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In this post I try to high light some negative expressions we use in our day to day life and show how they can be linked to the advertising world.

Many of our most important day to day negative expressions might not be as powerful as they are if they were said in positive. Let’s see some examples of expressions related to high risks: “WRONG WAY, GO BACK,” are all difficult to say succinctly and powerfully in any positive construct.

It’s interesting that for years incendiary materials were marked “INFLAMMABLE” or “HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE,” possibly because the wrong negative prefix actually sounded more dire.

“Don’t tell me” means tell me everything. “You don’t say!” means I really want you to say it, even though I can’t believe what you’re saying. As in, “Well, I never.”

The beauty of our language is the way you can stretch it. Two negatives can be combined to make a positive: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The reverse is also true.

Why are newspapers full of bad news? Because people are much more paying attention for bad news; possibly because it helps reassure them of traffic crawls past car accident. It’s also notable how in matters of romance or passion, the negative is often so vivid. I don’t mean in the sense of the obvious: “Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop” … etc. I mean in many of the expressions we share with our beloved, often captured in popular music. “Never will leave you,” sounds more committed than “I will always stay,” and “The 12^th of Never” seems an even longer undertaking than the absolute “forever.”

“Don’t Worry Baby”, from the mouths of the Beach Boys is quite cheering. Greshwin ain’t necessarily so negative in one of the anthems of porgy and best. And when 10cc sing the haunting, “I’m being in love (and don’t forget it) because I’m really so badly in love with you, I’ll try any tactic to hang in there.

Googling around for references on “negative words”, there are, in fact, a hundred well-intentioned but predictable passages on how to remove negativity from your order:, 7:7:thoughts, etc. (One earnest polemic on positivism carries the straight – faced headline: “Stop Being So Negative!”).

Cognitive psychology research conducted by Tufts University professor Salvator Scoraci has made advancements in understanding learning and “false memory” – mistaken recall of test words. It was formerly believed that memory was enhanced by “generative learning; that people remember better when actively involved in forming an idea around, say a particular word they’re asked to memorize; the theory being that positive collaboration helped it stick.

Scoraci has found people are actually more likely to remember such words when given a negative reminder than when given a positive one. This method of learning, using negative cues, is alike to how we find our way when we’re driving our cars, explains Scoraci. If we make a wrong turn, we’re much more likely to remember the correct road next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong path again.

But to circle this back to advertising, my research has also revealed a fellow-sufferer and copywriter, Michael Gebert, in the US. In his online newsletter, shameless Self-Promotion, Gebert repeats our frustrations: No COPYWRITER WILL ESCAPE THIS FATE. YOU write a nice, punchy headline – “Nothing Fights stains like spam O.” Then the comment comes back: “Nothing” is negative. Can’t we turn it into a positive? (Like what? “Spam-O fights stains Better Than Things”?)

Gebert goes on to say: put a sentence with a “not” a “don’t” in it in front of those people, and all of a sudden, they’ll be impressed by the magical power of that one single word to repel all customers, regardless of the actual meaning of the sentence. That’s not grammar. It’s voodoo.

What’s most confounding to me about this whole topic is that some of the most negative expressions have long been the very stock-in-trade of the world of hard sell. How many products have stated themselves “Not your ordinary …” or “Not for everybody” to increase their desirability to many?

“Accept no substitute,” “Don’t buy till you try our …,” “Will not be undersold”. “Nobody comes close to our …”. Just as the much-imitated “Drive away, no more to pay” has recently become.

There are also plenty of specific brands with famous and flourishing campaigns based on seemingly negative thoughts: “Lemon” or “It’s ugly, but it gets you there” were never going to be taken literally about Volkswagen, but said a lot about their cleverly self-effacing attitude. That, along with “You don’t have to be Jewish” for Levy’s bread, more or less started modern, more candid advertising.

More recently, “I never read the Economist. (Management trainee, aged 42)” has helped put that magazine high up the racks. The Wallpaper Institute of America declares. Nothing gets your attention like wallpaper,” along with whimsical visuals. The Village Vice has been honest and successful by declaring its individuality with “Not America’s favorite paper” (and thus yours).

When Everyday Batteries themes their ads “Never say die,” it’s far more declarative than “Always stay ALIVE.” Heineken, in the UK, sold a lot of beer that “Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.” And there’s no other line like David Jones’, at least in Australian retail. As Michael Gebert says, the arguments against the yea-sayers are understandable: “So understandable that they always get the same response:’Yeab, I know. But change it, would ja? It’s just one word.”’

