Light up your site

We all know how it feels to find the perfect gift. After scouring stores far and wide, suddenly your hunt is over: the stars have aligned to bring you just what you're looking for -- and not a moment too soon. It's a bit the same way when a search brings you to just the right site. But what if your site's just the right site, and users can't find it?

We're happy to let you know that you don't need divine forces to play a role in the findability of your site. Nope -- you can help make sure that your site turns up just when it should by taking advantage of these tips from our Search Quality Team.

1. Not sure if all your pages are being seen by Google? Search for your site's address after the command "site", like [site:example.com]. When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the topic of a particular page. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Webmaster Tools.
   
   
2. If you upload new pages or topics faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Google Sitemap and include a refresh rate.
   
   
3. Label your images appropriately. Users searching in Google Image Search will more easily find the image on your site. Don't miss out on potential traffic because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg]. Image Search is one of the largest search properties out there, so you should take advantage of it.
   
   
4. Manage your SiteLinks. Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as SiteLinks, so remember you can remove any that you don't think users will find useful.
   
   
5. Check for errors and keyword traffic in Webmaster Tools. See our diagnostics checklist.
   
   
6. Serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you've retired a page permanently, serve a 404. If you've simply relocated it, serve a 301. The more we know about your old pages, the faster we will find the next best page on your site for a given query. 
   
   
7. Users and search engines like organic content. Make some of your own!
   
   
8. Read our recently released SEO Starter Guide.
   
   
9. Watch our Tutorials for Webmasters.
   
   
10. Find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
    
    
11. Get the latest updates from the Webmaster Central Blog.
    
    
12. Find answers to your questions in our Webmaster Help Center, or ask your questions in the Webmaster Help Group. 
    

Whether it be the perfect gift, the perfect site, or the perfect cup of cocoa on a cold winter's night, we hope all your searches are fruitful this holiday season.

Daily Tidbits: Make money off parked sites and go mobile with Visa

Anyone with an unused, parked site can now make some cash by using Google's new AdSense for Domains, the company said Friday.

"AdSense for domains allows publishers with undeveloped domains to help users by providing relevant information including ads, links and search results," Google said.

The company is opening AdSense for Domains up to "English-language AdSense publishers located in North America" first, but it will eventually expand the service to other regions. When that happens, the new program will also support other languages.

Credit card giant Visa said Friday it has launched its Visa Mobile Application, which has become the first financial app for Android-based mobile phones. According to the company, the app alerts users to account activity and provides them with special offers from merchants. Once received, those offers will work with the Android phone's GPS functionality to map where those offers can be redeemed. The app is available now in the Android App Store.

According to a survey conducted by research firm eROI, which asked 283 high school and college students about their online lives, 25 percent of respondents claim they signed up for their first e-mail address so they could shop online. A whopping 81 percent of respondents said they got their first e-mail address to communicate with family, and 52 percent said they did it to chat with friends. eROI also asked the students which e-mail service they preferred. Google won with 32 percent saying they use Gmail. Yahoo took the second spot with 19 percent adoption, followed closely by Microsoft's MSN with 18 percent.

ReadWriteWeb is reporting that Google has removed a slew of sections from its Chrome browser's end user license agreement. According to the report, the new agreement has removed Chrome's age restriction policy and its requirement for personal information. It also no longer bans automated access. Google has yet to comment on the changes.

Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts atThe Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

Exactly What Is Google Adsense And How Are People Earning Money With It? Exactly What Is Google Adsense And How Are People Earning Money With It?

Most of the Internet marketing community is at least somewhat familiar with earning money through Google Adsense at this point. It is worth spending some time mastering Google Adsense for earning money, as Adsense can be financially lucrative.

Small contextual ads published on web sites with the consent of the web site owner is Google Adsense. The ads are created by publishers that are selling products and/or creating brand awareness. The ads that are created are called Adwords which is a Google sponsored program.

Google Adwords and Adsense run hand in hand. After doing a search on Google or one of their partner networks, if the user clicks on an ad then the person who created that ad pays Google a certain amount. This is described as "pay per click".

