Forestle Search
:Partnership Ends With Google
Forestle Search
Forestle Search which is based in Germany and just launched last month, was previously using Google’s Custom Search program. On their homepage they say, “Save 0.1 yd² of rainforest with each search you do at Forestle. So far we have already saved 25,024.6 yd² of rainforest!†Now when you do a search, the result shows a “Forbidden†message from Google, and above it Forestle prints this message:
“Google ended partnership with Forestle!
Dear Forestle user,
We just received an email from Google in which they announced the end of the partnership with Forestle. They said that we offered “incentives to click artificially on sponsored links†and that this was not compliant with their policies..
Well, we don’t agree with that!
We displayed a note at the top of the Forestle result page that says “only click on Google sponsored links if you are really interested in themâ€. Also we saved 0.1 m² per search and not per click! So where did we offer incentives to click on ads?
In our opinion Google ended the partnership, because Forestle became too successful”
Another interesting note above that message reads, “Please only click on Google sponsored links if you are really interested in them. You harm Forestle, Google and the advertising websites with artificial clicking.†(We are not really sure since when they have added these notes to their site.) Forestle says all of their income “minus administrative costs†goes to The Nature Conservancy initiative. While Forestle claims they save “0.1 m² per search and not per clickâ€, on their explanations page they say “Forestle earns advertising revenue from clicks on ’sponsored links’â€. Interesting!
