Besting Adwords

ExpoActive

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 04:28:40 GMT

I'm trying out some ExpoActive ads on the kbcafe search engine. I'll report successes (CPM vs CPM).

http://www.expoactive.com/

Google goes Offline

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:40:40 GMT

Nathan Weinberg: Google is taking its advertising business offline, buying ad space in major magazines which it will in turn sell to its AdWords clients.

Lost money

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:57:55 GMT

Damien: Let’s say the average blog with adsense earns $1 a month. And let’s say there are a million average blogs with adsense. [cut] So we do the math… 1 million blogs earning $1 a month- $1 million a month Google basically keeps forever as extra income. Why? Blogger’s give up blogging, they quit their adsense accounts due to getting disheartened that the $100 mark might as well be $10,000, they’ll never reach it.

http://www.talgard.com/?p=16

Yahoo! Publisher Network

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 07:28:49 GMT

I got my acceptance from Yahoo! Publisher Network tonight. Maybe tomorrow, I'll throw up some ads on a few pages and report on my successes (CPM vs. CPM).

http://publisher.yahoo.com/

Update: YPN isn't available to CDNians, like me, so I can't actually join. Makes you wonder why they accepted me in the first place?

Yahoo! Sitemap

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:55:43 GMT

Yahoo!: Enter the full URL [cut] of the site you would like to submit. Enter only the top-level page in your site, our crawler will explore the rest of your site from there. [cut] You can also provide the location of a text file containing a list of URLs, one URL per line, say urllist.txt.

http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Bell Virtual Marketplace

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:17:03 GMT

Bell has an advertising plan called Bell Virtual Marketplace, specifically for CDNians. You can buy ads and sell advertising placements. I just signed up, but I don't expect much from a company that generally sucks!

http://www.marketplace.bell.ca/

Update: I was denied. Although they won't tell you the reason, I think it may have been because I didn't know my split of CDNian vs. International traffic and answered NA.

Google Buys Yahoo Ads

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 03:35:35 GMT

Aaron Wall: I recently saw an ad for Google Print on the Yahoo!s Publisher Network on SearchBlog.

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001132.shtml

Getting Indexed

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:24:42 GMT

I get an extremely large percentage of my hits from Google search referrers. When I tell people how many search engine hits I get, they're often stunned and immediate want to know my secret. Here's what I usually tell them.

The best way to get well indexed is to create solid HTML pages that Google can understand. Here's some tips...

Don't use images where text is adequate. I once developed a dating Website where they insisted a lot of the content by images (because they wanted it to look really nice). Check out their listing in Google [http://www.google.com/search?q=lemontonic]. You might notice, I have a listing on the second page of results. Google cannot index the text in an image. At least not yet :)
Create a lot of index-able Web pages. Continue with the previous example, they have 76 index-able pages [http://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Alemontonic.com]. I have 38 thousand [http://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Akbcafe.com].
The HTML <title> is very important. Most sites will put the Website name at the beginning of the title (i.e. lemontonic >> Events). I find that you'll get higher in the search rankings by reversing this practice. If you look at the title of this page, I put the article title first (i.e. Getting Indexed - Besting Adwords).
Don't block Google from indexing your site. I'm not going to point to anybody in particular, but I know a lot of site use the robots.txt file to disallow all robots. Google's indexer is a robot and it will obey this command. Their are also HTML <meta> attributes that Google will obey. Read more here [http://www.google.com/remove.html].
Some people block robots because they can occupy a large percentage of your bandwidth. This is entirely true. Google consumes just under 10% of my total bandwidth. Five of the top seven host names requesting from my Website are from Google. And if you include MSN's bot, then seven of the top eight host names are bots. Who cares? This is gold.
Google cannot index Javascript, Flash, Java or Ajax. Any content that is produced with these language will not be well indexed. Each of these has its purpose and shouldn't be used where HTML is adequate.
A good SEO is worth his weight in gold. Unfortunately, 100% of the SEOs I've been involved with are bad and simply don't understand how Google works.
If you want a page indexed, then email (randy@kbcafe.com) a dozen bloggers asking them to blog it.
Don't participate in Google trickery. Here's some guidelines [http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality].

Adsense Alternatives

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 21:33:25 GMT

Ads on Blogs: You should consider all of the following if you wish to monetize your blog...

http://adsonblogs.blogspot.com/2005/08/blog-advertising-options.html

Adsense Q&A

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 19:12:57 GMT

Just some questions, I answered over Google talk.

