Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 24 April 2008 11:06
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
The eco-friendly Ecocho website, promising to plant trees in return for
users searching through the Ecocho search front-end, has had to stop
using Google as the search results provider due to a violation of
Google’s AdSense policies. Instead, Ecocho has been forced to use the
far less popular Yahoo search technology, vastly diminishing its
potential popularity.
The Ecocho search engine, (
global version) and the (
Australian version) was clearly hoping to ride to tree-planting glory on the coattails of Google’s stunning success as the world’s most popular – and arguably most accurate – search engine, but has been forced to switch over to the vastly less popular Yahoo.
The tag-line of the search site is “You search. We plant trees”, and it promised that “Switching to ecocho.com doesn't alter or slow your search. Search results are displayed via technology you already know and trust - Yahoo!”.
Unfortunately this sentence used to also say Google, so anyone used to Google’s search goodness will no longer get it.
Naturally one’s sense of environmental do-goodism is preserved when using Ecocho, but if the results aren’t the same, then your search results certainly are altered.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Asher Moses
quoted Google Australian spokesperson Rob Shilkin in an article on the topic saying that Ecocho “broke Google’s AdSense policies”, with Moses quoting AdSense rules which states that AdSense serving sites not "compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behaviour", which Ecocho did by “promising to plant trees”.
Shilkin was further quoted saying: "The site was in clear violation of our terms of service and we had previously warned the owner of past violations. We have now stopped serving ads and search results to the owner's sites."
The Ecocho Web Producer, “Alex”,
notes on Ecocho’s blog that: “You may’ve noticed that your Google searches are suddently not working on the site. Unfortunately, Google has decided to stop Ecocho from using its search technology. We’ve had phenomenal results over the first week and really hope that this can continue. We are speaking to Google right now to try to resolve this problem, but we could probably use your help.”
The blog urges users to try and convince Google to change its own AdSense policies, suggesting to users that: “If you love using Ecocho to perform your Google searches, feel free to express how unhappy you are about this decision here:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
”.
Please read onto page 2.