When Google receives money from the creator or publisher of the ad, they have to split the amount with the person who owns oil gas exploration the web site that the Adwords ads appear and that is the beauty of Adsense. It is a well guarded secret what the percentage of the split is, and it does vary, but for our purposes let's say it's 50%.

If the ad creator is fine to pay .40 per click for his Adwords ad, then the website host who has joined the Adsense scheme can expect to receive .20 when the ad is clicked. The 50% that is left will be kept by Google. So basically it is a partnership of sorts between Google and web site owners.

Adsense is shown in the most appropriate manner possible. What does this indicate? Well, let me give an example that probably illustrates it best. Let's say a website owned by Mary women's clothing. Google Adsense once Mary decides to monetize her web site can help her to show ads on her web site that would be related to clothing or to be more specific, women's clothing. In her web site if shoes are dedicated to a particular page, then on that page there would be Adsense ads appearing for women's shoes.

So the price per click is determined by what? This is where the Adwords side of the equation kicks in. Publishers who create Adwords bid on keywords. publisher will be willing to pay more for each click if the keyword is more lucrative or sought after. Keywords can be as high as $50 and above per click or as low as a few cents per click.

By putting Google Adsense on their web site, it wouldn't be a wonder to see them making some nice money if the web site they own generates some decent traffic. Web sites with specific content are created by most Internet marketers with the sole purpose of attracting high paying Adsense ads. 

Google Expands AdSense For Domains - Enough Already

The Google AdSense Blog announced they have begun rolling out the AdSense for Domain product to US based publishers and will continue to roll this feature out to all publishers in the future. AdSense for Domains allows publishers to place ads on domains that have not yet been developed yet, also known as parked domains. Google said they would show “ads, links, and search results on the pages, and may add other useful information in the future,” on these pages.

You have to understand that AdSense for Domains, formerly known as Domain Park, is a product that has always been extremely controversial in the ad space market. Since 2005 and likely before then, Danny Sullivan has called for major reform of the product, because it delivered poor quality traffic sparked huge controversy. Not only that, we have reportedlawsuit after lawsuit over the product and even with the reformed opt out feature, it still has resulted in more lawsuits.

So why did Google promise to make this available to all publishers? I think because they are getting worried about the economy and want to earn a buck anywhere and everywhere they can. Let’s look at the recent history, all in Q4 of 2008.

• December 8, 2008, Google now allows hard liqueur search ads in some cases, a policy they were against since AdWords launched.
• Before that, on October 31st, Google loosened their policies to allow beer search ads.
• On December 1st, we noticed Google showing text ads on image search
• Before that, Google on October 3rd, for the first time, placed display ads on Google Image search.
• In mid-November started placing ads (for the first time) on Google Finance and Google News.
• YouYube got ads in November as well
• Google Maps ads started appearing in early October.
• Google also started to allow gambling ads in the UK sometime in October.
• Google is also giving us more tools so we can spend more with them, including theSearch-based keyword tool launched in November.

Again, these are only the changes we have seen to AdWords in the fourth quarter, or in the past two months and 11 days. I did not include the November quality score change that gave ads an easier time reaching the top spot above the organic results, which would likely drive more clicks on the ad and thus earn Google more money.

Do you see a pattern here?

Simplify Creative Commons, Don't tweak it

As part of a study of how people understand the term "noncommercial use," Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito is conducting a poll linked to from his blog.

It's certainly a problematic restriction, as things stand. Unfortunately, Creative Commons appears to be going down the path of merely defining it more crisply when, in my view, the better approach would be simply to eliminate it entirely.

First, a little background. Creative Commons licenses are a sort of counterpart to open-source software licenses that is intended to apply to things like books, videos, photographs, and so forth. There are a variety of Creative Commons licenses worldwide (e.g. these are the choices offered on Flickr), but for our purposes here, one important distinction is between the licenses that allow commercial use and those that do not.

A noncommercial license means: "You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work--and derivative works based upon it--but for noncommercial purposes only."

