SEO Effect Of Duplicate Content

	There are a lot of ways that you can improve your site's page ranking in search engines, unfortunately, not all of them are good. Some people employ certain methods in acquiring a high page rank in search engines, even if these are considered to be deceitful in the sense that they are designed to trick the search engines - one of these methods is actually duplicating web content. What is duplicate content? Duplicate content in SEO is actually any web content that is considered to be similar to another site. Search engines have actually implemented new filters specifically to monitor these types of deceitful attempts to improve site's search engine page rankings. A lot of people think that by creating multiple but similar replicas of their web pages or content, that they will be able to improve their site's page rankings since they will be able to get multiple listings for their site. Since search engines are now monitoring these types of trickery, sites using duplicate content can actually end up getting banned from search engine indexes instead of improving their ranking.
	What are considered as duplicate content? There are a couple of duplicate content types that are being rampantly utilized by a lot of people, each one a bit different in their use, but all of them employed for the same purpose, which is to trick search engines to get better page rankings. One way of getting duplicate content is by having very similar websites or identical web pages on different sub-domains or domains that offer basically the same content. This may include landing or door pages aside from the content, so make sure that you avoid using this if you don't want your site to become vulnerable to search engines' duplicate content filter. Another method of creating duplicate content is by simply taking content from another website or page and reorganizing it to make it appear dissimilar to its original form, though it is actually the same. Product descriptions from many eCommerce sites are actually being utilized by other sites as well. Other sites simply copy the product description of manufacturer's utilized by other competitive markets as well. And add the fact that the product name, as well as the name of artist, manufacturer, writer or creator would be included, a significant amount of content would show up on your page. Although this is much harder to spot, it is still considered to be duplicate content, or spam. Distribution of copied articles by other sites other than the one that distributed the original article can also be considered to be a duplicate content. Unfortunately, although some search engines still deem the site where the original article came from as relevant, some however, do not.
	How do search engines filter duplicate content? Search engines filter for duplicate content by using the same means for analyzing and indexing page ranking for sites, and that is through the use of crawlers or robots. These robots or crawlers go through different websites and catalogues these sites by reading and saving information to their database. Once this is done, these robots then analyzes and compares all the information it has taken from one website to all the others that It has visited by using certain algorithms to determine if the site's content is relevant, and if it can be considered as a duplicate content or spam. How to avoid duplicate content? Although you may not have any intentions to try and deceive search engines to improve your site's page ranking, your site might still get flagged as having duplicate content. One way that you can avoid this from happening is by checking yourself if there are duplicate contents of your page. Just make sure that you avoid too much similarities with another page's content for this can still appear as duplicate content to some filters, even if it isn't considered to be spam.

Top 10 Don'ts for SEO Copywriting

Following in the footsteps of Rand Fishkin and Guy Kawasaki, I decided to come up with my own list of don'ts. There is no shortage of don'ts when it comes to SEO copywriting. It seems this niche got off to a rough start many years ago when early comers somehow misconstrued the core principles of the trade. Allow me to elaborate on how not to write SEO copy. 1. Don't shove as many keyphrases into the copy as humanly possible. It's not about the sheer volume of search terms you include. Yes, Google and other engines should be able to follow what the page is about. Yes, engines are looking to match a searcher's query with search engine optimized content on your web pages, but which pages land at the top is decided through a series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio. When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and user experience. 2. Don't lose site of balance. If SEO copywriting isn't about the percentage of keywords within the copy, then what is it about? Balance. You have two audiences with SEO copywriting: the search engines and your site visitors. But surprisingly, the balance doesn't come with serving both masters well. The balance comes in how much you cater to the engines. You see, your site visitors always come first. However, if you write with too little focus on the engines, you won't see good rankings. If you put too much focus on the engines, you'll start to lose your target audience. Balance... always balance.

3. Don't let someone else choose the keywords. If keyword research isn't a service you offer, an SEO firm, keyword specialist or some other professional that your client hires will have to conduct the research. Don't just accept keyphrases these folks toss your way. Ask to see the entire list with recommendations as to which terms would be best strategically. Then you, as the professional writer, can decide which will also work best within the copy. 4. Don't sacrifice flow for numbers. This is a follow-up to number three and is a major issue with bad SEO copywriting. SEOs or clients sometimes insist on using hacked-up search phrases that simply don't work in a normal sentence. An example? "Candies samples free." Many copywriters will just grin and bear it, sacrificing quality and flow for the sake of competitive values or other numbers. The result is often some obnoxious sentence like, "If you're looking for candies samples free, you've come to the right place!" Forcing a phrase into the copy at all costs never turns out well. 5. Don't use keyphrases that don't apply to the page. If you operate a site about wedding receptions, don't try to force a search term about wedding dresses into the copy just because it pulls a lot of traffic. (A) Unless you sell, alter or design wedding dresses, it won't be applicable. (B) Even if you manage to get the page ranked well for the phrase [wedding dresses], once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have nothing to do with wedding dresses, they will leave. It's a waste of time and effort and it creates a poor user experience. 6. Don't use misspellings and correct spellings on the same page. I fully understand that the misspellings of keyphrases can be valuable search terms. However, to mix correct spellings and misspellings within the same page of copy looks like you've got a bunch of typos in the content. It's just not professional. Some writers will go for the old, "We rent limousines (sometimes spelled limosenes) for the most affordable prices in town." I don't care for that approach. It's just not natural. Would you ever see brochure or newspaper copy that reads that way? I think not. 7. Don't use keyphrases the exact same way every time. This is how we end up with horrible SEO copy that sounds like a 4th grader wrote it. (See #4.) There are lots of ways to use keywords in copy, not just one. In order to sound natural, you have to get creative with your keyphrase use. One way is to break up phrases using punctuation. Since search engines don't pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write something using the search term [real estate Hawaii] that reads like this: "Currently there is an impressive selection of available real estate. Hawaii listings can be..." See? "Real estate" is at the end of the first sentence and "Hawaii" is at the beginning of the second sentence. The engines ignore the period so there's no problem.

