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Home::ECommerce
Think Like Google with AdSense
Author : Mark Meshulam
Copyright 2006 Mark Meshulam
A conversation with my son Matt confirmed my suspicion. The
Google AdSense ads I recently installed on my website
www.poingo.com are actually giving me an insight into what the
Google search engine spider cherry-picks from of my web page
content.
It's not hard to imagine: AdSense ads are context sensitive.
They exist as scripts on the web page. In order to be context
sensitive, the script must initiate an indexing when the page is
opened and refreshed.
Is there any reason to think that the indexing process performed
by Google AdSense would be different from the process used by
Google the search engine? None I can think of. Both indexing
processes need to do the same job: extract core meaning from a
page and compare it to a database.
In AdSense, the database contains paid ads waiting for a
relevancy match. In search, the database holds keywords. But the
meaning extracted from the web page could easily be identical.
Therefore, one might get a peek into the Google indexing
algorithm by reviewing a series of web pages which display
AdSense ads, and studying the ad content.
I studied the 30 or so pages on my site at www.poingo.com and
checked the AdSense ads on each page for relevancy to the page
content. Results were quite interesting.
The site contains a number of pages which present the features
of various software or service offerings. Verbiage on these
pages tends to be sparse and oriented toward key concepts.
On these product presentation pages, AdSense did a great job of
extracting meaning.
For example, the page offering Poingo Email Printer, software
which creates PDFs, was accompanied by AdSense ads which all
pertained to PDF conversion. Text on the page was minimal, but
the page title contained "create PDF", there were 3 keywords
metatags containing "PDF", and the first paragraph contained
"convert PDF" in bold.
>From an indexing standpoint the page spoon-fed meaning to
Google, and obviously there was a wellspring of PDF software
advertisers for Google to find in its database. A match (or five
matches to be exact) made in heaven!
Similarly, pages offering FTP software and an Outlook add-in
received highly relevant companion ads. Again, words on the page
were sparse, but page title and paragraph text contained the
obvious words FTP and Outlook respectively, and Google AdSense
took the bait.
The three pages mentioned above offered essentially single
concept offerings. PDF. FTP. Outlook. No confusing multiple
choices.
When analyzing the page which offers Lightning Navigator, a
hotkey shortcut software with multiple features, AdSense picked
one feature, screen capture, to orient 3 of the 5 the companion
ads. Interestingly, screen capture is listed seventh on the list
of product features. It follows six other features which were
all keyword-optimized but ignored by AdSense.
>From previous research, I recall that keywords pertaining to
screen capture such as "print screen", "screen shot", and
"screen grab" receive many more clicks per day than other
features such as "automatically create email" and "internet
shortcut".
Apparently in this example, AdSense was quickly able to select
the key concept for which it had the most ads to apply, and then
threw most of its ad eggs in this basket. The interaction
between page and AdSense now becomes more interesting. Inventory
of relevant advertisers becomes a factor in selecting key
concept. That makes sense. You can't post an ad if it's not in
the queue.
The non-screen capture ads on the Lightning Navigator page are
as follows: 1 for shortcuts (highly relevant) 1 for surveillance
equipment (huh??)
I have no doubt that there is a reason the surveillance
equipment ad appeared, but it was not visible to me in the text
of my page, the ad itself, or the page which the ad linked to.
Mystery abounds on this one.
If your eyes are not bleary yet, stick around. There is more to
tell.
A sizeable portion of the Poingo website is the article section.
Here I publish articles about small business and people,
processes and technology in the workplace.
The articles were written without use of a keyword suggestion
tool. They are written in 100% non keyword optimized English.
What did Adsense do with these verbose index-elusive rants?
To appear scientific - after all, somebody might actually read
this - I developed a down-and-dirty rating scale. First I
counted the number of relevant ads (of 5 total) per page, then I
multiplied it by a subjective relevancy score scaled 1 through
5, where 5 is "frickin' good" and 1 is "obscure at best."
Therefore a page score of 25 (5 ads x relevancy score of 5)
would be a top score ("AdSense, you're seeing into my very
soul") and 0 would be ("We never talk anymore, You don't even
know me(sniff)"). Here is the scoring: Chart showing AdSense Ad
Relevancy for Articles AdSense scored an average of 10.5 out of
a possible 25 on these wordy, interesting but non optimized
articles. Yet in 7 articles out of 20, Google scored the coveted
"frickin' good" appellation. 35% of the articles were
"understood" with high accuracy.
Beyond that, there was a chasm of irreconcilable differences
leading ultimately to the vacuum of deep space. What does it
mean to us little folk waving our flags and trying to get
noticed on the web?
Keep your message simple and clean, boiled down to one or two
key concepts on a page. The spiders want to understand us but
they are kinda dumb. At least that's what Matt says.
For charts and data:
http://www.poingo.com/ART-think-like-google-with-adsense.htm
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