Hey Scott, glad you liked the podcast, im honored that you listened! Just to clarify, I dont "side" with the argument you mention on whether ends justify means, I just find it an interesting point of argument. I actually prefer to go direct as you do, but I question the shrill voices of some in the Search industry concerning the topic as often I don't see it as as big a problem as they do.

It's about time someone has called Google out on this! I've been saying this for years about Google and all the other Search Engines:

Have a vested interest in NOT providing relevant search results, because if they did no one would buy or click the adverts.

This is not excactly the same thing as MS is saying here, but it's pretty darn close.

Of course some people are so enraptured w/ Google or their particular favorite SE, or are just in denal in genral, that they have a hard time beliving this. They feel that if a SE doesn't provide relavent results people will go somewhere else.

Well that is true for a small portion of Americans. However, any student of sociology or business or marketing knows that for the most part Americans don't want to do research on anything and will just go with the herd.

If you feel that SE's provide relavent results try this:
Pretend your the average Joe (or Joesephine) searcher, go to goolge and search for a restaraunt or hotel in the city closest to you. You'll see that hardly any of the results on the first page(s) are actually the website of a restaurant or hotel in that area. It's usually a link farm (whoops they're called directories now), or a page from one of the big sites like hotels.com, etc. Or they will have several results from the same businesses website.

ACK! What's up with the "jump link"? I put serious effort into my comments, whenever I do leave them, and while I don't do it specificlly for the link, I feel it's pretty rude to go through the extra work to make a link not count with the search engines.

Maybe that's just me though.

I want to thank Nick for sharing his views via audio. My opinion is Google could do more in stopping Joe and thus reducing spam. I agree that most likely why they don’t is because they do have a vested interest, not to make it a priority.

Texxs hit it dead center. Local Search is filled with spam or optimized web sites. Finding a unique hotel or restaurant local website in your town will be a needle in the haystack. Most people don't have the time or want to place the effort to dig through the results. Unfortunately, this may have an effect on why small business owners are skeptical about advertising locally online. Factor in the high ad rates from the phone books and their backs are up against the wall. Food for thought….

"Nick also sides with the argument, which I’ve heard many times, that these auto-generated crap pages filled with ads are not spam IF the ads on those pages bring you somewhere useful relative to your search. There I disagree. The ends do not justify the means. I do NOT appreciate being a pawn in that game. I want to search, get good results, and go DIRECTLY to them."

Perhaps a different way to look at this situation is to say that the spammers that are leading you to their site from which to provide you ads that lead you to what you might have wanted are actually benefiting from search results arbitrage due to the relatively poor quality of Google's. In other words, the spammer was able to get you to come to their site because they showed you a search result that seemed most appropriate. In other words, the spammer did a better job at providing relevance than Google's natural results. This took you elsewhere from where you then were presented w/ads that lead you in the direction of what you really wanted in the first place. Sure, the spam site made some coin along the way, but why scold them or view them as manipulators? I'd say if Google's results had been better then you might never have gone to the spam site because the better result that the spam site sent you to should have come up higher on your Google results list.

Another question is, in not doing anything about a large amount of spam from one gmail account holder spamming many Google Groups, how much is Google getting from the spammer?