MikeNoLastName - 12:19 am on Jul 2, 2005 (gmt 0)

Just got an interesting response from Adsense Support today, which may be a change in stance about scraper sites.

I wrote to report a huge "Made-for-adsense" scraper site, which as even every newbie knows is "against the Terms of Service" and supposedly highly discouraged by Adsense. One look at this extensive SERP directory style site makes it obvious what it is. The site is already PR0 ranked, so I assume G agrees. I also just happened to mention in my e-mail, as a side, that this scraper had copied most of our site on to theirs in snippets which show up ahead of us in the SERPs, and that by removing them from the Adsense program that it would help discourage more of the same activity both in scraping and in made-for-Adsense sites which I thought Adsense discouraged. I was rather shocked about the "not so canned" response I got.

Since we cannot copy e-mailed responses I will do my best, paragraph by paragraph to summarize it:

Paragraph 1: Polite sentence thanking me for letting them know about it.
Paragraph 2: Explains basic info about Adsense and how it is for publishers to display ads relevant to content, yada, yada... But most importantly, to me, a disclaimer that publishers and NOT G controls the content of the pages and WHAT PAGES HAVE ADS ON THEM.
Paragraph 3: Says that G provides info and is NOT A MEDIATOR. Again that they don't control content of pages. That I should contact webmaster.
Paragraph 4: Notice that they've forwarded my e-mail to User Support Specialists (at Google not Adsense) who would be better equipped to assist.

NOWHERE do they suggest that they agree the site is absolute Made-for-adsense trash or that they are even considering reviewing it for such, or give a ... rat's butt. Therefore I'm assuming Adsense now endorses such. Roll out the scraper sites! I guess it's possible the support person scanned over it and saw the word copyright and misunderstood, but that was a very small part of my e-mail.

I later got a second response from G Support to whom they forwarded my first e-mail (not Adsense) saying that I can file a claim of copyright infringement with them, but that I better be absolutely sure that their use was not protected by the fair use doctrine or I could end up paying legal fees of up to $100,000 like another recent case.

Besides the fact that this was not my original point, in reporting the site, but, gee, obviously "snippets" probably qualify as fair use (or everyone would be suing G and Y! and...), but that doesn't stop G from penalizing a site for duplicate content when someone "snippets your site to death" by using EVERY single line at least once SOMEWHERE on THEIR site in a directory!

Ovbiously there is simply nothing that ANYONE can do about either scrapers or made-for-adsense sites and they're here to stay!