How Google's Editors Tag & Destroy Offensive Affiliate Sites

Dramatic title. Well, it’s about time- a lot of sites should be knocked off their rankings pedestals.

What? Google Rates Sites By Hand?

If you hadn't heard, Google is indeed using human editors to increase the quality of its search results and catch more web spam. You must know what web spam is- those Google search results that contain only more (fake) search results, pages with no real content but lots of links and adds? These are black hat spammers trying to fake out Google and make money via affiliate programs and AdSense.

At one point, it wasn’t clear Google could beat these spammers- they always had a new programmatic trick to stay a step ahead. Enter human editors. It may seem anathema to Google's style, but it's critical to achieving their stated goal: quality search results.

For more details on these editors, or "raters", including a copy of a help wanted ad for European Google editors, check out these links:

http://www.searchbistro.com/index.php?/archives/19-Google-Secret-Lab,-Prelude.html

and

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7183.

Which Sites Are Tagged as Offensive?

If you don't want to get blacklisted, the most important thing for you to understand is what you should and shouldn't do when creating websites.

Ideally, it would be just as simple as following Google's Webmaster Guidelines (http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html). You could make the case that it is that simple. But it's easy, when you aren't getting any traffic and want to promote your site, to violate a suggestion you hadn't read all that carefully. Especially since so many sites are violating them. So the first imperative for webmasters is don't just skim Google's Webmaster Guidelines - read them slowly. MEMORIZE them.

Is that enough? Let's look at Google's site editing instructions (their 13 page “Spamguide.rtf”) and see.

Affiliate Websites Under Human Scrutiny

The first important distinction they make is that sites must have unique value to their visitors. This is discussed in terms of how to uncover "Thin Affiliates". A thin affiliate is a website that merely duplicates all or part of another site and directs traffic to it. The goal of the thin affiliate is to throw up many pages quickly (often with the aid of webpage-generating software), including their affiliate links.

Often these sites, like the fake search results websites, have pulled a large number of keyword search phrases together from Overture or Wordtracker, and, using some form of SEO (perhaps black hat), have wormed their way to high rankings.

Google doesn't mind an affiliate site that provides extra content or value for visitors. But a thin affiliate earning commissions and providing nothing? Offensive!

Navigating the Gray Area

Google tries to help the human editors distinguish if the site is thin or not with both principles and examples. Here are some of major points made:

• On thin affiliate websites, all external links point to one website (however, a site that compares prices between several affiliates does add value and is acceptable).
  
• A good test for thinness: Would the site stand on its own without the pages that lead to affiliate sites? Or, is there rich, unique content on the site?
  
• Some other criteria help editors identify program-generated sites: Sites with multiple similarities (or substantial equalities) between pages including formulaic descriptions, content, and template; and repeated text or dictionary-like lists of words in the description. [to check for these, search google for 'site:www.ANYSITE.com' without the quotes].
  

Obviously inoffensive websites can have one or two of these features, so Google encourages editors to send them a question rather than just mark the site offensive.

Other things that alert Google editors are:

• Images all hosted on another domain,
  
• External links not placed for humans but to get them indexed by search engines,
  
• Stock description for affiliate links rather than custom comments, and
  
• Hidden text (Could you be any dumber? That's so black-hat-2002!).
  

FYI: Google also asks editors to mark uniquely authoritative sites as either Vital or Useful.

How to Make a Positive Impression on Google Editors

1. Add valuable content, downloads (like a custom application, video, or audio), the option to receive something through real mail, or an ezine.
2. Link to multiple affiliates/revenue streams.
3. Make your website somewhat organic (not formulaic)- don't use keyword spam webpage generating software.
4. Add unique descriptions to webpages and links.
5. Host your own images.
6. List your contact info, phone number, availability, etc.
7. It's ok to have an affiliate program and spawn affiliates.

Since 1999, Brian B. Carter, MS, has reached more than 2 million readers online. His most popular site ranks in the top 1% of all major websites. Brian's second book, "How I Made $78,024.44 in Six Months Using the Newest Secrets of AdSense and Overlooked Keywords" will be available in October, 2005 from Since 1999, San Diego SEO Consultant Brian B. Carter, MS, has reached more than 2 million readers online. His most popular site ranks in the top 1% of all major websites. Visit his Adwords consulting site or read his Internet Marketing Blog Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Carter

The Truth about Google’s Adsense affiliate program.

