Google fights counterfeit goods peddlers

IF YOU'VE EVER hunted for a bargain on Ebay, it may have happened to you.

You buy a pair of name brand headphones online for a pretty good price, you get it at home and discover the quality and sound are shoddy. You've bought a counterfeit, probably from some random seller from Asia.

But Google is fighting back. In a blog post, the company acknowledged that there is a big problem with sellers advertising counterfeit goods online. With over a million advertisers using its Adwords service, Google had to shut down around 50,000 Adword accounts for trying to sell counterfeit goods in the last six months of 2010.

Google said it is constantly updating its systems to keep out bad adverts, and announced three specific improvements.

First, Google said it will now act on reliable Adwords counterfeit complaints within 24 hours. Secondly, it will work with real advertisers to identify and expel infringers. And thirdly, there is now a Google Adwords help centre page for reporting counterfeits.

Kent Walker, Google SVP and general counsel said, "We use their feedback to help us tune a set of sophisticated automated tools, which analyse thousands of signals along every step of the advertising process and help prevent bad ads from ever seeing the light of day."

"We devote significant engineering and machine resources in order to prevent violations of ads policies, including counterfeiting."

The Android mobile operating system has made a few big headlines recently, but it is should be remembered that search and advertising are still where Google makes most of its money. µ