Google: The world’s number 1 (sucking) Search Engine?
March 8, 2009 by Big Internet Marketing
Filed under General
It’s Sunday and it is time to Kick Google a bit. Take note, this post is not to whine about Google but just to show you what can be done and how easy these things are. So, don’t misinterpret this post. I love Google cause they bring in dollars for free. But, that is besides the actual point of this post. 
You know, people say, Google is the world’s number one and best search engine due to its perfect ways to give the searcher what he or she wants. Sure… It gives a certain group of people what they want, but, mainly, they are NOT the searcher crowd. The people who think Google is the greatest are indeed us, the internet marketers… (And, the Big G’s group of stock holders of course)
Google states: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We work hard to return the most relevant results for every search we conduct. To that end, we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike.
(Every time I feel sad, I log on to the page where I can read that. Moments later I am laughing. It IS the biggest joke…) Then, they claim this:
Search Quality is the name of the team responsible for the ranking of Google search results. Our job is clear: A few hundreds of millions of times a day people will ask Google questions, and within a fraction of a second Google needs to decide which among the billions of pages on the web to show them — and in what order. Lately, we have been doing other things as well. But more on that later.
For something that is used so often by so many people, surprisingly little is known about ranking at Google. This is entirely our fault, and it is by design. We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse. Competition is pretty straightforward. No company wants to share its secret recipes with its competitors. As for abuse, if we make our ranking formulas too accessible, we make it easier for people to game the system. Security by obscurity is never the strongest measure, and we do not rely on it exclusively, but it does prevent a lot of abuse.
The details of the ranking algorithms are in many ways Google’s crown jewels. We are very proud of them and very protective of them. By some estimate, more than one thousand programmer/scientist years have gone directly into their development, and the rate of innovation has not slowed down. (source Official Google Blog)
What crap is this?
Ready to go down the rabbit hole just a tiny bit?
Google is the easiest search engine to manipulate. Seriously. And, if they claim to be, they ought to do something about that to actually be, or, stop claiming to be. That would be false advertising and we can not have any of that. And, then I do not mean what they are already doing: Just saying they do something and ARE the best…
To be honest, they have been hiding LONG enough behind their impeccable imago.
Google is a cash machine. Especially for internet marketers like myself. Sure, I will not state otherwise. Once you know how, Google is the place to cash in. But, saying that Google is the best search engine providing the searcher with only the best results related to the searcher’s inquiry is to be called utter bull shit.
Let me give you two examples:
First, looking at the keywords ‘private jet for sale‘ (Results 1 – 10 of about 317,000 for Private jets for sale)
To give you an idea: This is what other companies pay per click on Adwords: (And, obviously, the number one on this result page is NOT paying)
Around 3-4000 people searching. So, let’s say 1,000 click. That is more than $8k p/month on advertising costs that the Adwords advertisers need to pay, and that Omnijet in this case is saving. They get the traffic for free.
Sure, the results are targeted precisely to the keyword. Yet, my point in this part of the post is showing you how easy it is to manipulate going AGAINST Google’s TOS)
And, before I will show you the way the first page (with red circle) is build, I will show you part of Google’s TOS on for instance Keyword Stuffing:
Keyword stuffing
“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.
To fix this problem, review your site for misused keywords. Typically, these will be lists or paragraphs of keywords, often randomly repeated. Check carefully, because keywords can often be in the form of hidden text, or they can be hidden in title tags or alt attributes.
Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our webmaster guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.
Not familiar with keyword stuffing?
Simple, you basically make a html document, lash in as many on topic keywords as possible, hence ‘keyword stuffing’ and your page.
I know, I am not such a writer, so, to make it more clear to you, here is what Wikipedia says:
Keyword stuffing is considered to be an unethical search engine optimization (SEO) technique. Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in content. The repetition of words in meta tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags.
Keyword stuffing had been used in the past to obtain maximum search engine ranking and visibility for particular phrases. This method is completely outdated and adds no value to rankings today. In particular, Google no longer gives good rankings to pages employing this technique.
Hiding text from the visitor is done in many different ways. Text colored to blend with the background, CSS “Z” positioning to place text “behind” an image — and therefore out of view of the visitor — and CSS absolute positioning to have the text positioned far from the page center are all common techniques. By 2005, many invisible text techniques were easily detected by major search engines.
