Some of you might remember a post I made in February of this year at "another" forum before Shawn arrived. It was called "Hammered by Google" and, to save everybody the trouble I have found it and reposted it here. To some viewers [2920] it may have made sense and to others not [what is was not was a conspiracy theory] but it was an observation and a placing in front of people what is a business logic, and obviously other "people" have now claimed it to be "their theory"! Whatever here it is: Now I said in another post that I was still "experimenting" with the theory and would be able to post a result. Well here I have two emails - one to Google and their response: My email to Google: and the reply: and here is the real nub of my argument: Need I say more?
Ok, gotta disagree with you on this one. First of all, that email from Google is their standard, canned response to anyone who inquires about their serps rankings. I've seen it many times. So anything they say in it has essentially nothing to do with your specific question. Second, I have several sites that have #1 rankings for competitive keywords (and some only mildly competitive) and all of them have adsense ads on them. In addition, most of them are high-paying adsense ads, so Google would have a high incentive to take that away from me if they so wished - but they haven't. So....nope.
Interesting answer Dazzlin, [yes I have seen that answer elsewhere too] but where I think that there is need to look more closely is, that it is the volume areas of business, like real estate, that have been targeted, and, obviously, there is a connection here with the sandbox theory- one thing is for certain - Adsense most definitely is providing information.
Foxy, I have to say that you have me rethinking about adding Adsense to my real estate clients. Thanks for the post.
Real estate sites have much bigger issues than whether or not they run adsense, i think. Yes, they've probably been targeted, but I seriously don't think adsense has anything to do with it. (I can't even imagine a good reason to put adsense on a real estate site, frankly). No doubt though, that Florida was the beginning of troublesome times for real estate sites.
I have several sites that I have used Adwords for, not Adsense though. Since I stopped using Adwords I have actually gained position on Google. This is only because I have started to do thinks "right" SEO wise. I think that in any situation you can see conspiracies, especially when things go bad. But I dont think actually that Google has capacity to monitor sites and try to rob them of traffic. It takes a man to be evil , Google are not, I am sure of that. They have so many people employed that just would leave them if they were into something like this that they cant afford that. Its just not any logic to it. Whats bothersome for me though is the extensive click fraud taking place with the Adsense system. Companies in third world countrys actually advertise for people to sit and click in a "natural" manner so that Google cant detect it. That undermines the whole system, and it doesnt matter if you limit the ads to just US because with remote desktop and proxys they can click their "American sites" sitting in India and earn good money in a for us very bad way . That should be discussed instead.
Most of my competition uses adsense, I don't. They all seem to be ranking just fine while running adsense and optimizing. There is no tricky situation going on here, its a fantasy.
serving adsense ads wont filter your rating at any point - i doubt anyone would use it if thats not a case.
I reiterate This is not a conspiracy theory it is an observation ! You can take it or leave it but do not accuse me of setting up a conspiracy theory - that, it is not. But, the test has provided sufficient information from Google so far [even if it is a standard reply from Google] to show that they are nudging people corporately [official standard email remember] toward Adwords. Also, I have waited from February to now - that is 4 months - without touching anything to see whether this site would reappear for an obscure Keyword phrase. I am going to change a few things SEO wise, and adsense wise now and I will see what happens.
dont take it wrong, nobody gave such an accusation... i personally would love to hear more on that because such an issue may be very important to all of us.
Thanks vinyl, appreciate the comment and I think I am sure that nobody intentionally meant that, but, I just want it to be very clear my reasoning is coming from a pro business [that is you make money from what you do] pro google, et al, point of view and this observation should be tested further.
I've honestly thought that this could be the case in the past.. the problem lies in the fact that Google promises they do not alter the results, buy ad space to apologize for the way some results appear (search JEW), and seem to be a upstanding group of people who are ethical. Perhaps I trust them all too well.
Foxy, I'm still with you on this. I've done a bit of checking myself and things don't all see quite right. I'll let you know the results as I get them.
Not this conversation again Come on people, it's not all about links, optimising your website, its about money and real estate is BIG business in any country, but especially a country as large as the US. You may have seen another example of two websites which have been dumped by Google. Real Estate websites are well known for spamming techniques, it's a common fact. Take this as an example, DMOZ won't list any vacation rental websites in it's directory anymore, why because it receives a higher percentage of spam riddled websites than it does genuine submissions, why traunch through thousands, to find a few genuine ones. You could look at it the same with Google, could you not? Be honest, you have to admit there are many spam Real estate websites out there, and it's easier to put a penalty on all these sites. The ones that genuinly want to earn a living and provide a good service will advertise on Adsense. Who knows what penalty or change in algo for these types of sites but to be honest I don't think getting sixteen million PR9 website link partners is going to help. IMHO Darren
Whenever looking at something of this nature, you need to do some more research. However, Google is a business and as such they want to make money. If they tweak the algorithm and get 5% more money. That's a lot of money. So it wouldn't surprise me to learn they are running a few tricks to make a little extra green. I imagine it will only get worse once they go public, and are being pushed to grow their revenue.