The Future of Online Video Ads

By Bruce Clay – September 18, 2006

The online video ad market hit $225 million in 2005 and is expected to reach $385 million this year, $640 million in 2007 and $1.5 billion by 2009 (eMarketer). Other projections range as high as $2.5 billion in 2010.

There is no doubt that as broadband penetration multiplies, and both video technology and ad serving technology advance, most major advertisers will want to use this branding strategy because of its ability to engage viewers.

Online Video Engages Users

A study by F. N. Magid Associates for the Online Publishers Association shows that consumers engage with video advertising as follows:

• 5 percent of consumers view online video daily
• 24 percent view once a week
• 46 percent view once a month

While many are attracted to humor, video news clips are most popular, with each genre being viewed by more than 25 percent of visitors at least once a week.

Online video ads have great potential on the web and are particularly appealing to a young, wired demographic. As online videos become more popular on user-generated sites like YouTube, the audience for video ads will increase, as will the number of video ads created.

Video Entertainment Factor

People are drawn to video because it is entertaining. Video popularity has grown with the proliferation of broadband. The best video ads are interactive and should be contextually and behaviorally relevant. Video ads can be used for branding, building loyalty and direct response but ads have to be presented in a manner that gives prospects what they want and when they want it. This may involve building a community where consumers can be entertained, interact with the video and perhaps even share it.

Ad-Supported Video

Consumers don’t mind viewing ads if they can get TV programs gratis on the web through their mobile devices. A recent survey reports that 62 percent will watch free on-demand TV programs with commercials rather than have to pay $1.99 for commercial-free content (Points North Group and Horowitz Associates).

Starcom USA reports the same. Consumers prefer to download ad-supported video content rather than paying to view programs without ads.

Online Video Ads Work

The community of online video watchers is growing. ComScore reported that the number of consumers viewing videos online increased 18 percent between October 2005 and March 2006. The early adopters who watch are very engaged with the advertising they encounter, especially when it is relevant to their needs.

The above mentioned Online Publishers Association study conducted in February 2006, surveyed a representative U.S. population sample of 1,241 Internet users aged 12 to 64 and reported the following:

• 40 percent clicked a link or visited a web site mentioned in the video ad
• 34 percent went to the advertiser’s web site
• 15 percent requested product information
• 14 percent visited the store to check out a product
• 10 percent forwarded the ad to a friend or family member
• 8 percent made a purchase
• Average viewing time spent with a video ad was 21 seconds

The above findings show the power of video ads to engage viewers.

Video Viewer Demographics

The study found that frequent viewers of online video are more likely to be young, male and affluent. These heavy viewers were 65 percent male with an age mean of 33 years, putting them in the coveted 18 to 34 demographic. Eleven percent had household incomes of $100k/year, and over 80 percent had broadband at home and at work.

Heavy Video Viewers Engage

The heavy viewer profile differed from the norm. For instance, 50 percent of heavy viewers visited a web site mentioned in the video ad, versus 40 percent for the total sample. Up to 45 percent of the heavy viewers went to a search engine to find more information on an advertised product, whereas only 33 percent of total viewers did so.

Clicking a hyperlink was less popular, even among the heavy viewers of video ads, with only 20 percent doing so versus 17 percent for the total sample. Overall, only 20 percent of the heavy viewers took no action, while 31 percent of the total sample took no action.

Video Viewers Are Wired

Viewers of online video are frequent consumers of multiple media. Ninety-one percent use the Internet for email, instant messaging or chat, while 84 percent also use the Internet for other purposes. Fifty-nine percent read newspapers online, 48 percent watch videos or DVDs, 46 percent read magazines and 43 percent play online video games.

Video Creatives Must Improve

Current video ad creatives must advance to be more effective. Most online video ads are merely repackaged television commercials. When creatives are designed specifically for online campaigns, response will likely improve. While these creatives will be more successful, this will require increased budgeting for studio production costs necessary to create more appropriate online ads.

The challenge is to create video ads for the short-attention span of web surfers who demand high-quality content presented as a compact viewing experience. While some video ads run 10 to 15 seconds, others run 30-seconds like a standard TV spot. Trends lean toward shorter ads, especially on mobile devices.

Obstacles to Video Growth

There are some limiting factors that can affect online video ad growth. The most obvious was mentioned above: cost. And while cost is an obstacle, video also has a lack of format consistency as a number of video formats exist, which include but are not limited to video technologies like Quicktime, RealVideo, Windows Media Player and Adobe Flash.

