Internet Marketing & SEO

Bots Artificially Inflate AdSense Impressions

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

Conventional wisdom has been that most web crawlers don’t run javascript so therefore the spiders won’t artificially inflate your AdSense ads.

That’s no longer true.

The new trend is to augment the SERPs with screen shots in places like Ask, Snap and others, and the screen shots are made with javascript enabled so that javascript page elements (menus, etc.) are visible. That means your AdSense ads are also being included in those screen shots and possibly skewing your statistics.

Both Ask and Snap make screen shots of various pages in your site so it’s not just a single home page image we’re talking about. Snap has attempted to make upwards of 40K screen shorts on my site alone before I stopped counting. Ask seems to be a little more conservative in the quantity of their screen shots, but that could be growing pains as it remains to be seen if they’ll screen shot entire sites and/or all sites they index.

What’s unknown at this time is whether or not Google discounts the impressions being made by these screen shot bots at Ask or Snap, or whether those screen shots contribute to your lower CTRs and whatever penalties (smart pricing?) that may bring.

Imagine the impact it would have if a low traffic site with maybe 1,000 pages suddenly had 1,000 screen shots made all at once.

You would see a traffic surge with very low CTR, it would look abysmal.

Would the AdSense algorithms respond in this situation?

Worse yet, now that the screen shot genie is out of the bag and everyone wants them on their sites for a variety of purposes, more and more screen shot providers are now taking more and more screen shots to fill this need. Before long a percentage of your daily ad impressions will probably be nothing more than screen shots.

It would be nice if the AdSense Advisor could chime in and let us know what impact, if any, these screen shots are having on our AdSense stats.

More Talks..

AdSense now offers rounded and squared ad unit corners

Saturday, June 30th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

While creating some AdSense ad unit javascript for a client today, I noticed a new feature in the AdSense control panel, the ability to chose the style of corners in the ad unit. Publishers can now select “slightly rounded”, “very rounded” or “squared” corners on their ad units, which is done by adding a new line to the javascript.

Here is what the slightly rounded looks like:

Very rounded:
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The most important pay per click metric is not click through rate

Sunday, May 6th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords, Internet Marketing, MSN adCenter, Yahoo! Publisher Network | 1 Comment

It is still amazing to me the number of people who care most about what their AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing CTR is on their ads, while seemingly ignoring what is arguably the far more important - not to mention valuable - pay per click metric. Yes, CTR is valuable to know, but in reality, a higher CTR doesn’t necessarily equate to higher profits or sales.

So what is the most important metric for pay per click advertisers? ROI. The Return on Investment is the most critical metric to consider when tweaking PPC campaigns. But not only do too many people give an in proportionate amount of time focusing on their CTRs, many of those same people are doing so without a clue as to what their ROI is! They are simply working off the assumption that higher CTR must mean higher ROI, without having the data and stats to backup their beliefs. This thinking is so flawed when ROI isn’t be tracked.

Ad copy has a crucial impact on CTR. But it is not unusual to have an ad with a higher CTR actually perform far worse when looking at it from an ROI standpoint, while an ad with a lower CTR convert several times higher for the identical product… even with the identical landing page. Why is this? Because ads can definitely be written that tend to bring greater numbers of clicks that don’t lead to sales.

For example, you could write one ad without a price, or even wrongly implies a fabulous deal or freebie offer, or a comparison shopping site that will offer a variety of pricing from many different online retailers. These types of ads tend to have a higher CTR because they are much more likely to bring in clicks in droves, while those clicks tend to have a much higher percentage of “looky-loos” who aren’t prepared to type in their credit card number and complete the purchase.

The second ad with a price in the ad copy will have fewer clicks, since people don’t need to click to see your price and then click back to check out your competitors. But even though you have fewer clicks, they are more qualified since they already know your price and are less likely to be in that comparison shopping phase and are more likely to be further along in the buy cycle. Now, your CTR is lower, but so is your cost of acquisition. This results in an ad with a lower CTR but with a much higher ROI.

Are you not tracking your ROI yet? You definitely need to be using one of the many PPC trackers out there so you can properly monitor relationships between CTR, ad spend and sales, so you know exactly what your ROI is on every keyword you bid on. This will also allow you to reduce your overall spend by getting rid of under-performing ad copy and keywords, as well as potentially upping your bids on the golden keywords… the ones that have that great ROI you really don’t want to live without! Putting steps in place so that you will know what your ROI is should be at the top of your PPC to do list, if you are one of those advertisers who currently does not not track it and uses CTR to gauge campaign success.