Anti-negativity, he asserts, “deprives a writer of one of the most effective rhetorical devices in the English language, for no good reason. Would GM still possess the car market if only they’d said, “You Would Really Rather Drive a Buick?

I couldn’t agree more. Or should I say, I agree as much as possible. I’ve always thought that Sara Lee’s long-running campaign in the US, “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee” was so much more appealing and friendly than the overblown self-congratulation of it’s underlying sentiment, “Everybody Loves Sara Lee.”

It’s a tradition that goes back to “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something’ from the oven” for Duncan Hines cake mixes. Or was it Pillsbury? And what could’ve been more persuasive than the theme that carried American Express to world recognition, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

Would it have suggested the same indispensability expressed as” Always take it with you when you leave home”? I think not. But then, perhaps I’m just being negative.

In this post I try to high light some negative expressions we use in our day to day life and show how they can be linked to the advertising world.

Many of our most important day to day negative expressions might not be as powerful as they are if they were said in positive. Let’s see some examples of expressions associated with high risks: “HIGH VOLTAGE, DO NOT TOUCH” are all difficult to say in a few words and strongly in any positive construct.

It’s interesting that for years incendiary materials were marked “INFLAMMABLE” or “HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE,” probably because the wrong negative prefix actually sounded more dire.

“Don’t tell me” means tell me everything. “You don’t say!” means I really want you to say it, even though I can’t believe what you’re saying. As in, “Well, I never.”

The beauty of our language is the way you can stretch it. Two negatives can be united to make a positive: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The reverse is also true.

Why are newspapers full of bad news? Because people are much more concerned in bad news; possibly because it helps reassure them of traffic crawls past car accident. It’s also notable how in matters of romance or passion, the negative is often so vivid. I don’t mean in the sense of the obvious: “Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop” … etc. I mean in many of the terms we share with our beloved, often captured in popular music. “Never will leave you,” sounds more committed than “I will always stay,” and “The 12^th of Never” seems an even longer undertaking than the absolute “forever.”

“Don’t Worry Baby”, from the mouths of the Beach Boys is quite encouraging. Greshwin ain’t necessarily so negative in one of the anthems of porgy and best. And when 10cc sing the haunting, “I’m being in love (and don’t forget it) because I’m really so badly in love with you, I’ll try any tactic to hang in there.

Googling around for references on “negative words”, there are, obviously, a hundred well-intentioned yet predictable passages on how to remove negativity from your diary, etc. (One earnest polemic on positivism carries the straight – faced headline: “Stop Being So Negative!”).

Cognitive psychology research conducted by Tufts University professor Salvator Scoraci has made advancements in understanding learning and “false memory” – mistaken recall of test words. It was previously alleged that memory was enhanced by “generative learning; that people remember better when actively involved in forming an idea around, say a particular word they’re asked to memorize; the theory being that positive collaboration helped it stick.

Scoraci has found people are in fact more likely to remember such words when given a negative indication than when given a positive one. This method of learning, using negative reminders, is similar to how we find our way when we’re driving our cars, explains Scoraci. If we make a wrong turn, we’re much more likely to remember the correct course next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong road again.

Yet to circle this back to advertising, my research has also revealed a fellow-sufferer and copywriter, Michael Gebert, in the US. In his online newsletter, shameless Self-Promotion, Gebert echoes our frustrations: No COPYWRITER WILL ESCAPE THIS FATE. YOU write a nice, punchy headline – “Nothing Fights stains like spam O.” Then the comment comes back: “Nothing” is negative. Can’t we turn it into a positive? (Like what? “Spam-O fights stains Better Than Things”?)

Gebert goes on to say: put a sentence with a “not” a “don’t” in it in front of those people, and all of a sudden, they’ll be impressed by the mystical power of that one single word to repel all customers, regardless of the actual meaning of the sentence. That’s not grammar. It’s voodoo.

What’s most confounding to me about this entire subject is that some of the most negative expressions have long been the very stock-in-trade of the world of hard sell. How many products have declared themselves “Not your ordinary …” or “Not for everybody” to improve their desirability to many?

“Accept no substitute,” “Don’t buy till you try our …,” “Will not be undersold”. “Nobody comes close to our …”. Just as the much-imitated “Drive away, no more to pay” has recently become.

