The Trouble With Google’s SA Ad Policy

Mandy De Waal writes about recent controversies with Google SA’s policies and apparent discrepancies in their reseller certification program…

Google South Africa set the cat among the pigeons when country manager Stafford Masie revealed intentions to moderate SA’s search industry, saying some e-marketing companies were committing “fraud” against customers.

Masie stated “Google-certified agencies” would be introduced in early 2009 to stop local search marketing companies making a financial “killing… off ill-informed clients”. Google SA said five e-marketing agencies already working across Google’s current base of 30 named and active clients will lead this programme. Google SA said the agencies in question would pioneer the programme to help determine what would be required for agency certification. Masie said after this process, certification will be made available to “all and everyone”. The full text of Masie’s response on agency certification can be found here.

Google’s move to moderate the local search market was met with scepticism and distrust by local search marketing companies that acknowledge questionable ethics have been practiced by a few agencies, but say Google caused this problem to begin with.