8. Don't use all types of search phrases for every situation. There are many ways in which this "don't" applies. One quick example is that of an ecommerce site. It wouldn't be advisable to use specific, long-tail keyphrases on the home page of your site. They are much too specific in most cases and are better suited for individual product pages. Broader terms are typically best for an ecommerce home page. If you don't understand the best applications for the various types of keywords, you're likely to have lackluster results. 9. Don't neglect ALT tags/image attributes. These tags are the ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link. The ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link. Depending on a few different factors, ALT text may be a good place for those misspellings mentioned in #6. 10. Don't forget the chain of protocol. There's a method to the SEO copywriting madness. The idea is not to get as many different keyphrases onto a page as possible. Just the opposite, in fact. Rather than having 12 different search terms used only one time each, you need to use two to four keyphrases (depending on the length of your copy) per page. The title, META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes. Your goal is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant content about a narrow topic. Unless you have an exceptional number of back links built up, just mentioning [dark chocolate], [chocolate strawberries], [chocolate chip cookies], [chocolate cake], [chocolate desserts], [organic chocolate] and [chocolate cheesecake] once each on a web page isn't likely to do a lot of good. Instead, pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them several times each along with mentioning them in your tags. When you avoid making common mistakes, you'll find your SEO copywriting flows much better, is more natural-sounding and ranks higher, too.

Google Cash Spam Policy

If you reached our website as a result of a SPAM email: Please help me fight SPAM. SPAM is a serious problem on the Internet. Please help me in finding the spammer that contacted you. Please forward a copy of the spam email you received to: spamcomplaint@googlecash.com I will take every legal recourse possible against them. Please understand that spammers often promote legitimate websites like this one, in an attempt to receive affiliate fees for referred sales. Even the largest websites like ebay.com, and Amazon.com have to deal with this problem. If you forward the email to me, I can track down the spammer through their affiliate link, and immediately have them removed from my affiliate program. My affiliate program is run through a third party that has very strict anti-spam rules. Once notified they will immediately terminate the affiliates membership and they will receive no commissions on sales made. This works well in stopping the spam, as once they are removed and will not receive their pay, they stop! So please forward me the email and I can stop them instantly. SPAM Policy GoogleCash.com does not use or tolerate SPAM! Any affiliate that uses SPAM to promote "Google Cash" will be immediately and forever removed from the affiliate program and will not receive commissions on any sales made.

Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Bloggers are buzzing this morning about Google ()’s most recent updates to Page Rank, the system that determines how much weight your site gets in its index. Many popular blogs have seen their rank (which is on a scale of 0-10) take dramatic hits, with some reportedly even falling from PR7 to PR4 (Andy Beard has a good list of those effected). This is a very big deal; many of these sites depend on search traffic and the credibility a high page rank brings to keep their business of selling ads afloat, and a drop in score can significantly lower the flow of visitors.

For Google’s part, the reason these sites are being slammed is because the company’s policy tells web publishers to “avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web.” Do some of the effected blogs sell links to such sites? Perhaps; we’ll let these folks defend themselves and their practices. But the real story is the hypocrisy of Google enforcing this policy on third-party publishers, when within their own engine they profit immensely by selling ads to spammers and so-called “bad neighborhoods.”

Here’s an example of just how easy it is to find link spam in Google’s sponsored listings. First, do a search for “low cost airfare,” and then follow this path:

1. Go to page 3 of results. Under “Sponsored Links” click the link for CheapAirfareWorld.com

2. Arrive at CheapAirfareWorld.com. Click “lowest airfare.”

3. If the resulting page isn’t a web spammer/bad neighborhood, I don’t know what is. The page is nothing but sponsored links.

The truth of the matter is that Google makes a good deal of money by allowing spammers to buy AdWords. These spammers in turn make money by creating pages with no value added content and instead using schemes to get people clicking paid links. Often, these paid links are AdSense, which puts even more money in Google’s pocket. If bloggers are selling links directly to such people, they are in turn taking money directly away from Google, which, as a $200 billion corporation, isn’t something Google is likely to be too happy about.

However, versus some of the companies Google allows to advertise in its search engine, many of those taking a Page Rank hit are producers of great content, and it’s a total shame that this policy might ultimately drive them out of business. As the buzz grows over this, it will be interesting to see what kind of response Google has to offer.

