High ranked for Cari Duit

Someone just emailed me saying that he had found my blog on Google using the key words "cari duit". In Malay, cari duit means "searching for money/ earning money". Being curious I did some research and I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that my old post "Cari duit - Make money" was #6 on Google and #5 on Yahoo! for the above mentioned key words.

On Google

On Yahoo!

It's even higher on their respective UK pages: #5 on Google UK and even higher, #3 on Yahoo UK.

End of google AdSense Referrals program

Just found out that Google's AdSense Referrals program ends during the last week of August. I used to a few referral ads on this blog but right now the only one is the Firefox with Google toolbar ad banner at the bottom.

The email from Google recommends joining the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network, which is now part of their empire.

Do remember to remove the referral codes from your site before the last
week of August.

For more information check out the Google help centre.

Review of Blogger in draft

They have loads of new experimental features on the Blogger in draft site.

The best feature is the Scheduled Post Publishing which allows Blogger users to write a post which then appears on a scheduled later date.

There is also the option to add a "Blogroll" which some might feel is a replication of the existing "Link List" widget. However, the later involved multiple steps - first the url followed by the name, then you would have to click the "ADD LINK" button and finally clicking the "SAVE CHANGES" button. Now, you can import all your subscriptions from Google Reader and only need to paste the url of the blog then click "SAVE CHANGES" to add a blog to the blogroll.

Other features that Bloggers users have been demanding for a long time have been such as a Search box and Subscription link have also been added.

However, some of the features I really want to see as listed in my post "New features in Blogger that we want to see" are still not there.

Having said that, I was amazed at the number of widgets under the "fun and games" category that can be added to your blog - a total of 2776 at last count.

There are literally thousands of widgets available and you can add yours as well. Feels good to be a Blogger user.

WordPress users - Eat your Heart out.

Adsense optimisation guidelines

The latest post on the official Adsense blog -"Another look at optimizations" mentions two guidelines for optimising your site for Adsense, namely:

1. Ads shouldn't be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.

and

2. Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content.

I have noticed a lot of web sites and blogs openly flouting these guidelines. Their intention is clear - to make it look like the ads are their own created content and thus increasing the click through rates.

On my blogs, the ads are either after each post and/ or on the side bar and visitors can clearly make out that they are ads.

I am wondering whether Google is going those sites that flout the guidelines. Will they be penalised in anyway?

Google adsense updates

I had not logged into my Google Adsense account for quite sometime and last week just signed in to see how much money I had earned since I was last paid. When I had initially signed up with Google adsense (several years ago) I had used my old Yahoo email address and have been using it ever since. I found out that now I had to open up a new Google mail account in order to access my account. I tried to use my existing Gmail account but I don't know why, it was refused.

After a few tries I decided to open up a new Googlemail (not Gmail) account. Yeah! There is a difference. Right after signing in with my new account, I was presented with a long TOS or something. I skimmed through it and of course said, "Yes! I agree". There have been other changes including easier management of ads but haven't had time to check them out.

I discovered that my overall earnings have fallen, no doubt due to the Googlespank my blogs received in January this year.

Changed my form of payment from Cheque to Electronic Funds Transfer. Figured that it would be less of a hassle and in the process do my little bit for the environment by eliminating use of paper.

Page ranked finally

I was really excited when I noticed a couple of minutes ago that my blog 'ah ok lah' is showing a Google page rank (PR) of 3. Thanks Google. I am hoping that it goes back to the PR 5 it once was before I got "Googlespanked".

FYI, Googlespank refers to Google punishing websites, which they consider naughty, with a big fat PR 0. I was one of their victims and I was really upset when I realised that my blogs had been penalised after the PR updates in January.

Unfortunately, the PR of this blog and others are still showing 0 page rank. Hopefully they will review my other blogs as well.

In case you are wondering what I did to get my penalization lifted, I have no idea. I did not apply for a reconsideration or "re-inclusion request" as suggested by Matt Cutts. However, I have removed ads from other companies (including referral buttons) and only carry Google adsense ads. I also haven't written a sponsored post for ages. So I can safely assume that those are the reasons I got my PR back.

