what's the big deal with Google ads on a site?

blade007 · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:40

A lot of sites are now placing those Google ads on their pages. Personally I hate them. Google have enough popularity without having ads everywhere.

so, why's a lot of places using them?

is it for better rankings?

Beansprout · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:45

Which Google ads?

Augmented · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:48

Do you mean Adsense? It's for revenue generation, and people have been using Adsense for years. It's just another pay-per-click scheme and one of the easiest to get signed up to and added to your site.

Beansprout · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:51

He might mean the "this site uses Google Adsense" buttons (green/white) which are a newish addition - basically if people clickthrough and signup to Adsense, when that person's account reaches $100 your account also gets credited with $100.

There's also a Firefox version, where the webmaster gets paid upto $1 each time someone clicks through and signs up to Firefox.

blade007 · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:54

I dunno what it's called

but they've got a row of text of ads

like on CDFreaks.com

on the right hands side there a column of ads saying "Ads by Google"

everywhere has them now.

is that what it is ... just to get 1 pence for a click-through?

Beansprout · 12 Mar 2006 at 13:58

Er, that's the source of about 98% of Google's revenue and the reason everyone uses them is because they're simple and effective

Payouts vary from next to nothing to over $2 per click, normally around $0.10 - $0.50, so it's a good way of earning money to cover the running costs of a site - and some people even live off their websites :cool:

You can also click on the 'Ads by Google' link to learn all this, by the way

blade007 · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:04

me= /doh

I just clicked through them to find out it was part of Google Ad sense.

I hate them. But I suppose people need brass to run a website chock full of graphics and MMFlash animations.

Boycie · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:05

Beansprout said:
Er, that's the source of about 98% of Google's revenue and the reason everyone uses them is because they're simple and effective

Payouts vary from next to nothing to over $2 per click, normally around $0.10 - $0.50, so it's a good way of earning money to cover the running costs of a site - and some people even live off their websites

You can also click on the 'Ads by Google' link to learn all this, by the way

I set up an article based website and i recieve around $20 a week just from people clicking because i found out that certain computer related keywords are worth a lot of money.

Augmented · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:09

blade007 said:
I hate them. But I suppose people need brass to run a website chock full of graphics and MMFlash animations.

If you're a Firefox user, then remove them from display via your usercontent.css or using an extension like Adblock to filter them out.

blade007 · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:17

Boycie said:
I set up an article based website and i recieve around $20 a week just from people clicking because i found out that certain computer related keywords are worth a lot of money.

that's quite a useful amount of brass for no work.

a marketing man's motto is "earn money while you sleep"

clv101 · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:21

blade007 said:
me= /doh

I just clicked through them to find out it was part of Google Ad sense.

I hate them. But I suppose people need brass to run a website chock full of graphics and MMFlash animations.

Adsense is great on the type of sites I use - they very often raise awareness of things that I didn't know about but am very interested in.

Al Vallario · 12 Mar 2006 at 15:30

blade007 said:
...I suppose people need brass to run a website chock full of graphics and MMFlash animations.

People need money to keep any proper website alive. Imagine you run a large content site with around 1,000,000 unique visitors a month. You have to shell out $500/month in server and bandwidth costs, and you can't just take that out of your own pocket. So you sign up to an ad network, ~10,000 (1% click-through rate) of those 1,000,000 visitors click an ad, you get ~$0.25/ad and straight off you're earning $2500/month. That $2000/month profit makes it worth your while to keep the site up to date and keep working on it

Google ads are common because, quite simply, they let anyone sign up and publish the ads. Other ad networks (Casale, Tradedoubler, Fastclick, YPN etc.) require the websites their ads are placed on meet a number of criteria, and applicants are frequently rejected.

