As fast as a company can be on top of the world it can fall flat on its face the next month, unfortunately that is the fate of Guelph, Canada based Geosign. The company had recently closed a $160 million financing deal in March 2007 and a 2 months later is laying off a rumoured one third of its work force due to being caught for arbitrage on Google. Arbitrage on Google is when a person tries to exploit the difference between the costs of placign Google Adwords and the income that is derived from displaying Google Adsense ads on niche sites. After this was discovered Geosign had to revisit several sites to remove the ads. According to Helen Overland at non-linear creations “search engines have long expressed their opposition to PPC arbitrage, and have been increasingly taking action against those sites which engage in it. This is just one more example of how people have to keep on top of the daily changes in the search engine marketing industry”.
Google catches Geosign and clamps down
Published: May 31, 2007Posted in: Features
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