might give the thief ownership of your stuff

I’ve noticed posts that hit the right places in Google’s natural search results can suddenly disappear off the radar without explanation (there’s never an explanation, let’s face it).

This morning, however, while looking for a vanished post, I did a blog search on the key phrase in question and found this:

That got my Columbo head going.

The top one is our site but the summary in Google’s index is only the last lines of the post in question… and the post in question has vanished from Google’s natural search results.

The bottom one is my post in a spammers site – stolen and used as Google bait for their ad-sense spam. The summary is the full summary.

Without knowing what’s actually going on inside Google, a layman’s guess is that Google has decided that the spammers own the indexed version of the post, not me.

The result is that they hold the full page title and header summary for my post indexed against their domain. The fact that it doesn’t come up in a Google web search suggests that the thieving site either has no page rank or is otherwise penalised.

Make no mistake. When Google created their search engine, they could have put it to use for good or evil. AdWords could be argued to be a social evil – given what it does to the body of information globally. Ad-Sense (where you and I get paid for hosting Google ads on our ‘sites’) is definately evil.

Think about it. It’s the ultimate, lowest-common-denominator, ‘get-rich-quick’ trash. What else would any rational person expect other than an explosion of fake sites, automatically updated with other people’s content earning invisible spammers money on click-throughs.

We are in danger of reaching a point where none of this works because the ad revenue model is too attractive to too many sleazy people who. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s the ideal ‘work at home’ opportunity.

However, if this ‘advertising-shapes-knowledge’ model doesn’t change, we are all – and I make no apologies for this – screwed and the online world will become a wasteland.