How to Report Spam to MSN

To report search engine spam to MSN, use the form on their website.

Have you seen any search engine spam lately? Instead of submitting spam reports to each engine, you can also simply submit a spam report through SEOToolSet^TM.

NOTE: If you have seen one of our Certified Analysts or Organizations engaging in spam practices, please report the spam violation through a Certified Spam Report so we can conduct a spam audit of their practices as soon as possible.

How MSN Defines Spam

MSN Search has recently added content guidelines to their website, explicitly stating that the MSNBot will see the following techniques as search engine spam:

• Stuffing pages with irrelevant keywords in order to increase a page’s keyword density, including ALT tag stuffing.
• Using hidden text or links.
• Using techniques such as creating link farms to artificially increase the number of links to your page.

Also, in an e–mail announcing the second preview release of the new MSN search, Microsoft mentioned cloaking and having duplicate content on multiple domains as things that will lead your site to being penalized or removed from the MSN Search index.

How to Report Spam to Teoma / Ask Jeeves

To report search engine spam to Ask Jeeves or Teoma, e-mail them at jeeves@askjeeves.com

How Teoma / Ask Jeeves Defines Spam

One of the most definitive sources of the Teoma / Ask Jeeves spam policy is on their Site Submission Terms page. Among the techniques that will keep you from being ranked are:

• Having deceptive text
• Having duplicate content
• Having metadata that does not accurately describe the content of a web page
• Including off-topic or excessive keywords
• Fabricating pages to lead users to other web pages
• Showing different content than the spidered pages to users
• Using intentionally misleading links
• Using self linking referencing patterns
• Misusing affiliate or referral programs

How to Report Spam to Yahoo!

If you find a site that is spamming in Yahoo!, you can report the spam through a form on their website.

NOTE: In addition to reporting spam, you can also report copyright violations to Yahoo!. To request that they remove any content published in violation of copyright protection, e-mail them at copyright@yahoo-inc.com.

How Yahoo! Defines Spam

NOTE: Altavista, All the Web and Inktomi are all owned by Yahoo!, so the Yahoo! spam policies and webmaster guidelines also apply to these search engines.

According to Yahoo!, search engine spam is webpages “that are considered unwanted and appear in search results with the intent to deceive or attract clicks, with little regard for relevance or overall quality of the user experience.” Officially, Yahoo! does not want to index sites with:

• Text that is hidden from the user
• Misuse of competitor names/products
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Pages in great quantity, which are automatically generated or of little value
• Pages dedicated to redirecting the user to another page
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Pages built primarily for search engines
• Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that use methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Excessive cross-linking with sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
• Pages that harm the accuracy, diversity, or relevance of search results
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent, or provide a poor user experience

How to Report Spam to Google

Google has a form that allows you to report spam to Google or you can e-mail Google at spamreport@google.com. Note that Google rarely manually removes websites from the engine. Instead, it tweaks the search engine algorithm and spam detection software to try and eliminate the spam technique that is clogging up the engines.

How Google Defines Spam

As part of their Webmaster Guidelines, Google outlines techniques to use to help Google locate, index and rank your website. They also specificially state that the following techniques may lead them to remove your site from the Google index:

• Hidden text or hidden links.
• Cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Automated queries to Google.
• Pages loaded with irrelevant keywords.
• Multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• "Doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

However you should keep in mind that these aren't the only practices that Google disapproves of. Generally, Google doesn't like their results manipulated by deceptive practices. Their recommendation for webmasters is:

Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

To combat common search engine spam practices employed by rogue SEOs, Google has also posted a list of practices that should raise a red flag when you are looking for a search engine optimizer. According to Google, feel free to walk away from an SEO who:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google

NOTE: If you are having trouble finding an ethical search engine optimization specialist, take a look at our Directory of SEOToolSet^TM Certified Analysts and Organizations. Everyone certified by SEOToolSet^TM is audited at random at least once a quarter to make sure that they are not using practices that would violate our Code of Conduct or Code of Ethics.

How Search Engines Define Spam

In terms of SEO, the term "spam" or "spamdexing" is used to describe techniques used to artificially inflate the perceived relevancy of inferior web sites. Throughout history, various techniques have been implemented with varying degrees of success. Examples of these spam techniques include hiding links, cloaking, link farming, keyword stuffing and using style controls to mask content. Since spamdexing practices are constantly evolving, SEOToolSet^TM has decided to hold our Certified Analysts, Organizations and Partners to a common SEOToolSet^TM Code of Conduct instead of outlawing certain bad practices. However, we believe that it is important to know what the major search engines specifically say about spam and what practices are definitely not allowed if you would like to rank in top-tier search engines. Plus, every ethical SEO should know how to properly report any spam that they see so the search engines can correct their algorithm

Gmail uses Google's innovative technology to keep spam out of your inbox.

Gmail fans often cite great spam protection as a key reason they love Gmail. It's relatively easy to catch spam messages; the challenge is to catch the right messages without blocking mail you want along the way.

How do we do it? Our team of leading spam-fighting scientists uses a number of advanced Google technologies. Though in many cases our best weapon is you.

Community clicks

Gmail users play an important role in keeping spammy messages out of millions of inboxes. When the Gmail community votes with their clicks to report a particular email as spam, our system quickly learns to start blocking similar messages. The more spam the community marks, the smarter our system becomes.

