Update: The Daily has removed all of the illegitimate advertising and hopefully set an example for the other college newspapers offenders.
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Last week, the Stanford Daily ran an article headlined “Diet pill use on the rise among teenage girls.” It concludes by quoting FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras: “As part of our ‘no tolerance’ policy, we are announcing six new cases against advertisers using bogus weight loss claims.”
But a funny thing will happen as you read through the article. You will notice that in the left sidebar, among a sea of other spam links, the Stanford Daily is advertising… diet pills. Diet pills that claim to offer natural and safe weight loss. Then there’s the sea of online gambling ads. This type of advertising is called linkspam, and most search engines consider it illegal.
It’s hard to vocalize how absolutely disgusted I am, and on how many levels. First of all, the dozens of links that pad the side and (especially) the bottom of every Daily article do not constitute mere “advertising,” despite what it says on the label. Nobody is expected to click on these links. The links are intended to boost each page’s ranking in search engines like Google that place a high premium on inbound links from credible sources. It’s hard to get more credible than stanford.edu. Which brings me to the second reason this is disgusting: that Stanford, of all places, is being used to game Google. (I realize Stanford itself doesn’t condone this, which makes it all the more frustrating that the Daily is leeching off its clout toward these ends.)
For years, bloggers have been writing about the importance of trustworthy and credible search engine results. And for years, others have written them off as geeky Web purists. This article is the most compelling and tragic demonstration I’ve seen of why we all need to care. It begins: “Type in the words ‘diet pills’ into the Google search engine and you’ll receive more than 800,000 hits.” Yeah. And the Stanford Daily is doing its part.
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Update: It’s even worse than I thought. The Daily is transparently hosting spam pages that resemble articles on its domain. If a marriage of academia and journalism can’t breed integrity, what will? Right under the diet pills ad on every page are two invisible “article 1” and “article 2” links that you can see when you begin selecting text. More on this technique here. I can’t imagine a dirtier or more dangerous use of this kind of spam than hosting advertisements about diet pills that look like actual Stanford newspaper articles.
Update: Here are the 3,950 links reciprocating the relationship.
May 27th, 2005 at 6:35 am
And they do it, because they can get away with it.
May 27th, 2005 at 6:49 am
does Stanford really need to run ads in the first place?
May 27th, 2005 at 9:04 am
They’re Google ads, which are context sensitive. The diet pills ad only appears because the article is about diet pills. I doubt there is something they can do about that…
Nevertheless, advertising on an university site, tsk!
~Grauw
May 27th, 2005 at 9:06 am
Oh, it’s not google ads. They just look like it. Never mind my previous comment then :).
May 27th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
It’s important to note that the Stanford Daily isn’t run by the university. It’s a separate non-profit corporation: http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=about
May 27th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
Jonathan,
Absolutely. I don’t blame Stanford the entity for this, the blame lies entirely with the Daily staff.
May 27th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Andy Baio wrote about something similar happening at the WordPress site.
May 27th, 2005 at 6:23 pm
If this bugs you so much, how come you never mentioned when WordPress did this, but worse? At least with Stanfrod Daily, you know where the money goes.
May 27th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Because it’s not my job to report on everything in the world? This is near and dear to my heart. I am a Stanford student.
I also think this is far worse than the Wordpress case. This is a *newspaper* for a *University*. This is the intersection of journalism and academia. Put aside the fact that it harms the Web for a second. Put aside that the Stanford domain is being used to game the Google search engine despite the illustrious search history of Stanford. Put aside the fact that the Daily itself ran an article about students falling prey to the misleading advertising of diet pills, and alongside the article is that very advertising!
Now consider the fact that someone can actually search Google and come across an article published at “daily.stanford.edu” that encourages people to use diet pills and links to a vendor selling them.
The Wordpress debacle was just wrong. This is wrong and demonstrably harmful by the Daily’s own admission.
–Blake
May 27th, 2005 at 6:30 pm
By the way, I have absolutely no idea where the money goes. For all I know it goes to the webmaster.
May 27th, 2005 at 7:13 pm
this is google bombing?
May 28th, 2005 at 8:02 am
Blake, you should try writing a letter to the editor or an Op-Ed and see if they publish it. Also, have you tried emailing them about it? Have they responded? I’m a Stanford grad student. This is lame.