These formats have created a lack of interoperability between devices, and it is not yet clear which will emerge as the video standard in the future.

Another obstacle is the lack of inventory. Right now, publishers are only equipped to run streaming video in about one-quarter of their content.

There is a need for interactive and traditional ad agencies to integrate their skills. The traditional agencies that normally handle video do not understand the online environment. The interactive agencies that do understand the online space are not skilled at making videos. The result is too few full-service ad agencies that can do both effectively.

Video is an emerging marketing strategy, and the potential for growth is there. Search engines are developing video search capabilities and integrating video ads into their paid search offerings.

Video Search

Google and Yahoo provide video search. Microsoft recently added video search (beta) to its Windows Live search engine. Results are displayed with a photo of the video and a brief description of video content. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are building their video search inventories and implementing video ads into their paid search offerings. Yahoo will include click-to-call and video content into its next Yahoo Search Marketing update.

Google officially integrated video ads into its AdSense network in May, exposing online advertising to a much larger mainstream audience. Google’s video ads are very non-intrusive by presenting a static screenshot that won’t play unless the user clicks.

Users can expect online videos and video ads to grow in popularity as people move from the TV screen to computer and mobile device screens. This method of ad delivery has promise because most people can choose to view videos on the fly — a pleasant alternative to being inundated with TV ads over which they have no control.

Online video ads are still in the early stage of development. Technologies need to converge and improve. Video ads will provide advertisers with the means to offer different executions in a video message across multiple platforms like TV, the Internet and mobile devices. This may become the norm in two to three years.

Searchles: The Next Generation of Search?

Contributed by Terri Wells

Online companies that include user-generated content as a huge part of their business model have been around for a few years now. This model is even being used with search engines, with del.icio.us as the most prominent example. But there’s a new search engine that takes that model even further, and it’s definitely worth a look.

It’s called “Searchles,” a mashup of the words “search” and “circles,” and it’s pronounced “circles.” It’s because the three-month-old search engine, an offshoot of Dumbfind, emphasizes circles of friends to make it work. “You can think of it as a cross between MySpace and a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us or Furl,” explained Dumbfind spokesman Eric Young. “It’s all about connecting to your friends and sharing information and making everything easily searchable.”

Users of Searchles take advantage of a double box system that lets them explore their topic by keyword, tag, or both. If you are a registered user, you can submit pages and sites to the search engine, and use tags to distinguish them and help you find them again. So far, so good; it doesn’t sound that much different from del.icio.us, or any other Web 2.0 site that uses tags or votes or whatever to let its community decide what is relevant.

The key difference is in the amount of fine-grained control in the hands of users. With many social search sites, when you search tags or keywords, you’re searching everyone’s tags. How do you know that those tags are reliable? For example, let’s say that you’re an advanced guitar player and you’re interested in sites to help you with your music. Think about all the beginning guitar players out there. The sites they tag as most relevant for guitar are not going to be nearly as relevant to you, because you’re more advanced than they are, so you already know a lot of that stuff.

Searchles has an answer for that. Once you’re a registered user, you can search in various “circles.” You can search everywhere; that’s the default. Or you can search through only the sites you’ve posted. You can search through sites that have been submitted by your friends. You can search through sites submitted by various groups you’ve joined. You can search through sites submitted by friends of friends. And you can search through sites submitted by “your fans” – people who admire you. (I have to wonder if that particular feature redefines the term “ego-scanning”).

Before actually trying out the search engine, I thought I’d poke around for a bit and see what I turned up. Groups seem to be an important part of Searchles, so I clicked on a link labeled “Groups” and was rewarded with seven pages of them, in no particular order. They were as specific as ones for heart surgeons and as random as one called “science stuff.” There’s a respectable number of groups related to programming, some that focus on history, and, not surprisingly, a few dedicated to searching and to Web 2.0. I found a few that looked like the kinds of groups I might want to join, so I clicked on their links.

Anyway, on the left hand side you can see the handle of the group’s owner and a list of group members. In the center you see recent posts, with links to each post; some are news stories, while others are event announcements. That little box to the right of each post tells you what tags they’ve been given (up to a certain number; if it has a lot of tags it lists the first few and mentions how many more there are). It also gives you options to save it, comment, on it, and share it, among others (which you can only do if you’re a registered member of Searchles, of course).

