Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 236 posts

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#111

Post by fallingknife »

aychedee wrote: post #45
izacus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling out a megacorporation for not defending your rights is oxymoronic by the extreme. You didn't stop other products from killing people by asking Walmart nicely to make sure it's safe. Isn't there a small thing called "regulators" for this? Or is US government now so fundamentally broken that it can't even provide its basic function anymore and has to be replaced by "pretty-please" appeals to megacorporations?

It's broken by design. AKA regulatory capture by business. Ever since America made corruption (paying money to politicians) legal it's just been downhill. Enjoy!

Regulatory capture has nothing to do with corruption. Regulatory capture is when businesses benefit from complex regulation because the competitive moat that the regulation gives them is more valuable than the cost (so high that only huge companies can afford it) to comply. Large businesses like moats and regulators like to regulate. No coordination required. Actual corruption, at least in the US, is much less common.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#112

Post by SargeDebian »

thih9 wrote: post #81
gumby wrote: post #14

Parasites like this have also colonized plumbing, locksmiths etc, as has been discussed on this site in the past. Seems like straight up fraud to me.

How is this different to what the real estate agents do? If you try to sell property on your own, you'll get many unsolicited offers from real estate agents, sometimes claiming they already have a buyer and sometimes this is even true.

It is different because the real estate agents typically don’t pretend to be the buyers.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#113

Post by mcculley »

jeffbee wrote: post #99
mcculley wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my paid ad for my restaurant is right above the organic search result, how is Google adding any value?

Hypothetically? You just recently moved your site to a new domain name (your reasons are your own) and you want to advertise the new one even though the old one is “organically” first. You want to control the snippet in a way that’s impossible with organic search. Among other hypothetical situations.

Google could notice the paid link goes to the same page as the organic link and choose not to charge the advertiser as they are obviously not adding or creating value.

Instead, because Google chooses to charge for that first link, it creates a situation where the business owner knows they have to outbid the competition to get the link above their own.

This is great for Google’s shareholders, bad for the restaurant.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#114

Post by CaptainZapp »

mellosouls wrote: post #68

Reminds me of the guy who made his shed the top rated restaurant on Trip Advisor https://www.vice.com/en/article/434gqw/i-made-my-shed-the-to... https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shed_at_Dulwich

That was incredibly funny.

I can even agree with Trip Advisors' reasoning that their main concern are not fake restaurants, but dodgy reviews.

Nevertheless, this never should have been allowed to slip through the cracks.

It wasn't just a make pretend great London eatery on Trip Advisors.

It was fucking number 1 in a city with literally 10s of thousands rated restaurants.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#115

Post by BLKNSLVR »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #5
fxtentacle wrote: post #3

As expected, an excellent read: TLDR: Scammers cloned a restaurant website. Amex gave them a merchant account despite fake address and fake phone number. Google let them advertise the fake restaurant despite none of the data matching Google's knowledge box. And I just love the quote, here in context: "Doug @Rushkoff says that the ethic of today's "entrepreneur" is to #GoMeta - don't provide a product or a service, si…

I am pretty sure that doctorow how has a better imagination than to believe that "Holy shit do we live in the worst of all possible timelines." We actually live in a pretty good timeline when we complain about ordering Thai food over the internet and the worst that happens is we get our food delivered with some trouble.

If you're OK with the timeline that's moving towards owning nothing and pretending to be happy for the photo.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#116

Post by londons_explore »

iconosynclast wrote: post #108
londons_explore wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our company is using a very big chunk of our ad words budget targeting our own brand name to make sure it's on top. You shouldn't need to do this. Googles ad auction on search multiplies your bid by a quality score when deciding which ad to show. A site that satisfies what the user is looking for will have a high quality score, whereas the 'wrong' site (ie. one for a competitor) will have a low quality score - part…

This doesn't seem to work very well at all. I frequently search for a particular vendor of something by name only to be served another similar vendor as the top result. It feels like it should be doable to serve these results in some sort of "you may also like these similar vendors" box or something like that which would massively improve the user experience

It doesn't work if the real company isn't an advertiser, or if they are an advertiser but aren't in this auction due to their targeting rules or being out of budget.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#117

Post by BLKNSLVR »

jeffbee wrote: post #96

I’d like to know what the author or any of these commenters think the process would look like that would have actually stopped this advertiser. Some guy wants to advertise their Thai restaurant. They’ve got the domain name, the site is up, it works. What else is the ad marketplace supposed to check? It’s not like you can’t have the same name as another Thai restaurant. After all, the domain registrar gave them that n…

It would look a little bit like a company that's got a fuckton of relatively well curated data about the world and maybe combining that data with some kind of "artificial intelligence" to maybe produce something useful to society like a reduction in the number of scams it gives advertising space to.

But maybe that's just me being shortsighted and valuing benevolence over revenue.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#118

Post by [deleted] »

dsr_ wrote: post #106
perihelions wrote: post #59

Simple legislative fix: entitle the victim (small business) to quickly and easily claim a trademark infringement on an ad, and claw back 100% of Google's revenue on that ad. And let Google be civilly liable, if they choose to contest such a trademark claim and they're in the wrong. Inspired by YouTube's DMCA claim system (or my superficial understanding of it). If there's a "bug bounty" on fraud, there will be an ent…

The FTC has jurisdiction here. No new law is required. Complaints need to be made.

[deleted]

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#119

Post by tjbiddle »

londons_explore wrote: post #102
davidkuennen wrote: post #61

It has always boggled my mind that you're even allowed to publish ads targeting other companies brand names as keywords without being the verified owner of that company. But I understand Google here. It's probably their single biggest income stream. Our company is using a very big chunk of our ad words budget targeting our own brand name to make sure it's on top. More than for any other keyword by far. And I imagine…

> Our company is using a very big chunk of our ad words budget targeting our own brand name to make sure it's on top. You shouldn't need to do this. Googles ad auction on search multiplies your bid by a quality score when deciding which ad to show. A site that satisfies what the user is looking for will have a high quality score, whereas the 'wrong' site (ie. one for a competitor) will have a low quality score - part…

I'd agree on this.

For a while I'd bid on the names of competitors (Not being scammy - just trying to win the #1 result placement); however, I found I was spending a bunch with basically zero conversions because - I assume, if someone is searching for something, they're expecting that something, so when they click it and realize it's not - they just exit.

On the other hand, bidding my own name: pennies.

Re: Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

#120

Post by theshrike79 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #104
urbandw311er wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an underrated comment. Google are enabling fraud on a massive scale by permitting the hijacking of established names and brands. Often brands or names that some small family company has worked for years to build a reputation for. We do indeed live in a world where tech and capitalism have birthed some sort of horrific offspring that’s choking us all.

But that's only part of it. Google will also happily serve up ads for fake bank websites that will steal your credentials. Google will happily serve up ads for a lot of malicious content on the Internet. Google are not only making it worse because of advertising, they're making it worse by facilitating scammers and fraudsters and various other criminals. All because their systems are so automated as to eschew any rev…

Yep, but try to put Google ads on a page with naked or scantily dressed people, you'll get banned real fast. =)

Stealing and impersonation good, sex bad.

Post reply on HN