The problem Creative Commons is trying to solve is that noncommercial turns out not to be easily defined. I've discussed this issue in more detail previously, but essentially, we operate in a world where opportunities to "microcommercialize" through Google AdSense and self-published books abound. So drawing a line--especially one that the content creator and the content user can agree on without too much thought--is hard.

See this comment from an earlier post, for example. ("Commercial" is a particularly confusing term, with respect to photography, where it refers to uses that aren't primarily editorial or artistic, and involves requirements for model releases and the like--which is only incidentally related to commercial use, as Creative Commons uses the term.)

It's not hard to see how we came to have such a noncommercial-use clause. There's a certain visceral appeal to saying, "I'll share my creative works with the world, and anyone can use them for free, so long as they credit me and don't make money off them. If they do make money, I want my cut or have the right to prohibit use."

As I say, appealing. Also not very workable or useful. A lot of truly personal and noncommercial uses are already either likely covered under Fair Use or are trivial. (Does it really matter which license the photo you downloaded to use as desktop wallpaper for your computer uses?) And prudent companies will ensure that all rights are in order by contacting the content owner directly, no matter what the license says.

I find it notable that no major open-source software license contains restrictions about who may use the software. Different licenses have more or fewer requirements about the circumstances under which you must contribute code enhancements back to the community or on actions you can't take (for example, related to patents) if you wish to retain your license. But they don't differentiate between whether you're a Fortune 500 corporation, a school, or just an individual playing around for fun.

If open-source licenses did routinely have clauses governing who could and couldn't use software, I think that it's fair to say that open-source would have had a much smaller impact on the world than it has.

As I've argued previously, by contrast, Creative Commons licensing offers up a complicated set of options that seem calculated to encourage people to contribute works to the commons while not pushing their envelope to allow any uses that they might consider "unfair" in some way. The result is a system that is far too complicated and that doesn't offer any real benefit beyond a simple license that requires 1.) attribution and 2.) downstream derivatives to maintain the same license.

Complexity, ambiguity, and lack of awareness are the issues with Creative Commons. Tweaking the signage associated with the overly complicated smorgasbord of options doesn't address any of those things.

Gordon Haff is a Principal IT Advisor with Illuminata, Inc. and has over 20 years of IT industry experience. He blogs about what's happening with enterprise servers and datacenters, "Yotta-scale" computing, and related software and device trends as part of the CNET Blog Network.Disclosure.

Topics:

Open source

Follow Google's Advice for Better AdSense Performance

By Chris Crum 

AdSense Optimization Tips

Google has been providing tips for optimizing AdSense ads to enhance their performance. The company has provided a three-part video series on this subject, which it has just released the final installment for.

The key items to note in this final video is that when positioning your AdSense ads for performance:

- Ad units placed at the bottom of the page don’t perform as well.

- Place Your Ads Where Users Will See Them

- Ad Units Perform better when they are placed above the fold

"So remember, position your ads above the fold and where users are more likely to see them," says Google.

Going a bit further, Google has put together a "heat map" to further emphasize good AdSense placement:

Looking back at the other installments of the series, part one talks about the size of AdSense ads. Google suggests using the following sizes:

- 300x250 medium rectangle
- 728x90 leaderboard
- 160x600 skyscraper

For more on AdSense optimization through size, view the following video:

Part two of the series looked at the color aspect (coverage here). Along with the video (below), they offered these tips:

- Use colors that either blend with or complement your site's colors. Make the ads a part of your site.

- Use lighter colors for borders, or no border at all.

- Try rotating colors or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.

- Save sets of frequently-used colors as a palette.

This video series has provided an educational look at getting better performance from AdSense ads, right from the horse's mouth. Google stands to gain from your ads working, so advice they give is likely to be in the best interest of all parties involved. If you have any other tips for AdSense performance that Google did no

Google AdSense Improvises

By: Navneet Kaushal 


AdSense was blamed for showing political ads in a lot of websites! No one was happy with them. But now they are planning to improve AdFilter and Blocking Ads. 

According to the Official AdSense Blog, they will very soon improve the speed of the AdSense Ad filter and at the same time enhance the blocking abilities of the Ad Review Center.