Well, at that point I decided I really should register to test it out. Registration is easy; the search engine just wants your email address, your online handle, and your password (entered twice to confirm). You also have to agree with Searchles’ Terms of Use. These are pretty vanilla. Among other things, Searchles does indicate that it respects copyright, and includes an address to email if you feel yours has been violated.

After you register, Searchles wants you to add a “bookmarklet” to your browser to make it easier for you to submit pages to the community where you can “tag it, describe it, share it, and post it to groups.”

On the left are spots for related people and related groups. On the right are columns for my posts, my friends, my groups, my friends’ friends, and my fans, as well as related tags. The middle area is for keeping track of my posts. Near the top are links that let me edit a “profile” and upload a picture. I put the profile in quotes because when I clicked on it, I noticed that there were places for only first and last name, zip code, email address (already filled in), location, slogan, and display name.

When you do get around to filling in the spots on the right, you might want to be careful. I clicked on one user’s name and could easily go to whatever he had listed under his posts, friends, groups, etc. I honestly haven’t decided whether that’s a bug or a feature.

You don’t actually need the bookmarklet to submit a link. I didn’t install it because I personally don’t like installing anything extra in my browser that I don’t have to. If you don’t install it and want to submit something, you do have to open a second browser.

It asks you for the URL, title, tags for the page, and a description. The center box asks whether you want to add this post to any groups. You can also (on the far right) send the post to friends. Right after I submitted the link, I did a search on one of the tags I used for the site, and was delighted to see that it turned up at the top of the results. Not only that, but the link and description turned up on Searchles’ home page (and it stayed there until more recent links bumped it off).

As you would expect, the site in general is set up to reward activity with recognition. The top ten most active posters and the top 20 most active groups show up on the home page. So does every new link that’s added to the site. Popular tags also show up on the home page.

Here’s something that Searchles mentions right on its home page that’s very cool for folks who like video. Whenever you submit a YouTube or Google Video, it is automatically integrated into the search results. I gave it a try, but all I can say is that I was really glad that the site allows you to edit links after you submit them! It was a bit of a struggle.

I shouldn’t put down Searchles for my own uncertainties with new technologies. And to be honest, it’s a very promising social search engine, especially for being in existence only three months. But there were some things I really would have liked to have seen that it either doesn’t have or weren’t obvious.

For openers, an on-site tutorial that takes you through everything you can do would have been nice. I know the company posted a tutorial on YouTube, but when I checked that out, there didn’t seem to be an audio track; just showing you with the visuals isn’t enough (and I did check my equipment to make sure it wasn’t just me). I was able to figure out how to add friends and several other things, thanks to links in the appropriate places, but I’m the sort of person that likes to RTFM. Fortunately, when you click help, the site takes you to a page that includes links to several categories, such as FAQ, bookmarklet, user questions, groups, and tags, and that really is helpful.

I didn’t see any way that you could designate certain links as private (not shared by the community). You could choose whether or not to share them with any groups you happened to join. I can understand the reasoning behind that, but I could certainly see people wanting to keep certain links private or share them with only a few people.

This point leads to another question about information. There also doesn’t seem to be any way for you to keep any part of your profile private. People can search for you, find out who your friends and groups are, all of the links you have added, and so on. This isn’t a bad thing, as long as users don’t mind (and it probably explains why Searchles asks for so little information in the profile).

By the way, when it comes to making friends or joining groups, people can do that completely without your knowledge — though you do receive an email letting you know that someone has added you as a friend. I told our CTO Rich Smith about Searchles, and he tried it out. I was able to make him one of my friends easily once I saw his handle; I don’t know if he received an email when I added him, but I received one when he added me. (I didn’t know about it right away because the email I used is heavily spam-protected). You can send people messages through the site itself pretty easily, which is a nice touch. Joining a group is just as easy as making friends; just find the group you want to join, and there’s a link at the top labeled “join this group.” Click it, and you’re a member.

Groups have owners (the person who created the group in the first place). I don’t know if the owner gets a message when someone joins the group, but it seems to me that this would be common courtesy – or maybe I’m just old-fashioned. Truthfully, most of the items I’m pointing out could be seen as positives just as easily as negatives; I freely admit I’m hypersensitive when it comes to issues of online privacy.

On the other hand, I think it would be kind of neat if Searchles had an actual forum. Groups form communities of sorts; there are home pages for groups just as there are for individuals. And of course you can send people messages. But forums allow for more interaction, and, I think, more of a feeling of community.

