Rogue Traders and Trustmarks

A proposed scheme to distinguish some publishers from others

[21_blue]

In the UK we have a BBC programme called "Rogue Traders", who try to expose tradespeople who act unethically and/or unlawfully. On the flipside, the government have a trustmark scheme, where they have a register of people in the building industry who meet certain ethical and quality standards.

Do you think Google Adsense might consider running a similar 'trustmark' scheme, whereby qualification requires meeting certain criteria - eg: a minimum length of membership of Adsense, periodic reviews of the quality of the site by Google Adsense staff, a minimum of 95% original content, etc..

Advertisers could then choose to display their ads at (a) search only (no content sites), (b) all Adsense sites, or (c) only trustmarked Adsense sites. Category (c) ads would attract premium rates which would help to finance the reviews and provide a higher CPC income for the publisher.

This might help to separate those publishers who run an ethical practice from those whose conscience has been seared with a hot iron. And it may well appeal to some advertisers, as they have the option to improve the quality of associations made with their brand.

If the above is not a workable scheme, hopefully it will spark some different and better ideas.

[alika]

This has been a suggestion banded about here for the last 2 years (I think EPV was among the first who raised this suggestion).

I think there is some merit to having some sort of distinguishing mark or whatnot if you are a publisher whose site has been found to be of "good quality" by the Adsense team. Maybe if your site passed a more rigid screening test for this "special level" for publishers, they can give your site some perks like more customization.

G hasn't done it yet, unfortunately. They're not even screening the sites where their code is placed (which I think is the first step to ensuring quality pool of publishers). If only they screen out the publisher sites that join them better, then quality will tremendously improve.

[21_blue]

Thanks for the history, and apologies for the repetition. I guess I should have done a search first!

I think the important element is the perks/differential pricing. A mark per se can be used and claimed by rogue traders, thereby losing its value. Differential pricing (or the types of perks you mention) are under the control of Google, and provide a strong incentive for positive action.

It's almost always more effective to incentivise positive action than police negative action (though there are times when the latter is necessary).

But, perhaps that's already been suggested as well. Ah well, I'll go back to sleep...ZZZzzzz...

[alika]

no worries 21_blue. afterall, even though this was suggested since the program started, it has not been implemented. so keeping it alive can hopefully remind the powers-that-be of the merits of this suggestion

[phidentity]

It would certainly give some degree of reassurance to our advertisers.

[incrediBILL]

If you want to weed out the crap sites simply do as Yahoo did when they started charging for inclusion into their directory. Every little flea bag webmaster suddenly had to think twice about whether their scummy little sites really needed to be in Yahoo.

I see absolutely no reason that legitimate webmasters making money playing by the rules wouldn't pay a small administrative inclusion fee to be qualified for a trustmark. This immediately separates the serious webmasters and sites from the scam artists as the scammers know their sites won't pass scrutiny and won't waste their money trying to join the program.