Google AdSense representative Gokul Rajaram was put on the spot during last week’s Webmasterworld PubConference in Orlando, Florida.
Rajaram said the intent of Google and Google AdSense is to allow the users, advertisers and web publishers to all benefit from the AdSense relationship. He added that AdSense has been successful so far due to Google’s understanding of page content.
Search pages currently represent only 5% of pages on the Internet but are nonetheless a very important part of the Internet. That also leaves 95% of the Internet open space for advertising.
The average web user visits approximately 3.8 sites before buying and, because of that, buying decisions happen everywhere. Google AdSense attempts to allow its users to unlock these conversions wherever they might take place on the Internet.
The Fight Against Click Fraud. “The Achilles heel of AdSense is click fraud,” David Cecil of http://www.searchenginecommando.com told Murdok. Cecil himself gave into the AdSense buzz and now makes hundreds of dollars per month as a customer.
“Click fraud is a huge priority for [Google],” Rajaram agreed, although he admitted Google normally gives offenders a fair warning before banning them. And when the Google Gods suspect click fraud, not even your teenage son is safe.
During the conference, one man shared an anecdote about his own experience with AdSense. The man’s teenage son had built website and placed an AdSense quote on his site.
One day, the boy approached his father with dollar signs in his eyes and exclaimed, “Look, Dad! I can click on these to make the amount of money that I get increase!”
Of course, the concerned father warned his son, “Don’t do that! You’ll get banned!”
Sure enough, the boy’s site was dropped a few days later.
The Google Network. Over 50% of the top 100 media metrics properties use AdSense, which reaches 80% of the Internet population.
The Google semantics behind AdSense attempt to guess what definition of a word the user is searching for based on the other words on the content page. For example, if a user performs a search on the word “java” Google attempts to determine whether the searcher is looking for a type of coffee, a programming language, or a small island vacation destination based on these clues.
AdSense also uses IP addresses to determine visitor locations; however, Google is still perfecting its localization technology.
AdSense payoffs fluctuate, Rajaram says, in relation to bidding, the actions of advertisers, and the amount of money people are willing to pay at any given time.
“We are maniacally focused on making sure our publishers are happy,” Rajaram promised, noting that Google is obsessed with “figuring out what our ecosystem demands.”
For more information on Google AdSense and AdWords, visit WebProWorld, a professional e-Business forum.
Garrett French is the editor of Murdok’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.