Having said all of that, I’d like to add one more thing. With Google’s recent purchase of YouTube, I think that, if the search leader is smart, its next major purchase will be a social search engine like del.icio.us. And Searchles bears watching. With its fine-grained user control, relatively easy-to-use interface, and double search box approach, it offers some unique features. Give it another six months to a year, and I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more about it.

DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warrantied or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result by implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.

Link Building and Link Bait: Using Google ” Related”

14 Tactics to Make Your Website Work Harder Right Now: Tactic 5 – Meta Tags and Titles (This Won’t Hurt a Bit)

Posted by Karri Flatla October 26, 2006
A few hours spent writing unique titles and descriptions for each page of your site is insignificant compared to the increase in traffic that results. Page titles tell the search engines what your site is about, and meta descriptions give searchers something compelling to click on in the search engine results pages. Additionally, using keywords in your <Title> tags further boosts each page’s calculated relevance to a particular subject.

What’s that? You haven’t done any keyword research yet? That’s no excuse. Do the exercise anyway and use your best judgment based on each page’s existing content. This is where writing for the “long tail” comes in handy. If you are unfamiliar with this subject, check out Matt Bailey’s article, Keyword Strategies – The Long Tail.

By the way, if your web developer proudly shows you a long list of keywords typed into the keyword meta tag, well, you know what I always say in these situations: take your money and run really really fast back to the bank. Keyword meta tags were used and abused for years. As a result, most search engines don’t put much stock into them. Time is precious. Spend it on something useful.

A good rule of thumb: if a monkey can do it, it’s probably not going to help your site do better in the rankings! And a monkey can’t make strategic decisions about the best two or three key phrases to place in your

Measuring Visitor Engagement and Behavior

By Manoj Jasra – October 26, 2006

When visitors arrive on your website, what are they doing? Is it what you want or expect them to do; or are they aimlessly wandering around and not finding what they came in looking? Are your potential customers abandoning your site just seconds after their arrival? If you are puzzled because you don’t know what visitors are doing, or why, then how can you ever create a decent strategy to offer your visitors a better experience on your website?

The means of engaging users is unique to each website. The Sports Illustrated website does it by displaying only the latest sports headlines and providing the actual content a click thru away; content like writer’s opinions, the NBA Draft and, of course, their own swimsuit issue – giving the user navigation control and also increasing valuable inventory through page views.

A site like Yarn Market , on the other hand, offers crisp, high resolution images of every single product which makes it simple for their visitors to view the colors, quality and intricate patterns of the various types of yarn. Again, giving the user control and increasing conversions.

It’s important that as a site owner you find your competitive advantage and unique selling proposition so that you can offer your visitors a tailored experience that will keep them coming back; however, your constructed experience has to be built to your specific audience’s needs and wants. You cannot push and audience that needs to be pulled, or pull an audience that needs and expects to be pushed.

If you really want to gain success, your website should be built from the audience back; and although I do not advocate giving your audience complete control over the navigation and reigns of your website – through tailored construction you can definitely create a perceived control that should always increase sales/conversions/page views.

In the rest of this article, I will talk about why it’s important to track user behavior and metrics that are helpful in deciphering how well your website is doing in keep your visitors engaged.

Why it’s Important

No one understands the metrics that matter better than the site owners themselves. The key is not getting lost in a mountain of numbers, but really zooming in on the few key metrics that really affect the bottom line, rather than all the other hundreds of metrics that contribute to measuring online success. The concept is simple; keeping users engaged will help to retain visitors, increase conversion rates, and consistently help deliver more revenue.

There are a multitude of reasons that owners should track visitor behavior, here are a few:

• Pinpoint areas on the website that need to be improved.
  • Analysis of visitor paths vs. dead content (content that gets visited infrequently) shows sites owners that either the content should be presented in a different fashion, be moved from the current area or possibly even deleted from the website entirely.
• Further promote popular reviews/articles/products.
  • By recognizing areas of a website that are frequently viewed and requested, site owners can simplify the paths to these popular sections by making them more accessible.
• Test new products/ads/conversion triggers.
  • Using A/B testing and analyzing visitor’s reactions to new features can help a website offer the most optimal combinations in terms of ad/conversion trigger placements.

Observing your visitors’ behavior will help you address the actual pains they are having with your website. If they are bored, entice them with rich content and media. If they don’t know where to go, simplify their path by removing roadblocks and bottlenecks. If they can’t find what they are looking for, analyze internal search terms and modify your site’s search functionality. And, if they are too quick to abandon, give them a reason to stay online by offering a free product/download or competitive pricing on your latest product(s).

