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.

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

Here’s Google:

Introducing AdWords Comparison Ads

Today we’re excited to begin testing a new feature of AdWords called AdWords Comparison Ads, which lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily. Comparison Ads is part of our continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to our users and to help you, our advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.

AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user’s query doesn’t provide enough information for us to confidently predict what they want. Take, for example, users who search for “mortgage.” Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

With Comparison Ads, you can also target your offers at a more granular level, leading to more valuable, qualified leads. To see how it works, let’s use our mortgage example. Users searching for “mortgage” on Google.com may see a promotion from Comparison Ads prompting them to select the type of loan they are looking for and to compare various rates.

(click to view full size image)

If they click the promotion, users are taken to a page with more detailed sponsored results. They can choose directly from the offers listed on that page, or they can further refine their search by providing additional information like income and home value. By giving users the ability to refine their search on a number of relevant attributes, we are able to show more targeted ads and provide you with more valuable leads.

Once users find an offer that matches their specific needs, they can either call you directly or request a quote. If a user requests a quote, Google automatically anonymizes the user’s phone number and sends you a unique code that you can use to contact the user. You only pay if a user calls the phone number on your offer or fills out a form to request a quote.

(click to view full size image)

While Comparison Ads is still an early-stage feature, we’ve focused on a number of ways to enhance the user experience:

• Speed — Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second. There are no long forms for users to fill out – Users see specific offers immediately and only need to fill in additional information if they wish to further refine their results.
• Transparency — Comparison Ads only shows real products. There are no teaser rates, or bait and switch offers. Comparison Ads also standardizes the information presented to users, making it easy for them to sort and compare offers on a side by side basis.
• Privacy — Comparison Ads won’t send advertisers any user information, including anonymized phone numbers, unless the user explicitly requests more information about an advertiser’s offer.

At this time, Comparison Ads will only show to a small number of users in select U.S. states and is only available to a limited number of advertisers in the mortgage/refinance space. Over time, we’ll increase the number of users who see Comparison Ads offers as well as the number of advertisers able to participate.

To read the original source from the office Google AdWords Blog visit  http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-adwords-comparison-ads.html

Hello from Las Vegas Hilton Convention Center where I spent 3 days at PPC Classroom Live 3.

Hats off to Anik Singal as not only a good friend, but someone who really ecellerated my career in Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing.

I remember the first PPC Classroom Live in Las Vegas, where I made a comittment to come learn from Anik & the rest of the speakers. It only seems like it was yesterday. These guys definiately have come a long way to bring more than 18,000 people into the training, 500 people at this event to network and share their success stories.

The first day begun where the brought up the coaches on stage. At PPC Classroom Live 2, Anik had asked me to come on board and help train the students as a VIP Coach.

Amit Metha, David Ford, Stephanie Houstan, Vikas Bhatia, Andy Huang, Adrienne Devita

After working with the student for over 6 months, it is a great honor to finally meet some of them in person. So we started the 1st day by introducing the VIP coaches on stage so students can come to us during the event to help answer any questions they might have.

What I really enjoy is to really spend some face time with students to help review their current strategies as well as share what tactics I applied for my own business.

It was great to be part of the panel to help answer questions in the VIP session. I actually had caught a flu last week in Texas. I was glad I was able to make it through the event that day.

Day 2 was great when I was up on stage presenting with my business partner Simon Leung. We went into more detail in terms of the strategies we deploy as an agency as well as training materials we used to train our team in China.

Sharing our actual results of a success campaign. $1.2 Million in gross sales revenue with less than $9,000 adspent.

It was a great to be able to spent sometimes not only with the students, but the support staff of Lurn who are behind PPC Classroom that is teaching the 10s of 1000s of entrepreneurs worldwide.

David & Andy Huang

Andy Huang & Mark Roth my mentor of CPA network ( Offervalut.com)

We had a surpised guest from Beverly Hills to see Simon & I. Blake Mallen, CMO and Co-founder of ViSalus.

Blake Mallen, Andy Huang and Carol Yang

After the 3 Days of intensive work Anik treated all the coaches and staff to a nice steak dinner at TJ Steak house inside of Las Vegas Hilton

Andy Huang, Anik Singal, Carol Yang

David DiNucci & Andy Huang

Of course, with every success event, there is the after party. We were invited by Blake Mallen to join his crew at the Wynn hotel.

Inside shot of Tryst at Wynn Hotel

Carol Yang, Andy Huang, David

Look forward to the next PPC Classroom Live 4, and hope to see you there.

To your continual success!

Andy Huag

“Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession — while revenues were down quarter over quarter, they grew 6% year over year thanks to continued strong query growth. These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the web as users and advertisers shift online,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “Going forward, our priority remains investing for the long term to drive future growth in our core and emerging businesses.”

Q1 Financial Summary

Google reported revenues of $5.51 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, an increase of 6% compared to the first quarter of 2008 and a decrease of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the first quarter of 2009, TAC totaled $1.44 billion, or 27% of advertising revenues.

Source:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Google-Announces-First-bw-14949372.html

Dear Amazon Associate:

We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www(dot)amazon(dot)com www(dot)amazon(dot)ca, or www(dot)endless(dot)com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.

As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.

This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.

We appreciate your continued support and participation in this advertising Program. If you have questions or concerns, please write to us by using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Program

Amazon is shutting down its affiliate program for PPC marketer, and this certainly will impact many of the affiliates who were riding the riches promoting amazon products.

If you are still doing PPC, make sure you maximize your effort before May 1sst as you have less than 3 weeks to continue receiving payment of your PPC effort with Amazon Associates Program.

Andy