Google is buying marketshare for Google Checkout by profiling merchants who use it, and giving them free high PageRank links from Google sites.

The Google Checkout blog, currently a PageRank 8 site, recently posted about the success of GolfBalls.com on their blog. Not only does that post provide direct links, one one of the links is a deep link with targeted anchor text.
The blog post about GolfBalls.com contains the following passage:

In addition, Google Checkout helps make it even easier for consumers to find us when they search for items like Titleist Pro V1 Golf Balls by displaying the Google Checkout badge next to our search results.

They talk about searching for an item, and instead point that link at a product page on GolfBalls.com. That is like me telling you to search Google for something then dropping an eBay affiliate link in the post.

If Google does something like that it is a co-brand cross promotion, and all is well. If I do something like that it is an attempt to manipulate Google and/or a spammy link buy.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying I would do it differently than Google is doing it. I would just like to remind Google engineers that they would call me as a spammer if I did the same things they do to make their business model work.

This is a mistake Google has made many times in the past.

How can Google ask webmasters to police paid links then do that kind of crap? What a bunch of hypocritical garbage.

Question: I am reading your book. On page 53 you mention using different search engine optimization strategies for small websites and big websites. How do you classify a site as small or large?

Answer: There are two big things that sort the classification of a site as large or small

• whether your optimization is manual or algorithmically driven

• whether search engines consider your site as spam when it ranks

Within those two ideas I think there are 4 big things that separate a small and large website

• brand awareness, and search engineer's perception of your brand

• ad budget, and how a search engineer will perceive your ad buys
• inbound link profile
• number of pages

Brand Strength:

The more well known your brand is the less likely a search engineer will be to penalize your site for doing shady things. When BMW was caught cloaking they were removed from Google's index for only 1 day. Google also has a whitelist of sites that should not be penalized based on human review:

Here is a non-exhaustive "white list" of the sites whose pages are not to be rated as Offensive (nor as Erroneous):
Kelkoo, Shopping.com, dealtime.com, bizrate.com, bizrate.lycos.com, dooyoo.com;

Notice that not only is Bizrate whitelisted, but so is a Bizrate subdomain on another site. Simply put, big brands should spam.

Ad Budget:

If I buy a link, Google is likely to view it as spam. If I buy a website, Google is likely to view it as spam. If a large established site sponsors a conference or buys other ads that tend to have links in them then they are more likely to get away with it. If a large corporation buys a site and slaps a network-wide footer link to it then Google is fine with that.

A large AdWords ad budget allows you to buy links indirectly. Beyond that, if you have a large Google advertising budget, Google may also offer you the following perks: free SEO advice (this is rarely talked about outside the corporate world), take your feedback on search quality (this is rarely talked about outside the corporate world), and they are more lenient with what you can do to rank (robotic content, anyone?). They are afraid to lose large AdWords ad accounts. Google backed down from eBay after eBay stopped buying AdWords ads.

If you are a large Google AdWords advertiser it is expected for you to buy sites and links at will with no risk. People like me, who do not spend heavily on AdWords, are branded as spammers if we follow those techniques. Going forward, a large AdWords ad budget might be the #1 SEO tool.

Inbound Link Profile:

The cleaner your link profile is the more dirty stuff you can do. The more link equity you have the more pages you can get indexed and the better they will rank. It is all about ratios.

Keep in mind that if you are branded as an SEO, a Google engineer may decide to wipe out your site on principal, even if your content quality is greater than the top ranking website, and you built almost all of your links using non-spammy marketing.

Number of Pages:

As you build authority status some search algorithms will become more lenient. For example, it is easier to rank new content based on site trust (some news sites even get immediate inclusion at the top position) and easier to get around duplicate content filters. If you have many pages (like a large product database) then some of your SEO strategy will need to be automated and formula based. With a smaller website you would create hand crafted content for most of the page titles, meta descriptions, page headings, and on page content for almost every page.

Google's official stance is that they do not want to index search results, but if a site scores decently on the brand front or it gives Google reason to fear forms of blowback they can also be more aggressive with creating automated low value content.

In some cases a small content website that builds a strong brand and amazing link authority can bolt on an offers section, and have that portion of the site treated more like a large site while the day to day brand building content is still treated as though it is a smaller website.

Most search trends typically last more than a day. Since Google integrates news results right in the first page of the search results all a news website needs to do is look at popular searches, Amazon best sellers, top Amazon movers, new items on Amazon, and hot items on eBay, write a vanilla piece of content, throw ads on the page, and cash a check.

Reporters no longer have to research public demand. All they have to do is look up the ad value and write about whatever makes the most money interests them. In some cases publishers may let a robot write the story for them!

Many of the most useful publishing formats and many of the most widely used sites are hard to effectively monetize. The solution is to use targeting technology and blend ads and content so closely that they appear to be one and the same. Many people have pushed this from many different angles.

This is somewhat of a rambling post about the merging of content and advertising.

Offline Ad Integration

I recently went to a hospital with a friend. While I was there I flipped open some magazine published by WebMD and read what was perhaps the most basic article on bipolar disorder ever written. The page long article had pictures added to make it two pages long, so the content wrapped around an advertisement for a bipolar drug, and there was even a quiz in there, which was not quite as overt as this Effexor one, but still pretty bad.

How Bad Does Google AdSense Suck at Monetizing Contextual Ads?

Many months ago as an experiment I created a backfill AdSense ad group where I bid a dime a click. Many of those ads appeared on Digg and MySpace and lots of blogs. The overall group had a 2 cent CPM. 19,083,546 ad views cost me $338.01.

Individual publishers can focus their content on expensive topics, but they still can't push the ads too aggressively in their content to their regular audience without losing some of their credibility and exposure.