Quick adaptation

The same advanced computing infrastructure that powers Google search also tunes our spam filters. As new spam data is released, the scale of Google's computer network allows us to quickly modify Gmail's spam-fighting algorithms. It's often a matter of minutes between the time a spammer sends out a new type of junk mail and when it's blocked from Gmail accounts.

Powered by Google

Many Google teams provide pieces of the spam-protection puzzle, from distributed computing to language detection. For example, we use optical character recognition (OCR) developed by the Google Book Search team to protect Gmail users from image spam. And machine-learning algorithms developed to merge and rank large sets of Google search results allow us to combine hundreds of factors to classify spam.

Authentication, for everyone

Many webmail services support a single authentication system to verify senders and help identify forged messages. Gmail supports multiple authentication systems, including SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DomainKeys, and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), so we can be more certain that your mail is from who it says it's from. Also, unlike many other providers that automatically let through all mail from certain senders, making it possible for their messages to bypass spam filters, Gmail puts all senders through the same rigorous checks.

Content Providers: How Much To Bid for Traffic?

Pay Per Click ROI Calculations For Content Providers

By Sean Donahoe

Originally Published: February, 2005

Introduction

While many articles have been written on Pay Per Click ROI calculations for ecommerce providers, very little has been written for the content providers. This article will focus on how a content provider can determine how much to bid when running a pay per click campaign. After examining the basic solution, advanced topics are presented to further refine the process.

Revenue Per Visit Calculation

To determine how much to bid, the revenue per visit needs to be determined. The model presented is simplistic enough that the inputs can be easily gathered from a web analytics program.

The first step is determining the value of a page. To do this, first determine the average CPM of the ads shown on the site. Take this CPM and multiply it by the number of ads per page and divide by a thousand. This gives you the average revenue per page.

The next step is to take this average revenue per page and multiply it by the average number of pages consumed per visit.

The calculation is relatively simple.

CPM x Ads Per Page
--------------------------- x Pages per Visit = Revenue per Visit
1000

This number is the expected revenue from a visit. This is how much you expect to make per visitor. This should be your maximum bid when purchasing terms.

Example:

Assume a fictitious firm that produces sports content. Their CPM is $14; Number of ads per page is 2; pages per visit is 5. Using the formula the maximum I should bid is .14.

14 x 2
-------- x 5 = .14
1000

Implementation

Now that the value of a visit has been determined a set of keywords can be built up from the content provided. Other articles and tools exist to help you determine which words are searched on more frequently. In this stage I recommend bidding at half the level that was determined above. This gives a good starting point. This means for every visitor that clicks on your ad you make the same amount as you bid.

Example:
Continuing the scenario, with a revenue per visit of .14, I would bid .07. I receive .14 in revenue and pay out .07. Making .07 in profit.

.14 - Revenue per visit
-.07 - Cost per click (To Search Engine)
-----
.07 - Profit

Maintaining

After running your campaign for a few weeks it is important to review the results and implement more advanced bid analysis. One important piece of advice is to track those individuals coming from your paid campaign differently than those coming through the normal search engines. My work has shown that visitors may actually consume more pages per visit than a normal visitor when they arrive from a pay per click search. This is probably because they were actively searching out this content and have a desire to read more about it. The use of custom URLs along with specialized reports should allow you to identify visitors arriving from your ads.

Identifying which visits come from each keyword will allow for a customized bid value for each term. Since each keyword will have a different number of pages consumed per visit the amount bid can be raised or lowered to compensate for this.

After having a complete understanding of what a pay per click visitor will do, bids can begin being tailored to generate either a higher return or more volume. Lower bids will generate higher returns per visitor but at a lower volume. Higher bids will generate more volume but at a lower return. Your own goals may vary depending on contract requirements, bandwidth, or other business practices.

Advanced Items

Breakout Content Sections

While this method is useful for smaller sites, larger content providers should breakout content into different sections depending on CPM and content type. Certain content may command higher CPMs and is more valuable. Other sections may have a higher number of pages consumed per visit.

New/Current Visitor Benefit

Firms using more advanced tools will know the future benefit of the consumer. Paid search is a great way to reach out to visitors that may not have been to your site before. Sites with a large volume of content may be more interested in the return behavior of visitors. Advanced tracking will allow you to determine if paid search visitors return and how often. This value can be added back into the model to increase the maximum bid value.

Contract Benefits

While determining your CPM per page it is important to understand the goal of your exercise may not be generating a high return. Site run ads may be written under a contract model. Bid amounts should be posted at the maximum to ensure the contract will be fulfilled. It takes a more advanced model to be able to forecast if a contract is in danger of not being met. This triggers the campaign development and implementation process to help capture the additional traffic needed to push you over the top. This proactive methodology requires frequent tracking of campaigns and forecasting models to be able to have enough time to implement the campaign.

Time/Agency Cost

A common mistake of many smaller firms is not considering the costs of developing and maintaining a paid search process. This is especially critical in the content based paid search model. The value of a content supported visit can be much lower than those that are actually selling items. It is important to add in the overall time or agency cost to the campaign results to determine a true ROI.

