I am always amazed at the business opportunities that people create on the internet. But when it comes to certain types of businesses and services that people offer, I get really ticked off when I see someone or another business offers a service that isn’t right. By now I am sure you have heard about the Google AdSense program. It’s been going on for about 10 years now. If you have a legitimate website with unique content and your website meets or exceeds Google’s Acceptable Guidelines for webmasters, then most likely you will be able to run Google Ads on your website and share a portion of the revenue with Google. Each click or impression of an ad on your site could make you money.
I was one of the original people who signed up with Google AdSense back in 2003/2004 and have some sites that have been running Google AdSense for 10 years.
In order to be accepted into the Google AdSense program, you have to apply and have a real website with unique content. I would like to go on to add that you need, say, at least several dozen articles of content on the site or it needs to be some sort of website that has other content. Even UGC User Generated Content can be okay. I don’t know the exact criteria since I haven’t applied in 10 years. But, that said, I have heard ‘horror stories’ nonetheless where people have had their Google AdSense income interrupted for whatever reason, or they just have been turned down. Sure, I get that. If your site isn’t good enough, then you shouldn’t run their ads. If you have some sort of fraud going on like click fraud or other shady practices then you will be turned down or they’ll simply stop paying you.
Unfortunately, there is a new “service” out there for people whose sites have been turned down or, worse yet, been turned down because of fraud. I actually respect Google in this way, as I am sure they have some highly sophisticated ways of figuring out fraud and sites that just don’t have quality content.
Let’s take a look at the latest scam. Well, I can’t say it’s a scam because I technically have not taken part or have not tried to use this guy’s services. But just the very nature of it is wrong, wrong, wrong! They’re not Google, and they shouldn’t be offering a service to get your website approved by Google AdSense.
What’s worse, is that this is being hawked on Google Plus, has made it to the “What’s Hot” page, and obviously they’ve manipulated Google’s Google Plus algorithm to get it to “go hot” on Google Plus. More on that after the screen capture:
I’ve done my best to make sure that I blurred out the important contact details of this person. Just reading this offering make me sick. But I digress.
What’s even more disturbing is the blatant manipulation of Google Plus to make this post “go hot” and get to Google’s What’s Hot page. If you look at the post, you will see that it’s only been +1d 12 times. To be honest with you, that is kind of suspicious since the fact that it has over 40 shares. People plus 1 posts much more often then they share something. So, the numbers are “off”. For a post that has been shared 46 times, it should have at least a few hundred +1s, not 12. That’s a tip, right there, that even the post is fraudulent. Then, let’s look at WHO shared the post. I see a few thumbnails of people: and all of them don’t have real faces in their photos, which is a dead giveaway also. It’s actually a violation of Google Plus’s guidelines to use something other than your real name and your real photo, and your face is supposed to be visible so that Google’s face recognition feature can be used.
Let’s look at the shares, via the Google Ripples:
As you can see, even the Google Ripples aren’t natural. One person shared the post, and then several others shared it directly from that person: no one else reshared the post. Well, I’m not going to go into much more about the fact that the post is fraudulent.
The problem I have, mainly, is the fact that no one can provide a “genuine” service like this. They’re NOT Google. Google will NOT help you with your Google AdSense application and fix your website for you.