Metrics to help measure Engagement (or lack thereof)

• Percent of Visitors under 60 seconds
  • Using this metric along with conversion rate will let you know if users are easily finding what they are looking for or not. A high percentage of visitors in this area with a low conversion rate indicate you should consider updating your material.
• Customer Retention Rate
  • Retaining customers is always a good sign that they are finding your website useful
• Internal Search Terms
  • This will give you a sense of visitors’ intentions on your website (are you offering the right content?). Avinash Kaushik had a great Blog post on this topic.
• Average Number of Visits per visitors
  • Monitor this metric to help determine how attracted your visitors are to your content. Remember, a return customer always costs less than a new one.
• Top Pages and Content Requested
  • Knowing what visitors are looking for can be helpful for site owners to tailor their content, making it more prominent and informative to the audiences’ needs.

source for the metrics: Web Analytics Demystified.“Insight” is a word commonly use in the Web Analytics World because it’s a major reason people use web analytics: for a better “insight” into their audience (with an online relationship you cannot have your sales staff read non-vocal cues or easily engage a prospect in a conversation). Having an online strategy that is supported by the intelligence and insight you’ve received is more effective than a strategy developed by any other means (unless of course you have unlimited amounts of money to burn or the Coney Island fortune telling machine from the movie “Big”).

Providing a user experience that engages visitors will prove to be a big step in helping you and your organization reach your online goals.

VisiStat Automates Web Analytics

Make Your Website Work Harder Right Now: Tactic No. 2

Posted by Karri Flatla October 24, 2006
State what your company does at the very beginning of your homepage’s body copy. One or two sentences will do. Be concise and speak in terms of results for the customer. You don’t have to be Hemingway here. Just remind your audience why they clicked over to your site in the first place. What sets you apart from the competition? Give your visitors a reason to keep on reading—it’s the warm handshake they need to feel better about spending precious time shopping your wares.

Quick tip: this is not a mission statement. Telling your visitors that “ABC Widgets is the premiere provider of wooden widgets to businesses all over North America” doesn’t cut it. Such statements are flaky and say absolutely nothing about your company or why someone should patronize it. Remember, five gazillion other sellers of wooden widgets are just a click away.

Click Fraud Level 1 – Google, Yahoo, Third Parties and You

By Jim Hedger (c) 2006

Some call it click fraud and some call it invalid click activity but nobody questions that questionable clicks happen. How they happen and to what degree might be up for debate but the existence of industrial level skullduggery is a widely known but poorly recognized secret of the search marketing industry.This dirty little secret is made up of hundreds of millions of dollars, which are unevenly split between tens of thousands of participants. Some astute observers might suggest this constitutes a conspiracy to commit fraud and is therefore illegal behavior. In that, they would be half right. Click fraud isn’t actually illegal, at least not in a criminal sense. Not yet anyway.

Google knows about issues associated with click fraud though it doesn’t like using the term “fraud”. The popularity of AdWords and ease of access to Google’s lucrative AdSense distribution system gave online scammers the two essential elements, motive and opportunity. Google has been playing catch-up ever since. Yahoo knows a lot about click fraud as well. Extremely credible allegations have been made about Yahoo’s commercial connections with click fraud artists. Many in the shadier side of the search marketing industry are in on the click-fraud secret as well, so much so that they publish how-to guides and self-congratulatory blogs. Frighteningly, spyware and malware makers are also in on the secret, often benefiting by becoming unwanted content-delivery partners.

Everyone’s making a lot of money and, like the great insurance scams of yesteryear, the costs to the ultimate victims are so widely distributed they often seem negligible to individuals affected. Negligible is, of course, a relative term. Is $10 negligible to you? How about $100 or $1000 or more?

Another group of people who’ve learned a great deal about click fraud are the victims, which tend to be small online businesses. Unfortunately, it is harder to track the impact on smaller businesses because they often lack the resources to properly police their own web and account logs. SEO-News.com editor, Kim Roach, wrote a strong piece titled, “Going Broke on Google AdWords” in SiteProNews last week.

Victims of Click Fraud come in all sizes. While Kim’s article addressed damage done to smaller businesses, a July 2006 report by online industry research firm Outsell estimated click fraud accounted for $800 million of a total of $5.5 billion spent on search engine advertising in 2005. Outsell reached these figures by studying 407 online advertisers that collectively controlled about $1 billion in ad spending.