I wasn't earning a lot in the first place but now my revenue from my blogs have dropped to a fraction to what I used to, a couple of months ago. Hopefully that will change once the PR of my blogs go up.

Izea to get rid of Google PR

In response to request from hundreds (if not thousands) of PayPerPost posties who were punished by Google, Izea has decided to remove Google PR from PPP entirely. Instead they would be using a backlink count. Read Ted Murphy's post on the Izea blog: "Customer Experience Survey Results".

According to a postie on the PPP boards, Izea will be using the Yahoo backlink count. For more information read this post on UTheGuru.com: "How to Count Inlinks / Backlinks to Your Site using Yahoo".

Checking the page strength of my blog on SEOmoz.org, gives me:

# Links pointing to full URL: 11186
Source: Yahoo! Site Explorer

# Links pointing to domain: 12049
Source: Yahoo! Site Explorer

That's not really the stats of a "Dot Com Mogul" but it's not bad at all.

How should Izea respond to Google

I don't know about other posties out there, but it has been ages since I last took a sponsored opportunity on this blog. I am still being punished by Google and my Page Rank (PR) still shows a big fat "0". It is obvious from the the posts on Izea discussion boards that I am not the only one and there's a lot of anger there. This is not a conspiracy theory and Izea founder and CEO Ted Murphy blogged about it saying "If you have been hit by Google unfortunately there is little we can do". Duncan Riley predicted on TechCruch that there would be "an exodus of bloggers out of PayPerPost".

Izea founder and CEO Ted Murphy says that "the PayPerPost market is not melting down" as reported in a Wired article. However, I do notice that several posties have removed the PayPerPost referral badge and others have even gone to the extent of removing all their sponsored posts from their blogs.

So what should Izea do?

Well it has two options:

1. Bow down to Google
- Have posties add "nofollow" tags to all sponsored links.
- Have all posties put up "sponsored post" badge on all sponsored posts.
- Allow posties to give "free for all" reviews.
- Negotiate with Google.

This should shut off several critics of Izea including long time PayPerPost hater, Michael Arrington. On the other hand, this might lead to an exodus of advertisers who are with Izea for SEO purposes and there are a lot of them.

Then we have the second option,

2. Eliminate Google from the picture altogether

One of the reasons that the PR downgrade hurt a lot of posties was due to the fact that Izea uses Google PR as the main requirement for taking an "opportunity". They have introduced their own ranking system called "RealRank" but many advertisers still prefer to use Google PR for screening Blogs to carry their ads. There is no way Izea is going to win in a fight with Google. David defeating Goliath happens only in stories.

So my suggestion is to get rid of Google PR as a requirement altogether and use only Alexa and RealRank. Izea might also want to get rid of the special tracking codes altogether as they are like beacons in code signalling, "Hey! we are posties. Come bury us".

Would love to hear what other posties and non-posties out there think of my proposal.

Beyond Google

Most of the time whenever I want to find something on the web, I use my favourite search engine - Google. I am not unique as an informal survey of friends' preferred search engine reveal that most of them use Google as well. A handful use Yahoo! but none of them use MSN Live search, Altavista or Ask.

No one will disagree when I say that Google is now synonymous with searching on the net. The word "Google" has in fact become a verb and it's not uncommon to hear people use the terms "Googled" or "Googling".

Anyway, according to a trainer at a course I recently attended, only about half of web pages in any search engine's database exist only in that database, meaning that the other half will never come out in your search results.

You can see that this is true when you use different search engines to search for a particular term.

In the end, it might be a better idea to use Metasearch engines. They collate search results from several different search engines. One good example is Dogpile. Others include Clusty, Copernic, Mamma and Surfwax.

I have started using Dogpile and Copernic a lot and they do give better results than either Google or Yahoo used separately. Do try them out and tell me whether you agree.

