This past summer, Google started noticing ads for vacation homes that didn't exist. The ads themselves weren't fishy — there was no malware or counterfeit goods — but there was something suspicious behind them. The photos were all pulled from other listings or from stock photo sites, and didn't match with the addresses. The ads were real, but the homes weren't. The point was to convince users that they were real for just long enough to get a deposit, at which point the company could safely disappear. Once Google got wise to the scam, they cracked down, poring through the system for any rental deals that might be bogus.