The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances • Hacker News Board

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#61

Post by chopsueyar » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 11:52 AM UTC

tlack wrote: post #40

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.

This is a very good point. As users of Adwords become more familair with its abilities to customize campaigns, they can spend less and keep their same conversion rates.

For instance, only advertising at certain times of day, or certain keywords for specific regions, not advertising in specific geographical locations, the use of quotes and brackets in keywords, etc...

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#62

Post by chopsueyar » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 11:58 AM UTC

Devil's Advocate:

Could it be the ad-revenue is down overall, and this is an accounting game to prevent GOOG stock's price from dropping?

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#63

Post by chopsueyar » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 12:00 PM UTC

jupiter wrote: post #4

Iv wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that imply less revenues for Google as well ?

Not if they shifted traffic to their own free inventory

Can you elaborate?

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#64

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 12:03 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #35

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#65

Post by throwaway32 » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 12:41 PM UTC

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?

Its impossible to get hard numbers, but I don't think Youtube has been the massive loss leader everyone assumed it was for a long time. Run a trace route from pretty much any home connection, Google is directly peered with nearly every residential ISP, that's bound to save massive amounts on bandwidth.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#66

Post by richardg » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 2:34 PM UTC

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…

I guess my site was hit by Panda too.. I said guess because all of us are guessing since Google does not bother to inform us. Like you, searching for a keyword, previously lands you in the first page - now it's on the 4th/5th page.

Try searching your site on Bing, Yahoo and see..

videowatchr.com uses Google video search and the youtube API to show youtube videos. So of course, it will have duplicate content.

If you use an API, you are getting someone's content most likely, does that make you a content farm? How about if you use an RSS feed?

Google should publish guidelines on this Panda - so we're not guessing.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#67

Post by MaysonL » Sat, Jul 16, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

chopsueyar wrote: post #60

nikcub wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with the entire concept of anti-trust, let alone support any case against Google - but I can see it happening

Yeah, Standard Oil and U.S. Steel were pretty awesome. Without robber-barons, we would have a dearth of philanthropists.

Bullshit.

Yes, some of the robber-barons were and are philanthropists.

But robbing to give it away is not much more moral than robbing to spend it yourself or give it to your heirs. Both are still theft.

For examples of modern non-robber philanthropists, see H & P, Buffet, et al.

Re: The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances

#68

Post by esrauch » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 10:27 PM UTC

mapgrep wrote: post #51

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #41

Not sure if people saw the comment that someone left on the original thread: "Seriously? It is because of the Panda update and the resulting shift in traffic away from ad-ridden low-quality sites and towards higher quality sites that often haven't yet been optimized for ads in the Google network. They've addressed this directly in both of the last two earnings calls and have said they expect the effects to be largely…

If that's true then come out and say it's true. Don't be coy. No, really, don't: You can't have it both ways, implying the original author is somehow dumb without being willing to stick your neck out enough to say it yourself. Pointing to a random anonymous internet comment is weasely.

Except he might not know that it's true, he was just drawing attention to an interesting comment.