Friend: suppose i'm on the adsense site
Friend: and i'm customizing my adsense appearance
Friend: and there's no colors i like
Friend: can i change it myself
Friend: in the code?
Randy: not possible
Randy: the color palette allows you to pick any color

FAQ

Friend: i see you have more than one unit on kbsearch
Friend: is that allowed?
Friend: you have the words and the ads
Friend: i want that too
Friend: can i?
Randy: u can have 1 adlinks and 3 other ad units
Randy: it's in the TOS

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Adword Experiences

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 18:13:04 GMT

Mickael Maddison: I searched google for "Canadian Idol" there were no ads coming up. [cut] I placed my ads, selected my zones, set the max price per click I would be willing to pay, and targeted "Canadian Idol" as my search term. The ads started displaying right away, and within a couple days I had over 7000 impressions and a couple of clicks through to my site. Then, all of a sudden, I noticed that there were no new impressions coming up for a couple days. [cut] Instead of the $0.65 max bid per click I had been running under before, Google now wanted me to bid a minimum of $6.18/click to reactivate the ad! [cut] Well, last check, no one is advertising for that search term. It appears that someone at Google, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that a 1000% increase in price would not alienate the only person currently willing to bid on this search phrase.

Randy: This seems to be a very common problem that was created by the moving minimum CPC in Adwords.

Section Targeting Trial

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:59:40 GMT

I just embedded section targeting processing comments in the KBCafe search engine. Since Adwords removed the 5 cents minimum bid and replaced with a graduating minimum bid, the CPM for the KBCafe search engine has plummeted. The reason seems to be directly related to the number of ads, although relevance and CPC might also be a problem. I'll report back in a few days on the success of this trial.

Section Targeting

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 16:25:52 GMT

Google: Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you'd like us to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site's content. [cut] The HTML tags to emphasize a page section take the following format:

You can also designate sections you'd like to have ignored by adding a (weight=ignore) to the starting tag:

Randy: Wow, this is a big help. Before, I use to wrap sections of my Webpage in javascript to get Adsense to ignore them. Now, a coupld HTML comments will do the trick.

Google Desktop Adsense plug-in

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:31:04 GMT

Google's new Desktop sidebar has an Adsense plug-in that allows you to track your Adsense earnings, impressions, clicks, CTR and CPM.

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/adsensestatus.html

Falling CTR

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 15:46:52 GMT

My CTR is falling off a cliff this week. Unsure if it's related to the Adwords changes, Adsense changes or simply ad blindness. I haven't modified any templates in awhile. Maybe I'll move the ads around a bit to shake out the ad blindness. Anybody else notice a significant drop in CTR?

Update: After a bit of investigation, I've concluded that the drop was caused by the recent Adwords changes. A significant amount of keywords were inactivated by those changes, as minimum bids increased. I now have hundreds, if not thousands of pages that display zero or one Adwords ads, where they were displaying six or more before.

Update: Another factor might be the new ad networks introduced by Ask Jeeves and Yahoo!.

Update (Aug 22): CTR and CPM have returned to normal, if not better than before.

Google Adsense: Revenue!

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:07:52 GMT

Lockergnome: Cash in on the revenue potential of your website and generate a steady stream of advertising dollars with the Google AdSense program. Apply online to join the AdSense program. AdSense enables you to reap the rewards of creating great content. Google technology grasps the meaning of your content, and delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to specific pages on your website. And when people click on these ads, Google pays you.

Randy: I get this RSS <item> all the time. Very annoying! And I'm not even subscribed to a Lockergnome feed. It's getting injected it into the blogosphere search engines and this is getting picked up on my keyword searches. Arggg!

Engadget Appears to break AdSense TOS

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 21:55:08 GMT

AdRants: Popular Weblogs Inc. Network blog Engadget appears to be breaking the terms of its contract with Google's AdSense program.[cut] David Naylor says he found six placements on an Engadget page. [cut] another Weblogs Inc. blog, Autoblog, is running far more than 3 ads on a page.

Jason Calacanis: I can assure you we are not violating any terms with them. I can not discuss the issue beyond on that.

http://www.adrants.com/2005/08/17/

AdSense Blog doesn’t use AdSense ads

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 19:07:44 GMT

Benjamin Adam: How many ads would the AdSense blog add if they could add AdSense ads?

Inside AdSense

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 05:13:06 GMT

Inside Adsense: Google is still a pretty small place, so when we heard that our AdWords friends had put together an Inside AdWords blog, it got our competitive juices flowing! [cut] Which is why we're proud to announce the launch of Inside AdSense here at adsense.blogspot.com.

http://adsense.blogspot.com/

Randy: Subscribed.

