Google gives preferential treatment to paying advertisers

Discussion in 'Google' started by FastWeb, Oct 1, 2007.

  1. #1
    This goes against everything Google stands for. I think the IPO changed Google into something it never intended to be.

    http://www.googlewatchdog.info/2007/10/does-google-give-preferential-treatment.html

    If you have any other examples of your website(s) PM me with those, I'm going to keep blogging about it. There will be future stories on sites with these problems, and updates on previous sites I've posted about.
     
    FastWeb, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  2. magda

    magda Notable Member

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    #2
    That doesn't prove anything.
    Four sites is a ridiculously small sample amongst the millions that google index.
    You only have to read digital point to see that sites do drop out or down the rankings, then come back when the algo is tweaked again, or they make a few changes, or get a few new backlinlks.
    And you're hazy about the relation of the time between them using adwords and adsense and being re-listed. In one you say 2 weeks, the others you say "at once" "immediately" - is that the same day? 2 weeks? a month?
     
    magda, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  3. FastWeb

    FastWeb Peon

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    #3
    The sample site was whittled down from a list of more than 20. All the sites had their SERPs restored within 2 weeks of starting up an Adwords/Adsense campaign.

    I'm hoping that I can get more examples to post about later on - this is not a coincidental phenomenon. I just haven't yet figured out whether Google is purposefully doing it, or if they have an incidental mechanism in place that allows the restoration of the search results and they don't know that it affects the natural results.

    I've been skeptical about claims of folks getting re-indexed or restored SERPs from Adwords/Adsense campaigns, but I've seen it for myself and watched it happen.
     
    FastWeb, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  4. camp185

    camp185 Well-Known Member

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    #4
    I seriously doubt this, and an easy way to prove it to your self is to start using adwords when you start a new site.

    If there is any relation to sites doing well in search results and advertising on Google I would guess it is because the site owners are doing many things to get traffic to their site like: SEO, clean code, professional looking site, lots of content, buying links, stuff like that. An increase in search engine traffic is just a natural occurrence at this point if done correctly.
     
    camp185, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  5. bogart

    bogart Notable Member

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    #5
    May have something to do with getting crawled by the adsense bot
     
    bogart, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  6. FastWeb

    FastWeb Peon

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    #6
    That was my initial thought, but I'd always assumed that the Adsense bot was a completely separate entity from Google's SE bot. Maybe there has been a conglomeration of data between the two bots that allows for the fast indexing or re-indexing of site? I just don't know.

    @camp185 - I wasn't looking at new sites getting indexed quickly. My focus is on sites who have been penalized or banned by Google, and get a fast SERP jump when they move to the Adwords/Adsense campaigns (in other words, they start promoting Google's HUGE advertising machine). The sites in my sample were all receiving large amounts of traffic from Google, were banned/penalized, and after signing up for Adwords/Adsense they saw a remarkable swing back up the SERPs.
     
    FastWeb, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  7. magda

    magda Notable Member

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    #7
    If there is anything to it, I suspect this is the reason. I remember reading somewhere before that it was claimed that the adwords/adsense bots accidentally had a 'relationship' with the search engine spider, through a mistake in programming - but it's only a theory.
     
    magda, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  8. FastWeb

    FastWeb Peon

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    #8
    I'd be interested in reading about this if you can find the link. If it is true and the problem still exists then maybe it wasn't really a problem at all, but instead a mechanism introduced by Google on purpose.
     
    FastWeb, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  9. designman123

    designman123 Guest

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    #9
    It is controversial:D.
     
    designman123, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  10. godmode

    godmode Well-Known Member

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    #10
    FYI. Adsense bot does both things. Indexing content and serving targetted ads based on the content. So Adsense bot does index your content to a large extent.

    This is confirmed by Matt Cutts at Boston Pubcon.
     
    godmode, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  11. Hottest

    Hottest Peon

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    #11
    Officially Google says (on its website) that Adsense is not related in any way to the SERP results.
     
    Hottest, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  12. godmode

    godmode Well-Known Member

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    #12
    I said it index pages not influence ranking. Yes, as far as matt cutts reference goes, he clearly said it wont influence your ranking. But help SE bot to help index pages faster from its own crawl cache.
     
    godmode, Oct 1, 2007 IP
  13. Pixelrage

    Pixelrage Peon

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    #13
    I totally disagree with this based on my own experiences. My site dropped Adwords half a year ago, and I'm constantly moving towards position #1 for two of my major keywords.

    My company has a $500/day Adwords budget and is nowhere to be seen on Google for its major words...for secondary keywords, we're as far back as page 10.
     
    Pixelrage, Oct 2, 2007 IP
  14. ezkl

    ezkl Peon

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    #14
    This is absolutely unfounded in my personal experience. A number of my clients were spending >$50,000/month in advertising before the recent net-wide dip (B2B e-commerce folks know exactly what I am talking about.) We slowly reduced their ad spend to maintain a solid ROI and SERPs stayed mostly static aside from the general sandbox shuffle everyone experiences. In fact, in a few instances the SERPs for lower volume keywords went UP.

    It would seem counter-intuitive to me to assert that Google would give those who pay more higher organic rankings for it would become quite obvious VERY quickly. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but I certainly have never experienced this. It should also be noted that perhaps increasing ad spend increases exposure and therefore may increase the number of inbound links.
     
    ezkl, Oct 2, 2007 IP