There are also plenty of specific brands with prominent and successful campaigns based on seemingly negative thoughts: “Lemon” or “It’s ugly, but it gets you there” were never going to be taken literally about Volkswagen, however said a lot about their cleverly self-effacing attitude. That, along with “You don’t have to be Jewish” for Levy’s bread, more or less started modern, more candid advertising.

More recently, “I never read the Economist. (Management trainee, aged 42)” has helped put that magazine high up the racks. The Wallpaper Institute of America asserts. Nothing gets your attention like wallpaper,” along with whimsical visuals. The Village Vice has been honest and successful by declaring its individuality with “Not America’s favorite paper” (and thus yours).

When Everyday Batteries themes their ads “Never say die,” it’s far more declarative than “Always stay ALIVE.” Heineken, in the UK, sold a lot of beer that “Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.” And there’s no other line like David Jones’, at least in Australian retail. As Michael Gebert says, the arguments against the yea-sayers are apparent: “So obvious that they always get the same response:’Yeab, I know. But change it, would ja? It’s just one word.”’

Anti-negativity, he says, “deprives a writer of one of the most effective rhetorical devices in the English language, for no good reason. Would GM still possess the car market if only they’d said, “You Would Really Rather Drive a Buick?

I couldn’t agree more. Or should I say, I agree as much as possible. I’ve always thought that Sara Lee’s long-running campaign in the US, “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee” was so much more delightful and amenable than the overstated self-congratulation of it’s underlying sentiment, “Everybody Loves Sara Lee.”

It’s a tradition that goes back to “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something’ from the oven” for Duncan Hines cake mixes. Or was it Pillsbury? And what could’ve been more compelling than the theme that carried American Express to world recognition, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

Would it have suggested the same indispensability expressed as” Always take it with you when you leave home”? I think not. But then, maybe I’m just being negative.

In this post I try to spotlight few negative expressions we use in our day to day life and demonstrate how they can be linked to the advertising world.

Many of our most important day to day negative expressions might not be as powerful as they are if they were said in positive. Let’s see some cases of expressions related to high risks: “NO RIGHT TURN,” are all difficult to say in a few words and strongly in any positive construct.

It’s interesting that for years incendiary materials were marked “INFLAMMABLE” or “HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE,” perhaps because the wrong negative prefix actually sounded more dire.

“Don’t tell me” means tell me everything. “You don’t say!” means I really want you to say it, even though I can’t believe what you’re saying. As in, “Well, I never.”

The beauty of our language is the way you can stretch it. Two negatives can be joined to make a positive: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The reverse is also true.

Why are newspapers full of bad news? Because people are much more concerned in bad news; perhaps because it helps reassure them of traffic crawls past car accident. It’s also notable how in matters of romance or passion, the negative is often so vivid. I don’t mean in the sense of the obvious: “Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop” … etc. I mean in many of the words we share with our beloved, often captured in popular music. “Never will leave you,” sounds more committed than “I will always stay,” and “The 12^th of Never” looks an even longer undertaking than the absolute “forever.”

“Don’t Worry Baby”, from the mouths of the Beach Boys is quite cheering. Greshwin ain’t necessarily so negative in one of the anthems of porgy and best. And when 10cc sing the haunting, “I’m being in love (and don’t forget it) because I’m really so badly in love with you, I’ll try any tactic to hang in there.

Googling around for references on “negative words”, there are, of course, a hundred well-intentioned yet predictable passages on how to do away with negativity from your writing, etc. (One earnest polemic on positivism carries the straight – faced headline: “Stop Being So Negative!”).

Cognitive psychology research conducted by Tufts University professor Salvator Scoraci has made advancements in understanding learning and “false memory” – mistaken recall of test words. It was previously thought that memory was improved by “generative learning; that people remember better when actively involved in forming an idea around, say a particular word they’re asked to memorize; the theory being that positive collaboration helped it stick.

Scoraci has found people are actually more likely to remember such words when given a negative reminder than when given a positive one. This method of learning, using negative cues, is similar to how we find our way when we’re driving our cars, explains Scoraci. If we make a wrong turn, we’re much more likely to remember the correct path next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong direction again.

