A new wave of adsense spam?

Blog + Scraper = built for adsense

[uncle_bob]

Slashdot has a frontpage article about a guy who has built a weblog from google alert traffic, as a vehicle for adsense.

With such mainstream coverage, I wonder how long before we see a whole slew of sites like this. I'm not sure his blog is adding value to the google alerts, what do others think?

[wonderboy]

Sorry for asking, but what is google alert traffic?
W.

[trillianjedi]

There is no such thing as google alerts traffic.

There are google alerts, which automatically send you news items and SERPS changes by email, usually with a link and a snippet:-

[google.com...]

The most useful thing I found last year.

The guy in question is pasting google alerts results into a webpage together with AdSense.

Fair enough, if it converts for the advertisers, good for him. If it doesn't convert, it's up to smart pricing to reduce the EPC.

TJ

[hyperkik]

Good news, bad news, or indifferent news.... There are already a ton of sites like this, most of which are inferior (presumably because they rely upon occasional manual updates by somebody who doesn't know or care about the subject, as opposed to automated tools.)

[androidtech]

It comes down to the same thing. How well they rank in the SERPs which means getting backlinks, fighting the sandbox, and these days: fighting the algo, etc.

[ogletree]

I can feel the gust of wind as thousands of webmasters are putting alert scraper sites. That is actualy a good idea and could be done in such a way that it is actualy helpful info site.

[amznVibe]

My problem is not with "made for adsense" sites but more importantly - isn't one of the main rules of the adsense TOS is to not draw attention to the ads by talking about them yourself? Can that rule be dodged by simply talking about them on another site you run? I should hope not.

If drawing attention to your ads is against TOS, Google should have terminated that account immediately, otherwise they have made a mockery of their TOS by applying it unevenly.

He clearly describes the ads, where they can be found, and why people should click on them in his blog - to summerize in a sense he basically says: announcement - I'm experimenting by putting up ads where lawyers will pay $15 per click that I get, and you can find the page "here" He just is smart enough not to say it that directly, but all those elements are there in one paragraph.

It's grounds for instant adsense account termination IMHO. Yet it still runs, why?