Google disputes these figures along with other figures reported by San Antonio based PPC-auditing firm Click Forensics in their monthly Click Fraud Index, questioning the methodology used in determining incidents of billed click fraud.

In an August 8, 2006 report titled, “How Fictitious Clicks Occur in Third-Party Click Fraud Audit Reports” Google’s Click Quality Team found two serious issues served to consistently inflate incidents of “fictitious clicks” recorded in third-party analysis.

According to their findings, “The major root causes for fictitious clicks falls into the two following categories: … detection of page reloads as ad-clicks”, and, “… conflation across advertisers and ad networks, or the counting of one advertiser’s traffic in another advertiser’s reports.”

The first cause of “fictitious clicks” noted by Google’s team suggests that sometimes users reload pages; use their back buttons, or open landing pages in new windows. Each action could be interpreted as a second, third or fourth click where only one should have been recorded.

The second cause of “fictitious clicks” is a bit more confusing, stemming from the massive AdSense system Google uses to distribute AdWords advertising. Google has thousands, (perhaps millions) of AdSense distribution partners. Some of these partners are extremely large corporations though most are independent webmasters. The largest of these partners often have complicated advertising systems that mix and match different types of ads (banners, AdWords, text-links, etc…) from different advertising platforms. They have their own internal system for measuring the effectiveness of these ads and sometimes those internal systems cause subtle incongruities in tracking ad-impressions. One such weirdness is the way some hits from the AOL network are grouped together under a single block of IP addresses.

Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, wrote a long post “About Invalid Clicks” to the Inside AdWords blog in early August. In it, Ghosemajumder suggests that surveys and reports from many click-analysts, including Click Forensics, do not give a full view of factors as seen by Google, or in some cases, by the analysts’ own clients.

Ghosemajumder says Google’s internal filters catch and cancel charges for the vast majority of invalid clicks, even though evidence of those clicks might be reflected in advertisers’ log files.

“If an advertiser is monitoring click activity, these automatically filtered clicks may show up in an advertiser’s logs, but not in their bills. When invalid clicks are detected after an advertiser is charged, we reimburse for them. Because of our detection efforts, losses to advertisers from invalid clicks are very small,” Ghosemajumder’s comments.

“Moreover“, he continues, “the study does not indicate whether the advertiser was actually charged for any of the clicks, only that the traffic analysis suggested that the clicks may have been invalid.”

It isn’t just the number of billed clicks that have advertisers and analysts concerned. Another report produced by Click Forensics showed that of 170 advertisers in the financial services sector, over 6% reported recorded visits from sites clearly identified as parked domains.

Dozens of third-party firms engage in ad-stuffing documents on parked domains. If the general consensus that an invalid click is one that is reasonably unlikely to lead to a potential conversion, then counted clicks from parked domains are assumed by many analysts to be invalid.

Parked domains are housed at URLs that, while owned, are not really operating as most Internet users might expect. A page at parked domain is generally one containing very limited information and a number of PPC Ads. The page is basically a placeholder being used as a billboard. Believe it or not, parked domains are said to drive a significant amount of traffic, especially under highly searched terms relating to health, travel and financial services. Given the number of click-throughs found in a report covering 170 financial services companies, 6% represents a huge number of clicks, each costing advertisers ten cents or more.

Jessie Stricchiola is considered one of the leading experts in click fraud detection and analysis. On the website of her firm, Alchemist Media, Sticchiola writes about an automated form of third-party click fraud that was publicly associated with Yahoo by click fraud researcher Ben Edelman.

“Another method of fraudulent clicking is initiated through automated click generation methods, using “hitbots” – software applications specifically designed to click on paid listings. This kind of activity is also initiated by both competitors and by search engine partners and/or affiliates, the latter often instituting extensive technology arrangements to enable their fraudulent click traffic to slip past the internal filtering methods used by the CPC engines. For CPC affiliates, there is a vested interest in generating as much traffic as possible to increase their portion of the shared revenue generated by paid listings. This is an often overlooked source of fraudulent click activity.”

The examples cited in this article are only some of the ways used by the unscrupulous to scam unsuspecting advertisers in an environment that is extremely difficult to police properly. Indeed, in the absence of any external oversight, the only real watchdogs are the search engines themselves. Click auditors working with advertisers are, apparently, not privy to information used by Google and Yahoo to examine the issue and, therefore, are unable to effectively create reports recognized by the two largest search advertising providers.

