Dec 6 2006

Accusations Of Google Funding Terrorism

By Jeremy Schoemaker 23 comments

I was pretty nervous to be a part of this panel that reviewed the data and was on stage presenting our findings to the world live. I spent hours going over it to make sure what I saw looked authentic.

The main story was about the AIT click fraud case but what is becoming the main story is the outing of Google Adsense all over Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and some various drug cartel websites.

Loren Baker from search engine journal was a member of the press corps covering the event. Check out his write up here

ToddW said on December 6th, 2006 at 5:21 pm

Well that’s a topic I never thought I’d read about.

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Aaron Shear said on December 6th, 2006 at 5:42 pm

Wow, this is a loaded subject.

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TheHostHunter said on December 6th, 2006 at 5:43 pm

With Adsense being as lax as they are with policing who does and does not show their ads, this was only a matter of time.

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Joetek said on December 6th, 2006 at 6:15 pm

The police Adsense about as much as they police their search. I’m sure all of these sites are indexed by their search engine… But yes, cutting them a check is different…

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C'mon said on December 6th, 2006 at 7:07 pm

Oh, they know about it. There’s NO QUESTION they know about it. They kick people off AdWords for next to nothing, there is no way they did not know about this.

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Christoph C. Cemper said on December 6th, 2006 at 7:53 pm

OMG - that was worth it… they kick small publishers from their program but keep those guys in it…

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Peter said on December 6th, 2006 at 7:57 pm

It’ll be interesting to see if this is picked up by the mainstream media.

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Marshall Clark said on December 6th, 2006 at 8:01 pm

Of course they will. This is the exactly the type of easily misconstrued unfortunate mistake/evil conspiracy that they dream out.

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Happy Mind - Happy Mood said on December 6th, 2006 at 8:03 pm

That is some crazy stuff! I wonder how far this issue will go.

Ed

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Stevo said on December 6th, 2006 at 8:32 pm

Wow. I wonder if the US government will paperclip this on to a bill like the online gambling!

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Dave said on December 6th, 2006 at 9:43 pm

I submitted it to Drudge.. lets see if he picks it up

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Christer Edwards said on December 6th, 2006 at 11:02 pm

That sure is a loaded subject–definitely gets your attention with the title alone.

I will also be interested in watching this to see where it goes.

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chris said on December 6th, 2006 at 11:58 pm

Wah wah wah. Stop it your whining… It is a slippery slope when a multi billion dollar company starts denying people services etc. due to the fact that they express their unfavorable and despicable political and religious views.

This is such a BS story, because the real motive to releasing/reporting this story with such a sensational headline is to fix/improve click fraud detection on the part of the Adsense/Adwords. So I guess that when all else fails, lets use the ol terror tactic to get what we want.

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Chris said on December 7th, 2006 at 2:36 am

This sorta stuff is impossible to sort out. When I worked at walmart.com we had all sorts of crap like this and it was really really hard to kill off.

Imagine a site saying “Jihad Jihad Jihad” with a rotating Kalashnikov graphic…and right below the graphic…your affiliate banner.

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Jason said on December 7th, 2006 at 7:46 am

A comment on Search Engine Journal made one of the better points I’ve heard on the subject: “Chances are the diamond you bought your wife financed a lot more terror than Adsense.”

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Peter said on December 7th, 2006 at 8:53 am

Matt Cutts had an interesting comment on Loren’s blog. He says that “The claim is that Google is funding terrorists via AdSense ads on Orkut. That’s false because ad clicks on Orkut don’t pay money to individual users. So it is literally *impossible* for bad guys to be making money via Orkut ads.” I guess if there’s no other evidence than what was on Orkut, this is going to blow over quickly.

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Brandon Lockaby said on December 7th, 2006 at 10:41 am

The “story” Shoe linked to actually changes subjects in the middle, it starts off saying that Orkut funds terrorist groups, then says it doesn’t… then goes on about what click fraud is. I could have written that pathetic linkbaiting crap myself :/

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SEOLoser said on December 7th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

Funny / interesting, but I’m sure anyone doing this will just have their account revoked

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carl said on December 7th, 2006 at 9:19 pm

Well, if this is not the most, “made for digg” post ever!

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aeiouy said on December 23rd, 2006 at 8:06 pm

Good to see I had an adsense account banned for nothing I did, yet Osama has no problems in having an Adsense account.

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Gagan Bassi said on April 15th, 2007 at 11:24 pm

I am wondering That what sorts of ads google is showing on terrorist sites??
Buy a Bomb, Rocket launcher
Have a latest review on Nuclear missile,
How to blow your neighbours house??
Google should check the authenticity of website before placing ads on controversial sites otherwise Google is on verge of being baned in countries like india and USA, which are against terrorism.

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Forbes, Shoemoney, & Graywolf on Arbitrage - WickedFire - Internet Marketing Affiliate Webmaster Forum said on December 7th, 2006 at 5:47 pm

[...] Balls? did you see this post on shoemoney yesterday? Accusations Of Google Funding Terrorism __________________ The must-read blog for web site owners - WebPublishingBlog.com [...]
How To Choose A CPA Affiliate & My 2006 Regrets - ShoeMoney™ said on February 5th, 2007 at 12:18 am

[...] a personal level - Well the by far biggest thing I regret was get in on the Google funds terrorism story. The real story was the AIT click fraud. The story was CLICK FRAUD and there is some pretty [...]