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Comment by ollybee | Hacker News Reader

This does not seem be a problem in the UK, searches topics that might be prone to this all seem to give the correct .gov.uk site as the first result with no ads that could be described as misleading. I wonder if the UK government, advertising standards agencies and trading standards authorities have put more pressure on google? Or perhaps the legal landscape here makes it untenable to operate such a scam business.

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They still pop up in the UK like a rash that won't go away.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/16/once-again-cop...

My first attempt, “tv license”, brings back a form-filling service above the real one too.

I think Google has really increased the number of in-search ads recently. It used to be that they were obvious and at the top/side, now they look like regular results and often fill up the whole first page. IMO they know they are dominant enough in the market now that they can get away with providing garbage results for some short term profit, and will just dial it back if viable competitors come along to stop anyone else entering the market.

I tried driving licence (at least the ones who popped up for me made it very clear they aren't government affiliated) and national insurance number. The national insurance one was pretty much an outright scam.

It took me to https://nino.org.uk/ which claims "All employers and universities in the UK will require you to have this number so apply for your NI Number NOW." That is a total lie - if you don't work during your time as a student you don't need the number at all. You can work without a national insurance number, you just will may pay a higher tax rate until you get your national insurance number when you'll get a refund. It only says all the way at the bottom that they are not affiliated with the government.

The ad is gone now - I wonder if Google is reading this thread and closing them down?

> and will just dial it back if viable competitors come along

Sure, once those find a way around Googles licensing crime against free and open markets built on top of Android and Google Play. Don't have to compete as default search engine provider if hardware providers are prohibited from changing the default.

I was going to say there used to be (home office applications come to mind), but searching for something like ‘SORN’ still returns 5 scammy ads above the real page you need (but the more common V5C doesn’t. I do think gov.uk has improved this compared to the past. I also noticed the uk govt is running google ads for some keywords themselves.

"This does not seem be a problem in the UK"

Unfortunately, it is a problem:

"Why can't Google get a grip on rip-off ads?" : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56886957

Excerpts from the above article:

> Adverts for unofficial services selling government documents such as travel permits and driving licences are against Google's own rules.

> In the UK, changing the address on your driving licence is free - but Google consistently showed adverts for services charging £49.99.

>Websites like these are not illegal and customers may still get the documents for which they have applied.

>However, some of the companies charge more than five times the amount that the official websites do.

Probably not as lucrative as targeting Americans. I’ve noticed a nice side affect of living in Taiwan to be that there is generally less trash to sift through when looking for this kind of stuff. Spammers just don’t target us as much.

I just shared with another commenter that this caught my Mum recently[0], but a quick search for the same terms "change driving license address" doesn't show anything now.

I did report it at the time (and suggest other family members to do the same) but from a numerous list of sponsored results to now see none is a surprise!

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27151919

I think it's user dependent, I turned off AdBlock and got this https://i.imgur.com/hyWlOpJ.png . Only one visible result at 100% zoom on a 1920x1080 display.

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