Google take a cut from every click (I seem to remember their cut outweighing the publisher's, but I may be wrong), and as such this is where most of their revenue comes from

Beansprout · 12 Mar 2006 at 15:36

Al Vallario said:
Google ads are common because, quite simply, they let anyone sign up and publish the ads. Other ad networks (Casale, Tradedoubler, Fastclick, YPN etc.) require the websites their ads are placed on meet a number of criteria, and applicants are frequently rejected.

Adsense is pretty strict about ad placement, surrounding text, and website content - they won't allow adult sites, proxy sites and so on.

But yes, it's a public signup thing.

Adsense is popular with users too because they're relevant and discreet so as webmasters we like that - we wanna keep our users happy.

I don't know where we'd be if we didn't have Adsense. Probably still putting up with popups, animated GIFs, HIT THE MONKEY and Bonzi Buddy :eek:

Boycie · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:03

Beansprout said:
Adsense is pretty strict about ad placement, surrounding text, and website content - they won't allow adult sites, proxy sites and so on.

But yes, it's a public signup thing.

Adsense is popular with users too because they're relevant and discreet so as webmasters we like that - we wanna keep our users happy.

I don't know where we'd be if we didn't have Adsense. Probably still putting up with popups, animated GIFs, HIT THE MONKEY and Bonzi Buddy

You have to be so careful about how the ads display on your website, i often email google just to check that what i'm doing is within their T&C, i've spoken to a few people who have lost their accounts more doing such small things that you wouldnt of thought twice about.

toastyman · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:37

Boycie said:
You have to be so careful about how the ads display on your website, i often email google just to check that what i'm doing is within their T&C, i've spoken to a few people who have lost their accounts more doing such small things that you wouldnt of thought twice about.

Oh yeah, don't click your own links either

They might ban you for that as well, eh boycie!

Jake 2.0 · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:56

Beansprout said:
He might mean the "this site uses Google Adsense" buttons (green/white) which are a newish addition - basically if people clickthrough and signup to Adsense, when that person's account reaches $100 your account also gets credited with $100.

There's also a Firefox version, where the webmaster gets paid upto $1 each time someone clicks through and signs up to Firefox.

so thats where our donations to ff go to these days!

Al Vallario · 13 Mar 2006 at 00:08

Boycie said:
You have to be so careful about how the ads display on your website, i often email google just to check that what i'm doing is within their T&C, i've spoken to a few people who have lost their accounts more doing such small things that you wouldnt of thought twice about.

I wouldn't say you have to be too careful with ad placement. Just exercise some common sense; no floating ads, huge "Please click the ads!" messages or clicking your own ads and you shouldn't run into any problems. Google do have a very no nonsense policy when it comes to click fraud and the like, however, purely because they have so many publishers they can afford to ban a couple of hundred each day and get ten times as many new sign ups in the same space of time

Freak_boy said:
so thats where our donations to ff go to these days!

As far as I know Google cough up that referral money out of the good of their hearts. There have also been recent reports that the Mozilla team earn some hefty sums from Google through the integrated search bar ($72 million last year alone?)

Beansprout · 13 Mar 2006 at 00:13

Al Vallario said:
As far as I know Google cough up that referral money out of the good of their hearts.

More people using FF = more people using the default Google search = a couple of Adwords clicks = Google earn their money back in no time

The best part is they're taking the masses away from MS and profiting from it

SpicyDuck · 13 Mar 2006 at 02:10

Beansprout said:
More people using FF = more people using the default Google search = a couple of Adwords clicks = Google earn their money back in no time

The best part is they're taking the masses away from MS and profiting from it

That's quite true. I can imagine the Mozilla and Google corporations becoming quite strong. Maybe even integrated at some point. That would make one hell of a challenge for Microsoft.

Phil.

Beansprout · 13 Mar 2006 at 02:13

OvertoneBliss said:
That's quite true. I can imagine the Mozilla and Google corporations becoming quite strong. Maybe even integrated at some point. That would make one hell of a challenge for Microsoft.

Phil.

The Mozilla Corporation's single shareholder is the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, so that could be interesting