Google, the world’s biggest search engine, is to ban advertisements for essay-writing services, amid claims that plagiarism is undermining the integrity of university degrees.
From the coming month, Google will no longer accept adverts from companies that sell thousands of essays and dissertations from as little as £70 to as much as £5,000 each around the world.
There have been complaints from universities about students being sold customized essays on the internet.
The essays, which are often written by freelance academics or graduates, and therefore harder to detect by plagiarism software, are frequently bought by overseas students and passed off as their own.
“I can confirm that we are changing our policy to disallow advertisements that promote the sale of academic paper-writing services,” a Google spokesman said. Google is committed to maintaining high standards for the advertising we accept.
The advert ban from the Google search engine has been “warmly welcomed” by university authorities. But it has angered essay writing firms which say this will unfairly punish legitimate businesses.
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, said Drummond Bone, president of Universities UK, the umbrella group of vice-chancellors.
Plagiarism Software
Universities UK members have severe penalties for those students caught cheating, with many institutions already using advanced anti-plagiarism software to enforce this.
Google’s forthcoming ban on adverts for "academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations” means that essay websites join a blacklist of “unacceptable content” including adverts for weapons, prostitution, drugs, tobacco, fake documents and “miracle cures".
There have been reports of up to 12,000 essays being sold to students in a year, says Universities UK.
Essay-writing companies are a booming industry. Peter Taylor, of Coursework.info, the biggest online coursework library, claimed last year to have 240,000 registered users, a £400,000 turnover and to make £50,000 profit.
But one of the UK companies fearing that it will be prevented from advertising, Essaywriter.co.uk, is angry at the threat to its business – with 80% of its customers coming through Google.
Google, commenting on the change, says its advertising policies are “developed and evaluated based on multiple factors, including legal and cultural considerations plus user and customer experience”.
And a spokesperson said that the advert ban was expected to be applied across Google’s global network.
In an attempt to help universities cut down on student plagiarism, it added all of its essays to TurnitinUK, a plagiarism prevention database, which is used by most universities.
However, Matthew Wilson, Managing director of Essaywriter.co.uk, says this will punish the legitimate, transparent companies, which sell essays, but which warn students that they must not be used dishonestly. His company, which also offers translation services, did not encourage plagiarism and copyrighted all the research that they sell.
Mr. Wilson says that such a bespoke service, selling tailor-made essays at short notice, with prices around £70 and upwards, can be used as a guide for students wanting extra assistance. Overseas students are frequently customers, he says – but the firm makes clear that essays should not be passed off as being written by the student.
And he says that such a blanket ban will not stop the search engine from generating links to rogue essay selling companies, which have been accused of scamming customers by providing poor quality material.