However to circle this back to advertising, my research has also revealed a fellow-sufferer and copywriter, Michael Gebert, in the US. In his online newsletter, shameless Self-Promotion, Gebert repeats our frustrations: No COPYWRITER WILL ESCAPE THIS FATE. YOU write a nice, punchy headline – “Nothing Fights stains like spam O.” Then the comment comes back: “Nothing” is negative. Can’t we turn it into a positive? (Like what? “Spam-O fights stains Better Than Things”?)

Gebert goes on to say: put a sentence with a “not” a “don’t” in it in front of those people, and unexpectedly, they’ll be impressed by the magical power of that one single word to keep away all customers, regardless of the actual meaning of the sentence. That’s not grammar. It’s voodoo.

What’s most confounding to me about this whole topic is that some of the most negative expressions have long been the very stock-in-trade of the world of hard sell. How many products have declared themselves “Not your ordinary …” or “Not for everybody” to make better their desirability to many?

“Accept no substitute,” “Don’t buy till you try our …,” “Will not be undersold”. “Nobody comes close to our …”. Just as the much-imitated “Drive away, no more to pay” has recently become.

There are also plenty of specific brands with eminent and boomimg campaigns based on seemingly negative thoughts: “Lemon” or “It’s ugly, but it gets you there” were never going to be taken literally about Volkswagen, nevertheless said a lot about their cleverly self-effacing attitude. That, along with “You don’t have to be Jewish” for Levy’s bread, more or less started modern, more candid advertising.

More recently, “I never read the Economist. (Management trainee, aged 42)” has helped put that magazine high up the racks. The Wallpaper Institute of America declares. Nothing gets your attention like wallpaper,” along with whimsical visuals. The Village Vice has been honest and successful by declaring its individuality with “Not America’s favorite paper” (and thus yours).

When Everyday Batteries themes their ads “Never say die,” it’s far more declarative than “Always stay ALIVE.” Heineken, in the UK, sold a lot of beer that “Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.” And there’s no other line like David Jones’, at least in Australian retail. As Michael Gebert states, the arguments against the yea-sayers are apparent: “So obvious that they always get the same response:’Yeab, I know. But change it, would ja? It’s just one word.”’

Anti-negativity, he says, “deprives a writer of one of the most effective rhetorical devices in the English language, for no good reason. Would GM still own the car market if only they’d said, “You Would Really Rather Drive a Buick?

I couldn’t agree more. Or should I say, I agree as much as possible. I’ve always thought that Sara Lee’s long-running campaign in the US, “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee” was so much more amiable and amenable than the overblown self-congratulation of it’s underlying sentiment, “Everybody Loves Sara Lee.”

It’s a tradition that goes back to “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something’ from the oven” for Duncan Hines cake mixes. Or was it Pillsbury? And what could’ve been more persuasive than the theme that carried American Express to world fame, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

Would it have expressed the same indispensability expressed as” Always take it with you when you leave home”? I think not. But then, maybe I’m just being negative.

This is a very interesting paper that looks like it has been used by Google employees to rate if a website is spam. I don’t know if it is real or still in use, but I do know it is a most read!
Spam Recognition Guide for Raters
  Introduction
During the course of rating, you may encounter results that Google considers spam. Some are obvious but others are less overt.  Provided here is an overview of spam recognition tools for use in rating projects.    

Before familiarizing yourself with tools aimed at detecting spam, i.e. deceitful web design, please read Google’s policies on quality web design http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality .  In particular, pay attention to:

* The distinction between pages designed for human viewers and those set up for search engine robots 
* The specific enumerated manipulative techniques for which sites may be “punished” by Google.   
If you are not sure of your spam detection skills yet, you may want to subject every result page that comes up for rating to a checklist of all potential manipulative techniques that this guide explicates.  With experience in spam identification, the spam-spotting techniques presented below become easy to use.  You will have seen patterns of honest pages and deceitful pages; questionable results will jump at you “asking” to be checked for evidence of spamming.  If unsure, do not hesitate to ask questions! 

Note on Foreign Language spam: If a page in another language uses an obvious spamming technique, do label it as spam.  Spam identification often does not depend on linguistic issues.  However, if you are unable to make a determination, feel free to rate the result as Foreign Language.  The same logic applies to Offensive pornographic results that are neither invited nor tolerated by the query.  If you can make determination independent of the language, please do so.    

Common Spam Techniques
Sneaky Redirects
What you’ll see on your Quest page: URL A is shown as a query result. 

