Can you really do that?
During a recent IM conversation, a friend suddenly made the connection between great SERPs and total domination. He had some of the top five organic results for several phrases, but realized that there were some that didn’t return onebox results and others that shop.com was spamming to take all of the top 3 onebox results. He realized that having the top two organic plus top 3 onebox would give him the top FIVE slots of free traffic. This suddenly opened his eyes as to what domination meant.
But then there was the shop.com spam. For one phrase, they had over a dozen listings. Each described a slightly different product (different colors, different fabrics, etc.), but it all linked to the same page where these were options in a drop-down box. Is that something that’s actually allowed? I mean, they had 8 of the top 10 covered with links to exactly the same page, which can’t be a good user experience. It wasn’t even different links which would select the other options by default. It was just a link to a page that showed a range of prices, then a customize box.
To try to find an answer, I’ve read through the TOS on Google Base. I can’t find anything prohibiting duplicate listings. I can’t say for certain I’m not missing it elsewhere yet, but at this point it appears to be allowed. I’m going to try to get some clarification on this and I’ll report back. But for now, be aware that there are some sites, not just the one mentioned, which are listing the same item multiple times in an effort to deny anyone else of a listing.
Comment by markus941 | January 19th, 2007
This DOES seem like a huge opportunity for spam. I’d be interested to hear any clarification you get on the matter.