Posts About ‘Google’

How I Lost My Adsense Account

Google-AdSense-banned

We all screw up once in a while. After all, we are ‘only’ human. This post is about how I made a mistake, the high punishment I got for making that mistake and the lessons which you can learn from being ‘ignorant’.

A few months ago I got an e-mail from Google. It said that I had violated the Adsense terms at that from that moment on, my Adsense account was banned. I was taken out of Adsense. At that point I had no idea why.

Now you have to know that I never used Adsense that much. I had set up an account I think about 6 or 7 years ago. I had put it on a small personal site which only had a few visitors a month. In a later stage I had put the Adsense on a different site but didn’t do much with it. In total I think I never made more than a 100 maybe 200 dollars on Adsense. (more…)

Updated: Will A +1 Get A Page Indexed Even When Blocked by Robots.txt?

google-plus-one-1-button-sites

Please read the addition made at the bottom of this post as well as the comments on how this post evolved.

The post was published quickly as I was excited to share my findings from a recent “test” I was working on. The way I reported on this test was flawed and I rushed to conclusions about the degree of the finding. It is now clear to me that the contents of the test page have not been indexed.

I have left the post live and relatively unchanged to demonstrate the fact that I clearly made a mistake here, I’m willing to acknowledge that fact and there is plenty that both myself and others can learn from this post (primarily, how not to run and report on an experiment). The mistakes made were a result of over excitement rather than any intention to misinform and I sincerely apologise for my mistakes.

I was hoping to have the evidence to include this in my last post when I stated that there were some major concerns with Google+, but I can now say with certainty: Google will ignore Robots.txt and index a page* that you have specifically blocked once the page has received a +1.

My concern was two-fold after having read this in Google’s FAQ on Google+ in that the wording suggests that either: a. any page that contains the +1 badge could be indexed (still possible) or that b. any page that has been +1′d could be indexed (now confirmed*) (more…)

Weighing Up Google+ – What You (& Your Clients) Should Know

imagesource: reliablenetworks.co.uk

Now that many of us in the search marketing space have come to terms with some of the dilemmas associated with Google Search Plus Your World (GSPYW), Google’s new privacy policy and the endless stream of figures coming out of Google celebrating the number of “users” of the Google+ platform it’s high time that brands and sites of all shapes and sizes start weighing up whether participating in Google+ is right for them (if they’ve not already done so).

I will make a few points up front that will hopefully help you decide whether or not Google+ is right for you and your site, but I will also raise some key concerns with indexation and potential manipulation of competitor search results that I have not seen widely covered thus far. (more…)

Google Fined in France For Abusing Dominant Position

Bottin Cartographes, Rue Édouard Nieuport, Suresnes, France - Google Maps

Things are not really going Google’s way in the first weeks of January so it seems. At least, if you look at the outside perspective of things. From the inside they did some pretty nifty things with the launch of Search Plus Your World for example.

From the outside however we have seen complaints about privacy, complaints about abusing their own products to push their own products and many other little hick ups which led us to think Google might be trying to kill themselves.

In the series of ‘ouch that hurts a little’ Google can add another to the list. A ruling Tuesday in a Paris court found Google guilty of abusing the dominant position of Google Maps. (more…)

Google+ Now Available For Teenagers

google_plus_age_warning

Bradley Horowitz, Vice President Product Management Google+, has announced that teenagers are now allowed to sign up for the network. This means that Google+ is now open to a whole new group of potential users because before this announcement you’ve had to be at least 18 in order to join.

In most countries you now have to be at least 13 to use the service. In some countries the minimum age is higher, in the Netherlands for example it’s 16 and in Spain and South Korea 14. These are now the same requirements Facebook has when it comes to age regulations. (more…)

Google Confirms Panda Update 3.2: A “Data Refresh”

panda-shower

SEO’s have been noticing fluctuations again over the past week or so, suggesting that another Panda Update might be around the corner. Today Google has confirmed to SearchEngineland they indeed have done a new ‘Panda Update’, which is numbered as being Panda Update 3.2.

Searchengineland says Google has confirmed that they have done a ‘data refresh’ about a week ago. This means that there were not made any algorithmic changes, just another run through by Google, a so called ‘minor update’.

The last Panda Update was from last November and that was also a minor update. Google did the last bigger update in October.

Larry Page Tells Employees: Understand Search Plus Your World or Leave

larry-page

Google launch of Search Plus Your World has lead to a lot of discussion on different levels. There is the “do we want to get this much personalized?” question, there is the FTC “is Google favoring their own products too much” question and there is a privacy question floating around, but most of all its the “Has Google turned Evil?” question.

The mantra which used to define Google, ‘do no evil’ seems to have turned against them on the public opinion, or at least that of the tech industry. That could really hurt Google as a brand, but there is one other area in which Google could be hurting: the employees. Are the happy with Google changes? And what if they’re not, does that matter? One thing is clear for them it’s: follow the leader (Page) or leave. (more…)

When Larry Met Sergey – Interactive Infographic

Online PhD made a interactive infographic which starts with “When Larry Met Sergey”. The guide, embedded below takes you through the history of Google highlighting al the major milestones starting at the moment that Larry (22) and Sergey (21) meet at Stanford University in 1995 when the internet just had 16 million users. (more…)

What Google Revenues Might Mean to the SEO Industry

internet-money

Last week Google announced that their Q4 revenue in the UK surpassed $1 billion. While this didn’t impress Wall Street a great deal it does show that ad spend in the UK search sector is very healthy indeed. See a breakdown of international numbers here. Another interesting stat that was corroborated widely by many PPC agencies was that the number of clicks rose significantly in the fourth quarter yet the amount they charged per click fell by 8%. So what does all this mean to the SEO industry?

In my opinion SEO is still very much the poor neighbour of the search market. SEO traffic is often viewed as “free” traffic which simply isn’t the case, it needs budget to deliver outstanding results. The fact that you can measure the ROI similarly often also lands on deaf ears. Adwords, it seems, is an easier sell yet in most cases a solid SEO campaign will deliver far more ROI than a similar budget placed in PPC. A client may not get full value in the first month but once the traffic intersects it keeps growing unlike the fairly flat curve that a PPC campaign often generates. I’m not going to turn this into a SEO vs. PPC post though, they both work. (more…)

Google Adds Nicknames to Google+ (Not Pseudonyms!)

nickname

When Google first launched Google+ there was a lot of rumor about the ‘real name policy’ which Google uses. You are only allowed to sign up to Google+ (and now to all Google products at once) with your real identity. Using a pseudonym is not allowed.

Google now launches a new feature to Google+ which will allow users to add a nickname to their Google Profile. Note though that the nickname is not the same as a pseudonym. Setting up an anonymous Google+ account will still not be possible. (more…)

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