So while CTR is an important metric for any pay per click advertiser, you need to be certain you are not sacrificing a higher ROI for that higher CTR. ROI is definitely your most important pay per click metric, and this should be the top priority in any pay per click campaign. Because at the end of the day, only your ROI is directly related to how much money you make at the end of the day.

Top Paying Legal Keywords (Adsense & YPN)

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords, MSN adCenter, Yahoo! Publisher Network | 3 Comments

Well I got a list of TOP PAYING LEGAL KEYWORDS from NP,
So Why not Share it here

I hope the information will be useful for webmasters doing keyword research.

austin dwi $66.89
austin dwi attorney $58.30
san diego dui attorney $54.56
houston criminal attorney $47.44
san diego dui $42.83
dwi texas $40.89
dui attorneys $40.19
dwi attorney $39.90
dui attorney $39.11
dui attorney $39.11
dui attorney $39.11
dui lawyer $38.49
lawyer dui $38.49
dui lawyers $37.57
federal criminal attorney $35.80
car accident lawyer $35.67
dwi attorneys $35.32
criminal lawyers $34.19
new york criminal attorney $33.95
auto accident attorney $33.19
auto accident lawyer $33.13
dwi lawyer $32.31
dwi lawyer $32.31
texas dwi law $31.02
car accident attorney $30.16
car accident attorney $30.16
california tax attorney $29.56
dwi in minnesota $29.37
motorcycle accident attorney $28.93
washington dui $28.38
lemon law attorney $28.25
lemon law $27.95
help attorney $27.92
injury lawyers $27.88
dallas dwi $27.68
wrongful death attorney $27.25
mesothelioma attorney $27.20
personal injury lawyer $26.72
san diego personal injury attorney $26.58
accident lawyer $26.55
personal injury attorney $26.32
personal injury attorney $26.32
tax attorney $25.83
tax attorney $25.83
alaska lawyer $25.77
minnesota dwi laws $25.75
federal lawyer $25.72
dallas personal injury attorney $25.58
lawyer injury $25.16
death lawyer $25.11

auto insurance quote $57.18
college loan consolidation $53.52
car insurance quote $46.89
federal loan consolidation $46.62
online car insurance $41.92
term life insurance quote $40.43
cheap car insurance $39.79
student loan consolidation $39.45
auto insurance quotes $39.24
online insurance quotes $37.63
student loan information $37.32
equity loan rates $36.53
nj auto insurance $36.31
student loan consolidation center $35.89
debt consildation $35.83
chase credit cards $35.02
student loan refinancing $34.89
discount car insurance $34.34
life insurance quote $34.26
homeowners insurance quotes $33.61
mortgage loans $33.17
mortgage loans $33.17
mortgage refinancing $33.08
equity line of credit $33.05
college loans $32.91
best mortgage rates $32.65
student loans $32.54
loan refinancing $32.44
us mortgage rates $32.38
instant insurance quote $32.37
term life insurance quotes $32.11
consolidation loan $32.03
loan refinance $31.95
car insurances $31.92
safe auto insurance $31.82
insurance auto florida $31.38
auto insurance $31.38
equity line of credit $30.71
gmac mortgages $30.46
mortgages for self employed $30.45
car insurance california $30.17
in car insurance $29.84
best mortgage $29.53
refinancing mortgages $29.43
line of credit $29.27
prequalify loan $28.98
loans com $28.75
business credit report $28.40
whole life insurance quotes $28.17
new york auto insurance $27.72
online mortgages $27.71
student loan $27.61
cheap house insurance $27.45
low cost life insurance $27.25
school loan consolidation $26.99
citi credit $26.80
manhattan mortgages $26.70
school loans $26.61
term insurance $26.58
second mortgage $26.56
credit report com $26.48
auto ins $26.21
consolidation $25.90
line of credit $25.57
landlords insurance $25.46
low mortgage $25.45
commercial vehicle insurance $25.37
credit consolidation $25.32
bad credit mortgages $25.22
bad credit mortgages $25.22
discount life insurance $25.22

Not Responsible for any price etc

Adsense’s ‘Advertise on this site’ Now Customized

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

Have you ever thought of your users as potential advertisers? If you think about it, advertisers are constantly trying to find sites tailored to the audience that they are trying to reach.

Now let’s assume an advertiser comes across your site and feels it would a good site to advertise on. You don’t want to lose this advertiser, right? That’s where Onsite Advertiser Sign-up comes in: Advertisers can create site-targeted campaigns directly from your site.