Google and sponsored posts

Just heard (or should I say, read) an interesting rumour. I am actually quite excited about it. Well, according to the rumour Google is going to start offering sponsored posts. If they do roll it out, I would be among the first to try it out.

Anyway, I got this through Katy who in turn got it from Shoemoney.

Google PR updates are still on

Just a few days back, I noticed that the Page Rank on my both my ah ok lah blog as well as this blog was down to 0. I didn't think much about it as it had happened before - where my blog' PR had gone to 0 and back up again.

Apparently, this is not some short term thing as my blogs are still showing a big 0 PR. It's clear that the Google updates are not over and in fact may signify that it's an ongoing process unlike in the past where they updated the PR and we had to wait a few more months until the next.

In case you are wondering about my reaction... I have to say initially I was really really upset. I seriously considered boycotting them. Moving all my blogs to my own host, removing Google as the default search engine on my browser, removing adsense ads from all my blogs - I earn peanuts from it anyway and discouraging everyone I know from using their products.

Why do I feel like this?

Mainly because I feel betrayed. Like how can they do this to me? Unlike some bloggers I know (online), I don't earn thousand of dollars from my blogs. Then there is the fact that I have always been a Goggle supporter, this was even before I started blogging (in 2003) and I have introduced hundreds of my students if not thousands, to the search engine (when it was still a search engine) and their email service. Talking about their email service - it was what actually makes it quite hard to boycott them. I love Gmail and sacrificing my email account might be an extreme move and to my great disadvantage.

It was my wife who brought me down to Earth, like she does most of the time. She asked me why I was so worked up about, "it's only PR".

One thing she said really made me think: "Do you blog because you love blogging or because of the stupid PR?"

To think about it, I never really cared about PR. I simply blog because I love blogging - sharing my ideas and thoughts. I became obsessed with PR only after I started blogging commercially in December 2006.

I am still pissed off but I am not boycotting Google.

Google PR updates 2008

In case you are not aware, the first wave of Google Page Rank (PR) updates has already started. Here are the PR changes on my blogs since the last update:

• Ah ok lah - Down one point from PR 5 to 4
• Car Blog - Auto Lah - Unchanged at PR 0
• Freebies - Unchanged at PR 0
• On Entertainment - Down one point to PR 1 (it was PR 3 a while ago)
  
• On Sale Online. Down one point to PR 0
• SEO Expert - AdamOk.net - Unchanged at PR 3
• UK Student Corner - Unchanged at PR 2

The fall of my ah ok lah blog was a big blow and the effects on my earnings were seen immediately.

Any changes on your blogs?

Google plans to stop AdSense referrals

I received an email from the 'Inside AdSense Team' saying that:

If you're outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.

Now you will agree that "retired" is a nice word for getting "rid off".

This means that all of us guys outside the three regions/ country will have to take down the codes by the last week of January.

The reason given by Google is that Adsense referrals haven't performed as well in regions outside the ones given above.

For more info read their post: "Upcoming referrals changes".

BTW, this is my first post using my new "PayPerPost PC" that came today morning.

Who's a Dot Net Mogul

I am sure you have heard about the Dot Net Moguls and one day as I was reading a post on John Chow's post on the "requirements to be a dot com mogul", I suddenly realised I could never be one. The reason - my blog is a Dot Net not a Dot Com. As a joke, I wrote "Dot Net Mogul in the making" in my blog's description.

Imagine my delight when I found out that I am #2 on Google for the search terms "Dot Net Mogul", just behind Stephen Fung.

Yeah!

UPDATE: As of 20th Dec, 2007, I am #1 on Google.

SEO Expert and Google

Someone emailed me saying that my blog name was misleading as there were not many posts on search engine optimization. Well! that's true but as pointed out on my blog description, SEO is just one of the topics that will be covered in this blog. Having said that, I have to admit that I haven't been blogging about SEO or search engine related topics for quite sometime.