When you click on the link: URL A may appear in the address bar of the browser for a brief moment, but you are sent to URL B. You might see other, transient URLs before the page finally loads with URL B visible in the address bar. One URL may sneakily redirect to a number of rotating domains, so clicking on the same result several times may land you on pages under different URLs.  Those pages may or may not look the same.

What’s probably going on: Domain B wants to extend its reach in our index, so it creates Domain A. Google indexes and scores the content on Domain A, yet the user is redirected to Domain B.  The webmaster presents one content to the search engine robot and another to the users. 

Examples:  
Result URL  What visiting the page takes you to1   

1.  Hotlinks have been disabled for some porn pages whose content is apparent from the URL structure. 

Question:  Are all redirects spam?

Answer:  Absolutely  not!  

For example, http://www.film.com  redirects to movies.real.com, but not in a sneaky manner.  

For another example, consider www.compaq.com. Compaq is a now a Hewlett Packard company.  www.compaq.com  redirects to http://h18000.www1.hp.com/  in a legitimate manner. 

100% Frame
What you’ll see on your Quest page: URL A is shown as a query result. 

When you click the link: URL A appears in the address bar of the browser. The page uses a frame that occupies all (or nearly all) of the browser window. Page B fills this frame. You need to reveal the page information for page B.  In Internet Explorer, point to any place on the main page (other than an image) inside the frame with your cursor, right-click and choose “Properties”.  Check Address: ( URL).2

What’s probably going on: Domain B is a legitimate commercial site that wants to extend its reach in Google’s index, so it creates Domain A. Google indexes and scores the content on A, yet the user is shown Domain B in the 100% frame. Again, what’s created for search engine robots differs from what is created for human visitors.

Example: http://www.catwalk4u.de/ (right-click on the web page body and choose “Properties” in IE, and note the URL, which may be one of a number of rotating sites, including http://www.link-diener.de/mode.html , http://www.trixo.de/mode.html   and http://www.looking4links.de/mode.html ).

Hidden Text / Hidden Links
What you’ll see on the result page: You may notice large blank areas on the bottom or/and the top of the page. Using the keyboard shortcut for Select All on the page (CTRL-A in Internet Explorer) may reveal text or links that are hidden from the user (example: white text on white background). 

2 Certain pages, primarily those that contain objects that can be copied, disable this feature.  

What’s probably going on: The webmaster hopes that adding more text to the page will increase the number of ways in which users can find the page searching on Google. Stuffing the page with text may put off site visitors, so the webmaster chooses to hide the text and/or links. Google scores content that the user never sees; what’s being created for search engine robots differs from what is intended for human page viewers. 

Example 1: http://www.marantz.com/ — observe pristine white space and then do select-all to reveal white-on-white text.

Example 2.  On the bottom of these pages observe hidden text in a very small font size:

http://www.jobjobbed.com/ 

http://free-web-hosting-inc.com/fort_wayne_indiana_web_hosting.html  

Porn on Expired Domains
What you’ll see on your Quest page: URL A is shown as a query result. It has a relatively “benign” domain name, with no reference to porn or adult content. 

When you click the link: The page has porn content. 

What’s probably going on: An adult content webmaster purchased Domain A after its former owner allowed his/her ownership to lapse. In Google, Domain A has some lingering good reputation in the form of PageRank. Webmasters linking to Domain A aren’t always on top of their links, and their “votes” for Domain A based on old, benign content can continue indefinitely, to the adult content webmaster’s benefit. Google is counting incoming hyperlinks that the new, adult content webmaster never earned, and search relevancy can be skewed. 

Secondary Search Results / PPC
We want to mark as Offensive the pages that are set up for the purposes of collecting pay-per-click revenue without providing much content of their own. You will see such cases most frequently in conjunction with “search results” feeds. Please read the whole section.

What you’ll see on the result page: Usually, the page presents its own set of search results.  Or, the page may look like the top-level page of a legitimate directory (tree structure) but clicking on a few selections reveals ads disguised as results.  Or, you see copied content from a legitimate, credible resource, without value added by the copying site, plus a PPC program in place.

What’s probably going on: The owner of the site gets paid whenever users click on these secondary results.  You may be able to reveal this pay-per-click scheme by pointing your cursor to secondary links without clicking on them.  Observe the status bar and you may see that clicks go through espotting, overture, or another advertising company.