New Adword Changes

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:53:37 GMT

Google implemented their new Adword changes. As I've always bid 5 cents, all but 3 of my dozens of keywords were inactivated. I tried reducing one of them from 5 cents to see how low I could go and for some reason this triggered a minimum of 10 cents and left me with only 2 keywords. The last two keywords have higher CTRs and I was able to reduce them to 3 cents. This will give me about 50% more click-thrus for the dollar, but I'm left with only two keywords to play with. To activate the existing keywords would require a minimum bid of 10 cents to $1. To add new keywords seems to require a minimum bid of 20 cents.

https://adwords.google.com/select/home

12 Tips to Writing Google AdWords Ads

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:53:01 GMT

Michael Wong: These tips will help you create ads that generate higher click through rates, and lower cost per click.

Target The Right Audience
Refine Your Keywords
Test Multiple Ads Simultaneously
Track The ROI Of Each Ad
Include Targeted Keywords In Your Ad
Sell The Benefits
Include Attention Grabbing Words In Your Ad
Use Words That Provoke Emotion & Enthusiasm
Sell Your USP
Link To Relevant Landing Pages
Remove Common Words
Deter Freebie Hunters

http://www.articlealley.com/article_915_7.html

Google admits to the Sandbox effect

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:09:59 GMT

Hugo Guzman: Several respected members of the SEO community are reporting that a prominent Google engineer has more or less admitted to the existence of a "Sandbox" effect during a session at SES in San Jose, California. The unnamed engineer basically admitted that all sites are subject to a "probationary" period of sorts regardless of merit. This period can last anywhere from six months to 12 months.

http://www.seoproject.com/news/google-sandbox-effect150805.shtml

Feedster Top 500

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:48:05 GMT

Feedster: Each month, Feedster brings you a list of 500 of the most interesting and important blogs.

http://top500.feedster.com/

Randy: Besting Adwords is ranked #55, just ahead of Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion.

Yahoo to launch blog ad network

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:39:41 GMT

News.com: Yahoo is planning to launch on Wednesday an ad network for small Web publishers intended to strengthen its hand against rival Google.

Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 14:35:44 GMT

PR: Ask Jeeves [cut] today announced the general availability of Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings. Available to existing Ask Jeeves advertisers since August 1st, Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings is a new search advertising product that allows advertisers to more effectively purchase, manage and optimize campaigns on Ask Jeeves (Ask.com) and its advertising syndication network.

http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com

Google loses AdWords trade mark case

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 13:03:11 GMT

The Register: A US district court has ruled against Google in a trade mark action over the sale of the terms “Geico” and “Geico Direct” in AdWords, its keyword advertising service. [cut] Car insurance firm GEICO sued both Google and Yahoo! subsidiary Overture in May 2004 over the sale of its registered trade marks as sponsored search terms in the keyword advertising services of both search engines.

Yahoo PN led to Higher Adsense Click Values?

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:11:03 GMT

Darren Rowse: I wonder whether it might be more to do with the change to vary the number of ads they are now showing per ad unit which they explain should lead to an increase in earnings.

Google: To increase monetization on your site and improve the relevance of ads, AdSense now varies the number of text ads that appear in a given ad unit.

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=22506

Does the format of the URL affect AdSense?

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:23:00 GMT

Obli.net: I've found that ever since I changed to FancyURLs (a feature my blog software has that allows me to change my post URLs from "http://obli.net/index.php?itemid=122" to "http://obli.net/item/122") Google seems to be liking the site more and more, my posts are indexed more quickly, and the ads are actually on-topic more often now (as opposed to serving ads from French banks when I'm talking about something completely different). So here's my tip for webmasters with AdSense; try to use as simple URLs as possible, I have a suspicion that Google dislikes question marks in the URL.

http://www.obli.net/item/147

Randy: I can confirm that my URLs with question marks don't do as well as URLs without. In fact, it would seem that Google is removing some of my URLs with question marks.

AdSense Optimization

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 21:15:14 GMT

Google: AdSense now optimizes your ad units on the fly, to present the ideal number of the most relevant ads available!

Adsense 15% better?

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 17:47:54 GMT

Randy: Jason, I’m seeing elevated revenues per click on Adsense since the Yahoo announcement. Confirm?

Jason: I can tell you we did see an up tick the last two days.

http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000633053917/

Stern sues Google

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 03:43:44 GMT

MarketingVOX: Howard Stern launched a lawsuit against Google last week, alleging that the search engine giant fails to live up to its promises regarding the daily budget limits that AdWords users can place over their accounts.

