In search world we’ve long noted the power Google holds for shaping the web. We’ve long lamented the way Google has failed to put that power to good use, compared to the way it has put that power to work. Google is responsible for much of the character of today’s web (something Google’s own CEO now refers to as a “cesspool”). MFA sites obviously polluted the web (”MFA” is “made for AdSense”, Google’s advertising system. An MFA site is useless except as a vehicle to serve ads).Comment spam and forum spam are aimed directly at Google’s reward system.

As Google became the only search engine, it shaped the character of the web, and is responsible for that impact. By my view, Google is also capable of fixing many of the problems, by virtue of that same power. But it doesn’t bother. And that’s the problem.

Today we see evidence that 100% positive, 5 star product reviews are worth $0.65 each. As the story is currently being reported, some BizDev guy’s name is associated with an offer to pay $0.65 for perfect major brand product reviews on Newegg and Amazon. According to his instructions, you sign up and read the product description for the target product, and then write a review as if you owned the product and loved it. You have to give it a full 5/5 rating, and sound real. For this, you get $0.65. That’s sixty five cents.

Of course the Google lovers will say this is not Google’s doing, and Google can’t stop unethical people from gaming human reviews.

The rest of us will note that Google relies heavily on user reviews for things like Google Local. Google assumes human reviews are worth more than nothing, and includes them into the merit calculations it uses to rank web sites. If you’ve ever seen a “10 box” of Google local results for a plumber or other service provider, you will see that  those with more/better reviews show up more frequently than those without reviews. If everyone has one review, then those with zero reviews don’t show at all.

Google has decided that reviews have value, and this incorporated them into the ranking and indexing rules that drive traffic on the web. Obviously Google didn’t value them at sixty five cents, since a boost in Google local is worth far more than that. I wonder, what value did Google assign? And is that value managed across markets? Is this yet another market Google is making, encouraging and requiring human reviews, valuing them secretly, and then trading in that market? If so, Google continues to encourage the web to become a cesspool.

During 2006 I watched known-to-be-less-reputable characters in one of my markets balatantly spam the local reviews in order to gain stars in Google local. He was ahead of his time and stuck out “like a sore thumb”. No one in his market had any reviews, while he had 5 glowing reviews all dated within a week or so of each other. The fact that he was not a native English speaker helped them stand out, but Google still missed it. His competitors cringed with disgust when they saw the results of a Google local search… they felt that guy was really really ugly sitting up there with 5 obviously (to them) fake reviews. They felt it was bad for their industry in general, and bad for the marketplace. They were so put off they refused to ask their customers for reviews. They didn’t want to be like that guy.

As you can guess, that guy has been quite successful. He was never after the top-tier clients on the Dignity Scale. He was after money, which Google delivered via traffic. And now that he has the money…
What’s a fake review worth in your industry? Whether you like it or not, as long as Google is controlling the traffic flow, you will be required to either have a number of glowing, perfect reviews, or you won’t compete with those who do. Especially since starting today, many more companies are aware that perfect reviews work and can be had for as low as $0.65.
Be forewarned, though: with most scams, there are third parties riding the coat tails of the instigators of the initial scam, pitching a “solution” which also  just happens to be really really good for them. I consider OpenID one of these… watch as the OpenID promotors pepper the web with comments that OpenID is the solution to fake reviews. It’s not… and it represents a GREAT way for companies like Google to control even more of your access and perspective on the cesspool of the web.

Addendum: There’s plenty to laugh about over at QualityNonsense.com but you might especially like the bit on EBay’s keyword stuffing.

Japanese quality of life and humanitarian advocates are referring to Google as that big, bad IT behemoth formerly known as Cyberdyne Systems (Terminator movies).

“It is necessary to warn society that an IT giant is openly violating privacy rights, which are important rights that the citizens have, through this service.”

They are calling for a ban of Google street view for Japanese cities. Google thinks it’s cool to video tape everyone’s neighborhoods and homes and put it onto the Internet for the public to peruse. Not everyone agrees this is a good idea. The question is, does Google need permission? Perhaps a better question is, did Google ever think to ask?

It’s too easy to point to some good that comes from these innovations to justify any objections. History reminds us that major wars have resulted from social blunders and insulting indifference. Just as overly-direct, geeky nerds are often considered abrupt and rude due to their tendency to overlook basic common courtesies, Google has become a humanitarian embarassment. Yes, it’s way cool to do amazing things with public data. No, it’s not cool to force it down our throats.

Here’s to hoping Google gets a clue before someone starts throwing more shoes.

Once in a while I like to remind everyone of some of the trust points that exist out there in Internet land, and this time I will underline the importance of paying attention because dang, it seems just about everyone is stuffing crap into your local Flash storage these days.

Everyone knows about cookies, those little locally-stored files that companies hide on your system so they can refer back to the hidden data later when you come back for another page, or when you visit a partner website. Cookies are what makes the stateless web stateful — without a cookie stored on your machine, a web site cannot relate two web page requests to each other. There would not be any “login” without cookies, because the cookie maintains your status as a logged in user. There can be no “remember me” without cookies, because the cookie is the “memory” storage facility. If you clear your cookies, you will find that websites you visit regularly no longer recognize you (until you fill out the login form again, at which time the website places a new cookie on your system).

Companies would not be able to track you easily either if there were no cookies, because by sharing cookie data companies can share usage data and ultimately track your usage of the Internet. And that’s why people like to clear their cookies. By clearing the cookies, you maintain some control over how you appear to those companies tracking your use of the Internet.

There are other ways to track, however, and one of those has become a major tool of companies these days. I am seeing just about everyone taking advantage of the local storage made available outside of the cookie system by the Flash player. Hiding tracking data in the Flash local storage is nothing new… this has been going on for years. However, lately it is amazing just how much stuff is being stuffed into that Flash storage.

If you want to see for yourself, you simply need to visit the Fash local settings control panels for your system and set your system to “always ask” for requests to utilize the local storage. You will also need to clear the existing permissions and data (which might be quite substantial if you didn’t already know about this “feature” of Flash). And of course be forewarned that clearing your local settings will change your browsing experience. Pandora will forget who you are, for example, as Pandora uses Flash to store your identity. Ditto for other websites, just as if they had been using cookies and you cleared your cookies. You can also access the settings manager with a right-click on any embedded flash object, such as a YouTube video. A right-click should offer a settings option.
It used to be my Flash local storage was stuffed by obvious Flash content… Flash content which desired to store variables or settings for use by that Flash application. Now, however, it seems web designers are placing tiny meaningless little Flash objects into web pages just to utilize the Flash local settings storage for hiding tracking data. Geez… Youtube is barely usable with “always ask” turned on… every few seconds it’s trying to store something locally. Is this really necessary?

Check it out for yourself… visit the Adobe page that displays your Flash local storage settings manager, clear the junk they’d already stored on your system, clear the list of “allowed websites”, and set your privacy to “always ask”. Then resume surfing and be amazed as your are contsantly interrupted by web site after web site seeking to store stuff on your system.

Beware that you’ll need to visit most of the tabs of the Flash local settings manager app to be sure you get all of it… not just the “Global Privacy Settings”. They have some redundancy in there and certainly didn’t make it easy to take control of your own system.