We also received questions about why political ads are able to run on Google and AdSense sites. The Google advertising program is managed by a set of editorial policies that we have developed based on various factors, including user and customer experience. While Google or its executives and employees may express opinions about specific political issues and candidates, Google's advertising system does not favor one political position over another. Our network provides advertisers with a way to reach their audience, whether they are companies selling products or political campaigns promoting candidates or issues. Just as Google's advertising system does not favor one car manufacturer's ads over a competitor's in our auction, we also allow ads regardless of the particular political position they represent.

We'll also continue improving the Ad Review Center, giving you ways to block entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads -AdSense

These changes are expected to be implemented over the next couple weeks.

AdSense Ads In Google Finance

By: Aaron Wall 


Google added an ugly AdSense block to Google Finance. It looks poorly integrated and noisy. They didn't look to take a page out of Yahoo!'s book on this front. 

Yahoo!'s ads offer more in the lines of branding, and they also sell custom research reports (likely on a CPA model).

Anyone who thinks Google has fully tapped out its revenue potential needs to be reminded that Google and YouTube are leading downstream destinations from Google.

Did you know that when a company ranks #1 on a Google Map with 10 results and #1 in the organic search results that the organic result only gets 60% more traffic? But there are 10 links in the onebox...which means that as a whole they probably get more traffic than the top organically ranked site does, especially on smaller browsers.

One interesting fact is that the majority of the users who got to the site via the natural link had resolution above 1024-768 and the majority of users who visited via the Onebox result had resoultion of 1024-768 or under. This makes sense because the lower the resolution of the screen the more real estate the Onebox listing gets above the fold.

Many of these onebox and universal search destinations (Finance, maps/local, product search, real estate, movies, travel, video, lyrics, books) can be monetized at much higher rates than whatever AdSense is yielding, and Google sees all the AdWords data, so they can tackle any new vertical they want (employment? education? healthcare? finance? ) and compete based on under-monetizing themselves in the short term, aggressive launch-time public relations, and giving themselves free traffic from the search results.

Google will take a leadership position in new markets like voice and video chat and voice search.

As long as Google does not destroy their brand, punt on user privacy, raise anti-trust concerns, or lose a major copyright battle they have lots of upside left. Google defines the new digital economy.

Kyte Gets Google AdSense, Fresh New Mobile Sites

On Monday night video-broadcasting platform Kyte is launching several new ways to make money with its service. Included are two new ad servers from AdTech Helios IQ and Lightningcast, as well as a new option to pick up Google AdSense (for video) which includes pre-roll, graphic display ads, and endcap text ads. These join Kyte's internal ad manager, and help fill out any ad inventory depending on how popular your shows are.

It's worth noting all of this is still only for pre-recorded content, and as such can't be used for monetizing live streaming shows. I'm told this is something on Kyte's road map, which when implemented would give publishers a new way to pull in revenue from live broadcasts besides relying on ads outside of the Kyte player.

The new mobile pages (click to enlarge)

(Credit: Kyte.tv)

Alongside the new ad partners, Kyte is launching branded mobile pages that let artists or other content providers organize all their work into a single mobile-friendly page.

This is going live with two Interscope Records artists: Lady GaGa and theAll-American Rejects. Here users can watch content streams that are optimized for their device (3GP for Nokia users and QuickTime streams for iPhoners), and interact with other users like they'd do on the normal Kyte service. This includes live chat and an in-line comment system.

Mobile pages can be saved to your mobile device like you'd save a bookmark. In the iPhone's case it's nothing more than a home screen shortcut which brings you right to the artist page.

Channel owners are able to customize both the layout and the style of these mobile pages to their taste, as well as pick out any ad units that can go on the bottom or top of the page. For now it's a manual process that involves a little hand holding with Kyte staff, but in the future publishers will be able to use a simple dashboard tool to update and make changes on the fly.

While these changes may seem trivial to the casual user, providing additional ways to monetize mobile online video is a big deal. It's not quite there for live streaming, but Kyte's very close. In the meantime, the current system is set up to let publishers big and small add advertising that can be tacked on to all content--both old and new.

