GOOGLE ANNOUNCES PURGE OF AD-HEAVY WEB SITES

Google is sending cease and desist orders to companies that buy ads tied to Web searches - but then yank users to sites with no relevant content.
Google is sending cease and desist orders to companies that buy ads tied to Web searches - but then yank users to sites with no relevant content.

Google is trying to clean up its search results by cracking down on dubious Web sites that contain little content but lots of ads.

The search giant has notified a number of Web publishers in the last few days that they will be dropped from its popular "AdSense" program starting June 1.

The cut-off notices jolted the online ad world, where hundreds of thousands of people make money in exchange for allowing Google to place ads on their Web sites.

Google's AdSense software has made it easy for advertisers to piggyback on any Web site - no matter how obscure - that attracts an audience.

For example, on a travel Web site, Google's AdSense will automatically serve up relevant travel-related ads on that site. Web site publishers then get paid each time a visitor clicks on one of the ads supplied by Google.

The easy money has led to a rise in "made-for-AdSense" Web pages that critics say clutter up the Internet and divert online searches. These content-free sites, which often are nothing more than links to other sites and a bunch of Google ads, exist solely to exploit AdSense.

"The economy has built up to game the Google system," said Darren Chervitz, the director of research for Jacob Asset Management.

Web site publishers do it by pocketing the difference between what they pay Google to drive traffic to their site and the amount they get for running Google ads.

For instance, a publisher can bid on a cheap search term, say, "purple raincoat" so that its site purporting to be about raingear is displayed each time someone searches for the term on Google.

The publisher may pay a nickel to Google each time someone clicks on the link to their Web site, which may be nothing more than a picture of a purple raincoat.

The publisher makes money if, on average, they collect a dime each time a user then clicks on one of the Google-supplied AdSense ads.

Although Google still makes money off of these sites, they don't like them because they hurt the quality of search results and reduce the "click through" rate for advertisers.

"If advertisers get a bad return on their investment, they will stop spending money," said Jeremy Schoemaker, an AdSense expert who runs the popular ShoeMoney.com blog.

Search experts said Google routinely cuts off publishers who run afoul of AdSense rules, but they believe this latest round of notices was a more widespread effort to clean up its ad network.

"I don't really remember where this many people reported it at one time," said Chris Winfield, president of Internet search marketing firm 10e20.

Google confirmed that it had sent out notices, but characterized it as part of an ongoing review.

"In some cases, violations of our program policies will result in termination from AdSense," Google said in a statement.

Tips - Using Social Networking Sites

This tutorial is just an introduction about how you can quickly promote your site yourself using social networking sites to instantly generate visitors to your site and how to turn this content eventually into good positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN. In some cases it's all the seo you'll ever need (if your site is up to scratch).

Writing search engine friendly content is creative but not black magic. Let's assume you have a site that at least Google can spider, and your using Wordpress (which you can get free) for your blog. If Google can spider it, MSN and Yahoo can too. The aim of this search engine promotion thread is to how you how you can use social marketing and book marking sites to spread the word about your site or product, but more specifically to:

* Add Useful Content To Your Site
* Get traffic to your site instantly
* Get Into Google, Yahoo and MSN Free if you are not there already (and probably within a week)
* Acquire One Way Non-Reciprocal Links (through social bookmarking)
* Get Google Pagerank (via links from other sites to this page)
* Do it all ethically without spamming
* Do it in (about) one hour - yourself!
* Eventually appear in Google SERPS.

This advice is suitable for any business but it all rests on you finding relevant sites to your niche.

1. The title of your article should contain the keywords or keyword phrase you are targetting.
2. Focus your mind on the content of your page and your target keywords.
3. Write normally as best you can - 500-1000 words. Your view on anything makes it "unique".
4. Check your chosen key-phrase appear in the content once or twice.
5. Bold keyword keyword phrase once or twice in the content to help "emphasize" keywords
6. Make sure you use superlatives and geographic references etc throughout the copy if you offer what you would erstwhile claim. Let Google make the determination you're the expert or the best and that you are based near anywhere. Having the word "best", "flower" and "shop" ANYWHERE on the page could see you rank for "best flower shop" if you have enough links to your site to back this up in Google's eyes. This is a perfect way of saying something when you can't actually say it on page but you know people are using that term in searches. It's about being creative about what you're not saying! Of course adding in a link or two to relevant other websites also helps. Remember if it's not on the page or in links to the page from other sites you wont rank for it in Google. Note also that you could have nine words in a 10 word Google search query and you won't appear anywhere in some cases! This is why when writing your article write naturally and be extensive about your product or service.
7. Publish your article blog. Make sure "pings" is on.
8. If relevant, submit your article to social bookmarking and ranking sites (here's my "technology" favourites - Digg, Delicious, Magnolia, Stumble, Furl and D-zone.

Hey presto, you have 6 new links to internal pages already, and may have just cased a traffic spike to your site and in your logs!

Minutes Later.... Check Google Blog Search - are you there? You might be everywhere! That means there's a chance you've written an exceptional article and now it is available worldwide for people looking for it's content, and all spread automatically to blog sites everywhere thanks to your "pings" from your blog.

A few hours later.... Check Digg, Dzone (obviously these sites are relevant to my industry - you need to find ones relevant to yours etc.). If you've written something of any use to people, people will choose to reward the article by voting for it, meaning it gets seen more, visited more and potentially linked to from these viewers' sites. Note - You should always be looking to join new sites. I joined Netscape and submitted my first story. It bombed traffic wise but interestingly enough it still did generate a lot of links back to the page.

1 Week Later Check the social bookmarking sites. If you've written an article of any merit, people will add a link to it (you can see this beside the social bookmark link) - another way of quickly generating 10, 20 or 10,000 links and visits, depending on your article. Check the search engines. Has the article been spidered yet? (it has probably been picked up from one of your social bookmark links at least if not spidered via your navigation structure (which you should get fixed if is the case). If it has it will be in Google and you never know, it may feature in Google for your chosen search term where you may have not before! You can check how many sites are linking to your article using Yahoo Site Explorer....(just type "link:www.mysite.co.uk" into Yahoo search box and you will see what I mean. Hopefully this grows over time.

3-4 Months Check your Google Page Rank - the page has probably got some! You've successfully written an article and published it to the world in a search engine friendly way that could see you feature in the search engine results for your chosen keywords within days. In some cases, that's all the seo you'll ever need!

The golden rule of SEO is to remember that if you want to appear in Google for chosen terms, those terms need to be on your page - but not necessarily all together in your target key phrase. If you want to rank high in Google, you need lots of links linking back to your article.

PS - Social networking / marketing / participation can be addictive! Don't install the StumbleUpon button, for instance, unless you have a few hours to kill!