Although the ‘Advertise on this site’ link will no longer appear on your ad units following last week’s ad format change, you can still display a separate Onsite Advertiser Sign-up link on your site, such as within the sidebars or footers of your pages. This method offers you more flexibility as far as the placement, the font, and the color of the link, and can help you retain interested advertisers who visit your site.

If you’d like to create such a link on your site, just follow the detailed instructions in our Help Center and then add your link into the HTML source of your pages. If you use CSS on your site, you can create a nice rollover and make your link even more visible to potential advertisers:

Once you’ve created a separate link, don’t forget to customize your Onsite Advertiser Sign-up page. Please keep in mind that it’s currently only possible to customize one landing page per account. In other words, advertisers can target each of your sites individually, but they’ll see the same landing page when they click an ‘Advertise on this site’ link from any of your sites.

We encourage you to give this new method a try and to experiment with various placements. Having more interested advertisers bidding on your site means increased competition — which in turn translates into higher revenue potential for you.

A fresh, new look for AdSense ads

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords | 2 Comments

You may have noticed that some of your ad units have started to look a little different lately — we’re happy to announce that, just in time for spring, we’ve given our standard ad units a fresh makeover. After extensive testing and research, we’ve found that the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers. We’re in the process of rolling out this change to all ad units, and you should see that your ad units are automatically updated over the next few days. But, before you rush to make sure all of your ad units still match your site, please be assured that the fonts and colors of your ads won’t be changed.

Although it’s not possible to opt out of the new designs, we hope that you and your site visitors will find our new ad formats clearer and more attractive. We’re always testing new ways to improve the look and feel of our advertisements, so stay tuned for more format options in the future.

Using dynamic keyword insertion in AdWords URLs for higher click throughs

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | Affiliate Programs, Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords, Internet Marketing | No Comments

While most people use dynamic keyword insertion in their Google AdWords campaigns for ease of use and customization when using large lists of keywords or to use for tracking purposes, most people don’t realize they can also use dynamic keyword insertion in their display URLs to increase clickthroughs as well.

First, let’s look at the display URL and how it works. This is the URL that AdWords displays when your ad shows up in the Google search results or when displaying on the search or content network. And as per AdWords requirements, this display URL must match the destination URL…. however, what most people don’t realize is that they don’t need to match exactly.

Usually, this is used by advertisers when they have a long and nasty URL string attached to their destination page. For example, if my destination page had a url like www.example.com/browse.html?ie=UTF8&node=42607011&prodid=123456 most advertisers chose to use www.example.com as the display URL for that ad. However, there is an even better way to do this that would increase CTR rates.

Consider the fact that in Google AdWords, if someone is searching for the keywords that trigger your ad, any of those keywords you have in your AdWords ad will automatically be bolded. Usually, people reserve using dynamic keyword insertion for just the title, destination URL and occasionally in the description, but rarely for the display URL. And if you don’t happen to have the keyword in your base URL, you are missing out on additional bolding that makes your ad more noticeable and stand out from the rest.

If you were searching to buy a digital camera, and you two ads that where nearly identical except for the display URL.

example.com Vs. example.com/digital-camera/

Which one would stand out to you the most? And second, which ad do you think would be the most relevant choice when you had searched for “digital camera”. Definitely the one with digital camera in the display URL.

And what is the added bonus? Very few advertisers are using this in their current campaigns. Bizrate is an example of one who uses this well, but you can easily do several Google searches for competitive keywords without a single advertiser using this technique for higher CTR. So it is very likely the only ones in your ad results who will have bolded URLs at all are the ones with keyword domains.

Do keep in mind that the display URL has a 35 character limit. Depending on your destination base URL, you could be getting close to it. You can consider removing the “www.” at the beginning of the display URL. And if you happen to run over the 35 character limit once your base URL and keywords are displayed, it will go to the default you selected. So be sure to pick a default highly targeted to your overall keyword list for the ad group.

A couple housekeeping notes. It is within the AdWords terms to show a different display URL from the destination one, as long as the base URL (the www.example.com part) does match. However, do ensure that you have a custom 404 set up, or use .htaccess, to ensure they go to your homepage or alternate landing page. That way if someone just types in www.example.com/digital-camera/ that the potential visitor (or AdWords team member!) will end up on a real landing page not a browser 404 error. And you’d be surprised at the number of people who will type it in rather than clicking on the ad… especially if your ads are also displaying on the content network.

Dynamic keyword insertions can also cause your keywords to be disapproved for “incorrect keyword insertion”. This is common if you are selecting keywords that would turn the ad into complete nonsense once the keywords are inserted into the ad copy.

