What To Do When AdSense Serves The Wrong Ads

The most common frustrations among AdSense publishers are 1) Google serving inappropriate ads on their web pages, 2) low click-through rates and 3) low payouts per click.

This article discusses the first frustration, which is highly correlated with the other issues, and discusses what webmasters can do to combat it.

To begin, it is important to understand how Google determines what ads to serve via the AdSense program. This explanation goes back to April 2003 when Google acquired Santa Monica, CA-based Applied Semantics. Applied Semantics' products are based on its patented CIRCA technology, which understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval. A key application of the CIRCA technology is that it allows Google to, without human intervention, understand the key themes on web pages in order to deliver relevant and targeted advertisements.

However, the CIRCA technology is not always accurate or appropriate to the page. For example, in a general web page about health topics, AdSense is currently serving ads for insulin even though only two words in one paragraph relate to insulin. Rather, the site is much more focused on dieting.

One explanation may be that the CIRCA technology is tied to keyword pricing and inventory (e.g., AdWords advertiser daily budgets), and that AdSense serves ads that it hopes to maximize revenues. However, this often violates a critical AdSense rule - if the ads do not relate to the topic discussed on the web page, visitors will not click on them. Likewise, TopPayingKeywords.com always tells clients never to try and trick AdSense. That is, if customers are coming to your page from a link or advertisement for one topic (e.g., hair styles), never try to create a page about an unrelated topic (e.g., mortgages), just because that unrelated topic is an expensive keyword. While you will be serving expensive ads, because the topics are not correlated, visitors are unlikely to click on them.

Getting AdSense to serve the correct ads is a trial-and-error process. In the health page example above, all it took to get AdSense to remove the insulin ads was to remove the paragraph in the text that mentioned insulin. Fortunately, AdSense often updates itself within just a few hours, so it's easy to keep modifying your site until the most relevant, and hopefully most expensive, ads are served.

By Dave Lavinsky

Google's AdSense a bonanza for some Web sites

LOS ANGELES — Canadian software developer and part-time humorist Eric Giguère made fun of the avalanche of Internet arthritis drug offers on his Web site last year. For his efforts, he received a $350 check from Internet search giant Google.

Giguère has one of those ubiquitous "Ads by Google" links on his site, offering ads the search giant considers of interest to readers. You might think that people rarely click on them, but they do — and often.

"For my own, personal humor writing, I got paid," Giguère says. "It certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities that were out there."


Google has a simple proposition for anyone who owns a Web site: Let it put up links to its ads, and Google's AdSense program will give you a piece of the action when someone clicks on them.

It's found money for many bloggers, small e-tailers and huge businesses — from small personal sites such as Giguère's, to those of big-time corporations such as Amazon.com, the New York Times and About.com.

Giguère was so inspired, he wrote a book, Make Easy Money with Google, coming in May from Peachpit Press. Hundreds of online forums and Web sites are devoted to AdSense tips and tricks. The downside of the AdSense economy, critics charge, is that the avalanche of ads has created a new form of spam and is destroying the integrity of sites.

"This is a program that rewards people not for creating the best content, but for how to create sites to attract more advertising," says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch online newsletter. "AdSense has nothing to do with search. It effectively turns the Internet into a billboard for Google's ads."

Google, whose executives often say their mission is to organize the world's information, naturally begs to differ. "If I do a search for the New York Times and see an ad offering a subscription discount, that's useful to me," says Susan Wojcicki, Google's director of product management.

Web site publishers don't disagree.

"Say I write an article about a Braun shaver," says Chris Pirillo, who runs the Lockergnome.com gadget Web site. "I publish it, and within minutes, I have targeted ads about shavers on my site. Someone who reads the content may feel compelled to pick one up. That helps me and the reader."

Tales of AdSense riches range from a few hundred dollars a month to $50,000 or more a year, though high-dollar paydays are rare. They require a Web site with tons of traffic and the ability to put in 18-hour days working the system.

Pirillo, who has a following from his former role as a host on the now-defunct TechTV cable channel, says he's clearing more than $10,000 a month.