Ask nearly any black hat SEO marketer about keyword stuffing and they say it is passe and not effective anymore. But, is it?
So, based upon the above, Google does not allow, nor will it rank high, pages that practice keyword stuffing.
Have a look at the source code of the page and try to see, whether or not it is hard to determine if this page is using ‘keyword stuffing’ or not: (sorry for the huuuuge image… )
What? Me? Keyword stuffing? Noooooh, not me…
What do you think?
Well, I think this can be defined as ‘keyword stuffing alright. So, if we were to follow Google’s TOS, we should, once we find this out, report this to Google so that they can take these nincompoops out of the index.
Ha, guess what? I know someone who did report this site. Many times. Google does nothing. Google states that keyword stuffing can ‘ can harm your site’s ranking’ Then, how about the above results? How is that harming the site? If at all, it is harming other parties (stupid enough) to follow the Google TOS. It harms sites that pay $8k per month on Adwords for sure. (should it rank confirm Google’s TOS then ok. But, is it?)
Fair? Nope. Therefore, I think it is time Google stops hiding behind their so called imago.
Want another typical case? Why not, it involves a site of mine which does not participate in black hat techniques and is filled with relative (quality) content.
Sure, the site was made to rank high in order to make sales on the Howies Apprentice 3 launch coming Monday.
I watched this page as a hawk and saw it land on the #1 spot on the keywords ‘howies apprentice 3′ amongst others. I managed to do this following Google’s TOS at all times. Yes, it can be done.
Thing is, today I noticed my site was overtaken by someone else:
Hold on a minute. The second ranking is the basic ‘about’ wordpress page. How can THAT rank based on being quality and relative content?
Please… Have a look at the perfect on topic and high quality relevant posts that are to be seen: (PS: I could have copied the text, but I refuse to have such textual crap on my blog, therefore the pic:
What on earth is this? Sure, it is English… but.. wtf are they writing about?
Is this nice related and quality content that deserves to rank #1?
In my opinion, if we have to believe Google it shouldn’t. Unless there is some kind of secret message embedded that only customers who use Google and want to buy Howies Apprentice program 3 understand.
I certainly don’t understand it.
Of course I know how this page has been made. It took the owner less than 2 clicks to do. She, since I know her, then fires up software to get back links pointing to this crap site. She does this with submitting screen savers to software download sites and she does this buy firing this kind of content to massive blog networks all with references made to her site.
That my friends is the key to success it seems
Where there are black hat marketers who say keyword stuffing and screen saver submissions to rank are not effective anymore, Google seems to think different.
What do other bloggers say?
Just read on Shoemoney.com that not only the organic search results are attracted to spam and scraped sites. Ranking on Google has become a business as you can see on Problogger.
So, conclusion is this:
If you want to rank highly on Google following their TOS you can. You need not to worry taking over HIGH competitive keywords as easy as you may hope but doing it right you can beat millions of other competitors to it with the greatest ease. This is what I do and have made thousands of dollars with personally. My shit works. Period.
However,
The black hat techniques ‘she’ uses work as well and I have to say, even better.
The funny thing is this though.
I make way more sales then she does. She may rank well but her conversions stink. Trust me, I know.
So, another conclusion is that if you do not know the whole package on how it is done, you may rank well but won’t convert your visitors in to buyers. They simply go back to Google to find my site lol.
If you know how to convert but don’t know how to rank then you are still lost. Find the key to both of them and you’re smiling.
Anyone interested to know how this is done? I might just tell you how you can.
PS: I know there will be people saying that the keywords in the above examples are piss easy. to rank for …
Sure, I will be the first to agree. Yet, I have seen sites (I made) beating tens of millions of other sites in a matter of a day’s work. Once you know how, yes: too easy.
But, do you know how to convert those visitors too?
Another question I have is this:
What do you think of Google?
So, does Google Adsense Really Suck This Much?