Summary

In summary, content based providers should begin examining the value of a visitor to their site. With careful tracking and analysis it can be profitable to use paid search as means of driving page consuming visitors to the site. After the initial campaign has been started more advanced bidding concepts can be applied to gain even more benefit.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition.
FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings.

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Comment Spam and Reciprocal Links

Watch For New Anchor Tag In Link Exchanges

Originally Published: January 19, 2005

Today Google introduced a new tag [1] which will also be honored by MSN and Yahoo. The purpose of this tag is to fight "comment spam".

Comment Spam Defined

Comment spam refers to entries user place in guest books, blogs, etc. which include links back to the user's site. This spam may help the user increase the PR of his site by creating links from legitimate, highly ranked sites.

Like most spam, this comment spam is an annoying waste of time and bandwidth.

No Follow Anchor Tag Details

The new tag (rel="nofollow") is added by the owner of the site where the comment is posted, it tells Google and the other search engines to ignore that link for calculating pagerank and link counts.

Here is an example of a normal and modified anchor tag:

Visit my Spammer Heaven site.

That comment would be transformed to

Visit my Spammer Heaven site.

Notice that the nofollow tag can be applied on a per link basis by the site owner. This gives the owner greater control than the NOINDEX META tag or the robots.txt file which function on a per page basis.

The No Follow Anchor Tag & Reciprocal Links

The new no follow tag is intended for sites which allow the user to post comments but it should work in any HTML page. This presents an opportunity for unscrupulous webmasters to offer "reciprocal links" which are useless. The webmaster can offer to exchange links but he can put the no follow tag in the anchors on his site which negates any gain from the search engines.

If you offer to trade links you need to inspect the source code of the page where your link will reside. You should look for the "no follow" tag in the anchor as well as older tricks which prevent the links from being properly indexed by the search engines.

[1] http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

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Cloaking: Does Your Web Host Change Your Web Pages?

Google Doesn't Like Cloaking

Originally Published: March 15, 2005

When you choose a web hosting company, you don't expect that they are going to change your web pages. You also don't expect that they change your web pages for their own benefit. Unfortunately, that's exactly what some web hosts seem to do.

What Do These Web Hosts Do To Your Web Pages?

These web hosting companies change your web pages when a search engine spider requests them. For example, if Googlebot visits your web pages, the web host will return a different web page than the web page that is returned when a normal web surfer visits your web pages (a technique with the name cloaking).

The changed web pages contain links to the web host web site so that the link popularity of the web host site is improved. In addition, the web host creates new page and complete sub directories full of links on your web site.

Note that these changed URLs and the new pages cannot be seen by you. The URLs are not static and you cannot see them with your FTP client. Only search engine spiders can see the changed web pages because the web host intercepts the requests and dynamically creates the pages.

Some hosts also seem to add links to some of their clients on your web pages. They do this to artificially improve the link popularity of their clients' sites. If you see any Secret backdoor to Google offers from your web host without further details, you should be skeptical. If a web host changes the web sites of other people, it is likely that they will also change your web site.

What Does Google Think About This?

Shortly after this issue has been raised in an online discussion forum, a Google spokesman commented on it:

"What a scuzzy practice. [...] I've seen stuff like that before, but it's usually pretty rare. Legitimate hosts have a lot to lose from deceiving their hosting clients like that [...] Practices like that just go way beyond legitimate and into scamming."

How Can You Find Out If Your Web Host Changes Your Web Pages?

Go to Google, search for your domain name and click on the "Cached" link next to the results. You'll see the web page that Google has indexed then.

If the web page in the Google page has links to other web pages that you don't know, chances are that your web host has changed your pages. In that case, you should contact your web host or Google so that the problem can be solved.

Web hosting companies with ethical business standards don't use these techniques. If you find out that your web host changes your pages, you should consider a new hosting company.

If Google finds out that your web site uses cloaking, you will get into trouble, even if the cloaking has been done by your web host and not by you.

Editor's Note: See search engine cloaking to learn about intentional cloaking by webmasters.

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Cloaking

Cloaking is a search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the users; this is done by either looking at the IP addresses of who is requesting the page, or by looking at the User-Agent HTTP header. While there are some legitimate uses for cloaking, like giving Macromedia Flash to users while giving text to the search engines (since search engines can't understand Flash), cloaking is most often used to try to trick the search engine into giving it a higher ranking than it would get without cloaking; it can also be used to trick search engine users into visiting a site that they ordinarily wouldn't, because the search engine's description of the site differs from the site's actual contents. For this reason, sites that are discovered to be using cloaking are permanently banned by most search engines.

Cloaking is a form of doorway pages technique.

A similar technique is also used on the Open Directory Project web directory . It differs in several ways from search engine cloaking:

• It is intended to fool human editors, rather than computer search engine spiders.
• The decision to cloak or not is based upon the HTTP referrer , which tells the URL of the page on which a user clicked a link to get to the page. Some cloakers will give the fake page to anyone who comes from a web directory website, since directory editors will usually examine sites by clicking on links that appear on a directory webpage. Other cloakers give the fake page to everyone except those coming from a major search engine; this makes it harder to detect cloaking, while not costing them many visitors, since most people find websites by using a search engine.

