
Google News Growth Hack Exposed - jmarbach
http://jmarbach.com/google-news-growth-hack-exposed
======
CaveTech
This could be what we consider "cloaking" in the ad industry. Ads containing
legitimate content are submitted, but when a user clicks it, a risk assessment
is done based on the users information (ip/location/js enabled/saving cookies
etc).

If it's determined that you're unlikely to be a crawler or a person affiliated
with the host site (google employee in this case) you're served a "Blackhat"
ad, which is generally worded much more aggressively and against the TOS. High
risk users are redirected to "Whitehat" pages which follow the TOS and
generally don't attempt to actually convert a user. These high risk users are
considered dead clicks.

A few years ago this was an _insanely_ profitable industry on Google Adsense,
but they've cracked down a lot. The new major space for this type of
advertising? Facebook.

~~~
rafaelm
Facebook cloaking is pretty huge right now. Even more so now that they've
started cracking down hard on affiliate ads. Still, everyone knows that when
you are cloaking it's just a matter of time before your account gets banned.
FB is getting harder to cloak everyday. (Not that I do any advertising on FB,
it's too stressful.)

------
jnorthrop
This author needs to build his case before jumping to the conclusion, "And
now, I hesitate to recommend it to anyone for any use." This was one article,
on one day. It was clearly a scam, but it was one article. And if the Google
complaint form is more focused on the publisher maybe that is because most of
the problems submitted are from publishers.

The author needs to submit the complaint and move on.

~~~
LukeB_UK
I agree, there was an "other" section on the complaint form for him to use.

------
pgrote
This is nothing new. "Publishers" get in all the time with less than
spectacular backgrounds. Google provides a method for reporting sources that
shouldn't be there.

[https://support.google.com/news/publisher/contact/report_iss...](https://support.google.com/news/publisher/contact/report_issue_content)

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Well that's certainly one weird old technique from a malicious advertiser.

------
tagawa
"I bet they are the only publishers violating the guidelines" \- should be
"aren't"?

------
niyogi
Isn't this just a very sparse interstitial in front of the article placed by
the publisher?

