Nov
18
All can now invite AdSense advertisers
Filed Under Google | Leave a Comment
Posted today on the AdSense Blog
Gain more advertisers right from your site
Many of you have been asking for the ability to sign up advertisers directly from your pages. Starting now, you can do just that with Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up. Using this feature, your ad units will display an ‘Advertise on this site’ link that takes interested advertisers to a landing page where they can quickly create an AdWords account and ad targeting your site. Ads created through this channel will automatically target your site and only your site. More advertisers competing for your ad space means more revenue for you.
With customization instructions here on how to implement the code.
So what it adds up to is recruiting AdWords customers for advertising on the content network. There’s no bounty or commission offered apparently, so I guess it prevents Google from being considered being a merchant in the affiliate marketing business. 
There’s some heated discussion on this at WebmasterWorld, hot on the must_read list for today. As incrediBill points out, we’re opted in for it by default - seen at the bottom of our Account page.
I’ve already opted out, as usual taking a wait and see view of everything until more facts are in. Meantime, I see no sense to it as far as there being an advantage for us as publishers.
Nov
15
Holiday Rant: Poison Words for Adsense
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As good as AdSense targeting is, what I’ve found over time is that there are certain words that act as POISON WORDS and can kill targeting on some site pages, even if those words appear nowhere on the pages, but simply are included in the global navigation of a site. It doesn’t matter if those happen to be higher priced advertising words - if they’re way off they just plain look silly and are a useless distraction.
There’s no doubt that it’s time to give a try at Section Targeting and if that doesn’t work for those pages, just not run AdSense on them at all.
Nov
5
There’s been some speculation as to why Google Adsense would be paying $1 a head for referrals who install Firefox with Google Toolbar.
In addition, if you are a U.S. publisher, for Firefox with Google Toolbar referrals we will pay up to $1 per referral the first time a user installs Firefox. (We hope to make this available soon to international publishers.)
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/11/have-you-heard.html
There can be no other logical conclusion I can think of but that they want to increase the usage of Firefox with the toolbar enabled for prefetching purposes.
What is “results prefetching,” and how does it impact my site?
On some searches, Google uses a special tag supported by Firefox and Mozilla to instruct the browser to download the top search result before the user clicks on the result. When the user clicks on the top result, the destination page will load faster than before. This tag is only inserted when it is likely that the user will click on the first link.
For example, when a Firefox user searches for [stanford], Google includes the following tag in the results HTML:
link rel=”prefetch” href=”http://www.stanford.edu/”
The official Mozilla Link Prefetching FAQ describes the behavior of this tag in detail.
Prefetching may impact your site because the prefetch request will happen whether or not the user clicks on the result, so it may result in additional traffic to your web server. Google only inserts this tag when there is a high likelihood that the user will click on the top result, but clearly this heuristic is not right 100% of the time.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html#prefetching
It’s my guess that there may be a saving in processing costs over the long haul, aside from all sorts of statistical benefits for them.
Oct
3
Matt Cutts, Click-Tracking and Newfangled Google Algo Cracking Crap
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Matt Cutts has done another of his fun blog posts, this time a review of a new breed of SEO software being offered, supposed to be used to game Google and get around the so-called “Sandbox”
Leaving aside the question of what exactly an “SEO Network Engineer” does, the quote confuses the difference between links (the basis of Google’s PageRank) and clicks (which are, um, not). The rest of the RankAttack site also acts as if clicks were links.
Sure, of coursce clicks aren’t links, but maybe it’s possible that this idea didn’t just blow in out of thin air. Maybe the perp got the idea from a 2002 patent that was issued to Google
Methods and apparatus for employing usage statistics in document retrieval
Posted about at WebmasterWorld a few months ago
Google Patent: Using Usage Statistics in Search
Couple of obvious points:
– Just because things are posted about at SEO forums doesn’t mean they work
– Just because patents are granted doesn’t mean the “things” in the patent are being used
It’s kid of scary to think that some people might come across things that have been written about - even patents issued and published, or posts about them sometimes - and then try to capitalize on them by creating services or software to exploit the possibilities suggested, whether or not there’s any basis in fact for their efficacy.
Do I think usage statistics about traffic can affect rankings? Not that anyone cares what I think but mmm.hmmmm, yes, I do believe it’s entirely possible, though not empirically proven. But I don’t think it’s anything that can be faked, nor do I believe that there’s any “system” or program that can even get close to faking it. If it were possible to fake it, it would be done by seriously capable black hats (we know who they are, don’t we?) who would keep it TO themselves and and AMONG themselves, and certainly would not sell it for under a hundred bucks.
I get kind of tired of what’s put out there to take advantage of newbies and trusting souls who haven’t yet learned what a bunch of sharks there really are in this business.