The truth about Google’s Adsense program is that it is amazing. It’s the greatest affiliate program ever invented. There is no affiliate program that even comes close. If you are not using Google’s Adsense, you’re truly missing out on a great opportunity. I’ve tried several other affiliate programs, and the only one that is creating revenue even close to Google’s, is the Amazon.com affiliate program. Amazon.com’s affiliate program pays 5% commission and up for shipped products. It’s not really clear how Google pays you, but let me tell you it seems very fair. They do not pay per clicks, leads, or click throughs; they have a secret formula that no one will tell. But trust me it works. I was making pennies off of clicks monthly, until I joined Google. Then the pennies became dollars.

Here are some basic tips for signing up with Google’s Adsense program.

Tip # 1
If you search multiple websites in different categories you’ll find one thing in common. Almost all of them have Google ads and nothing else. This is because most other programs are a waste of time. Don’t take my word for it. Try other programs, but don’t skip Google’s Adsense.

Tip # 2
Google’s search spiders are so specific, that the ads that appear on each page correspond exactly to some element of that page. Therefore, having ads from other companies is not a good idea.

TIP # 3
You can place text, image, banner ads and even a search box that will earn your company revenue. Do not place a search box from another company on the same page as Google’s search box. They may stop working with you.

In summary, the Adsense program is a great way to make revenue, has incredibly targeted ads and don’t use other search boxes on the same page as a Google search box. If you have any questions about Google’s Adsense program, you can email me at tech1@techpizza.com.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

5 Google Affiliate Secrets To Help You Earn Thousands Of Dollars Monthly

There is no doubt that Google affiliates rank as some of the most successful affiliates anywhere on the web.

Yet few understand the reason behind this success. Even the majority of Google affiliates who are yet to start making huge five figure checks do not quite understand why the Google Adsense program has flourished so much within such a short time.

Anybody who understands the real secrets behind the phenomenal rise of Google affiliates will be in a much better position to benefit and profit from it, whether or not they are current Adsense affiliates.

1. Google Affiliates Are Riding On The Most Dramatic Shift In The Advertising Industry In History

A few webmasters think that this Adsense and pay per click affiliate mania is a passing fad. All indications are that this is not the case. If anything mounting evidence points to one of the most dramatic and rapid shifts in advertising industry history. You can’t beat the deal to advertisers where they pay only for actual traffic to their website and more so when they can easily calculate their conversion rate on that traffic and predict their profit margin on the deal. This arrangement cannot be duplicated on TV or in any other offline media with so much precision and accuracy.

This means that advertising revenue will continue to shift away from other media and will move online at an even more rapid rate than is the case currently. And not just any online mediums like banner ads for example. The revenue will specifically shift to pay per click text ads. If you need some proof just look at the Google numbers in recent months, and most of it is being generated by PPC ad revenue.

What does that mean to a blogger or webmaster? It means huge and increasing profits as the number of advertisers grows and the competition between them for clicks grows fiercer.

It means that any expert in any tiny little niche will find it increasingly easier to make a good regular income from a low traffic targeted site with higher paying, more valuable Adsense keywords.

2. Google Affiliates Recognize That Content Is Not King, It’s Everything

Writers, or rather good writers are already enjoying a huge advantage as Google affiliates. Only well written content will attract quality traffic and only interesting engrossing content will keep that traffic coming back again and again. Only high-quality keyword rich content will keep a site high in search engine rankings and thus guarantee enough traffic to keep Google affiliate adsense earnings high.

3. Top Google Affiliates Are All Using The Blog Secret

Blogs were created for linking and everybody knows that links are closely related to traffic in two ways, firstly they generate traffic but more importantly, they help a site achieve high search engine rankings with usually opens the floodgates of traffic. Top Google affiliates are using this secret to keep those big fat Google affiliate Adsense checks arriving by special courier every month.

