image

Yesterday Joe Hall became annoyed. Otherwise soft spoken outspoken Joe had some choice words for an SEO company which had come up with what can be described as a creative way to get +1's:

ScreenClip(2)

The site's pages contained an inline popup layover thingie. You know, the page gets dimmed, the inline popup appears and then you have to click somewhere?

No biggie - popups work, after all - but this popup was different. This popup pretended to be a "spam" blocker. What? You're not a spammer?!?! Well, click the +1 and get immediate access to the site! It's that simple!

A kerfuffle broke out with the offending company claiming to be not only fully above the board with this but also that Google is A-OK with it.

image

Which seems too silly to be true - and Joe Hall quickly pointed it out:

image

Yet the weird truth of the matter is that as long as no money or prizes exchange hands, publishers may exchange content for clicks:

Publishers may not direct users to click a Google+ Button for purposes of misleading users. Publishers may not promote prizes, monies, or monetary equivalents in exchange for Google+ Button clicks. For the avoidance of doubt, Publishers may direct users to a Google+ Button to enable content and functionality. When a Publisher directs users to a Google+ Button, the button action must be related to the Publisher or the Publishers content.
-- Google button policy (Ed.:yes, they have a button policy Smile)*

Not long after Alan Bleiweiss - not a stranger to uncovering even criminal activities during an SEO audit - became involved the company decided to take the popup down.

image

image

I think they did the right thing there. I also wouldn't be surprised if the company actually did receive confirmation that this " having to click +1 to get access to content " from Google. I'm pretty sure you're as surprised as I am to read that, yes, Google's policies are OK with this.

What do you think about this line in Google's policy? Surprised?

* button policy archived here.

About the Author: Ruud Hein

I love helping to make web sites make it. From the ground up if needed. CSS challenges, server-side scripting, user and device friendly JavaScript tricks search engines have no problems with. Tracking how the sites perform and then figuring out how to make that performance and the tracking better. I'm passionate about information. No matter how often I trim my feeds in my feed readers (yes, I use more than one), I always have a couple of hundred in there covering topics ranging from design to usability, from SEO to SEM, from life hacks to productivity blogs, from.... Well, you get the idea, I guess. Knowledge and information management is close to my heart. Has to be with the amount of information I track. My "trusted system" is usually in flux but always at hand and fully searchable. My paid passion job at Search Engine People sees me applying my passions and knowledge to a wide array of problems, ones I usually experience as challenges. It's good to have you here: pleased to meet you!