Google Quality Review Protection
By: John Elder posted in Adsense
Hello good people!
Had another really good Adsense earnings day yesterday, bringing in $111 in adsense and $35 in amazon commissions (though on only 2 items purchased at around $500). That’s a nice daily total of $146.
Ten days into December I’m averaging $113.30 a day in combined Adsense and Amazon earnings. If that continues, we’re looking at around $3,500 in earnings this month, which is just under pre-Panda earnings levels.
Pulling one over on Google…
A month or so ago a Google quality review handbook was leaked. Basically it was a training manual that Google gives to its employees who manually review websites for spam in order to teach them how to spot spam.
Of course, as soon as Google realized that the handbook was floating around on the Internet they moved heaven and earth to shut down the sites that were offering the handbook as a download.
And of course, I got a copy of it before it disappeared (moving faster than Google is one of my talents!).
It was very interested reading, and a little scary. The thing basically condemns “our” type of websites as spam, unilaterally. In fact it goes so far as to suggest that all sites that have Adsense ads or affiliate offers are “probably” spam. I know that doesn’t make sense because Adsense is a Google product, but Google hasn’t made a whole lot of sense for quite some time.
What’s the point?
The point is, the handbook spelled out the exact methods a Google employee should go through in order to determine if a website is spam or not in order to determine whether or not a site should get deindexed. After studying it, I think I’ve figured out a way around their guidelines so that our type of sites seem squeaky clean to a Google quality reviewer.
Step One: remove all ads (both adsense and affiliate offers) from your home page, by home page I mean the page that comes up when you type in www.yoursite.com.
Step Two: make your home page look as professional as possible. Put a company address, even if it’s fake. Put a phone number, even if it’s fake. Make the site look like a boring corporate website, without any content (such as articles). Create a logo (even a generic one that you use on every site you own).
Step Three: make most of the links on the home page point to boring pages without ads on them. I’m talking about “About” pages, “Privacy Policy” pages, and “Contact” pages. Maybe even make a fake “corporate mission statement” page. Really yuck it up! Maybe even create a page that has biography information about the fake managers in your fake company. Put fake pictures of your fake vice-presidents, your fake ceo, your fake lead council, etc. Have fun here…use the same bio info on all your sites!
Step Four: somewhere on your homepage, as inconspicuously as possible, put ONE link to the rest of your site, the REAL part of your site, the part that has all your spun content and adsense and affiliate ads. Or to put it another way, to the pages that look like this:
Why will this work?
Google quality reviewers are instructed to check the homepage and click links on the homepage to check several other pages. They’re supposed to look for certain things. If your home page and most of the links coming off of it are all pointing at boring things that look nice and don’t violate any of the things those reviewers are looking for, I think we’ll be ok.
You see, these people look at thousands of sites per day and they don’t spend more than a minute or two looking. They aren’t really digging around and doing a good job, they’re just taking a quick glance, clicking a button, and moving on to the next site.
Just be sure you have one link tucked away in a way that doesn’t attract the eye, maybe as text or an invisible image link pointing to your real adsense pages so that the Googlebot will find it and spider the rest of your site!
Is this ethically questionable? Or at least a little sneaky on our part? I don’t know. I do know that I’ll stop playing dirty when Google gets its act together. Until then, my plan is to…
Keep on building!
-John
The Marketing Fool!
Emanuel
12. Dec, 2011
Interesting scary read John!
So this means that we now have to put a mask to our sites?
The Marketing Fool
12. Dec, 2011
I haven’t done it to any of my sites, and don’t plan on it until Google starts massively deindexing them. Then I might. But people seem to really freak out about the possibility of deindexing (I know people who have had 700 sites deindexed in a single day). If you’re worried about it, then this is certainly something you can do to protect yourself…at least I hope it will!
Emanuel
13. Dec, 2011
Wow 700 sites in a single day!
Did his sites have some kind of footprint and google found them in a blast?
Well… I think Im going to play safe and follow your recommendations because Im just starting this journey.
The Marketing Fool
13. Dec, 2011
No particular footprint…but it’s not hard to find sites once you’ve seen one. That’s why it’s important to follow my suggestions to disguise your sites..