All Posts Tagged With: "9"

A study was recently done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project showing that 47 percent of adult internet users in the United States have attempted to locate information about themselves via Google or another search engine. It looks like people will commonly search family members, co-workers, and potential dates.

While your initial reaction may be that this figure seems a little high, I am surprised that it isn’t much higher. We live in an age where everything is moving online, and the amount of data out there can sometimes be scary. It is a good habit to monitor what exactly is out there about you, because anyone has access to it.

I search myself regularly, as well as keep a Google Alert with my name active to see what people are saying about me. How do you monitor yourself online?

It’s been exactly two weeks since we talked about Google redefining what a clickable area is in an effort to combat click fraud, so I figured that was adequate time to let the change soak in and examine some trends. At the time of the change, it made sense for Google and advertisers, but it fueled a lot of speculation that sites that depend on Google AdSense to generate income would likely lose out on some of their monthly income.

Something that a few publishers speculated on is that with lower fraud rates, publishers would likely be willing to pay more per click to get their advertisements seen. We are also approaching the holiday season, meaning that advertising budgets are going up and a lot of other businesses are launching seasonal advertising campaigns.  If this theory holds true, Google AdSense publishers should still be seeing consistent income.

In looking over my analytics and AdSense reports, it looks like my income from Google AdSense has dipped some, despite a heavy increase in traffic.   Is this due to the clickable area change?   Unfortunately, that isn’t something that I can be sure of.  As David points out, a lot of things can factor into a change in pay-per-click advertising.   Thats why I decided to poll my readers and find out how AdSense is performing for you over the past two weeks.   Has your income remained steady?  Have you noticed any trends?

Have you ever noticed your copyrighted content being scraped? Not only is this illegal, but it can sometimes even result in that person ranking higher than you in the SERPs. While you can always file a DMCA, there is another way to hit the splogger where it hurts……in the wallet.

If you are wondering how to go about this, Daniel of Daily Blog Tips recently talked about a fairly easy way to report a AdSense terms of service infringement to Google. The idea is that this will get the splogger kicked out of AdSense, which will then take away any profit they might be making off your content.

If you are interested in learning how to report people in these situations, I recommend you click over and check out Daniel’s post.