While Google’s hands may (or may not) be pretty clean in these respects, the company continues to press ahead with initiatives that may be more likely to generate the kind of legitimate, hard evidence, formal complaints that regulators will use to exert control over Google’s stranglehold on the internet search process.

Google Linking Product Usage

One of the things the legal system hates to see is when giant companies use their power to force services or products upon other companies or consumers. This not only limits innovation, it costs other potentially powerful businesses in ways that neither politicians nor judges approve of. Intel, for example, was forced to refine the way it sells computer chips after forcing manufacturers to accept terms that made it impossible to use AMD chips, even if they were better for a specific usage.

Google has made a subtle change to the way they handle results from their dominate search platform. Although the company claims it is making the changes for privacy reasons, there is an exception big enough to drive a truck through that points directly to the beginnings of tying less dominant products to the company’s monopoly product in order to stifle competition.

Users logged into Google will have their searches encrypted by default. On the surface, this sounds perfectly reasonable. However, what this means is that the owners of websites visited by users from searches will not longer be able to see what the exact keywords were that led to the visitor finding the website.

For example, these days, if someone searches for freelance writer and they end up on my freelance writing website at ArcticLlama.com, I get a report that says the user came to my website from Google and that the search that led him to my website was freelance writer. This is useful information for me, because it shows why and how people end up at my website. It can also offer a reason for unexpected things that happen.

My freelance writing business is named ArcticLlama, so when I found a funny joke in the form a Llama Font, I wrote a little post about it and put it up on my website. A month or two later my site got a lot of extra traffic. Since I hadn’t done anything, that I was aware of, out of the ordinary, I wondered why there were more traffic to my website. Had a popular website linked to me? Was there an article I wrote that went viral? Was there a serial killer our there with the same name? Had Brian Nelson just won a million dollars and people were desperately trying to find me?

As it turns out, it had nothing to do with me after all. Upon looking at my traffic logs and Google Analytics, I was able to see that one of the top keywords for users coming from search engines was "llama font". The joke font had gotten popular and people were finding my article about it on Google. It was good information to know so that I didn’t make wrong assumptions.

As a website owner I have no inalienable right to a person’s search keywords per se, and therefore, Google’s decision to encrypt outgoing traffic in such a way that I will no longer see why keywords bring visitors to my website isn’t something that I have any standing to complain about, except Google isn’t doing it properly.

Instead, Google has a very big exception to the rule. If you are a paying advertiser on Google and someone comes to your website from a Google search, then the company gladly hands over the keywords that brought that user to your website.

In other words, If you buy something from Google, then Google will give you something free that no one else can give you and that no one else gets unless they buy from Google AdWords.

Note to Senate committee: If you don’t want to look like you are just chasing after the biggest kid on the block for no reason, start paying attention to these kinds of things. Keywords are valuable SEARCH information and Google just locked them down so that only the people who buy from Google’s ADVERTISING group are allowed to see them. Vertical integration by monopolies is a no no.

Google Abusing Monopoly Power? is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

I don’t do much (Ok, none) buying of ads via Google’s AdWords platform. However, an AdSense publisher I find it very useful to stay up to date on AdWords program features and developments. Just like a T.V. executive must have a firm grasp on what advertisers want in a T.V. show — and, more importantly, the audience it delivers — a successful online writer needs to have a grasp on what advertisers want in a website, and the readers it delivers.

What I have noticed is how many AdWords advertisers do a very poor job in using exclusions to keep their ads properly targeted. For advertisers paying per impression (CPM), this is throwing money down the drain, pure and simple. Even for cost per click (CPC) poorly targeted ads are likely to have poor conversion ratios and do nothing but chew up your online ad budget faster.

Negative Keywords for Better Ad Campaigns

The big national advertisers and the ads from online-focused endeavors tend to use the negative keywords feature of Google AdWords to exclude poor matches from eating up their ad dollars. Local businesses and those that are not as online savvy tend to be the ones who make poor choices in this regard. More specifically, local small businesses need better negative keywords to make their advertising perform well.

Here is an example.

I happen to live in Denver, Colorado. So far, no problem there.

I also happen to write a lot about computers, including Microsoft Windows.

Can you see the potential problem coming?

Take a quick look at the ads displayed on this very webpage. See any ads for a Denver company that sells or installs Windows? Glass windows, not software windows?

There might be some of those ads there right now, and there might not. I never know what ads will appear at any given time and it is completely in the control of Google, not me. However, I have seen on previous articles advertisements that seemed strangely out of place only to realize that the issue is improper use of negative keywords. In this instance, Denver window companies would do well to use microsoft as a negative keyword, especially considering that in the technical world of online publishing, it is at least 50-50 that on a given webpage, the text refers to the software and not the glass used in houses.

As an advertiser, there may be a fear that using negative keywords will exclude your ad from somewhere you want it to be. While that is always a concern, there are so many places for ads to be displayed that most advertisers have trouble with the dollars side of the equation and not the display side. Err on the side of too many negative keywords and adjust from there. You’ll find your ad budget goes further and your conversion ratios will go up.

Oh, and just as an aside, it works out better for us publishers too because people are so much more likely to click on a related ad than a random one that is poorly matched to the content.

Use AdWords Negative Keywords to Target Ads Better is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

Amazon.com made a change to its Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program. In an email I received today, Amazon says that it will no longer pay referral fees to people who send users to the homepage of Amazon via paid search advertising.

I didn’t really know anyone who did this, but I knew it happened.  Basically, what you would do is buy ad space on certain searches.  For example, you might have an AdWords campaign on Google where you placed an advertisement on the search results for HP laptop keyboards or something like that.  Then, when a user searched for that phrase, your ad would be one of the ads on the side.  If they clicked the ad, it sent them to www.amazon.com where they might buy the keyboard, or something else altogether.

The sneaky part of this system is that you get the referral fee if someone buys ANYTHING within a certain amount of time from your referral.  You get a higher referral for a specific products, but this is obviously a volume game.

The way to make money for doing nothing is to get good but cheap keywords and search phrases.  That way, you pay almost nothing for all of those ads.  The amount of money you get from Amazon more than covers the expense, and you make a nice profit.

Apparently those days are over. 

Score One for the Good Guys

This change is actually a victory for legitimate content providers, legitimate businesses, and legitimate advertising.  Advertisers no longer have to compete (pay more for) ads that are placed by people who aren’t actually advertising anything.  Content providers no longer have to worry about vague, low converting ads driving down their AdSense revenue or getting them smart priced.  And businesses, like Amazon, don’t have to pay for something that isn’t giving them any value.

It will be interesting to see, if anyone follows along.

P.S. I find it interesting that virtually every piece of clip art in Microsoft’s Clip Organizer under the search “research” is either a test tube or a person at a microscope. 

No one but biology guys do research?

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Amazon Associates,Affiliate Programs,Online Marketing,Making Money Online,Online Ads

Amazon Associates,Affiliate Programs,Online Marketing,Making Money Online,Online Ads

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Amazon Associates No Longer To Pay for Referrals From Paid Search is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC