Google is doing its bit to stop student plagiarism by banning adverts for essay writing services from next month.

The ban on essay-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations has predictably upset essay-writing firms. The managing director of UK-based Essaywriter.co.uk, Matthew Wilson, told the BBC that he is furious about the ban since up 80% of his customers come from Google (although he also says on his web site that 70% of customers are repeat buyers). Wilson claims that he warns students that the essays should not be submitted as their own work.

However, if you look at Wilson’s web site, there’s little doubt that the essays are being sold on the basis that they are good enough to hand in:

“Our work is written to the highest standard and delivered with speed and perfection. Whether you are looking for a short essay or an in-depth dissertation you will be safe in the knowledge that we have some of the UK ’s top writers on hand who have graduated from some of the best institutions in the country.”

Wilson also offers a US$1000 “no plagiarism guarantee” on site, which is kind of bizarre, but presumably that means that the essays he sells are original works.

Universities, on the other hand, are very happy about the Google ban.

“We welcome this move,” Professor Drummond Bone, president of Universities UK told the told the BBC. Essay writing sites claim that students pay hundreds of pounds for model answers – but do not then submit these as their own work. We all know this claim is absurd.”

In the UK it is believed that up to 12,000 essays are sold to students each year, ranging in price from a few dollars for a prewritten piece up to more than US$10,000 for longer pieces.

This is not the first time that Google has banned adverts for particular categories of products or services. There’s a long list of banned categories, including counterfeit goods, fake documents (IDs, passports, social security cards, immigration papers, diplomas and noble titles), hacking and cracking sites, prostitution, tobacco and cigarettes, or weapons.

The whole notion of keyword advertising is still relatively new, and so it’s good to see Google slowly, but surely erradicating the suspect advertising that appears on its network.

Related:

Entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 2:39 pm under Google, Uncategorized.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
Stumble It!