See also

• Keyword Stuffing
• Link farms
• Search Engine Cloaking: Is Cloaking The Holy Grail Of SEO?

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking

Reprinted from Wikipedia, The Free-Content Encyclopedia under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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Click Fraud

How To Avoid Click Fraud

Originally Published: January 18, 2005

Click fraud is becoming a major problem for online advertisers. If you advertise your web site on pay per click search engines such as Overture or Google AdWords, chances are that you pay way too much for your clicks.

What is click fraud?

Click fraud is the practice of artificially inflating the number of clicks in a pay per click online campaign.

Overture defines click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site to purchase goods or services or to obtain information.

Google defines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions.

No matter how you define it, click fraud means that someone is cheating you and that you pay too much for your pay per click campaigns.

Who are these people?

There are three main groups that click on pay per click ads without real interest in the offered goods:

• People who joined Google AdSense or other per click affiliate programs click on the ads on their own web site to make a little income. Often, these people cooperate with other webmasters to click on each other's ads.
  
  
• Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads of competitors to drive up their advertising costs.
  
  
• Companies (often in India, Russia and China) hire people who are paid to click on ads. (Intentionally broken sample link: [timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-654822,curpg-1.cms] )

Is click fraud really a big problem?

No pay per click company denies that pay per click fraud exists. According to some web analytics companies, as much as 50% of all click activity is fraudulent.

This means that your pay per click marketing activities are half effective as they could be because of click fraud.

What can you do to save money?

The best way to lower your pay per click advertising costs is to optimize your current ads so that they deliver a better return-on-investment.

There are many things you can do to improve the effectiveness of your pay per click ads. Details can be found in our Google AdWords eBook.

In addition to useful information that helps you to lower your advertising costs while increasing your profits, the eBook contains a list of keywords that attract click fraudsters and information on how to avoid click fraud.

Copyright by Axandra.com, publishers of:

• IBP All In One Promotion Software
  All You Need To Get Top 10 Rankings On Google And Yahoo!
• Successful Advertising With Google's AdWords
  How To Optimize Your Pay Per Click Campaigns
• Marketing ROI Optimizer
  Lower Your Costs And Increase Your Profits

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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Click Fraud and How to Counteract It in Ad Campaigns

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Excerpt

Part 1

By: Boris Mordkovich and Eugene Mordkovich

Originally Published: July, 2005

Editor's Note: This is chapter 6 of the book Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook, see the bottom of this page for ordering information.

Unfortunately for any advertiser or businessperson, whether they are online or offline, fraud is a component they must all deal with, in one form or another. With offline businesses, it’s usually in the form of shoplifting or mysteriously disappearing inventory. With online business, however, the fastest-growing type of fraud concerns a phenomenon called “click fraud.”

On its most basic level, click fraud is defined as any click that is maliciously made on an advertiser’s PPC ad with the intent of depleting the amount of money in the advertiser’s account.

As a simple example, let’s assume you have a pay-per-click ad set up on Google and your keyword bid is $1 per visitor. Therefore, each time someone clicks on your ad on the results page for that specific keyword, your account is charged $1. If the amount of money in your account equals $1,000, then you can have 1,000 clicks on your ad before your account is depleted of funds.

If someone decides to target your ad via click fraud, they can use various methods to arrange to have your ad clicked on repeatedly until your $1,000 is gone. This can occur within a matter or minutes, or over a number of days or weeks, depending on what method is used and how blatant the fraudsters are about the process.

Obviously, this is an incredibly destructive type of fraud, especially since it occurs online, where many people feel they are acting anonymously. Some click fraud campaigns do not even try to hide their location or identity if they make a lightning attack on your ad; instead they wait and change their online “identity” after they had made a significant dent in your account, if not having drained it altogether.

The Growth of Click Fraud

Excessive clicking on links to websites and forms of online advertising not tied to a cost-per-click payment is nothing new to the online community. Ever since the beginning of the Internet as a commercial enterprise, excessive clicking on search engine listings was used to create a sense of “popularity” of the website. which often led to improved rankings on the search engine (Stefanie Olsen, “Exposing Click Fraud”).

It is partly because of this early type of questionable clicking that search engines began to explore different methods of ranking websites, leading eventually to today’s reliance on complex algorithms, robot crawls, the infamous Google Dance, relevancy ratings, related links, content, popularity, and so on.

Repeated clicking on pay-per-click advertising is not a recent development, but it has become a major problem for all parties involved.

This phenomenon, now referred to as “click fraud,” has been a part of the Internet for quite some time. One of the earliest successful strikes against this type of fraud was conducted by Jessie C. Stricchiola, President of Alchemist Media, Inc., who identified and successfully procured a refund on behalf of the national corporation Chase Law Group against Goto.com (now Yahoo! Search Marketing) late in the year 2001.

It wasn’t until later in 2002, however, that many companies began to discuss the issue in online articles and forums. One of the main problems with combating click fraud seemed to be that there were so many different interests involved.

Or course, advertisers were concerned that their ad dollars were being wasted. Yet, if they were also affiliates, they saw the potential of making back some of their own click fraud losses by practicing click fraud themselves.