It is also worth noting that the displayed keyword(s) will be from your keyword list, not from what Joe Surfer types into his Google search box. So if you have broadmatched cameras, and Joe Surfer searched for digital camera, your display URL would only show cameras, not digital cameras.

To use the dynamic keyword insertion simply ad {keyword:default} into the title, description, display URL or destination URL. The “default” part you would customize to be the keyword(s) you want to appear if Google is unable to insert the specific keyword for some reason, such as the display URL going over the 35 character limit or the title going over the 25 character limit. Chose it wisely.

Many advertisers are a little bit scared of using dynamic keyword insertion, primarily because Google doesn’t offer much documentation on its usage. But you can definitely increase CTR by using it. If you are still a little wary, create a second ad copy within your ad group, and Google will automatically rotate between the two and then automatically select the ad copy with the highest CTR. So it is a win-win way to try out new ad copies, including this one with dynamically inserted keywords in the display URL, and see which ad copies result in the highest CTRs for you.

Adsense Referrals, now with Google Checkout

Saturday, March 24th, 2007 | Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

Today we’re excited to announce that in addition to AdSense, AdWords, Firefox with Google Toolbar, and Google Pack, you can now refer your users to Google Checkout through AdSense.

Checkout gives your users a faster, safer, and more convenient way to shop online. OK, that sounds great for them, but what do you get out of it? Well, every time you refer a user to Google Checkout, you make a little money. It’s a simple process that includes all of three steps:

1. You place the Checkout referral button on your site.
2. Someone clicks on the button, signs up as a buyer with Google Checkout using a valid U.S. credit card, and completes a purchase of at least $10 before shipping and tax through Checkout within 90 days. (The current $10 minimum purchase corresponds to our existing $10 promotion for new buyers, so this amount may change in the future.)
3. You earn $1.

It’s that simple. Please note that Checkout referrals are currently only available for U.S. publishers, and Google Checkout is currently only available for buyers with a U.S. credit card. We hope to make both Checkout and Checkout Referrals available in more countries soon.

If you’re not convinced, why not try it out yourself? It costs nothing to sign up (actually, you’ll even get a $10 bonus) and it’ll make shopping online a little easier. And remember, if you’re still figuring out how to improve the performance of your referrals, take a peek at our optimization tips for referrals.

You can get started with Checkout referral ads by visiting the AdSense Setup tab in your account. We think your users will thank you for showing them Google Checkout, and your wallet will like having some extra money for you to spend at all of those great Google Checkout stores.

99 Tips n tricps Google Adsense elementary knowledge

Friday, March 16th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

1. AdSense income = advertisement demonstrated number of times x clicking on rate x clicks on the unit price x intelligence fixed price factor (Smart Price)

93. you may find the information in the Adsense help which majority of you needs.

94. Contact support before anything strange to adsense that you not got in TOS.

95. Be nice with it, It will with you

96. Never missuse it otherwise forgot it.

97. Not to be clever with it.

98. Never force visitor to click ads.

99. Act on all above 

 If you like that article then Link to thanks

IMSEO

AdSense increases publisher earnings to $250 for new AdSense referrals

Thursday, March 15th, 2007 | Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

Have you noticed many $5 AdSense or AdWords referral popping up on your AdSense reports yesterday? Don’t worry, you aren’t losing out on the potential $100 you could earn when that referred publisher earns his or her first $100 with AdSense… in fact, you can now earn up to $255 for a single AdSense referral with the change made to the referral structure yesterday.

The new structure is two tiered, so publishers will no longer have to wait until their referral publishers to earn money from that referral. The first commission earned is only $5, but the publisher you refer only needs to earn $5 within 180 days for you to earn it. But it is with the followup commission that can really earn publishers some good money. Once that publisher then earns $100, you now will get a commission of $250, much higher than the previous commission of $100.

This is nice for publishers on a couple levels, and I was looking forward to this being implemented as soon as I initially heard the change was on its way (although I wasn’t told just how much the commission was increasing to). First, you will get a conversion even if that publisher doesn’t make $100 within 180 days… it is hard for a publisher not to earn $5 within the same time frame. And they have more than doubled what you can earn when those publishers do hit the $100 threshold, meaning those who are active in promoting the Google AdSense referral program can earn significantly more money.

The changes seem to apply to previous transactions as well, perhaps everything in the previous 180 days, judging from the stats showing up in the AdSense control panel.

The help files have not yet been updated, but we should see the help files and likely an announcement on the AdSense blog shortly.