Is Cuil the next big threat to Google?

Ex-Googlers launch rival search engine which hopes to offer a more comprehensive way to search the web.  It is pronounced “cool” and expect to start accepting search requests today.  They claim to have 120 billion pages in its index.   If this is accurate it would put it at three times Google’s index.  Content analysis is going to be more in depth than other leading search engines.

It will be a tough road ahead to try and unseat Google at the top of the search engine market.   Many have tried before, but none have come even close to capturing the market share.  Somehow I don’t think that Google will be losing any sleep over it.

All about Adsense Profits – Part I

There really is only one way to earn money from AdSense. You create a website, and insert the AdSense code into the html pages. You then drive traffic to that site, and you earn money when people click on the ads that are being served by Google. That all sounds pretty easy, but there is more to it than that.

 

It is easy, but it takes more practice and experience than that. What you must consider is that you only earn a few cents when someone clicks on an ad. That amount can be as little as three cents or as much as five dollars. The most successful AdSense publishers are targeting keywords that pay the maximum amount of money.

 

These AdSense publishers use a variety of tools to find out what the high paying keywords are. These tools include keyword research tools, such as Word Tracker and Keyword Elite.

 

They spend a great deal of time researching those keywords, finding out what the top keywords are, in terms of number of people searching for them, and what word combinations are being used. These are words and phrases that they will target in the content of their AdSense sites.

 

Next, they determine which of those top keywords pay out the most money per click. Those who have been in the AdSense business for a while are not going to build sites that target keywords that  pay only three cents per click!

 

They are making a living, and three cents doesn’t go very far in putting food on the table.

 

These AdSense publishers use the tools that Google provides to help determine which keywords are paying the most to the publishers. Unfortunately, you won’t find these tools inside your Google AdSense account, but if you look into your Adwords account you will see them.

 

You see, Google has two programs: Google AdSense and Google AdWords. Those two programs work together. Business owners use Google AdWords to advertise their products and services. When you publish Google AdSense ads on your site, the ads that are being displayed are those that people using the Google AdWords program have paid Google to run.

 

Fortunately, it is free to set up a Google AdWords account. You just set it up, and start using the free tools that are provided and see how much bids are for the keywords.  The same keywords that you’ve discovered using keyword selection tools such as Word Tracker and Keyword Elite.

 

By doing this, you have access to the same information that the people who are paying for ads has, and this helps you to build more profitable AdSense websites.

 

This is a secret that Google won’t tell you about, and few AdSense publishers will share with you. Having a Google AdWords account is the key to finding out which keywords are going to pay you the most amount of money per click.

 

Choosing the right high paying keywords, however, isn’t all that there is to it. You must also have the traffic. Low traffic sites won’t make you a full-time living. This is why most publishers have multiple websites.

 

They find the top keywords in terms of number of searches, figure out the keywords from that list that pay the most amount of money per click, and then build sites accordingly.

 

A successful AdSense publisher may have sites on topics such as boating, hair growth, video games, making money online, etc. When you have multiple sites, you can make a nice living with a mid level amount of traffic to each site.

 

If you have hundreds of sites, which some publishers do, you can make a living even with low traffic. So, here is some insight: The more traffic you have per site, the fewer sites you will need to earn a living from AdSense.

 

 

What Is AdSense, Really?

 

 

 

In a nutshell, it is a profitable program that still gets overlooked by many who are just coming online to start a business, as well as those who have been online for years.

 

First, let’s take a look at exactly what AdSense is and what it is all about. AdSense is a program for webmasters which was implemented by Google a few years back.

 

Essentially, a webmaster (a person who owns and builds one or more websites) signs up for an account with the program, and once they are approved, they paste the Google AdSense code into the html pages on their websites.

 

Google then starts serving ads to those websites, based on the keywords that it finds in the text of the website page. When a visitor clicks on one of those ads, the webmaster earns money – usually a few cents for each click. However, when a site has a great deal of traffic, and when the webmaster knows which keywords are the most profitable to target, they can earn a substantial amount of money.

