Google To Retire Their Adsense Referral Program
Google is going to retire their Google Adsense referral program during the last week of August. During that time, referral ads that featured Google products or offerings from Adwords advertisers will no longer display any ads.
Although the referral programs is not that lucrative as compared to other monetization programs, at the very least it is an additional source of revenue for some webmasters. While I did not actively promote this program, a quick check around find some webmasters making decent money off it.
My Google Account Is Reinstated!
I received a piece of good news from Google this morning regarding the reinstatement of my Google Adsense account. I have been waiting for an answer for the past one month counting from Day 1 of my account termination. Even though I am a very optimistic person by nature, I have already given up hopes of getting my account reinstated given the information and feedbacks I have garnered from forums and other blogs alike.
But the strange thing is I have gotten so used to making do without Adsense ads that the news did not really affect me that much. I thought I would be very delighted but I am just glad to have an extra revenue channel back. I have some good results in using CBpro Ads on some of my websites and this is where the dilemma starts, should I go back to using Google Adsense or other contextual ads.
Nah! As always, I would go for both. Initially, those first 2 weeks without Adsense is hell but the good thing to come out of this experience is that I am forced to look for alternatives and good things have come out of it. I’ve always believed “whenever there are obstacles, opportunities are always around the corner” and this certainly hold true for me each time I meet with an obstacle. So the next time any obstacle appears, take time to survey and look around for the hidden opportunities that are just round the corner. Good luck! 
Good News From Google
Wow! I just received an email from Google today that my appeal is under consideration and although the email do stated that it is by no means a guarantee that my account will be reinstated. Well, at least there is a piece of good news today. After almost 2 weeks of waiting, this is good news indeed.
As for the other contextual networks that I have been testing, I have yet to see any positive results. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my websites are based in very specialized niches. I have been testing some other advertising scripts and systems that come to my attention recently.
I will post some reviews and introduction in the near future and I hope you will find them useful to your online success.
Google Closed My Adsense Account
Recently, I have my Google closed for suspected fraud click. Imagine my surprise when I tried to log on to my account, only to receive a message that my account has been closed due to click fraud. It was beyond anything I have experienced during my brief time as an online marketer.
The thing that makes it the more surprising is that the previous night; I was still checking my stats and everything seemed normal. There is no surge in traffic to indicate I may be a victim of someone trying to get my account closed by Google.
A quick check on Google Adsense forum revealed that a large number of webmasters are affected too even though there are no indication of any click fraud involved. Some webmasters suggested writing in to Google to highlight our plight. However, the general reply from other more experienced webmasters is that the chances of getting your account reinstated will be very slim. Left with no further options, I sent an appeal email to Google immediately and I hope to get a reply from them as soon as possible.
Early Page Rank Update For 1st Quarter 2008
The time of the year has come again when every webmaster will be sweating over their websites’ page rank. As you know, Google updates page rank of each site every quarterly. The last update was in early Jan, however these few days; I started noticing the page rank on all my websites behaving abnormally.
I have websites spread across a few web hosts and servers and surprising all the page rank start behaving abnormally at the same time. One moment, I have a site page rank down to zero and the next day, the website has its page rank increased.
I don’t recall experiencing such abnormities during the last update and after a quick check in various forums revealed that Google may have change its page rank algorithm and that might be the cause of my websites’ abnormalities.
Luckily, the change in algorithm did not affect my websites ranking that much. In fact most of my sites, old and new have seen an increase in page rank except for one blog which is penalized and has its page rank dropped to “0”. I suspected it may have to do with all those paid postings that I have been doing all these time.
Anyway, according to other webmasters, the updating is still in progress and may last until the end of the month.
So how did your sites fared during this update?
Adsense Ads Units Are Less Clickable Now
About a week back, Google announces change to their Adsense Ads units. If you noticed in the past, the clickable area for Adsense ads units encompassed the whole background of the individual ads. Now, clicks will only worked if you click on the title and URL of each ad.
Well, it seems that this move by Google once again annoyed many Adsense publishers who see a immediate decrease in their Adsense earnings.
