It would be arrogant to say all the credit belongs entirely to White Knight SEO, but it looks like Google has taken notice of our efforts and decided to block advertising on the keyword google cash and google money tree.
For advertisers playing the Google cash game, this is at best check, not mate. We have not induced a moral decision by Google to protect naive users. This appears to be the narrowest possible compromise, a strategic retreat by Google to avoid the obvious embarrassment of having the organic results overtly exposing the scams advertised on the right. Google is still allowing advertisers to bid on variations like google cash detective and google cash system.
In the past, Google has publicly promised to take down fraudulent advertising and failed to do so. This time around, there was no press release, Google just suspended bidding on a couple of exact match terms. The moral of this story is that if marketers and publishers establish and maintain the moral high ground, we can pressure the ad networks to act responsibly.
Updated September 16: Google posts more advice about how to fraud site that tell you how to make money with Google.
Especially noteworthy is the section about Reporting a sponsored link. It appears they need our help to figure out when someone is advertising on Google using the Google trademark.
If the site in question appeared as a sponsored link on the Google search results page, please report the site through the AdWords Help Center.
Good news.
Still racking my brains about putting pressure on the affiliate networks as well.
Most of these companies just end up popping up under different names, legal entities with new officers.
And the many of the affiliate networks have relationships with large mailing lists and force the offers into “email only” offers once they’ve been outed via the scam boards or now the white knights.
Well played Sir Stein…