Bloggers & Smaller Independent Publishers

There are many different takes on how individuals publishers can profit:

• Sell products or services, like I do here. The easiest thing to sell is something associated with your brand. Nobody is going to get mad at Discovery.com for promoting a Discovery toy store.

• Dave Winer suggests using authority and influence for indirect profit
• sell ads: contextual, brand ads, keep your main channel clean while creating an associated offers section on your site, or some combination

In many verticals advertising is overtaking the other monetization models. You only need to think back to the Wordpress Mesothelioma fiasco to remember how much people are willing to trade in their brand for a few dollars, and as long as Google puts a $0 value on your content then advertising is going to beat out paid content in most fields.

In Content Ads

With the flood of content in an endless number of formats advertisers are asking for more value than they did in the past. They want to be able to track the results, and they want ads delivered right in the content.

• Large trusted online publishers are already creating content specifically geared toward branded advertising experiences.

• networks like ReviewMe pay publishers for their attention, feedback, and reach - asking publishers to write honest reviews of interesting products and services
• Federated Media is pushing a concept they call conversational marketing, which asks known publishers to write on a topic and then puts a company slogan next to the quote. John Battelle is likely even going to write a book about conversation marketing.
• On top publishing channels Yahoo! buys ads distributed in content
• Google tells publishers to blend ads into content
• Google sell virtually unmarked inline text link ads, asks publishers to wrap the ads in content with a call to action, and opts publishers into the program without even asking their opinion.

Ads on Large Social Networks

Get enough exposure, traffic, and leverage and you can sell what you once gave away. This philosophy was core to Google's success, and also helped make Facebook wildly profitable. Facebook has done a good job of selling custom sponsorships. Valleywag found their rate card, and noticed that they are likely making up to $90 million on Facebook community sponsorships. There are many clever elements that make FaceBook's sponsorship program work so well

• there is only one sponsored ad on the page at a time

• the ad is put in content and formatted like content
• their ad unit format is so new that people have not yet learned to ignore it
• when someone clicks on an ad they still stay on the Facebook site
• after enough people join a Facebook group that brand gets free follow up advertising by having their brand located on other spots throughout the site, which leads to more sign-ups, which is similar to StumbleUpon ads, social media marketing, or buying organic SEO exposure with PPC ads. You buy enough exposure, mindshare, and traffic that people believe your brand to be credible and they vote for it too.

Facebook is getting some blowback from advertisers about having their ads appear next to some sketchy groups. Of course even if they don't advertise next to those groups they still support their existence by advertising on Facebook. But Facebook, like Google, has so much exposure that many brands feel they need to be seen there.

Behavioral Targeting & Interactive Ad Units

Any form of interactivity or any distribution model that becomes popular can become an ad stream. Google has beta tested making their ads more interactive, creating gadget ads, and allowing users to edit their search results.

Yahoo! and Microsoft promote behaviorally targeted ads. Google claims they are against the idea of behavioral targeting, but already use it, displaying ads based on past searches. Both Microsoft and Google have bought in game advertising targeting companies as well.

Unmarked Ads

Having a large audience makes it easier to enter new markets. Last year Google spent $58 million buying marketshare giving away Google Checkout. Not only are they promoting themselves by carpet-bombing their SERPs with checkout ads, but they also rewrote their relevancy algorithms to boost the relevancy and exposure of any content on Google owned video websites. Many of these videos will eventually carry ads.

Google also leveraged the video interactivity to do cross promotional advertisements that were completely unmarked, and only labeled as promotions after people complained.

Google has also removed disclosure from many Google syndicated ads, which may lead some content readers to think publishers advocate certain lifestyle choices. Google, aware of the power of advertising, recommended HMOs carpet bomb consumers with deceitful educational messaging.

Paying for Content

Anywhere there is a believable story and an arbitrage opportunity someone is putting the pieces together to create profitable content. Colleges are hiring student bloggers, many sites grant a brief moment of exposure for contributing your content, Google is paying college students for gathering local business information, and there are a near unlimited number of business review sites.

How Does All This Relate to Me?

• You can look at how these various networks are blending and targeting ads to think of types of sites you could buy or types of content that you can make today that will be more profitable as the ad networks evolve.

• Some of these sites do an excellent job of ad integration to make the ads look like content. Emulate that on the profitable portions of your site.
• As the market gets saturated with free content sorting through it becomes more than most would desire to do. Central editors will be paid nicely, and the value of a strong brand goes up.
• If a market has few real competitors in it you can leverage wealth stratification, the desire to be important, and improving social software to take advantage of consumer generated content to create a backfill of information, knowing you can display ads differently to site members and non-members.

One of the easiest ways to get your message across is to be different and denounce a currently popular meme. Dan Thies recently referenced a person who is launching their marketing brand by calling the long tail crap. Even if they know what they are talking about with some forms of marketing it undermines their credibility to talk about search marketing with no appreciation for the tail.
This is a growing trend with information in general online. Marketers with a for profit agenda, a reason to create spin, or no knowledge of a field create ratings, reviews, or half compiled resource list at a market and get people to talk about them

• for being useful (to those naive and new to the market, or those featured in the compilation) and

• for being inaccurate (for those who know the market and realize that the lists are marketing garbage)

As marketers like you and I fill industries with information pollution it gets harder and harder for the novice web user to know truth from fiction.

The net effect is that we all buy more lies and garbage, become less trusting and more cynical, and small businesses end up having more similar externalities to large businesses, where the profiting company does not take into account any of the downsides to the pollution they created to generate profit.

Some publishers feel absolved of any wrongdoing when they rely on a third party ad network for ad targeting, but profit driven ad network are amoral. Why would someone pay $3 a click for free ringtones if there wasn't some sort of reverse billing fraud on the backend?