eeve - 8:07 pm on Feb 14, 2005 (gmt 0)

The point is not to get away with it. Because it isn't doing anything wrong.

Otherwise, perhaps we should punish everyone with advertising on their site! Or maybe just sites with advertising that changes with page refreshes? That would be most commercial sites with banner ads or google ads or any such thing. Come on people.

What's your real gripe? That someone found a simple, cheap, effective way to generate traffic and backlinks? Please. It's the weighting system that gives such weight to backlinks that's the problem- not the advertisers.

Even if Google began actively checking if links disappear after a page refresh, and downgrading those as advertising links... so what? I still get TRAFFIC from my advertising efforts.

Transient links like this can be discounted if the SEs want... but punishing them would be foolish.

Also, why do the ads have to be categorized? What everyone has to realize that it's the search engines' jobs to find out what a page is about and show relevant search results. It is NOT their job to tell me what I can and can not put on my site. And whether I can or cannot show advertising. That's my business- as long as I'm not linking to any junk - x rated, casinos, prescription drugs, etc... then it's not Google's job to make me categorize my ads. Period.

It is NOT Google's job to protect YOU from advertising. You can choose not to visit that site. It is therefore not Google's job to make sure you only have to see relevant ads. Please! Let's not make Google the ad police of the web. Webmasters will benefit by showing relevant ads... but they don't have to.

Come on!

[edited by: eeve at 8:21 pm (utc) on Feb. 14, 2005]