Search engines were interested in maximizing ad revenues (which click fraud accomplished for them), yet realized that if they didn’t help control click fraud, eventually they would lose those very advertisers and their ad revenue.

In addition, some people who were involved in click fraud didn’t understand that what they were doing was wrong. This was particularly true if they were not very computer literate or had themselves been a victim of click fraud. In some cases, they had even been told they were helping the very people whose ad dollars they were depleting, because clicking on their ads increased the popularity of the website.

However, click fraud didn’t really become a huge problem until pay-per-click advertising became more prevalent. Logic dictates that if there is nothing to practice click fraud upon, it is unlikely to be a large problem. Unfortunately, the increased popularity of pay-per-click advertising has concurrently revived the practice of fraudulently clicking on paid advertising.

Although many suspected fraudulent clicks were depleting their ad accounts, it wasn’t until a few landmark cases came to light that the online advertising industry began to react to the growing problem.

Estimates of the extent of the problem today vary widely, and this is a subject of much discussion among advertisers and PPC search engines. Estimates range from a low of 10% to as much as 50% of clicks falling into the fraudulent category. The search engines usually claim that, although it is a significant problem, it falls toward the lower percentage. Developers of tools and software to counteract click fraud, however, lean toward the higher figure.

However, everyone does agree that click fraud has been a problem in the past and that it is becoming an even greater problem now. Left to flourish on its own, click fraud ultimately could bring the entire pay-per-click industry grinding to a halt, with advertisers losing enough money on their ad campaigns to drop their ROIs to negative numbers. This, in turn, could lead them to withdraw from this type of advertising altogether.

The domino effect from such a retreat could have a massive effect on search engines in general, most of which now rely on paid advertising as a prime source of income for growth in the marketplace. Both sides have a great stake in controlling and ultimately bringing click fraud statistics down to the lowest possible percentage.

As long as there are people willing to commit fraud, however, click fraud will never be completely eliminated. Advertisers and search engines agree, however, that the issue needs to be addressed now, before it gets completely out of hand.

Probably the most infamous and audacious click-fraud case, which caught the attention of the industry and alerted them to the potential danger of click fraud, involved an individual named Michael Anthony Bradley. Mr. Bradley developed a software program that he called “Google Clique.” He claimed that the program allowed clicking on pay-per-click ads in such as way as to be virtually undetectable to search engines.

Bradley told Google that if they were not interested in purchasing his software at a reported price of $100,000, he would send copies of it to at least 100 spammers worldwide. This would result in fraud in the neighborhood of at least $5 million in the course of six months. Bradley was charged with extortion and wire fraud in March of 2004.

Later in the year, another significant lawsuit brought to the forefront another type of click fraud, this time involving affiliates. On November 15, 2004, Google sued one of the advertisers on its AdSense program (which involves websites including a PPC ad on their site in return for a portion of the income earned by Google when someone clicks on that ad).

The lawsuit claimed that Auctions Expert International, a Houston, Texas-based company, “ flagrantly abused (Google) by artificially and/or fraudulently generating ad clicks…. These clicks were worthless to advertisers, but generated significant and unjust revenue for defendants.” Key to the lawsuit was the claim by Google that the site itself was set up specifically for the purpose of click fraud and was never intended to be a legitimate auction website.

Experts in click fraud are of two minds concerning these two significant cases. One side believes that businesses need to accept the fact that a certain amount of click fraud is inevitable, just as offline businesses accept the fact that they will be subject to a certain percentage of loss due to shoplifting and other means.

Those who adhere to this view generally believe that the search engines are doing all they can to identify the culprits and rectify the situation via refunds to their advertisers. They also believe that advertisers need to consider click fraud part of the cost of doing business online and that they should take whatever steps are possible to detect it (more on this later in the chapter).

Other experts, most notably Jessie Stricchiola from Alchemist Media, who is one of the earliest analysts to identify and deal with click fraud issues in paid advertising, see the problem slightly differently. They tend to view the public actions by Google against click fraud activities as a means of deflecting advertisers’ concerns. To these analysts, search engines appear to be either unable or unwilling to commit the resources needed to combat click fraud. Instead, they place the onus on the advertiser to detect and report it; then the advertiser must rely on the search engine’s judgment as to whether or not the incident is true click fraud, or not.

As for the search engines, many have begun to institute click fraud detection programs. Google itself claims that both the Bradley case and the Auctions International lawsuit show that Google is sending a warning to all who participate in click fraud that they “…have sophisticated technology that detects and eliminates fraud…. This lawsuit … demonstrates the success of our antifraud system and that we will take legal action when appropriate.” (Steve Langdon, Google spokesperson.)

These high-profile legal cases are, however, just the tip of the iceberg in terms of click fraud in general.

Continued: How Click Fraud Affects Advertisers (Part 2) >>>

Reprinted from Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook

The full book is available directly from the publisher or from Amazon.

Copyright 2005 by MordComm, reprinted with permission.

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Choosing The Right Keywords For Your Site

Compiling & Evaluating A Keyphrase List

By Scott Buresh

Originally Published: August 26, 2003

Many businesses recognize that search engines can bring volumes of highly targeted prospects to their website, typically at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.

