Improve Search Engine Rankings: Not with Overture Content Match!

So I have content match turned on with Overture, and with my recent post about click fraud, it appears they are trying to make me a liar. One of the terms in my account is Improve Search Engine Rankings. My Overture content match usually costs me about $20 a month total, across a large number of words. In the last week I spent over $75 on that single term, at 44 cents a click, while my ad was in 3RD position. Whats up with that?

I understand they enable certain terms on certain partner sites, but I just can't believe that traffic was legitimate.

I have not seen much sketchiness with their regular search product, just their content match on that specific term. Since it never really made any sales Overture content match has now been disabled :)

Friday. July. Yippie.

Whether you like Omega Watches or hate horses hopefully this post will have something for you. :)

Interviews:
Dr. Garcia
Greg Jarboe

Keyword Locator:
A while ago I did a review of keyword locator, and did not plug in my account details for logging into AdWords. The people from Keyword Locator probably should have mentioned this somewhere.

Sports:
I played tennis with the roommate yesterday. He gave me this gem of a compliment:

For as fat as you are, you sure are mobile.

For Sale...or Maybe Not:
Recently someone offered me $7,000 for this domain because they wanted to help drive traffic to another SEO related domain.

They think they have the best SEO domain possible, but in an industry generally lacking in credibility the domain name is far less important than what links and other people say about it.

It's Crazy:
That MicroSoft would even consider buying Claria / Gator and their bad karma.

The Point of Diminishing Returns:
WSJ has an article about how Google is running into roadblocks with many of their vertical searches (ex: video search, news search, library search)

Every Search Engine & Their Dogs:
are releasing new products.

  • recently A9, Yahoo!, & Google released or updated maps or map APIs.

  • Yahoo! recently launched a subscription search. Google is rumoured to be readying the same.
  • AOL is launching a new video search, Google recently made a video search player, and some copyright works were found within Google video.
  • Google and Yahoo! both recently upgraded their personalized search services, and Yahoo! made theirs social as well.

Shawn Hogan Interviewed

A while ago I said that my ebook could be improved by interviewing a good number of industry experts to help build a more broad / diversified voice.

My goal is to interview about a dozen people who are doing well or I think really know their stuff. Recently via email I interviewed Shawn Hogan from Digital Point. He claims not to be an SEO, but his site gets far more traffic than most SEO related websites.

The biggest things that stood out to me from his interview:

  • he created things that he himself wanted / found useful

  • he threw it out there to collect feedback & added features people wanted
  • he loves to automate as much as possible

Over 38% of Click Fraud Prevention Software Vendors Use Bogus Click Fraud Stats to Promote their Products

Another class action click fraud lawsuit:

Google (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) and its top rival, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), have declined to say what percentage of clicks would fall under click fraud. The figure most cited by independent firms that track the practice is around 20 percent.

Scott Boyenger, chief executive of Colorado-based Click Defense, said in an e-mail that his company's tracking system has detected click fraud rates of as high as 38 percent. The company sells software to prevent click fraud.

Joe Holcomb, from BlowSearch, also states the 38% is not unrealistic.

A few things which discourage AdWords click fraud:

  • If you click a competing ad on Google you make that ad more relevant to the search query. Google discounts their click price to make up for their higher relevancy.

  • By clicking on a competing ad on Google you increase your own ad costs since you must bid higher to make up for your lower ad relevancy.

There are hundreds of millions of searches each day. No way 38% of the ad clicks are fraudulent AND not detected by the engines.

Recently, at the New Orleans WMW conferences I spoke with some people who told me they intentionally clicked their own AdWords ads just to try to keep them relevant and ranking.

Those preaching about the doom caused by click fraud are not telling the whole story.

To me, doing click fraud is about the same as complaining about people ranking above you. It is a waste of energy and builds little to no longterm value. Why? You will always have competitors.

Worrying about competitors instead of focusing on building your own business and parnerships while they are busy building their business means you are falling behind. If you are spending a ton of money on PPC ads it makes sense to track it, but click fraud should not be a primary business focus if you are trying to build a legitimate long term business.

Content publishers have more incentive to do click fraud since they get a cut of the revenues, but that is why most smart people do not bid sky high on content ads. For how cheap the branding effects are, I am usually stoked just to break even on content ads. If that means I am paying for a little click fraud oh well.

Danny Sullivan posted the click fraud complaint here (18 page PDF).

Ian Turner Missing

Well known SEO Ian Turner recently attended the WMW conference in New Orleans, and failed to return home. ThreadWatch has a post about him being missing.