Most top Google affiliates have dozens of blogs loaded with the right keywords and engaging content. With just a little SEO (search engine optimization) skills, these new breed of high flying online professionals are able to get their sites to the top of search engine rankings. It is then minimal maintenance as they sit back and watch the traffic volumes flow to their blogs already loaded with Adsense ads. The result of all this is that the clicks happening at their sites shoots up and with it their Google affiliate Adsense earnings.

4. Google Affiliates Are Using The Secret of The Hook

In advertising it is called the hook. Journalists call it the angle or slant of the story. Both mean the same thing. It is all about picking up a subject and asking yourself, what aspect of it most interests your audience? If you answer that question accurately then your ad or your article will attract maximum interest.

Online this is becoming more critical by the day. Content that is not slanted to fit the interests and needs of you audience will not attract enough interest and this impacts on the traffic of your blog or site and ultimately on your Google affiliate adsense earnings.

Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Read the rest of this article at his Google affiliate writer’s blog. He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Kyalo

Affiliate Marketing as a revenue-model tool

Affiliate marketing is defined as a revenue sharing relationship between advertisers or merchants and online publishers or affiliates. Affiliate marketing is a revenue-model tool that can be utilized to establish a successful business while creating outstanding wealth. In order to increase your affiliate earnings, you should also consider learning how to mask your affiliate links and how to track which marketing methods provide the most revenue. Affiliate Marketing guarantees a fast ROI (Return of Investment) and for some Online Merchants and Services are the Sales generated through the Affiliate Channel making up a considerable percentage of their total online Revenue. An affiliate program is a marketing initiative, a sort of performance-based advertising, whereby the affiliate promotes the merchant's products/services, and in return and depending on the type of program, the affiliate receives a commission from, or shares revenue with the merchant for delivering sales, leads or traffic to the merchant's websites. Search Engine Page Inclusions with XML and ROR sitemaps for Google and Yahoo Search Bots Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns Web Banner campaigns Advertising Revenue through Affiliate Programs, Adsense, el al Each Marketing Company will pitch you the importance of their company's offering providing you the “winning formula for the Internet Selling Bonanza”. The results you will look for is the increased revenue the affiliate marketing program brought to your site. Well, we need to define affiliate marketing as a premise:” Affiliate Marketing is a system of revenue sharing between one site (the affiliate merchant) which features an ad or content designed to drive traffic to another site (the advertiser). In order to increase your affiliate earnings, you should also consider learning how to mask your affiliate links and how to track which marketing methods provide the most revenue. So in this introduction to becoming an online marketing affiliate, I am going to give you a basic explanation of what marketing really is, and how you can use it to maximize your revenue online. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of people who think about affiliate marketing take advantage of it because they don’t know where to start and don’t have money on hand to pay for a product that teaches them how. Even if you don’t have a physical product to sell, you can still make money online marketing other people’s products, either through Direct Sales, Affiliate Marketing or Drop Shipping. Anyone can make money online, but you need to turn a profit to stay in business and have the ability to make affiliate marketing a full time job. Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates. Always incorporate product reviews on your affiliate marketing website so you can pre-sell them the initial benefits. Specifically, this is not a book for beginners, you have to know the lingo and be somewhat familiar with online affiliate marketing to enjoy the full benefits. The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before. And they get all these benefits by simply getting involved in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is defined as a revenue sharing relationship between advertisers or merchants and online publishers or affiliates. Affiliate marketing is a revenue-model tool that can be utilized to establish a successful business while creating outstanding wealth. In order to increase your affiliate earnings, you should also consider learning how to mask your affiliate links and how to track which marketing methods provide the most revenue. Affiliate Marketing guarantees a fast ROI (Return of Investment) and for some Online Merchants and Services are the Sales generated through the Affiliate Channel making up a considerable percentage of their total online Revenue. An affiliate program is a marketing initiative, a sort of performance-based advertising, whereby the affiliate promotes the merchant's products/services, and in return and depending on the type of program, the affiliate receives a commission from, or shares revenue with the merchant for delivering sales, leads or traffic to the merchant's websites. Search Engine Page Inclusions with XML and ROR sitemaps for Google and Yahoo Search Bots Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns Web Banner campaigns Advertising Revenue through Affiliate Programs, Adsense, el al Each Marketing Company will pitch you the importance of their company's offering providing you the “winning formula for the Internet Selling Bonanza”. The results you will look for is the increased revenue the affiliate marketing program brought to your site. Well, we need to define affiliate marketing as a premise:” Affiliate Marketing is a system of revenue sharing between one site (the affiliate merchant) which features an ad or content designed to drive traffic to another site (the advertiser). In order to increase your affiliate earnings, you should also consider learning how to mask your affiliate links and how to track which marketing methods provide the most revenue. So in this introduction to becoming an online marketing affiliate, I am going to give you a basic explanation of what marketing really is, and how you can use it to maximize your revenue online. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of people who think about affiliate marketing take advantage of it because they don’t know where to start and don’t have money on hand to pay for a product that teaches them how. Even if you don’t have a physical product to sell, you can still make money online marketing other people’s products, either through Direct Sales, Affiliate Marketing or Drop Shipping. Anyone can make money online, but you need to turn a profit to stay in business and have the ability to make affiliate marketing a full time job. Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates. Always incorporate product reviews on your affiliate marketing website so you can pre-sell them the initial benefits. Specifically, this is not a book for beginners, you have to know the lingo and be somewhat familiar with online affiliate marketing to enjoy the full benefits. The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before. And they get all these benefits by simply getting involved in affiliate marketing.
source :
http://www.articlepros.com/online_business/affiliate_programs/article-191040.html

