Google’s 2016 bad ads report reveals details on how its recent policy against “misrepresentative content”, otherwise known as fake news, is affecting publishers.
Since November and December of 2016, Google has permanently banned over 200 publishers from its ad networks for promoting misrepresentative content. In total 540 sites were reviewed, and at least some action was taken against over half of them (340). This is the first time Google has included a section regarding fake news in its bad ads report.
Also included in the report are details about the 1.7 billion total ads taken down in 2016 for violating Google’s policies, which is over twice the amount of bad ads removed in 2015.
The following is a summary of several of the key statistics highlighted in Google’s report.
Google’s 2016 Bad Ads Report
Payday Loan Ads: Since banning payday loan ads in July 2016, Google has removed more than 5 million of them from its network.- Ads for Illegal Products: Google removed 68 million ads for healthcare violations, this is up from 12.5 million in 2016. Additionally, 17 million ads for illegal gambling violations were removed in 2016.
- Misleading Ads: Google removed 80 million ads in 2016 for deceiving, misleading, and shocking users.
- Mobile Ads: Google has gone and disabled more than 23,000 self-clicking mobile ads in 2016.
- Ads Trying to Deceive Google: Nothing is getting past Google — 7 million ads removed for intentionally attempting to trick the search giant’s detection systems.
- Bad Sites: Google has taken action on over 75,000 “bad sites”, sites which bad ads point to, in 2016.
All together, if only one second was spent taking down each ad that was removed in 2016, it would take a total of 50 years to finish the job. Good thing Google has automated technologies and a large team dedicated to protecting searchers from bad ads.
Original news article from SEJ