February 12, 2009 by Big Internet Marketing
Filed under General
First of all, I am by far a big Adsense earner. I have several Adsense sites but the money I make with them is nothing to write home about. Yet, after a recent article I wrote on one of my sites apparently describing what happened to become the next sort of mini internet craze I came to the conclusion that landed me in to a situation where I had to ask myself whether or not Adsense had to suck. And, more importantly, if it was costing me FAR more than that it was bringing in…
Wait…
Adsense is something you make money with…
But, what if it is costing you? And, all the time you are so happy that you earn a few hundred dollar per month. But, could you not be earning thousands of dollars instead?
WITHOUT Adsense?
Don’t get me wrong. It is a great way for many people to simply earn some money online.
Some money…
But hey, it doesn’t take much effort! You sign up for Adsense, you pick your ad color matching your site(s) and you copy and paste their ad code into your sites with indeed the greatest ease.
Google then published content related ads right on your site. Once a person clicks on your ad you make cash. I am sure it is a great solution but recently I was forced to feel a bit different about it all… And, looking at it now, maybe for the better!
What it is that happened just didn’t feel good and made me doubt about Adsense and its possible successes normal people can have with it. And, whether or not there are better opportunities with which normal people can make a lot more money with…
I am sure there are those of you who still earn their full time income and a bit (thousands upon thousands so to speak) per month but I got quite disappointed in the whole Adsense program and am getting close to undertaking action in removing Adsense from all of my sites.
Let me explain what I mean with them and a bit more about how I came to this all:
As said, I wrote an article on one of my sites (news related) about something that became a little bit of an internet craze.
The article was one of the first articles to be mentioning about the possible UFO at the inauguration of President Obama. I had made print screens from the CNN video with the flying object clearly visible, adding to the post’s value. Considering the fact my site was a ‘newspaper themed site’ many people saw it as actual news I am sure.
At first, I did not do this out of commercial reasons but just to get my point of view out over something I had seen on the CNN camera. Something I felt could be news. You never know, you might hit something big…
I bookmarked the post on some sites and it sort of hit the main stream for a good few days resulting in more than 66,000 visitors in less than 3 weeks or so. Lots of sites decided to link to my article, certain news papers did and it was bingo. Traffic, traffic and traffic. It was craaazy.
Besides the fact that my site went offline for a while due to its bandwidth exceeding (which I never had before and luckily only lasted for 4 hours) I noticed something else what was rather disappointing.
Since the site initially did not have a commercial value to me as in such I was still curious to see what this traffic would bring in clicks and of course revenue.
The site in question is monetized with Adsense but has more of a different kind of purpose as to why I own it. It provides news and that is it for now. But, since none of my sites go un-monetized so to speak I placed Adsense. Some money is always better than none.
While I checked my Adsense stats daily a certain drop in income per click was clearly noticeably. This was about half way into the certain traffic spurt this site had received.
Where the site had one top day of $75 income out of Adsense clicks (With thousands of visitors per day, which is not much, I know… Actually pathetically low if you ask me…) the other days it would come to $50 or a bit less.
Until the day that brought the certain drop of income per click.
Not just some little drop, no… The traffic remained the same as in thousands per day , I received about the same amount of clicks yet, the daily income went to $12 or even less! That is not just sad, it is silly too. I mean, who possibly wants to earn that per click.
How close to insult can you get? 
So, as this is now an ongoing incident while we speak… In my opinion Adsense Really sucks.
The site still gets only a much smaller percentage of income per click as compared to what it used to do in the beginning and nothing on site has changed during the whole time. I also know that the UFO niche most probably is not the best paying one either yet a ‘certain drop’ of income from what it was making during those days is unexplainable to me.
It is not clear to me how that could have happened all of a sudden. Anyone here an idea that you would like to share about this?
Then of course, I know if you target the higher paid keywords you can make some serious money. And, in all fairness, I have sites totally targeted and niche related which bring in several dollars per click. But, it is in these segments that it is harder to compete. So, not always reachable for the starting marketer.
For instance, I own a site which is highly ranked on ‘private jet’ related keywords with surpluses of $4 per click. Since I have no jets this might as well be the only site I could imagine having Adsense on. Simply cause there is no affiliate program for private jets. (Well, there is eBay and some charter companies with affiliate programs but unfortunately in the private jet market they do not convert that good)
But, on these sites I do own with higher earning clicks it is also in these segments that I have noticed a drop of income per click. Anyone who has noticed the same?
