Many of you have experienced difficulties with your websites’ quality ratings being downgraded by Google, or your AdWords account being shut down or suspended recently, in what has come to be known as the Google Slap. We have been approached by a number of affiliates asking for further information on what may have caused this and what can be done to have their sites’
quality ratings restored or
their AdWords accounts re-activated. Therefore, we are providing below the information provided by Google, in the hope that this will be helpful to you.

1. Duplicate Mini-sites
The issue is often that affiliates create sites for the purpose of circumventing Google’s affiliate link policy. This policy states: “We’ll only display one ad per search query for advertisers sharing the same top-level domain in the display URL. This means that if you’re an affiliate advertiser, your ad may not show for a query because another affiliate or the website that runs the affiliate program also has ads using the same (or a similar) domain in the display URL.”
(http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=14844)
When one site is essentially the same site as another, while the product is fine, promoting it with different domains is against the rules. It violates the requirement that a site’s content be unique.

2. Use of trademarked terms in the Ad text:
AdWords ads will not show if they’re using a trademarked term (e.g.
Photoshop) in the ad text and
the landing page does not provide a reasonable amount of information about this product. Please make sure that the landing page provide enough information about the trade-marked term, so that it is not a ruse to attract visitors to the page but offers valuable information.

3. Squeeze Pages to obtain visitor names and email addresses:
Landing pages that act as squeeze pages to obtain visitors’ names and email addresses are often rated poorly on landing page quality. This is usually because the landing page is a data harvesting site that only contains a form. A site of this nature could most likely be advertised successfully if the user was taken to the page that describes the product and lets them buy it. Asking the users to provide a name and email before they can learn more about the product is not considered a good user experience and will be discouraged. If users are being asked for their name and email, then there should be some value that is provided to the user.

4. Thin reviews:
Review sites that contain short one paragraph reviews of products are considered thin reviews by Google and are not rated highly. If the review is a short abstract, and a link is provided to a more detailed version of the same review, then that review is considered by Google to be more valuable to the user and is therefore rated more highly. Google values reviews where the basis for arriving at the recommendation or the rating of the product is disclosed in the review, as it delivers a better user experience.

In general Google suggests the following practices to ensure a high rating on their search results:

- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
- Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
- If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value.
- Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
- When in doubt consult Google’s webmaster guidelines for more general information.

I hope this information was useful to you. Make it a prosper year in 2010.

Cheers!

Andy Huang

Mountain View, California — Google and Facebook are each set to embark into new territory on Monday with the launch of a new URL-shortening service, a tool that modifies a long internet address in to a much shorter string of random characters such as Goo.gl, potentially shaking up the sector and putting pressure on established players such as Bit.ly and TinyURL.com.

Apart from some currently available high-profile shorteners such as TinyURL and Bit.ly, Google’s new URL shortener, goo.gl is not an all-purpose link reducer that users can access by going to a standalone site. The roll-out appears to be targeted at increasing user engagement with services such as Twitter, which relies on short 140-character messages.

Google’s offering unveiled this week is part of a revamped Google’s browser toolbar and its Feedburner RSS service, which is designed to make it easier for users to post comments to various social networks, but the service is not yet available as a stand-alone for “broader consumer use”.

URL shorteners have fairly climbed in popularity over the last 18 months, with an increasing number of web users using services such as TinyURL and bit.ly to condense links so that they can be shared more easily on social networking sites such as Twitter, which imposes a limit on the number of characters that can be contained within a single message.

Google’s shortening service will automatically apply to links that are pasted into the new “share” feature on the Google Toolbar. The share button allows users to instantly post or email comments to services such as Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Twitter or Gmail.

Goo.gl is not an independent shortening tool, but Google says “if the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.” The search giant claims its entrance into the URL shortening market is significant as its service is stable, reliable, fast and will apply the same standard of malicious content detection as Google’s ordinary web searches.

Jenna Wortham of The New York Times has commented on the new Goo.gl service “a direct attack on Bit.ly” — the popular URL shortener developed by Betaworks Studio that has become a standard on sites such as Twitter. However, shortly after Google’s announcement on Monday, Bit.ly revealed that it would begin creating custom URLs for a number of major websites and publishers, including The New York Times (at nyti.ms), The Wall Street Journal, The Onion and even Microsoft’s search engine Bing.

Also, Facebook’s shortener, fb.me, is predominantly designed to encourage users to share information with the wider social web as well as use on mobile device, and it is unclear whether fb.me will be rolled out across the whole platform.

According to some industry analysts, who have warned that the sheer volume of short links that could be generated by Facebook’s and Google’s URL shorteners could “overwhelm” the number of bit.ly links circulating on the internet.

However, Betaworks Studios hopes the “white label” edition of the bit.ly services will challenge to companies and businesses keen to hold-back their online identity, and it may start charging for the feature in future. It remains to be seen whether Google’s continuing dominance of the web at large can extend to the realm of the tiny.

As you may have heard…

Mike Filsaime is leaving the GURU business to focus
on other cool stuff in Internet Marketing like software
and services.

So…

…what does that mean to YOU and why should YOU care?

It means you can get his $1297.00 Home Study Course
The 7 Figure Code for Free if you act fast!

Mike he has decided to give ONLY Lucky 10,000 people
the course for FREE (Instant Access) as well as send
you some free bonuses just for the s&h

http://enroll.the7figurecode.com

And in case you are wondering, there is no catch to the
offer.

Well, unless you consider the 10,000 a “catch”

So take note:

- Over 100,000 people know about this.

- 25,000 + People are on the VIP list.

- Millions of emails are going out today…

and… he is only giving this offer to the first 10,000 people.

So let me do some math for you.

This current product ($1297) sold to 2500 people in just 1 week
so you can imagine that for FREE 10,000 people will jump on this
very fast

(so don’t yell at me if it is CLOSED if you get there late, I
am doing my best to let you know about this and I hope this
notice reached you in time.)

http://enroll.the7figurecode.com

So HURRY over to the site right now and get access to
The 7 Figure Code, one of the best home study courses
for serious Internet Marketers not looking to be “Newbies”
forever and get access now and get your bonuses shipped
to you as well.

http://enroll.the7figurecode.com

Thanks

Andy Huang
PS – Remember, only 10,000 people get access and this could
sell out (or be gone).

Google taking action and annouced Tuesday that it is suing Pacific Webworks and “several other unnamed defendants” over using “Google Money” scamming consumers in CPA offers.

This is yet another sign that Google is taking seriously the threat to its brand from the unauthorized training schemes, ebooks and membership programs that have proliferated in the last couple of years.

In combination with the recent large scale permanently disable AdWords accounts of AdWords advertisers at the account level, Google’s scammer-attack is hitting home and word is that there are quite a few PPC guys that are planning to lay low for a while. And all that is before the FTC comes calling.

Google’s latest lawsuit specifically mentions what they call “names to be wary of”: Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works

Be cautious of what you are marketing online these day. Qualify the program for quality before you market them.

Andy Huang