AdWords Trademark Complaint Procedure

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 20:24:26 GMT

Google: When we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, we will only investigate whether the advertisements at issue are using terms corresponding to the trademarked term in the advertisement's content. If they are, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademarked term from the content of the ad and prevent the advertiser from using the trademarked term in ad content in the future.

http://www.google.com/tm_complaint_adwords.html

HowTo Adsense

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 20:08:41 GMT

I find it grotesquely funny how many people claim that you can't make money from Adsense and blogging. I'm here to tell you, it's easier than you think. About six months ago, I didn't know anybody that was making good money on Adsense, but in those last six months, the tales of Adsense successes is overwhelming, including my own. Every month, my cheque from Google is getting bigger and bigger and I'm expecting my biggest cheque again this month. I'm not talking 1% growth per month, my Adsense cheques are growing 100% monthly. I've found one difference between those that claim you can't make money from Adsense and those that do. Effort.

Adsense Bounces

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 16:12:00 GMT

McMasters: My most recent Google check bounced! Did this happen to anyone else?

http://forums.seochat.com/t44904/s.html

The Google Conspiracy

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 16:01:36 GMT

I'm truly amazed how many bloggers think that Google is personally out to get them. Here's how the story goes. You've been blogging and have 6 readers according to your FeedBurner stats (Technorati, Feedster, Mom, Dad, PubSub and IceRocket). You decide to throw up some ads and make a little money. Unfortunately, you find out that with 6 readers that you're not getting any clicks. So, you start clicking yourself, several times per day. Google sends you an email telling you that you've been cut-off of Google Adsense for invalid clicks. You then turn your blog into an anti-Google campaign.

Interview with the million dollar man

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 17:12:28 GMT

JenSense: I asked Jason if he'd care to answer some questions on how he does it, he graciously did just that, sharing his thoughts, ideas and advice on AdSense.

JenSense: What single change do you think made the biggest leap in your AdSense income?

Jason Calacanis:

Taking off the borders around the advertisement
Making the links the same color as the links on the blog

JenSense: Do you ever worry about someone attempting to target you for click fraud?

Jason Calacanis: Not at all. Google has the issue totally under control.

http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/08/interview_with.html

I Love Mondays

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 03:56:32 GMT

...and Tuesdays too. You see, my CPM on those days is always much higher than the rest of the week. I almost always get the most click-thrus on Thursdays, but make the most money on Monday and Tuesday. Well, not always, I once got a great CPM on a Thursday and that one day still stands as my best ever. Removing that week, the pattern reproduces almost every week since I start using Adsense. Could it be that Adwords users are structuring their campaigns to pay more per click on Monday and Tuesday, the first two work-days of the week?

Update: I got my biggest Adsense cheque EVAR today.

$14,653.27

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:15:22 GMT

SE Roundtable: The thread is named $14,653.27 for the month of June, 2005, where a member lists out his revenue growth on a month to month basis for the past 21 months with AdSense.

June 2005: $14,653.27
May 2005: $13,157.44
April 2005: $12,693.79
March 2005: $13,104.18
February 2005: $11,561.06
January 2005: $10,138.73
December 2004: $10,954.02
November 2004: $ 9,560.35
October 2004: $ 8,706.15
September 2004: $ 8,033.99
August 2004: $ 7,064.21
July 2004: $ 5,887.94
June 2004: $ 4,983.53
May 2004: $ 3,202.77
April 2004: $ 2,837.63
March 2004: $ 1,542.09
February 2004: $ 991.10
January 2004: $ 605.61
December 2003: $ 399.42
November 2003: $ 178.11
October 2003: $ 63.84

Announcing The Yahoo! Publisher Network

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 03:49:34 GMT

Yahoo!Search: I'm proud to announce today that Yahoo! has launched a beta network in the U.S. for small- and medium-sized publishers.

http://publisher.yahoo.com/

Randy: Signup here.

Yahoo to Tests of Ads on Blogs

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 05:54:09 GMT

NYT: Call it the battle of the blogs. Yahoo is testing a system that will let it place ads on Web sites of bloggers and other small- and medium-size publishers, a market that was created and is dominated by Google. Yahoo will invite 2,000 sites to take part in the test, beginning today, and will open the system to blogs and other publishers by the end of the year.

Yahoo Publishing Network - Coming Soon

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 18:29:06 GMT

Darren Rowse: The rumors that the new Yahoo Publishing Network (a competitor to Google’s Adsense program) have been circulating the web of the past few days on a number of blogs and forums including Webmaster World, Thread Watch and at Jensense. It looks like an announcement could be imminent.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney?m=772

LockerGnome

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 21:32:58 GMT

Shift Market: Chris Pirillo's LockerGnome brings in about $10,000 a month just from AdSense.

Ask Jeeves to Launch PPC

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:22:50 GMT

IHateGoogle: Search Engine company Ask Jeeves is ready to roll out their Sponsored Listings program on August 15, 2005, which will be a pay-per-click program similar to Yahoo!'s and Google's.

http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com/