Google Media Bot is Smarter Than Me

Stumble Make AdSense?

December 7th, 2007

I recently wrote a blog that turned out to be pretty popular with the social bookmarking crowd(SBC), visits totaled into the thousands. At the end of a few days of continuous traffic via sites like Stumbleupon, Reddit and others I got curious as to why the AdSense for content ad block I placed in the article wasn’t converting anything, nothing, notta, zip, zilch.

Balancing traffic recorded via Google Analytics and ad impressions recorded by the AdSense report for the ad channel didn’t add up. No big surprise, 90% of the web surfers who visited the page were using the FireFox browser and it appears half of those were using an ad filter plug-in. Mybloglog stats reported clicks were occurring but not being reflected by my AdSense account - again, no big surprise as this has been reported by a few bloggers and is even a thread in Google Groups.

It has been well documented the traffic from social bookmarking sites (SBS) doesn’t produce AdSense for Content so what is new?

First an interesting observation.

I have one keyphrase that for my site is the “coup-de-gra”, the term for which I dream of owning. Needless to say I track my position for the term often. For the couple of years I have made movement from page three to two and ultimately page one of Google. Hung in the number 9 position up until about 6 months ago when I jumped to number 5 where I remained until the 30th of November. On the 30th I jumped to number three! I assure you there was much rejoicing, we wore hats, drank champagne and truly enjoyed the serious up tic in traffic the movement of just the 2 spots delivered.

It was about this time that the blog traffic settled back down. It started to feel as if a large man with a hammer was inside my head making every attempt to pound my eyes out from the inside. Kinda like the headache you get when your in Italy and you drink the 5 liter jug of wine, you know, the one with the screw on cap. It wasn’t the cheap champagne that was causing this headache - my position for my coveted keyphrase went back to number 5! It wasn’t fair! I only held third position for 3 days - and it was over a WEEKEND! NOOO!

I then remembered a test that was run back before the summer about the Google bounce rate and how you may be able to manipulate a search term’s ranking based on popularity of your site in relation to the term. Problem was my blog article had nothing to do with the phrase in question… Coincidence?

Next thing I noticed was my Google Referral 2.0 ads actually received clicks during the SBC traffic. Because clicking on a referral ad does not produce an income until the person clicking completes a predetermined action on the advertisers site the “click filters” appear disabled. I suggest when you write an article you believe has the potential to drive a lot of the SBC to your site use a relevant Google Referrals 2.0 ad.

Google Referrals 2.0 is a pay-per-action, publishers don’t get paid for the click (unless this is what the advertiser set as one of the required actions) - payment comes when the clicker completes a predetermined action on the advertisers web site. Some advertisers select one action, may be a purchase has to occur or just a form has to be completed - or the advertiser can select a series of events like this example; click through = $.76 - completed form = $7.82 and purchase = $80.00. I have only seen a couple instances of advertisers selecting click through as an action, my guess is the click through via Referrals in those instances were cheaper. The Referrals 2.0 program is very beneficial to the advertiser if done correctly as I pointed out in a SEO blog guest appearance I made a while back.

I do assure you however those $80 conversions make you do a double take the first couple of times they happen. Not all advertisers have this type of payout but I use this to illustrate a danger in using the Google Referrals 2.0 ads. It is really tempting, I mean really freakin tempting, to place the high paying ads on your site, take my advice on this one as it was hard for me to get it through my thick skull - ONLY PLACE RELEVANT ADS! This advice seems easy to follow, what is relevant? It is hard to see a potential $150 payout and convince yourself it will not work in your content no matter what the ad’s subject matter. In my case, as I suggested, Google’s Media bot was much smarter than me… but fear not, I think I got a handle on it now with a few conversions a day - me likes 2.0

So since I decided to delve out advice about placing AdSense I thought it would be a good idea to completely re-read the terms of service. While reading the definitions and program policies I found a confusing entry. In the first example it describes what Google AdSense Referrals are;

What is Google AdSense Referrals?

“Referrals is a feature of AdSense that allows website publishers to increase their revenue while increasing their users’ awareness of useful products and services.”

I find this definition contradictory to the AdSense program policy described here;

Google AdSense Program Policies

“You shall not promote or facilitate a Referral Event by any means other than displaying a Referral Button on the Site, unless expressly authorized in writing by Google (including by electronic mail).”

I contacted the Google AdSense Team about his conundrum and the answer in short was you can endorse and recommend products you refer but you cannot make reference of where on the page you would need to click to go and get the product.

Hope that makes sense… Seems to be crystal clear direction to me!