July 6, 2005 Archives

In the past, we wrote an entry named GoogleGuy Wants AdSense Spam Sites Out. Some of the AdSense spam, scraper sites, click fraud and so on were out of hand. Jenstar at WebmasterWorld posted a thread named Reporting click fraud to Google AdSense, which is a shorter version of what she blogged on under the title Reporting publisher click fraud to Google just got easier.

It is true, it got very easy to report spam. All you need to do is click on the text at the bottom right of the Google AdSense ad that reads "Ads by Google" or "Ads by Goooooogle". Then it pops open a new window, at the bottom of that window it reads "Give Google feedback on Ads by Google". By including the phrase "invalid clicks" in the comments field (to report click fraud), it will be routed to the correct team.

Above is an image of a typical Google AdSense Ad, where I highlighted the link you click on to report such activity.

There is a wonderful thread at WebmasterWorld named Which are the leading search engines in Europe? I am not sure how statistically valid all of the responses are, but these are real people with real experience talking about which engines are the most popular in the European market.

UK Engines: Google, Yahoo, ASKjeeves, MSN,
UK Portals: Wanadoo, NTL, Tiscali, Lycos, BTopenworld

Netherlands Engines: Google (~85%)
Netherlands Portals: startpagina.nl , planet.nl

Germany Engine Stats: Google 81.6% , Yahoo 4.5% , MSN Web-Suche 4.3% , AOL Suche 2.5% , T-Online 1.6% , WEB.DE 1.2%

Sweden - Besides for G,Y,M,A eniro.se
Denmark - Besides for G,Y,M,A eniro.dk
Norway - Besides for G,Y,M,A kvasir.no

The thread goes on...

A new thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named DMOZ Top Listed Domains discusses a list published a while ago at www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/dmoz-listings.html.

At the same time, a new thread on this topic was started at Cre8asite Forums.

When I became a DMOZ editor, one of the most obvious things to look for or ask yourself on a submission was: Does this domain name exist already in the ODP? If it does, then you have to be really strict about if a new (additional) listing should be allowed it. I assume this is very subjective and some editors are more easy going then others.

The conversation touches on that topic in both threads. Overall, the Open Directory Project has been getting lots of negative attention in the past several months.

Randfish does it again, he organized a question and answers session with the MSN Search Term at SEO Chat. The thread is named Ask Questions Directly to the MSN Search Development Team. It is a great opportunity for those who have questions, to get them answered. MSN is a serious engine and should not be taken lightly.

Last night I received a demo of a new product that Hitwise released this morning. The product is now available at http://www.keywordintelligence.com/.

Normally, I would not blog product promotions but this keyword research tool is (1) incredibly powerful and (2) very affordable. The press release is available and pdf with the features.

The three major components of the product at:
(1) Search Term Suggestions - provides the most popular search term variations for any word
(2) Industry Search Terms - provides the most popular search terms for over 160 industries
(3) Search Term Portfolios - an easy to use tool to manage keyword lists

Basically, this is a lower end version of Hitwise's master products. It is an affordable, but rich data set of information which you can use for your clients. The data is superior to other keyword research tools because they can tell you two more important things than other products (might be more then two):

(1) The "Success Rate" which is basically the click through rate from the SERPs to the page. You can use this data to not only see which search terms are most popular, but which drive a larger number of clicks.

(2) "Industry Search Tool" provides a method for you to search for the most popular search terms within an industry. An excellent started for brainstorming.

The Portfolio is a great way to organize all this data and build personalized reports with "Volume" and "Success Rate" marks. Not only this, but you can compare different markets (US, UK, Australia, and so on). Very powerful and worth taking a look at.