Before AdSense, which began in March 2003, bloggers and other small Web publishers had fewer options to make money. They could put banner ads on their sites for a host of non-related products, or commission programs from Amazon and eBay. "It was a lot more work, and you didn't get much of a return," Pirillo says.

With AdSense, "You write content, publish it, and the money starts to pour in," he says.

When he published the now-defunct Silicon Alley Reporter magazine, Jason Calacanis says, he used to suffer from insomnia, worrying about his monthly $200,000 to $400,000 printing bill.

He now runs a company called Weblogs, which publishes 75 Web sites on such topics as cars, gadgets, digital music and video games. He sleeps much better, he says, because "with AdSense, you know you're always making money. Your life gets a lot easier."

In his first four months of Web publishing, AdSense brought in $45,000. Some of his blogs produce $3,000 a month. His best do "four figures," Calacanis says, though he's reluctant to fill in the exact numbers. "And that's with zero marketing," he says.

How it works

Google and Yahoo dominate the booming online search advertising business, which is expected to grow to $5.6 billion in 2008, from $2.7 billion in 2004. Profit from search advertising enabled Google to more than double its revenue in 2004, to $3.1 billion.

The concept — text ads that appear next to search results — works on a "pay-per-click" model. Advertisers pay only if someone clicks on an ad. To use the programs, advertisers buy "keywords" for anywhere from 5 cents to $100 a word. Those are the terms people type into query boxes when they're searching, such as "Atlanta wedding photographer" or "Omaha Italian restaurants."

AdSense works as a part of that keyword model; it's an offshoot of what Google calls its AdWords program, which competes against Yahoo's Overture unit.

AdSense is a bonus program for advertisers who use Google AdWords. Through AdSense, Google clients get to tout their wares beyond Google's home page — potentially reaching more than 200,000 participating Web sites.

Small Web site operators have flocked to AdSense as a way to attract advertising. To participate, they sign up at Google, which reviews the site. Once a small piece of computer code language is implanted on an accepted site, Google does the rest — matching ad links from its warehouse of clients to appropriate sites.

There's an art to optimizing a site to attract more links — and generate more revenue.

Gay Gilmore, who runs Seattle-based recipezaar.com, says the trick is to attract ads next to recipes beyond the main page. "The ads need to be targeted," she says, "so that when someone is reading about chicken soup, an ad for one of the ingredients is of keen interest."

Web site publishers need to be creative, says Dave Lavinsky of TopPayingKeywords.com, an AdSense advice site. A house painter advertising his services on a homemade site is leaving money on the table if he mentions only house painting, he says. "'Housepainting' is a 20-cent word. 'Home improvement' is worth $2, so you should create content for that."

But Sullivan says keyword tricks hurt the editorial integrity of sites. Another problem, he says, is the proliferation of computer-generated directories with links to hotels, restaurants and entertainment and no real editorial content, fueled by the availability of "Ads by Google" checks.

Wojcicki says Google tries to review all sites in its program, and removes offenders such as the directory sites. Critics say the site reviews can sometimes result in an FCC-like "family friendly" filter. Bloggers complain about being rejected for discussions of sexuality and use of four-letter words.

"I begged, argued and appealed to reason for months," says author Susie Bright, whose site discusses sexuality issues. "I pointed out that all my postings were things you could easily read in ... any number of mainstream magazines that cover sex and politics from a fairly sophisticated point of view. And I pointed out that my readers like to buy trousers, go on vacations, purchase ink and basically buy all the same things that everyone else does."

Wojcicki wouldn't address the specifics of Bright's concerns, but says AdSense isn't for everyone. "We're very careful about who we let into our network. We reject sites with content some people may feel uncomfortable about."

With pay-per-click ads, Google and Yahoo are locked in a bitter battle for advertiser dollars. But Yahoo doesn't compete with AdSense for small publishers — yet. Yahoo says it will introduce an offering later this year.

For now, Google's most notable AdSense competitor is privately held Kanoodle, which accepted Bright's site. It works with small publishers and big ones (including USATODAY.com and MSNBC) and differs from AdSense in that advertisers can choose topic areas of the sites where they want their ads to appear.