How A Google Affiliate Can Use Curiosity To Get More Clicks And More Dollars

Most Google affiliates do not know that curiosity is one of the strongest of human incentives. It has been used to sell countless products and services for centuries. This is the reason why you should ask yourself he question, is there enough curiosity at my Google affiliate site?

Curiosity will get you sales and it will certainly get you plenty of clicks on your Google affiliate sites. But how do you generate curiosity without making visitors to your site feel cheated? Or feel that you have not provided enough information? Actually there is nothing that can kill the popularity of a site faster than most visitors to a site getting either of these two sentiments towards a site.

Use Headlines To Generate Curiosity At Your Google Affiliate Sites

Do your Google affiliate headlines create enough curiosity? Or do they simply tell the whole story so that nobody bothers to click on them to read more? Headlines are critical to the amount of clicks that a person is able to achieve at their Google affiliate site. Firstly enough curiosity in a headline will get visitors in droves flocking at your site. Once they are there, chances of them clicking on any of your ads will heavily depend on how long they stick around. And how long they stick around will lean heavily on how much content they get to read while they are there.

Whether your Google affiliate site is a blog or website, it will have several headlines to your articles displayed on your home page. Most people are terribly busy and hurried when they are online. The truth is that there is too much to see and too little time available to see it. What this means is that visitors to your site will be extremely selective on what they end up clicking on.

The more curiosity you create in your headlines, the longer they will stay, and the more questions that will be created on their minds. The result of this will be many more clicks at your Google affiliate site.

Answer Questions Adequately but Ask Others To Generate Curiosity At Your Google Affiliate Sites

Give valuable useful information in your Google affiliate site content but make sure that in doing so, you create other questions and thus more curiosity in your readers and hunger for more information. Have you ever noticed that when you find some really valuable information on a subject, it encourages you to look for even more information? This puts visitors to a site in just the right mood to click on one or two interesting Adsense ads that they see.

Use Links To Other Sites To Generate Curiosity At Your Google Affiliate Sites

I have found that my Google affiliate sites, which have plenty of links leading to other sites, tend to achieve many more clicks, than those that are packed with only content and few or no links to other sites. It all comes down to the curiosity levels created by giving your content in the form of brief text and links rather than detailed content with no links.

Use text Links Within The Content To Generate Curiosity At Your Google Affiliate Sites

Text links buried deep inside interesting content work like a dream. The main reason is probably the fact that they do look like ads. But one of the reasons has to be the curiosity most of these text links tend to create in a reader. You can use these effective text links to get more traffic to your Google affiliate sites. More traffic to your content-packed but curiosity-filled Google affiliate sites will mean many more clicks at your Adsense ads displayed and much more cash generated for you.

Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Get his weekly ezine packed with information to rapidly increase your Adsense earnings NOW. He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Kyalo