Category — search

The common belief is that Google finds new pages and websites by following links from other websites. This would make sense, but recently I have had two incidents which has led me to believe that good finds new pages by tracking users sits visited OR looking for links in google mail.

This is some scary stuff for both consumers and more importantly webmasters. For consumers the privacy concern is definitely something to think about. For webmasters you can have your website indexed before its even ready.
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I love when I find hilarious things when searching the Interwebs on the Google. I decided to search for “best search engine” to see does the Google think that it is the best search engine ever. Apparently Google is suffering from a case of low self esteem. Who do you think is better than you Google, is it Yahoo? No, it can’t be aren’t they in some kind of financial crisis, maybe MSN? Nope, they just recently rolled back indexing and algorithm changes because they pissed off so many webmasters. So tell me who is better than you Google? DOGPILE LOL

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Like most people my first foray into monetizing my websites was Google AdSense. It paid pretty well per click and made me enough for a few nights out every month. Recently I have been more involved on the other end as an advertiser. Using AdWords let me really understand what a total BS AdSense is and how much publishers get screwed.

Before I jump into my problems with AdSense I just want to let you know that this problem exists across other networks, I just happened to notice it on the Google.

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Before I kick things off, I want to thank all of you who have been posting your comments. They are great and help me discover new things every day.

Anyway I build websites both for fun and as a way to experiment with SEO. Recently I have been working on monetizing these projects just to see what the “make money online” hoopla is all about. I don’t make enough to retire, but its fun non the less.

One website I threw up had to do with DRM Free Movies. It was one of my early projects and I have not had the time to really build a valuable website. It did receive about 20 to 30 unique visitors, so I decided to throw up some AdSense, Amazon, and AdBrite to the site to see if I can monetize the traffic. I made about 50 cents to a dollar a day which was nice.

A few days ago I checked my analytics, and lo and behold I was receiving 0 traffic. I investigated to see if the site was still ranking for the keywords, and of course it was not. What was interesting is that the “brand name” still ranked the website, but all of the keywords I was targeting do not.

I believe it was due to human review that my site was removed. Thanks to Rose who posted a comment on Google Human Review and sent a link to SPAM Guidelines.

Lets use this opportunity to learn what NOT to do and how to avoid a Google penalty.

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According to Forbe’s Ask.com has finally thrown in the towel to fighting off the Google. They realized that they can’t compete under their current model. They decided to focus all of their energy on attractive married women. No it’s not what you think its for, get your mind out of the gutter. According to Forbes here is what the search engine will focus on:

The leaner Oakland-based search company will be retooled as a homemaker’s resource providing answers to queries about cooking, gardening and health. The target audience will be married women living in the American South and Midwest.

Investors did not seem to think this was a great idea, but did like it somewhat. I disagree completely I think this is a GREAT idea. I am for more vertical search engines. The Google results are not relevant to everyone, and although they are trying to create personalized search, I think that Ask is on the right track. This also supports an earlier post about Vertical Search stealing Google Search Share in the future.