Unfortunately, these same companies often overlook the most important part of their search engine marketing campaigns, which is keyphrase selection and evaluation.

Keyphrases (those phrases that potential customers are using to find products or services on search engines) are the building block of any search engine marketing strategy.

It is essential that they are chosen carefully, or else the remainder of the campaign, no matter how effective the implementation, will likely be in vain. What follows is a three-step process that goes over the process of compiling, selecting, and evaluating the ongoing performance of keyphrases for search engines.

1. Compiling A Keyphrase List:

Usually, companies are sure that they already know their ideal keyphrases. Often, they are wrong.

This is typically because it is very hard to separate oneself from a business and look at it from the perspective of a potential customer (rather than an insider). Compiling a keyphrase list should not be, despite common practice, a strictly internal process.

Rather, it is best to ask everyone outside of your company for their input, especially your customers. People are often very surprised at the keyphrase suggestions they get- and sometimes dismayed to realize that an average customer doesn’t speak the same language that they do.

Only after you have put together a list of likely phrases from external sources do you add your own. As a last step, try to add variations, plurals, and derivatives of the phrases on your list.

2. Evaluating Keyphrases:

Once you have compiled a master keyphrase list, it is time to evaluate each phrase to hone your list down to those most likely to bring you the highest amount of quality traffic.

Although many individuals will base their assessment of keyphrase value based only on popularity figures, there are really three vitally important aspects of each phrase to consider.

a) Popularity

By far the easiest of the three to judge is popularity, since it is not subjective. Software like WordTracker gives popularity figures of search phrases based upon actual search engine activity (it also gives additional keyphrase suggestions and variations).

Such tools allow you to assign a concrete popularity number to each phrase to use when comparing them. Obviously, the higher the number, the more traffic that can be expected (assuming you are able to obtain good search engine positions).

However, this number alone is not good enough reason to pursue any particular keyphrase, although keyphrase analysis too often stops here.

b) Specificity

This is more abstract than the sheer popularity number, but equally important. For example, let’s assume that you were able to obtain great rankings for the keyphrase "insurance companies" (a daunting prospect). Let’s also assume that you only deal with auto insurance.

Although "insurance companies" might have a much higher popularity figure than "auto insurance companies", the first keyphrase would also be comprised of people looking for life insurance, health insurance, and home insurance.

It is very likely that someone searching for a particular type of insurance will refine their search after seeing the disparate results returned from the phrase "insurance companies".

In the second, longer keyphrase, you can be reasonably sure that a much higher percentage of visitors will be looking for what you offer- and the addition of the word "auto" will make it much easier to attain higher rankings, since the longer term will be less competitive.

c) Motivation of User

This factor, even more abstract than specificity, calls for an attempt to understand the motivation of a search engine user by simply analyzing his or her search phrase.

Assume, for example, that you were a real estate agent in Atlanta. Two of the keyphrases you are evaluating are "Atlanta real estate listings" and "Atlanta real estate agents".

Both phrases have very similar popularity numbers. They are also each fairly specific, and your services are very relevant to each. So which phrase is better? If you look into the likely motivation of the user, you will probably conclude that the second is superior.

While both phrases target people looking for real estate in Atlanta, you can infer from the second phrase that the searcher has moved beyond the point where they are browsing local homes or checking out prices in their neighborhood- they are looking for an agent, which implies that they are ready to act. Often, subtle distinctions between terms can make a large difference on the quality of the traffic they attract.

3. Evaluating Keyphrase Performance:

Until recently, judging the performance of individual keyphrases was a dicey proposition. Although it is possible to tell from your log traffic analysis how many visitors are getting to your site from each keyphrase (valuable information, but unfortunately not enough to do much with), it was very hard to decipher which phrases were bringing you the most quality traffic.

Recently, however, some sophisticated but affordable tools have been developed that allow you to judge the performance of each individual keyphrase based upon visitor behavior.

This new software makes it possible to periodically analyze which keyphrases are bringing your site the most valuable visitors- those who buy your products, fill out your contact form, download your demo, etc.

This type of data, rather than the sheer number of visitors from each search phrase alone, is invaluable when you are refining your search engine marketing campaigns, since you can discard and replace non-performing keyphrases and put increased effort toward the phrases that are delivering visitors that become customers. This kind of ongoing analysis is the final piece of the keyphrase puzzle, and allows you to continually target the most important phrases for your industry, even if they change over time.

Choosing The Right Keywords Conclusion:

Keyphrase compilation, evaluation, and performance are all vitally important to any search engine marketing campaign. While high rankings in search engines are an admirable goal, high rankings for poor keyphrases will consistently deliver poor results.

Integration of this keyphrase process into your overall search engine marketing strategy can dramatically improve your website performance (and thus your bottom line).

Related article: Finding Relevant Keywords With Google

Editor's Note: Word Tracker offers a free trial and a free Keyword Research eBook

Copyright by Axandra.com, publishers of:

• IBP All In One Promotion Software
  All You Need To Get Top 10 Rankings On Google And Yahoo!
• Successful Advertising With Google's AdWords
  How To Optimize Your Pay Per Click Campaigns
• Marketing ROI Optimizer
  Lower Your Costs And Increase Your Profits

All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.

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