Caydel’s SEO Blog

Well, as you all may remember, there was a class action suit launched against Google a few months ago with regards to click fraud. I joined into the suit, and recieved my settlement just a few moments ago. 5 minutes ago, I just recieved the following email:

Dear Google AdWords advertiser:

We are writing to notify you that we have processed your claim for
Account Number *removed* under the Lane’s Gifts v. Google class-
action settlement. We are issuing credits to the AdWords account
identified in your claim.

To view your credit award, log in to your account and open your
Billing Summary page. Your credit award will appear under the label
‘Adjustment - Click Quality’ between the dates 10/27 and 10/28. In
some cases, it may take a few days for an award to be reflected on
this page, so if you don’t see it at first, please check back soon.

You don’t need to do anything to redeem your credit. Google will
automatically apply it to future invoices for your credited AdWords
account. The credits are valid for one year from their date of
issuance and may be canceled at any time after that.

Credits are awarded on a pro rata basis, taking into account these
factors:
- The amount you paid Google for advertising
- Google’s revenues from online advertising since January 1, 2002,
and your claim percentage
- The total amount of credits available in the settlement, which is
US$60M.

If you have any questions, please contact us at
.

Thank you for your continued support of Google.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Being somewhat excited by this, I quickly logged into my Adwords account to see how much I recieved back. And, *drumroll* I got $0.48.

Yes, you heard correctly. $0.48 bloody sense. This is a touch rediculous. now, I am not a large scale advertiser. But when I filed my claim, I claimed $198.42 on my account, at an estimated 30% click fraud rate, in line with the numbers resulting from a variety of studies which had been reported around the time that I had filed.

Just to emphasize how rediculous this compensation is, I was compensated for 0.24% of my advertising costs. ie, Google is compensating me for an estimated 0.24% click fraud rate. Now, I didn’t expect to get the full 30% I claimed back. I would have been happy to get 5% back.

We all *know* that there is a higher click fraud rate than that. If this has proven anything, it has proven that the only people who actually are making good on this suit were the lawyers arguing it.

At any rate, I will relish my 2 free advertising clicks. With any luck, at least one of them will convert. If anyone else has recieved their settlement, let me know. I want to know if what I recieved is in line with the settlements other people have recieved.

In the last couple of weeks I have been paying more and more attention to the logs for this site, looking especially at my referrals. I have been noticing lately that MSN has my site listed in the #1 position in the MSN Images search for the keyword ‘Medusa’. The first image there is pointing to a post I wrote this summer titled, ‘MVC: Why Everybody Should Code With Rails at Least Once‘. In that article, I link to an external image on ny.com called ‘medusa.jpg’, with the anchor text ‘Medusa’s Hair‘.

I really do not know how MSN thinks my site is related to ‘Medusa’. If anything, they should think that the site I linked to with the ‘Medusa’ keyword would be a more legitimate source for information on the topic. Especially considering that that link is the only mention of the word ‘Medusa’ on the entire site.

I am not complaining, though. This is getting me as many as 20 unique visitors per day… I just wished I understood how an why MSN ranked me so highly for that term…

Share This

A recent study performed by the UK-based Sleep Council found that women in the United Kingdom are 10% more likely to be ‘grumpy’ in the morning. In addition to waking up grumpy more often, the study also found that women additionally tend to stay grumpy longer than the men also included in the study.

This should fall into the ‘obvious’ category. Hope my wife doesn’t read that! You can read more about the study at Health24.com.

Share This

Since I am now taking blogging somewhat seriously again, I do feel somewhat compelled to let people know that I am gone this weekend. In fact, I’ve been gone Since Wednesday night. We’re visiting my wife’s family for a few days to help them pack and prepare for a move this coming Friday.

So, this pretty much means that I doubt I will be posting anything until after I return on Monday or Tuesday. I do have some great ideas in my mind ready to write about once I get back.

Every one have a great weekend. WebmasterRadio.fm is currently live broadcasting the domain auction from the Traffic East tradeshow in Hollywood, CA. Some pretty cool domains are up for grabs. Definately something you should be listening to if you plan to sell some domains in the near future!

Share This

It was just posted on the Wordpress development blog that Wordpress MU 1.0 and bbPress 0.72 have been released. This is some great news - I can attest to the smooth function of these two packages, as I have been using both of them extensively on a blogging community I built this summer. Both of these are quite simple to install and configure, if you are comfortable with the Linux command line.

The login integration is really grat, as it makes your community more cohesive…

Share This

cshel recently made note of a little bit of nerd humour on last night’s episode of NBC’s ‘Heroes’… Check it out - thanks for pointing that out, cshel!

Share This

Today, Adbrite launched some great new features to publishers.

New IAB Ad Units: A bunch of new ad unit sizes have been released in accordance with the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Standards and Guidelines for Internet Marketing Units. This will allow even more flexibility when placing ad units into layouts.

Reserve Pricing: Are you an Google Adsense user? Well, now AdBrite has a new feature in which you can enter your Adsense client code. The AdBrite unit will then show Google Adsense ads until the estimated CPM for your site falls below a certain reserve level you set. At that point, AdBrite will step in and display their own ads, if they can deliver a CPM above the reserve you set.

From the Ad Zone setup page

We want you to earn as much as possible from your ad placements, whether that’s through AdBrite or the networks you’re already working with.

You can run ads from your current ad networks within your AdBrite code, and we’ll always show the ads that earn you the most money. In other words, when we can earn you the most, we’ll show our ads. When we can’t, we’ll rotate your other ads back in. You can’t lose.

If you go to my main InfoHatter site, you will see an AdBrite skyscraper on the left hand side. At the moment, it should be displaying Google ads wrapped in the AdBrite box. And I apologize in advance for the horrible look of that page!
It seems that AdBrite has been working quite hard launching many new features lately. I guess they have to; in the arena with Google, MSN and Yahoo! no doubt means that they have to step up to compete. I think we can expect to continue seeing great features from AdBrite in days to come!

P.S. When I tried to create a new text link zone, the form now say ‘Text and Banner Zones’. I guess this means that AdBrite’s long-awaited banner advertising network is soon! I would hazard a guess that this is no more than a week or two away!