 

It sounds easy enough, but it’s not really that easy. First, you have to be approved – and Google is thorough. The good news is that once one site is approved, you have a Google AdSense account, and you do not have to seek Google’s approval to use AdSense on any other site that you own, as long as that site is within the Google’s TOS guidelines.

 

Once you are approved, you have to know which keywords to target – the ones that pay the most amount of money per click, and how to write (or have written for you) content that draws those high paying ads. Often, this is the hardest part for what are known as ‘AdSense publishers.’ 

 

Finally, you have to learn how to drive tons of high quality traffic to your AdSense site. Without the traffic, you won’t get any clicks, and without clicks, you won’t be earning any money.  Plus if it is low quality then you won’t have anyone clicking the ads.

 

This is the second hardest part of being an AdSense publisher. There really aren’t any secrets here – it is just a matter of learning to use some basic, proven traffic generating techniques.

 

You may have heard experts say that it isn’t profitable to build Google AdSense sites anymore. If you haven’t heard this, there will come a time when you will. But that really isn’t true. In fact, there are thousands of people just like you that are making very nice livings from the Google AdSense program.

 

Usually when a guru says that you should not use Google AdSense, they generally mean that you are better off not using it when you are promoting your own product, and your website is tightly focused on that product. However, you can use Google AdSense for a site that was built specifically for the AdSense program, or on sites that you are using to promote affiliate products.

 

You should also note that many successful AdSense publishers have more than one website. They typically have hundreds of websites, on a variety of topics on which they display the ads. However, there are also those that simply have one high traffic website, from which they earn revenue from the AdSense program.

 

Regardless of this, all AdSense publishers start with just one website, and grow from there, and this is what you will be doing as well. You have to get the basics down, and learn the secrets that surround the profitability of Google AdSense before you can be successful with multiple sites.

Will Microsoft’s new BrowseRank be the new Pagerank?

Microsoft researchers and academic collaborators detailed an idea this week it calls BrowseRank that seeks to bring more of a human touch to that assessment.   The classic Google Pagerank uses the number of incoming links as votes.   The more links your site has, then the more popular the site.   Unfortunately this method is prone to linkfarms that try and game the system.

Browserank replaces this link counting with a count of user browsing activity.   The more visits and longer a user stays on the page, then the more important the page is.   Right now it is still in the expiremental stage with Microsoft only using volunteers.   This begs the big question of what would happen if microsoft includes the Browserank tracking into a future version of internet explorer?

It would definitely be met with a lot of protest, but if it turns out to be a good indicator of website popularity, then Microsoft will have a huge advantage in the search engine results.   Of course Google could release their own method and include it in the Google toolbar, but they still wouldn’t have as much reach as Microsoft and IE.

We will have to stay tuned to see where all of this is headed.   Don’t worry though, the big search engines are always working on bringing you better search results.

Will a Yahoo Google deal cost you more in PPC?

Yahoo’s search advertising agreement with Google could result in more than a 20 percent jump in keyword prices for advertisers, according to an independent report released Tuesday by SearchIgnite.   This could make your search engine marketing budget skyrocket.  The report claims the cost could go up as much as 22 percent.  This would really cut into profits over time.  On average, the cost per click for bidding on the same tail keywords on Google, compared with Yahoo, costs 12 percent more for the No. 1 position on a search result page, and as much as 28 percent more for the No. 5 spot.

An excerpt from the report:

“The price difference for bidding on tail terms on Google vs. Yahoo increases as the ad’s page rank decreases. Therefore, it would be economically advantageous for Yahoo to outsource a significant amount of their tail term inventory, paying closer attention to the outsourced inventory’s rank rather than the keyword terms themselves. Acting this way, Yahoo should be able to better monetize the majority of their tail terms with the Google partnership. ”

SEM folks should pay close attention to this deal.  The same could be true if Microsoft buys Yahoo.  Either way there will be one less major player in Tier 1 PPC.