The Great Google Adsense Side Effect

The Internet is now built for Adsense

If the Internet consisted of real brick and mortar buildings there would be a construction boom going on right now like the world has never seen. The Internet is not in a recession or on the road to a depression, rather it is experiencing an economic and social explosion of activity.

The reason ... Google Adsense.

Most people think of Google Adsense as being a game-changer for advertising, but what Google Adsense has also done is to create a huge incentive to build sites around topics to place Google Adwords on. Where this seems to work best is with gadgets. There is no topic left untouched by the Adsense content builders, but gadgets are at the heart of this new Internet construction boom. 

The Gadget Content Explosion...

On November 5th, 2007 Google announced the name of its Google phone project ...Android.

Name announcements are where it all starts because domaining is at the heart of SEO which is important to getting free traffic which is critical to new Internet projects getting Adsense funding. Literally, hundreds of domains have been registered since this announcement with the Android name and other variations that mean the same. 

A few examples ....

helloandroid.com 
justanotherandroidblog.com
phandroid.com

All of those domains now rank in the top ten results when searching for "android blog" in Google!

Trademark Infringement? Nope! 

A more schooled business person might wonder about all of this trademark infringement and think cease and desist letters will be flying to all of these new sites. Think again my old school friend! The legal community may not be aware, but trademarking is no longer enforced by a large army of corporations on the Internet. The reason is because companies have finally figured out that Internet content centered around their brands is rather GOOD for their brands! 

The majority of the content I am talking about is of the good kind where these newly constructed websites become the hub for discussion, commenting, reviewing, supporting and in general getting down to the nitty-gritty of every new gadget (or every new anything) introduced to the world.  Google and the other search engines then crawl this content and in effect help turn these new web construction sites into thriving neighborhood hangouts where thousands of real people actually go. 

These people become the first drivers of new products and are the early adopters who will wait in line to buy. An example of this is the recently launched Blackberry Storm available for Verizon customers. Lines were out the door at Verizon stores and most locations sold out. The word of mouth on this product spawned from thousands of websites, many of which were created to focus exclusively on the Blackberry Storm. 

Search Google for "blackberry storm forum" (without quotations) and you will see these sites in the top listings:

blackberrystormforum.com
everythingberry.com
storm-blackberry.com (with Yahoo ads)

These sites were produced to build a community that clicks Adwords ads. They were created because of the Adsense program, but they still do serve a greater good in my opinion, which is to be an independent source of information and Q&A. 

The two most common types of sites created for Adsense are blogs and forums. Others include software downloads, niche directories and news headline type sites. Over time, domains with the product name followed by generic words that are typically searched for such as ...  forum, forums, blog, video and news tend to rise to the top of search results. Website builders around the world know this and build accordingly. 

Is the content of bad quality? 

Yes and no. There are of course many spammy scraper sites that steal content from others and then automatically update the sites. However, those are not the ones usually showing up in the top search results. The site winning the search result wars for "android blog", for instance, isgoogleandroidblog. blogspot.com which is the number one result. The site appears to be a real hub for Google Android content and reader comments and also contains a column of Google Adwords ads! 

Search for any popular gadget and you will see quality blogs, forums and news sites in top results that were created to cash in from Google Asense:

>> "Amazon Kindle blog" - amazonkindleblog.com
>> "iPhone news" - iphonestalk.com, iphonealley.com, iphone-ipod.org
>> "Wii blog" - wiiblog.net, wiispin.com (both created for Adsense)

The How-To...

1. Follow the announcements on the tech news gadget sites and grab domains as soon as names are announced.

2. Build a blog or forum ASAP on the topic. It is important to build first so that Google crawls you first.

3. Create quality content written by you or experts (your friends :). It is important to not plagorize other content on the Internet. Be distinct with your voice by using humor or technical savvyness. Do not use paid writers that write $20 articles unless you know they write quality. Quality is king, even when building for Adsense!

4. Participate in related forums and comment on blogs and news articles that relate to your topic. Be real though, do not be a comment spammer. This will get your site linked so that Google crawls it.

5. Update your site a couple times a day and make your content unique.