If you attended the New Orleans WebmasterWorld conference, and stayed around through the weekend, please take a look at the thread to see if you can offer any details.

Ian is a great guy. I wish him a safe return to his family soon.

AdRoar: No Click Fraud Here?

So AdRoar recently sent out an email that starts with:

We have recently seen many articles discussing pay per click "click fraud" in relation to the major search providers Google and Overture. Please see the articles referenced below.

By its design, advertisers on AdRoar cannot be subject to "click fraud". This is primarily due to the fact that almost all popunder creatives are shown using contextual software. Since this is not accessible to third parties, it cannot be defrauded.

We urge you to test AdRoar against your current PPC provider to see the vastly better ROI's available. Click here to see how now! Firther information about AdRoar is below the referenced articles.

How Orwellian is that? A small ad provider with a fairly open publishing partnership talking about fraud being virtually impossible with their service.

If I can't do click fraud can I still do impression fraud? How is your service better than AdSense ad targeting which lets me chose the sites my ads are published on?

The larger picture is does AdRoar have any quality traffic, and where does it come from. For them to attack the credibility of Google and Yahoo! to push their product seems bizarre.

In the same email they also promote their ad publishing service offering 60% payout. Weird.

Crazy Dayz I Sayz.

Managing SEO Risk via Dumb Affiliate Marketing

A while ago Christoph Cemper shot me an email about his post about ______.

Personal experience and a wide variety of friends have helped me conclude that most hosts are garbage, so a bad host in and of itself is not a big story. ________, on the other hand allegedly sent out an email offering affiliates a $100 bonus for knocking Cemper's site out of the top 10 rankings.

They could have contacted Christoph directly and tried to fix their problems, or they also could have reranked the search results a bit more discretely. What is even worse about how they sent out that email is that one of their affiliates posted it to the page which talks negatively about their service, which shows how they aim to slience it. Talk about not breeding trust in a service!

Christopher could also build a ton of links from almost anyone burned by a bad __________ hosting experiece by creating an image button and asking them to use it to link to his page about them.

Any time you use shady techiques to manipulate the search results (which most all SEOs - including me - are guilty of), and also use mass communication tools to do so (most smart SEOs do not do that unless they are creating crash and burn sites) you raise your risk profile and the chances that your technique will backfire.

Update: ServerPronto has been harrassing me with phone calls, likely about this post. After weeks of waking me up on the phone they still call and call. For doing that I think they are _________. I took their name out of this post, so hopefully that will be enough for them to leave me alone.

Univision Partners with Google, Yahoo! Social Search, Google Partners with T Mobile

En Espanol Por Favor:
Univision now powered by Google.

Share Your Searches:
Yahoo! Social Search. SearchEngineWatch has a writeup on it as well. Search personalization is going to be huge.

Mobile Search:
T Mobile partners with Google

BONN, June 29 (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) mobile arm T-Mobile will use Web search leader Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) as the starting point for surfing the Internet on its mobile phones to promote Internet usage, T-Mobile said on Wednesday.

The mobile partnerships are going to be huge.

Google Ranking Problems - What Ever Happened to Avril Lavigne?

So Avril Lavigne is getting married. Why should I care? hehehe

While it is sad that I search for said information, it is interesting to note that Garbage.com is the top ranked site for both Avril and Avril Lavigne. Where is the relevancy on that one Google? Is Google trying to say she is a Stupid Girl?

Steve Balmer says they will catch Google on relevancy in 6 months, although Google continues to increase their marketshare, and today launched Google Earth and a truely personalized search service.

Screenshot images of Avril search results below Garbage ranking for Avril on Google.

Garbage ranking for Avril Lavigne on Google.

Yahoo! Search DMCA, Copywriting Advice, Google AdSense Supports Warez Sites

Yahoo! DMCA Policy:
bogus, removing sites without ANY sort of notification. They really ought to work on that. (from TW)

Bad Copywriting Advice:

You can also use copy from the site (no links), like the section where it says, "The only current SEO Book on the planet. Buy the industry standard #1 ranked SEO Book. What do the search engines think?" Etc.

Especially copy on this page:
http://www.seobook.com/buy-now.shtml

How can a copywriting professional offer such advice on an open forum?

Google AdSense Feedback:
Questions for AdSense...

  • Why are many WAREZ sites use AdSense as a business model?

  • Is it proper to use the AdSense spam report feature on WAREZ sites?
  • What if Google ignores that feedback?
  • Is Google telling webmasters that stealing is fine, and they support fraud?
  • Do they want people to run clickbots on their system to get them to actually accept feedback?
  • Are clickbots and other scam software products the only way to force quality into the AdSense program?

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