While Google and Yahoo both claim to be working on finding solutions to the problems posed by invalid clicks, both admit they are months or even years from finding foolproof solutions. That both make a great deal of money from invalid clicks, clicks directed from parked domains, and other third-party shenanigans has lead some to speculate that the major search engines might not be approaching the problem with missionary zeal. There is a lot of murky ground. The only obvious things about the issue is that there is an issue and that a solution, though not immediately forthcoming, is desperately needed.
About The Author
Search marketing expert Jim Hedger is one of the most prolific writers in the search sector with articles appearing in numerous search related websites and newsletters, including SiteProNews, Search Engine Journal, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.

He is currently Senior Editor for the Jayde Online news sources SEO-News and SiteProNews. You can also find additional tips and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Jim at the SiteProNews blog.

What are the Sandbox and Google’s TrustRank?

The Sandbox and TrustRank are just names for a set of filters. The Sandbox effect basically means that new web sites disappear from the search results for some time after getting good rankings. It means that time filters have been applied to a web site.

A high TrustRank means that Google has learned to trust a web site. It is probably is several years old, reputable sites link to the web site and the web site has a good inbound link history and it hasn’t used spam techniques in the past.

A web site that is in the Sandbox probably hasn’t a high TrustRank. Inversely, a web site with a high TrustRank won’t be put in the Sandbox.

What does this mean to your web site?

The older your web site is, the better. It seems that Google’s filters tend to be stricter with new domain names so it’s more difficult to get high rankings with new domain names.

New domains have to prove that they are trustworthy before they can get high rankings.

To show Google that your web site is trustworthy, get good inbound links to your web site and keep on working on inbound links. The longer other web sites link to your site and if new web sites begin to link to your site the more likely it is that you’ll get high rankings.

You should optimize the links to your site . If the right web sites link to your site, you show Google that your web site can be trusted.

If you have an old domain name and many good inbound links, then you can improve your Google rankings by optimizing your web page content.

If you have a new domain name, you have to show Google that your web site can be trusted first. You can do this by getting the right links to your web site. Use ethical SEO techniques to promote your web site on search engines.

Two Sides of the Sandbox – Getting Stuck and Unstuck on Google

By Jim Hedger – October 18, 2006

The mysterious “Google Sandbox” has been a hot discussion topic for search engine optimizers since the phenomena was first noted and named in late April 2004. Since then, ideas on the function, scope and even existence of the sandbox have been a mainstay in SEO and Google related forums, chats and articles.

The term, “sandbox” describes a process of Google’s ranking formulas that appear to slow the debut of new sites in the Top10 listings. Whether or not the sandbox exists tends to depend on the side of the black hat / white hat debate one comes from. SEOs dedicated to “pure”, non-spammy SEO tend to downplay the effects of the sandbox while those who use dark-art tactics know from personal experience that the effects are very real.

In a November 2005 interview with WebmasterWorld’s Brett Tabke, Google chief engineer Matt Cutts appeared to acknowledge it saying, “How many feel there is no such thing as a sandbox? SEOs normally split down the line. There are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries.”

While Matt’s comments did not exactly confirm or deny the existence of a sandbox, they did leave the barn door open wide enough for a great deal of discussion. Between November 2005 and September 2006, well over 300 credible articles, forum threads and blog posts have addressed the topic.

For some, such as Search Engine Guide editor Jennifer Laycock, the Google sandbox is an expression of importance and credibility imbued upon sites that have established themselves over time in Google’s index. In a June 2006 article, Jennifer wrote, “… there is no Google sandbox! It simply doesn’t exist.”

When new sites are spidered and brought into the index, Google compares them with similar sites already in its index and makes a judgment on the relevance of that site against the others. “After all,” she wrote, “how many mortgage application sites does Google really need to list? Why should they think that your brand new mortgage site is any more worthy of a ranking than the 1.5 million (yes, MILLION) sites that are already indexed for the phrase ‘mortgage application.’”

Jennifer wrote her piece in agreement with a post Sheri Thurow from Grantastic Design made to LED Digest (issue 2177) where Sheri proclaimed, “There is no such thing as a Google Sandbox. It’s one of those terms that self-proclaimed search engine “experts” came up with to explain why their methodologies don’t work.”

Sheri’s post generated a great deal of controversy, partially because it was perceived by readers as a rant. She explained her point by writing, “A search-friendly Web site is built on a solid foundation of keyword-focused text and giving spiders a means of accessing that text. Then, objective 3rd parties should basically confirm what you say about your own content. It has been this way for years. For that reason, no Google Sandbox. If your site doesn’t have the foundation, its pages won’t appear in a search engine results.”

