I just signed onto a very popular Shanghai blog and here are the first three ads through google adsense, “Tantric massage Shanghai”, “Ecstasy Massage” and “Massage Shanghai”. All three offer outcall service and of course all three list mobile phone numbers. Now it seems like this is quite a very common occurrence these days. These massage girls are obviously bidding very high for google adwords because I see it on almost very Shanghai centered site, including the NextStep Directory (Although its pretty nominal on our website). On the flip side, it also means that not only are people clicking on the links, but they are utilizing the services. Why else would the massage services continue to pay so much money per click. Anyway, what it comes down to is the fact that all these websites are acting as pimps.

On another note, I’ve read a couple articles recently that talk about how there are several cities/towns in the US called Shanghai, such as Shanghai, Virginia. Since the keyword Shanghai is bid at such a high rate, these massage ads are appearing in these towns throughout the US.

Lastly, just to give this post an ounce of respectability, the consistency of these massage ads on Shanghai related websites says something about google’s adsense/adwords business model. After all, it was just announced they had missed their projected earnings and that click through rates for adsense were going down on a global scale. This seems fairly obvious when you think about it. If you see the same ads on every site you go to, how many times are you really going to click on them? So it seems all these sites have started to cannibalize each other. My recommendation, and what we will probably do for the NextStep Directory, is using a different service for delivering ads to your site. This way, you are distinguished from the rest of the sites and might actually offer something unique.