But who decides where the line is draw after that? You obviously have an affiliation towards Moneysupermarket (judging by your original emotional reponse). However, I would tend to agree that a commercial site such as that can benefit from advertising when customers are looking for the quickest exit as they can’t find what they want!

The problem is, how much advertising is too much – as a measurable entity. There are plenty of pitfalls for search engines here – they’ve got to define and recognise the advertising content before they decide on the parameters and judgements.

Care to name some of the spammy sites you make reference to? What are your borderline examples and extreme cases in your opinion?

The concern for me comes from MFA sites with no content, nothing useful and piles of advertising. If the site has relevant information, a tool, or a comparison engine like the Money Supermarket site then I don’t see how it can be classed as spam.

I have personally used the website and have got my motor insurance from it so you could call me a little biased.

I would name some sites that are spammy but I don’t like to name names.

One point I would like to make, and what I would consider spam, is domain squatters with some directory structure type site where there is no content and every link is a revenue generating one. Sites that like should be banned, they are really quite annoying.

My comment about Moneysupermarket was intended to highlight that there must be a grey area. Technically, advertising revenue is being earned, regardless of weather it is PPC to PPC or PPC to affiliate links/advertising deals. If anti-arbitrage measures are intended to prevent PPC to PPC where’s the line drawn after that? Open ended question really as there isn’t really a black or white solution.

I can see how my post looks like an attack on Moneysupermarket. My (!) was intended to show a drier sense of non-existent humour in that Moneysupermarket are purely bigger – whether they’re different or indeed spammers depends on the grey line.

As all good exam questions like to end – discuss…

Personally I tend to see sites with 3+ Google Adsence blocks on them as spam. Any sites that use trade doubler or commission junction etc tend to have to go through some sort of editorial or review before potential advertisers will let them use their adverts.

One other thing is that most spam sites hardly make any money and so don’t advertise on Google or Yahoo etc…

I think you need to revisit how you have put the post above and just look at it again, the post is good in highlighting the quality score issue but it could have some more in depth detail and analysis.

Sorry about my “Do you have any idea what you are talking about?” message, I tend to get a bit over zealous in my criticisms. I guess we all live and learn.