"The search advertising market is red hot right now, and publishers and advertisers want more," says Kanoodle CEO Lance Podell. "We offer them more places to show their ads, and they love that."

How long will search sizzle?

Google's initial public stock offering last summer was a Wall Street sensation. The stock opened at $85 a share and now sells for around $180, down from its 52-week high of $216. Some analysts fret that the red-hot paid search market could start to cool down.

Forrester Research, revising downward earlier projections, expects 30% growth in search advertising revenue this year, after a 45% jump in 2004.

"Click fraud" is another nettlesome issue for Google and Yahoo.

Advertisers pay for ads only when they're clicked, but it doesn't always work that way.

Some competitors click ads just to run up the other guy's bills. Web publishers with AdSense get their friends to click ads so they can get more money. Some savvy webmasters have set up automated clicking models called "Hitbots" or "Clickbots," which click away all day, and cost the advertiser.

Such efforts "threaten our business model," Google CFO George Reyes said at a recent industry conference. "Something has to be done about this, really, really quickly."

University of California professor John Battelle, who is writing a book on search, says the success of AdSense has built a "growing, extremely sophisticated offshore industry."

"There are more of these sites than you can imagine," he says. "The robots click on the ads and then none of the clicks turn into leads for the advertisers. That's not how it's supposed to work."

Google and Yahoo say they are working on the problem, but Battelle doesn't think that's enough.

Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online have banded together on several occasions to fight e-mail spam, and Battelle says Google and Yahoo should show the same kind of joint leadership. "Because if they don't, it will end up biting them in the butt."

How AdSense works

Advertisers pay Google and Yahoo to have their ads appear next to search results. Google's AdSense program gives advertisers additional reach, by putting their ads onto an estimated 200,000 additional Web sites.

The twist is that Google pays each Web publisher a commission, in exchange for running the ads. It's found money for many publishers, who say they make anywhere from $50 to $200 a month and beyond.

- Advertisers buy search keywords.
- A purchase of "cell phone" for instance, produces ads next to search results on Google's main page. The same purchase also produces AdSense ads for cell phones on many other sites, including Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome gadget and gizmo blog, when cell phones are mentioned.


By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

How to Profit from Knowing the Most Expensive Keywords

By knowing the most expensive keywords on the internet, you can create websites and web pages based on these keywords. On these sites and pages, you can serve expensive ads and/or promote affiliate offers that reap high bounties when clicked or completed.

The challenge lies in driving traffic to these sites. One way to drive traffic is through search engine optimization, whereby you create a website that ranks highly on the search engines and receive “free” traffic. Or, if you already have an existing well-ranked site, you can create new pages linked from your existing pages. A second way to drive traffic is through online advertising.

With regards to advertising, one key is to understand correlations between keywords. By determining correlations between inexpensive and expensive keywords, you can advertise on the inexpensive keyword (via pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines) to drive traffic to your website that serves ads based on expensive keywords. For instance, advertising on the keyword “painting” ($0.20 keyword), and sending visitors to your site about the related topic “home remodeling” ($2.00 keyword) allows you to profit from the wide spread between the keyword prices of the two correlated keywords.

Likewise there are many opportunities to run banner and other ads through online advertising networks to drive traffic to your website. These ads can run on both “painting” and “home remodeling” websites. The cost of CPM (cost per impression) advertising typically does not reflect the price of the keywords. That is, a banner ad on a “painting” website typically costs the same as a banner ad on a “home remodeling” website. This sharply contrasts the price of PPC advertising on search engines which vary widely based on the keyword.

There are two other ways to profit from knowing the most expensive keywords. The first doesn’t even require you to own or operate a website. In this method, you advertise using inexpensive means (e.g., via pay-per-click advertising on inexpensive keywords or CPM advertising) and direct traffic to high paying affiliate offers. The second method is to set up your own search engine. There are several companies that allow you to easily set up a search engine that serves PPC ads syndicated from Google, Overture or other PPC search engine networks. Once you create your engine, you can drive traffic directly to your PPC results, and get paid every time someone clicks on one of the results. Likewise, on your search engine’s home page, you can include many links to expensive keywords, so that when someone clicks on it, the engine shows expensive ads based on those keywords.