In fact, a search on Google for the terms - SEO Expert, shows that my blog has dropped to the seventh results page. It's even worse on Google UK - my blog is now on the 15th results page. That's a far cry from the days when my blog was #5 for the search term and that was not long ago.
Now got to try and bring it back up again.

PayPerPost coming out with new web ranking system

Recently paid a visit to the PayPerPost forums after quite sometime and I was not surprised to see a lot of threads were about the recent Google PR updates and the havoc it has created in the blogosphere and of course, on the drop in earnings of several posties (Bloggers who are members of Izea).

I was not spared. Yesterday discovered that 2 of my blogs, namely 'Freebies' and 'Auto lah' had slipped further and now have 0 page rank (from PR3 in just over 2 weeks). Of course, I am disappointed.

Izea has responded by announcing an ongoing project to come up with a new blog ranking system, code named "Goo Gone". The new page rank calculation will be based on the following:

• 70% weighted towards visitors per day
• 20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
• 10% weighted towards pageviews per day

According to Ted Murphy, CEO of Izea:

Unlike Google, we are open to feedback. We will publish the actual formulas for all to view. If we make any changes over time based on user input you will see what those changes are and why.

Looking forward to see how my blogs fare on their system.

Google phone ?

It ultimately turns out that all the rumors were wrong. Google is not going to come out with a Google phone to rival Apple's iPhone. Rather, it's strategy is to take over the mobile phone software market, much like Microsoft did with the computer market.

In case you have your head buried in sand, Google just launched Android, an open source operating system for mobile phones. This follows Google's quiet acquisition of 22-month-old Palo Alto based startup Android Inc.

Google has also formed the Open Handset Alliance with 32 other partners, comprising Mobile Operators, Handset Manufacturers, Semiconductor Companies, Software Companies and Commercialization Companies. Their aim:

to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience.

According to the website, the explicit goal of Android was:

to be the first open, complete, and free platform created specifically for mobile devices.

Anyway, listen to what the creators of Android have to say:

Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords

If you are using Google Adwords to advertise your website, products and/or services, you will either use ad agencies to handle your advertising campaign or do it yourself. I guess most people would prefer to leave all the hard work to the agencies even thought they charge quite a lot.


What if you learnt all the secret methods used by agencies on running a profitable campaign? Well! It's not a secret anymore. PPC Professional Steve Baker has come out with the Google Adwords ebook. Google Adwords - The Ultimate Guide reveals all the PPC Agency secrets. I found the ebook to be highly informative and useful. Best of all, it's completely free to read online.

Going through the site, I found the comments really interesting. Steve further clarifies doubts and replies to questions raised by the visitors.

Anyway, you can also download the entire document, which is published by Epiphany Solutions Ltd for £12.49.

Google PR updates and my blogs

Some of my regular visitors might recall an earlier post of mine where I had asked "Is Google going to get rid of page rank?"

Just realised that Google has finally gone ahead with the page rank updates. Regarding my blogs, I have had mixed results.

My oldest blog, ah ok lah, has finally gone back to PR 5, thus gaining entry to my list of "High ranked Blogspot blogs". The SEO Expert blog has also moved up and is now PR 3.

My other blogs which have seen an increase in PR are:

• On Entertainment. Now PR 2 (from PR 0)
• UK Student Corner. PR 2 as well (from PR1) and
  
• On Sale Online. PR 1 (from PR 0)

However, two of my old blogs slipped down a bit. Both my Freebies and Auto lah blogs are now PR 2 (down from PR 3). I guess it's partly my fault as I have been neglecting them (with regards to SEO), for quite sometime. I guess I will have to see whether this will have any effect on my revenue from the above mentioned blogs.

Easier management in Adsense coming soon

According to a news coming out from Google, they are going to release a new feature soon that lets us manage ad units from within AdSense publisher accounts without the need for changing the code as we used to do earlier.

From what I understand, we can change colors and channels for new AdSense for content ad units by just updating from within our AdSense account and the changes will be visible automatically on your website or blog.

It isn't live yet and they plan to roll it out in phases.

For more info go to the Inside Adsense blog.