What Jennifer and Sheri are saying is Google is not going to automatically give a first page listing to a new site, no matter how well optimized that site might be. There might be thousands or even millions of competing websites being compared against a site that has not had time to establish itself as a peer-referenced site.

Peer referencing is an important cornerstone of Google’s overall ranking formula. Originally, Google built its search results based on the number of links directed to a specific document from other web documents. As technology progressed, the creation and maintenance of web documents became infinitely easier, especially with the deployment of blogs. Driving the creation of millions of fresh documents, sites and blogs was the popularization of Google’s paid search advertising distribution program AdSense. Suddenly, a direct profit motive existed for some in the SEO sector to use their knowledge and immense talents to game Google’s SERPs six ways to Sunday.

Links, which have long been like gold for search savvy webmasters, became increasingly important following the series of algorithm upgrades that started with Hilltop in the summer of 2004. Since that time, Google has raced to keep up with a myriad of methods devised to game its ranking methods. The implementation of an critical measure of how a site, or a document originating at a specific domain, has established itself along side similar sites and/or documents, is accepted by most SEOs as a long leg in Google’s race against manipulation of their search results.

Google has consistently moved to limit link-based exploits of its link-based organic ranking system. Starting this time last year, it implemented a series of measurements examining a wide assortment of data about documents in its index, along with data derived from linking documents known as the Jagger update.

It is safe to say that for the past two years, the majority of research and advancement in the field of search engine optimization comes from the study and analysis of link structures. When it comes to getting a strong ranking on Google and to a lesser degree, on Yahoo, link partners are as well scrutinized as the specific page or domain being indexed.

One of the newer clichés being thrown around SEO circles is the phrase “Link Baiting”. Links from well-established, relevant sites is good at Google. Getting good quality links is a getting harder every day. Link baiting describes a tactic to entice others to link to your site by presenting enticing content.

One of the best-known and well-respected link analysts, Andy Hagans wrote a strong piece earlier this week titled, “Secrets to Beating the Sandbox 2.0 REVEALED: The Ultimate Guide“. Though the title is in itself a fine example of link-bait (as noted by RustyBrick), the content of the piece is extremely thorough and well written.

In his opinion, the Google Sandbox definitely exists. “The sandbox/Trustbox is a set of filters in Google’s search algorithm that together prevent new sites from ranking well until they gain trust.” Andy redefines the debate by suggesting “Trustbox” as a far better name than “sandbox”. It is certainly more descriptive.

Andy’s “Ultimate Guide” opens with a concise tutorial on what the “sandbox” is, how it effects sites, and methods he uses to dig through it. As with most pieces by Andy, he clearly delineates tactics that might be considered black-hat from those that are simply smart work on the part of webmasters.

Though I earlier noted that those who believe in the sandbox tend to fall on the dark-arts side of the SEO sector, I don’t intend to suggest all discussion about the phenomenon comes from black-hat SEOs or to imply that all those who find themselves playing in the sandbox are spammers. Due to their need for rapid placement and their propensity of burning domains, the function of a Google Sandbox affects black-hat (or, more appropriately, self-servicing) practitioners far more directly than it does in-house or agency focused SEOs.

I don’t mean to disagree with Sheri or Jennifer either, not exactly anyway. I suspect that for them the existence of a sandbox is irrelevant and therefore far off their radar screens. It is not in Jennifer or Sheri’s interest to spend time delving into the dark-arts of SEO as neither practice black-hat techniques.

Something resembling the Google Sandbox, or as Andy calls it, Trustbox does exists for new websites. Jennifer Laycock actually summed it up best herself, speaking in a session about small business at SES San Jose, in which she used the opening of a new restaurant to describe the non-existence of “sandbox effect”.

In the analogy, Jennifer explained that she was a fan of Chinese and Ethiopian cuisine. In her mid-west city, there are hundreds of Chinese restaurants, several of which she has eaten at or regularly frequents. The opening of a new Chinese restaurant might register on her radar screen but would not likely cause her to race out to try it. If a number of friends recommended the new restaurant, she would be more likely to try it out. Chinese restaurants are ubiquitous in North American cities. If a new Ethiopian eatery opened in that same large mid-west city, she would be very likely to go out of her way to eat there, with or without recommendations from trusted friends, simply because there are very few restaurants specializing in Ethiopian food.

In other words, Jennifer’s observation brings us back full circle to Matt Cutts’ original affirmation, “There are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries.”