Understanding keyword pricing is critical to the online advertising, PPC search engine and affiliate marketing businesses – businesses that combine for over $25 billion a year in revenues. With a market of this size, generating substantial profits, if you have the right information, is really not that challenging.

by. toppayingkeywords

Maximizing AdSense Revenues via Up-Selling

If you go into any Blockbuster Video store, you quickly notice the company’s use of a classic marketing technique – up-selling correlated products. This technique is highly effective at maximizing Blockbuster’s revenue and profit per customer. Moreover, this same technique can be applied to websites using Google’s AdSense program.

Up-selling is defined as selling additional, often higher priced, products and services to current customers. Ideally, the upsold products are correlated to the initial products – that is, they fill the same, or similar customer need that the first product did. Blockbuster up-sells its rental customers by offering them new and previously owned videos for sale. It also groups videos and posts signs saying “if you liked this video, you’ll like this video” spurring rentals of the new video.

To show how this technique can be applied to Google AdSense, let us look at an example of a painting website. To begin, it is critical to understand that by enrolling in the AdSense program the “product” that this website is selling is the keyword “paint” or “painting” as these keywords will show up in the AdSense results posted on their web pages. It is also critical to understand the price of these keywords, or how much the advertiser pays when someone clicks on one of their ads (a portion of which is passed on from Google to the owner of the painting website). In this case, top advertisers are paying approximately 19 cents for the keyword “paint” and 45 cents for the keyword “painting.”

By applying the technique of up-selling correlated products to the painting website, the website owner could dramatically increase the price of its products and the rate at which people buy (click on) the product. Like in the Blockbuster example, the key is to first determine expensive, correlated products to up-sell. In the painting case, one keyword that quickly comes to mind is “home remodeling” as painting is often part of a larger home remodeling project. Moreover, “home remodeling” has a price of $1.70, or nearly nine times the price of “paint.” Furthermore, finding keywords correlated to “home remodeling” yields even more expensive keywords such as “home improvement loan” which currently has a price of $6.50, or thirty-four times the price of the original term “paint.”

Now that the more expensive and correlated products have been identified, the website owner must create web pages with quality content about these products and entice, via text and links, visitors to go to these pages. The higher quality the content, the more enticing the product or service becomes, and the more likely a visitor is to click on one of the high paying AdSense ads.

In summary, by simply posting AdSense ads on their websites, most website owners are losing out on significant profits. Rather, they must identify the most expensive keywords that are correlated to their existing keywords and create web pages with quality content about these pages. While this requires some work, the returns on this investment are significant.

by. toppayingkeywords

Elements of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine Optimization is a web based marketing strategy that is widely used today. To open your business or product to all possible clients, you have to make your website highly visible. The success of your business or product depends on the consumers. You have to reach out to the market so that you will get better results. Search engine optimization is cost effective. It allows you to engage in a process which does not require you to spend much. In the process of Search engine optimization, there are four basic elements. Knowing and recognizing these elements can lead to successful web advertising.

The first element in Search engine Optimization is content. You must make sure that you can provide the most relevant keywords and phrases in your business field. These keywords and phrases should be free from spelling or grammatical errors in order to achieve better search ranking. They should also be simple and plain so that they will directly point to what the searching customer wants to know. This will make your web site search engine-friendly.

The second element is inbound linking. In search engine optimization, you must provide inbound links as much as possible. This will allow you to have a better coverage online, thus leading to more customer webpage views. With the millions of people inquiring about anything, you can be sure you can get your share of the market.

Outbound linking is also a useful element of Search engine optimization. Although it is advised to have less outbound links from your website now, quality outbound links can still help you promote your business.

The last element of SEO is website submission. It is important to submit your website to the various popular websites so that it can be evaluated and will eventually get the chance of being placed on the top lists. Search engines have their rules, so you must follow each of these rules strictly.