Pro-SEO

Though i haven't seen this myself, I have seen a number of people reporting to have seen an italic font being used sometimes on the title in AdSense adverts.

There has been no official word from AdSense at present, so i would guess this feature is currently in testing and they are going to be monitoring what effect this has on CTR and what publishers/advertisers think about it.

initial responses seem positive, Nobody has complained about it and many have said the italic font on AdSense ads is "eye catching".

This may demonstrate a positive aspect of "ad blindness", Ad blindness also means very small changes to how the ads are displayed could have a large impact on how noticeable the ads are. Because we are used to seeing the same ad format over and over again if that format is changed, Even slightly, It may mean people suffering ad blindness have their attention drawn towards the changes.

It also may be the beginning of a new era where AdSense allows publishers to pick exactly how their ads are displayed, I wouldn't be surprised if soon advertisers are able to pick what font their ad is displayed in.

Have any AdWords advertisers seen an option in their control panel to have their ads displayed in italic font? Or does anyone have a screen shot of this new italic font format?

Labels: adsense, adwords, google

It's official, You can ask your visitors to click your AdSense ads, But only the referral products.

Unlike with regular CPC AdSense, where you get paid per click, You can encourage users to click your referral links - Firefox with Google toolbar, Google pack and AdSense referrals - By telling them how good that product is, Drawing attention to the link, Changing the style, size, colour and font of the text link, And even by embedding the link directly into your content.

Why the difference in policies? it's simple. With regular AdSense you get paid on a per-click basis, Where as with the referral ads your get paid on a PPA (pay per action) basis, Which means the users have to sign up or download/install something before you get paid.

Be aware that you can not encourage people to click referral links and download products for "deceitful" reasons such as "to support your site" or to "make me some money".

If Google later introduce a pay-per-action system for AdWords i wonder if they will exorcise the same policy for adverts that are not their own.

Labels: adsense, adwords, google

The link: operator sucks, Right? Well luckily we don't have to worry about this inaccurate crapshoot "advanced operator" anymore.

Google webmaster tools has launched a tool that will report all of your backlinks on Google, Not just the small selection the link: operator decides to tell you about.

How to use it:
1 - Log in to your webmaster tools account and click the site you want to check backlinks for


2 - Click the "links" tab

Labels: backlinks, google, seo

I have noticed a lot of confusion regarding backlinks in Google when people use the link: operator lately. A lot of people get worried if their backlinks have dropped in Google.

Google say "The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL."

Some people have read this to mean "Link: will list all webpages linking to the homepage", Which is untrue. The link: operator lists a small selection of links pointing to a page in no specific order.

If Google showed 200 links one day and 100 the next it doesn't mean they only know about 100 backlinks and it doesn't mean they have started ignoring half of your backlinks. The amount of backlinks Google shows depends on which datacenter you are querying with that search.

Google use all backlink in their algo as soon as they find them, Regardless how many links are displayed in a link: search.

Labels: google, seo