May 28th, 2005 at 8:09 am
Hey Blake, Isnt that sort of nefarious thing prohibited by the Board of Regents or Governors and the University itsself? Even if its a non-profit independent entity they’re not legally allowed to do such a thing using the University’s name are they? or have they found some sort of a loophole?
Its really kind of sad considering that my community college’s news site and paper apparently have more journalistic integrity than a globally recognized University like Stanford’s respective paper. For the amount of money you guys are paying a term i’d be up in arms about it myself, advertising that is made to look like a news report from an academic institution’s paper is unacceptable, and hopefully others out there share your concern about it.
May 28th, 2005 at 5:21 pm
There simply is no comparison between this and the Wordpress debacle. Don’t get me wrong, Wordpress was a black eye for sure, but this is an order of magnitude worse. The blurred line between journalistic integrity and blatant pandering to anybody whole kick in a couple bucks to push their wares is outrageous.
May 29th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Nothing worng with selling ad space on your site, as long as the money goes to benefiting the school or the website…
June 1st, 2005 at 3:41 am
I worked as an Ad Exec at the Stanford Daily for 2 years. I can tell you everything.
1. The Daily is independent of the University and only receives funding from the pool of Special Fees, which students pay for. That is, students vote every spring for organizations which they are willing to pay money for, that will be added to their tuition. This is the only money we get from Stanford.
2. The money we make from the Daily goes to…the Daily. No one is making profits from this. The ad staff get paid, but all of the money is reinvested into the newspaper. It costs a lot of money to put out a daily, free newspaper that is delivered in several towns surrounding Stanford, in addition to campus.
3. I was opposed to web advertising like this when it came up. However, it is really easy money for very little work. Unlike print ads, there is nothing to design. We are aware of the Google tracking; we are Stanford students, after all. We figured it out. But the advertising VP doesn’t think there’s a problem with making money for the paper. Also, most students read it in paper form, where there are no links.
4. Yes, we need to advertise! In order to maintain our independence from the university, we have to advertise and bring in revenue. Otherwise, the university could control the newspaper, which you know would probably mean less freedom to publish controversial articles about the university. It costs SO MUCH MONEY to publish! I know you don’t believe it but we need to bring in about $900,000 a year just to break even, and we also get funding from private donors.
So, in sum…yes, diet pill ads next to a diet pill story are wrong. I completely agree. I argued so hard against those stupid German vacation ads and online casino links. And maybe the next ad VP will change that. But in terms of the need for money, it is absolutely necessary, or we won’t have a Stanford Daily anymore.
June 1st, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Nikki, Thanks for contributing an insider’s perspective. I certainly hope the next ad VP will take a different tact. The problem with the online link selling is that the Daily is “selling” the PageRank of Stanford.edu (of which they are only one part). If the Daily wants to sell links, they should get another domain and not freeride off of Stanford’s PageRank. The $900K is not surprising, and few people would have a problem with the need of the paper to raise money. That being said, the need to generate revenue does not change the responsibility for having fair and ethical practices in all areas (including ads).
July 12th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
I don’t know if you noticed, but the Google Toolbar for Firefox reports a Pagerank of 0 for daily.stanford.edu.
November 2nd, 2005 at 2:47 am
Its really kind of sad considering that my community college’s news site and paper apparently have more journalistic integrity than a globally recognized University like Stanford’s respective paper. For the amount of money you guys are paying a term i’d be up in arms about it myself, advertising that is made to look like a news report from an academic institution’s paper is unacceptable, and hopefully others out there share your concern about it.
October 18th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
[…] I was browsing some Mozilla developer blogs, and an entry by Blake Ross on The Daily Stanford and its link spam caught my eye. In a nutshell, The Daily Stanford was (and still is) helping search-engine spammers game google by advertising crap such as diet pills and online degrees. They also advertise online casinos with this amusing quote, “Stanford plays slot machines and blackjack daily at established online casinos where black jack and slots are safe and rewarding.” (originally references www.allslots.com). A later post from Blake shows that the Daily Californian is playing the same game, though a bit less deceptively. […]
June 21st, 2007 at 10:56 am
I totally support online advertising if needed
for independant newspaper to stay independant…
January 29th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
[…] That’s not the case according to Google. One thread at Google Groups confirms that this belief is a myth. How could an education site be above the rest if we only look at its exclusivity (only schools can apply for these domains)? In fact, it has been an issue in the past that an online daily of a reputable university was involved in placement of spam links back in 2005. It’s by coincidence that Google’s founders had their Ph.D’s at this university! […]