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Grant Shapps's guide to "bouncing back" from recession

Conservative housing minister mocked for his company's self-help guide.

By George Eaton Published 03 September 2012 11:02
Conservative housing minister Grant Shapps. Photograph: Getty Images.
Conservative housing minister Grant Shapps founded a company under the alias "Michael Green". Photograph:

It hasn't been a good start to the new parliamentary term for Conservative housing minister Grant Shapps, who was revealed by the Guardian to have founded a family company selling software that increases a website's advertising revenue by manipulating search engines. In breach of Google's code of practice, the $497 (£313) software package, TrafficPaymaster, "creates web pages by 'spinning and scraping' content from other sites to attract advertising". Operating under the alias "Michael Green", Shapps claimed customers could "make $20,000 in 20 days guaranteed or your money back".

Shapps transferred his share of the company to his wife, Belinda, in 2008, but the business has continued to publish such titles as Michael Green's How To Bounce Back From Recession, "a beautifully written self-help guide for negotiating your way to better times." As Owen Jones notes, it's "Pure Alan Partridge".

                              

Shapps has been widely tipped to replace Sayeeda Warsi as Conservative chairman in the imminent reshuffle, but after today's debacle it would be surprising if David Cameron wasn't having second thoughts.

Tags: Conservatives  David Cameron  Coalition  

 
 

4 comments

Shepptic Reader's picture

Tue, 2012-09-04 14:52 — Shepptic Reader (not verified)

I think the guardian has misunderstood the true scale of the badness of the software package. The worst thing about it is not that it tried to "manipulate Google", but that it worked by stealing other people's (often copyrighted) web content. That is what the 'scraping' means.

Manipulating Google implies using questionable SEO techniques to convince Google to show the website on the first page. Scraping is stealing content from other people to instantly produce thousands of pages on a website. This stolen content is then 'spun' by a program that changes words, so the writing doesn't look like a duplicate. It doesn't look like English either.

Whereas blackhat SEO is against Google rules, stealing copyrighted content is illegal. Basically Shapps was making money by marketing a program that claimed to help other people to make money by cheating and breaking copyright law. I think this is a tad more serious than "against Google guidelines".

hugh markey's picture

Tue, 2012-09-04 08:18 — hugh markey (not verified)

Gosh, chaps! This is just the manual George Osborne's been looking for. And these go-getters are often in the same room. Communications need improving.

Rachmaninov's Friend

hugh markey's picture

Tue, 2012-09-04 08:18 — hugh markey (not verified)

Lor' Almighty! This is just the manual George Osborne's been looking for. And these go-getters are often in the same room. Communications need improving.

Rachmaninov's Friend

hugh markey's picture

Tue, 2012-09-04 08:18 — hugh markey (not verified)

Lor' Almighty! This is just the manual George Osborne's been looking for. And these go-getters are often in the same room. Communications need improving.

Rachmaninov's Friend

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