Google Froogle and Christmas Spam
Looks like Froogle is serving its users a nice dish of Spiced Ham for the holidays. Has Froogle, Google’s comparison shopping engine, and its giving spirit of offering no setup fees or no pay per click fees for product listings, led to the spamming of the system? Brian Smith of Comparison Engines looks at some popular searches on Froogle and its spammy results.
With the online holiday shopping season in full blast, Brian says that such spammy results lead to a “horrible user experience” and that Google’s Froogle need some serious attention. Brian writes : “I just performed a search for ‘iPod Nano‘ which is one of the most popular products this holiday season…and the results made me laugh…then cry.”
In a excellent post with some definative screenshots and examples Brian goes on to explain that “The major problem… is that the results are made up of spam and eBay affiliate listings. Almost every single store listed on the first 9 pages (90+ results) link to spam or outdated (and therefore incorrectly priced) ebay affiliate listings.”
For the complete Froogle overview, I suggest reviewing Froogle Spam on Comparison Engines.