Basically it can possibly become much worse…
Adsense does not only possibly suck, it potentially robs you from a lot of money as well. Imagine owning a site promoting online surveys. (You are welcome Elise 
) They pay something like $34 per sale and are popular by many people so I have heard. (I’ve used the example of Online surveys for no other reason than to be able to plant a link to Elise since she is such a nice person )
But anyways…
Eager as you are wanting to make money you start building your website or blog and since you have heard of the BIG Google and the Adsense (With which you can make milllllllllions of dollars) you of course go ahead and sign up for an Adsense account.
You then spend time to actually get targeted traffic from the search engines and are welcoming people to your online survey site who are indeed looking for an online survey program with their credit card in their hand, ready to buy.
Great! The hardest part done, you have landed a visitor interested to buy!
Then they see your clever positioned ad (Since Google even tells you where to put it) and…
Click …
Your visitor just clicked on your Google Adsense ad.
Congratulations my friend! You just earned yourself around $0.85.
But, he clicked AWAY from your site and you have earned Google around $1.50 on the go and even worse, most possible, you have earned the person who was using Adwords to advertise on your Adsense ad a nice commission of about $34 or so. Minus his cost per click of $2.35 is a net profit of $31.65
So, basically, you have been robbed $33.15 by making the click yes, but not making the sale.
So, my question is (and it is one I am seriously asking myself AND testing out):
Am I better off without Adsense?
If you look at the above image, hmm.. maybe we are! These are two screen shots taken from Adsense and a clickbank account over the same period of time. Where Adsense recorded 45 page views this resulted in 3 clicks. Within these same 45 page views Google saw 26 hops where made. (Hops are clicks to the vendor site recorded by Clickbank)
Clearly, the $0.60 is less exiting to welcome in to your bank account than its counterpart income, the $22.84 that was made while making the sale yourself, resulting in a lot more profit!
I think the question you need to ask if you have as well Adsense as your own promotions going on what it is that makes your visitor click on the Adsense ad INSTEAD of your promo.
And, why he or she does not click on your promotion making you $34 per sale? Instead it is a meagerly $0.85 you gain with Adsense.
Ok, cool once you get thousands of clicks.
But, what if you could make hundreds of sales out of those thousands of clicks instead?
Sure, easy to solve this, we remove Adsense. From now on it won’t happen again! No more deceiving click away from Google.
But, if you still don’t know why visitors do not click your promotions on your site to buy the products and simply close your site to go back on Google for another search; you have yet another problem.
Because now you earn nothing.
I decided to go and do some testing with sites that get the same kind of traffic in niche and amount and have one site with and one site without Adsense. I used to earn money with Adsense and product sales on those sites so I can compare it after a while. Does the income without Adsense drop or will it generate more sales simply because the visitor has no other choice than to open up one of the offers.
Does a site without Adsense earn more than a site with Adsense?
It may be simple for some, but if you are unable to make your site’s own advertisements and promotions (read affiliate programs) convert better (with or) without Adsense you get a lot of site closers.
They will not click and buy.
Once again, if you would have had Adsense on there they might have clicked that earning you some cents.
However, how do we make our sites so that we do not need Adsense but that it will look after the $34 or more per sale commissions that are coming in from the sales that the site directly is making?
So…
Does Adsense suck THAT much that it in fact costs you money? The more I look at it, the more I think it does.
Although I come to the conclusion that this does not entirely depend on Adsense. Once you are able to make your site convert better with direct offer promotions instead of Adsense, you WILL be better off. This also means that if you are not able to do so you will lose money.
There are people who will argue that it is all in the numbers of traffic (targeted) and the higher paid niche markets. However, in most cases, even if you had thousands of visitors to your sites, if you could divert them directly to an offer YOU promote, you do not only cut out the middle man (men) you also make hordes of more money, so that one does not go up.
So, what is it that I still have Adsense on my sites for?
I don’t know. It does look good. Kind of gives trusted look. Will that be it?
I just do not know… (yet)
I said you will lose money if you are not able to make your site convert better but, this count as well for not trying to improve and answering the question.
If you do not try it for your own sites and you would be able to improve conversion then you too lose out on more money as well. Or?
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