In their own words:
“We’re rolling out a change to our text ad formats to help reduce accidental clicks and increase value for advertisers…..This new format will match the changes we’ve implemented on Google.com to help decrease the number of accidental clicks and increase the number of ad conversions. A reduction in accidental clicks will keep users on your pages, interacting with your content until they choose to click on an ad. This change will enhance the user’s overall experience with your websites and improve advertiser campaign value, but it’s likely that your click-through rate will decrease.”
Google Clamps Down On Paid Postings
Here is an update on the latest round of Page Rank drops that affect thousands and thousands of bloggers worldwide. At last, Google decided to clamp down on bloggers who are monetizing their sites through paid postings. Many webmasters who are doing paid postings in their blogs found their blogs’ Page Rank dropped from even as high as PR4 to PR0. This is especailly true for people who are doing PayPerPost opportunities.
Google is doing this retaliation to people who are blatantly selling links and doing paid postings. It seems that Google is now going full force to stop other ads networks from jeopardizing and hurting their long profitable revenue channel “Adsense”. It’s understandable and while this seems so surreal to the thousands and thousands of bloggers worldwide, it’s a reality that will stay.
So what does it mean for you if you are doing paid postings all these while?
<!–more–> Definitely in the unforeseen future, it’s going to hurt your income, but then you should not be dishearten. After all, this is part and parcel of life and you should be prepared for it. That’s why it’s always important to diversify your income channels so that when one suddenly dropps, you wlll not be affected that badly.
If your Page Rank is not affected even though you are doing paid postings and selling links, you need to act first and remove all traces of PayPerPost and other paid postings if possible. Stop doing paid postings if you do not want to affect your Page Rank.
However, if you don’t care about your sites and you are those bloggers who set up your blogs to purely monetize from paid postings and selling links, then please carry on as per normal. 
Currently, there are much speculation going round whether Google will offer amnesty to PayPerPost or other paid postings blogs. Thee is another rumor going round Google may scrap Page Rank altogether.
Since whatever Google does is beyond our control, we should continue to stick with building quality sites and also look for opportunities to exploit and make money.
If you have read through my posts, you would have known by now, I always advocate diversifying your income channels. I have sites built purely for paid postings and I intend to continue monetizing it that way. So whatever you do, always think of alternatives in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
Google Page Rank Update – 3rd Quarter 07
It has been months since Google last did their Page Rank update. Talks have been going round in forums and blogs about the Google Page Rank update and when will it finished.
No one has any clear idea when their sites will be updated but according to news going round in forums and blogs, Google has started to penalize those sites that have been selling links. Many webmasters who have been selling links on their sites through ads networks like Text Link Ads have been slap with Page Rank penalty which result in lower Page Rank for their sites.
For me, this round of updating is a mixture or joy and disappointment. Although disappointment is a tad too harsh as all my sites have experience Page Rank increases. In fact most of my sites jumped from straight unranked to a Page Rank of 3 or 4 whereas the sites that I focus most on only have a slight increase in Page Rank of 1 to 2 places. 
I supposed these sites are being slapped with Page Rank penalties as I have been selling links through these sites. But I can still take heart from seeing that ProfitablePoint has a slight increase in Page Rank to 1 even though this blog is less than 2 months old. In fact I was quite surprise by the increase in Page Rank as I did not do anything much except for updating ProfitablePoint regularly.
From this update, it seems that Google has changed its Page Rank algorithm and this is just the beginning according to some who said that the next coming update in 2008 is going to be more harsh on those selling text links.
But what make this whole Page Rank update so interesting and fun to watch is the way webmasters are all going crazy over the Page Rank update. Wonder how’s the next round of updates are going to be! Seems like real fun!
Some Thing To Take Note For Adsense Publisher
For webmasters who are monetizing their sites using Google Adsense, please take note of this:
Recently, on one of my sites I have PSA (Public Service Ads) appearing out of the sudden for no apparent reason. I check my google account for that particular site and found this was happening because I did not update my contact information.
After browsing through multiple forums and blogs, I found out that this issue is happening because I have not confirm my contact details by inputing the PIN that Google had sent to me.
I was puzzled because I have received pins before for my other accounts but this time round the problem seem to stem from the missing PIN which was supposed to be mailed out to me months back???
