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The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

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Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#31

Post by Revisor »

Google has become a publisher and an affiliate marketer, dabbling in mortgages, loans, flight search, even clothing (Boutiques.com). The search results are clobbered more and more with results to Google's own properties.

Less long tail, more Google properties, outprice and drive out the small enterpreneurs. That's the reason.

Have a look at the screenshots in this article, especially in the second half

http://www.seobook.com/category-killer-domain-names

Don't mind the name, but read it anyway, Aaron Wall is today probably the most inquisitive watchdog of Google.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#32

Post by aneth »

nikcub wrote: post #15
patio11 wrote: post #9

Some combination of: 1) Panda, which redirected hundreds of millions in revenue from some content farms to other parties (including, likely, the ether) which do not show up on Google's books 2) Google is being increasingly aggressive about monetizing the Google SERPS. More ads in more places with more prominent billing. Other sites on the Internet have not been aggressively up-monetizing principally because they have…

If Google ever does end up facing an anti-trust trial, your second point will likely form part of the case against them. This could be considered direct evidence that Google are using their dominance in search to favor their own properties over others.

It's not illegal to use dominance in one market to enter another. That's called good business.

Antitrust requires monopoly, which google does not have. There are many competitive and successful ad networks and search engines, and there is no lock in to the search product.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#33

Post by smashing »

growt wrote: post #28
dirtyaura wrote: post #8

Two wild guesses: Video ads - They finally figured out efficient video ads and have turned YouTube from a loss leader to a money-making machine Mobile ads - Do GMail and other Google apps on Android already show ads?

I think the first one might be true. I'm seeing ads on almost every video now.

I am using adblock plus on firefox. I haven't seen an ads for a long time.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#34

Post by WillyF »

andybak wrote: post #22
WalterGR wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changes that Google made, designed to reduce the number of "low quality links" in search results, such as those to content farms. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-qua... Rather than being an algorithm change, it seems to be a process that Google runs only occasionally, which labels entire sites (rather than individual pages) as low quality. Sites with that label are penalized in search results…

I've found many of the claims of collateral damage to be from sites that I don't honestly feel were adding much value to our lives, even if they weren't strictly content farms. I'd be interested to hear your specific story?

Here's my collateral damage story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763272

There are definitely high quality sites that were hit by Panda.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#36

Post by jonknee »

happybuy wrote: post #24

Isn't it true that Google doesn't actually tell advertisers what % of the per click advertising revenue they are paid? Its amazing that after all these years we have learnt to accept this black box and trust Google is somehow paying advertisers a constant percentage. It's likely Google wanted a bit more revenue for this quarter so decided to pay advertisers slightly less of the cut. Wouldn't surprise me if this becom…

Publishers can log in and see their current split. It's in account settings and I'm currently getting about 70% with the "AdSense for Content" product which is what I use. If you use the Google Analytics hook-in you can get very detailed statistics about which pages/visits are paying you what too.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#37

Post by Acorn »

WalterGR wrote: post #23
andybak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found many of the claims of collateral damage to be from sites that I don't honestly feel were adding much value to our lives, even if they weren't strictly content farms. I'd be interested to hear your specific story?

My site that was penalized is The Online Slang Dictionary. http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ It's the oldest slang dictionary on the web and had the only freely accessible slang thesaurus on the web until about a month ago. In contrast to other slang dictionaries, The Online Slang Dictionary is only for legitimate slang words. I've never used any black-hat or even slightly questionable SEO techniques or means to publ…

Your website comes up as the 4th results for "slang dictionary". Where was it before panda?

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#38

Post by lifeisstillgood »

WalterGR wrote: post #23
andybak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found many of the claims of collateral damage to be from sites that I don't honestly feel were adding much value to our lives, even if they weren't strictly content farms. I'd be interested to hear your specific story?

My site that was penalized is The Online Slang Dictionary. http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ It's the oldest slang dictionary on the web and had the only freely accessible slang thesaurus on the web until about a month ago. In contrast to other slang dictionaries, The Online Slang Dictionary is only for legitimate slang words. I've never used any black-hat or even slightly questionable SEO techniques or means to publ…

If @WalterGR above is correct, then changes to your site will only help when panda is rerun between one bot visit and the next (ie it's a batch process not a constantly evolved ranking).

If that's true then an awful lot of sites I have heard about may have been wasting time SEO'ing for nothing. (most obvious is serverfault)

Does anyone know if it really is an infrequent labelling run or an algoithm change and or it's run frequency?

Edit: reference to waltergr added correctly

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#40

Post by tlack »

patio11 wrote: post #9

Some combination of: 1) Panda, which redirected hundreds of millions in revenue from some content farms to other parties (including, likely, the ether) which do not show up on Google's books 2) Google is being increasingly aggressive about monetizing the Google SERPS. More ads in more places with more prominent billing. Other sites on the Internet have not been aggressively up-monetizing principally because they have…

One more aspect: a lot of PPC advertisers do not like to use network ads (i.e., partner sites) because they are perceived as yielding lower quality clicks. Clicks from Google itself are seen to be more likely to monetize for the advertiser.
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