Let us take a look at an example:

http://www.startcool.de/Dir/Medien/Fernsehen
This site is simply a copy of the Open Directory Project (aka DMOZ), but has a PPC program on the right (Google AdSense); the presence of AdSense PPC on top of the ODP content makes this site (every page on it) Offensive.  Think about what the incentives are for creating a copy of the Open Directory Project; ODP is a free resource that does not accept advertising.  By copying the search feed of DMOZ, sites can get contextual advertising on a pay-per-click basis.  Google does not encourage creation of duplicates, so we are asking you to mark such result Offensive.  Of course, had the result been a page on the Open Directory itself, it would have to be rated on the merits to the query.3  As you see, pages with the same content may be assigned vastly different ratings based on the absence or presence of a ppc program.

Here is an example of a page with ’search results’ (ads):

      http://www.toxiclemon.co.uk/s.php?av=custom&ver=27617&set=uk-only&qkw=lastminute&qcat=web

Note that the links on the page go through go2net.com.  Also note: some ’search result’ pages disguise the nature of what they do more than others.  On Toxic Lemon pages, a more experienced user realizes that the results are essentially ads (Overture, Espotting are known providers of contextual ads), but this does not salvage the rating for this page.   You can safely label all pages from Toxic Lemon Offensive, even if they are in another language.

Standard directories, or sites with results links that neither go through affiliate PPC programs nor redirect you through one of those programs, are usually not Offensive.  One example of a non-Offensive directory is a directory that is clearly built by the site itself, not copied (http://www.joeant.com/DIR/info/get/5704/48827 ); also, a directory that charges for membership, not for clicks, is not Offensive.  Consider for instance a directory of realtors that accepts entries for a yearly fee.

Please note that when you hover the cursor over links on the page you are examining, you are not always seeing the “true” URL in the status bar below.  This is because it is possible to fool users by rewriting the URL reported in the status bar using Javascript, so take some extra time to understand where the links on the page are taking you.4

3 ODP (DMOZ) results are not Erroneous.

4 If you use Mozilla, you may have access to extra tools for spam evaluation.  Write to us for specific instructions, please.

Some common PPC and Search Engine feed domains:

searchfeed.com    findwhat.com    espotting.com    overture.com    go2net.com

More examples: 

http://www.toxiclemon.co.uk/t/fancy-dress-shops/angle-dress-fancy-little-shop.htm

http://www.widgets.ws/widgets/us+robotics+modems

http://www.skc-networks.com/search.php?keywords=1260%20free%20nokia%20ri
http://hockey-apparel.discgolfnet.com/tennessee-titans-super-bowl-screen-saver.html
http://www.investment-wonder.com/top-search/investment/Group-Investment-Susquehanna.htm
http://www.carzilla.us/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi?keywords=motorcycle+rally
http://www.paley.com/search/Washing%20Machines.html  Clicking on ‘results’ on this page takes the user through affiliate.espotting.com; scroll to the bottom of the page on http://www.espotting.com/affiliate/account/login.asp and you will see that Espotting.com engages in exclusive pay-per-click partnerships with European sites.  Another example:
http://www.shopguide.co.uk/Washing-Machines/
http://www.milipics.com/
http://www.tools-directory.us/dir/matsushita_compressor/index.shtml
Thin Affiliate Doorway Pages
We differentiate between affiliates that produce extra service, value, or content, and those that simply are duplicates of other sites, set up to boost traffic to other sites and earn a commission for it.   The former ones are not Offensive and should be rated on the merits to the query.  The latter ones are Offensive.  Please read the whole section. 

UPDATE  Please read Appendix I at the end of the Guide.  Appendix I applies the distinction between thin content and added value affiliates to the case of Hotel Booking Sites.

Thin affiliate doorways are sites that usher people to a number of Affiliate programs, earning a commission for doing so, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user.5  A site certainly has the right to try to earn income; we’re attempting to identify sites that do nothing but act as a commission-earning middleman.

Observe where the links on the site take you.  If the links are overwhelmingly leading you to one affiliate program, this is a strong signal that the site is a Thin Affiliate.  Likewise, if the pages on the site are homogenous, and the links go to one or more affiliate programs, this is also a strong candidate.

In assessing sites for a Thin Affiliate rating, it is urged to click around the site (preferably during a “Sanity Check” in another browser) to determine if the links are affiliate in nature (or Pay-Per-Click, in the section that follows).

Here is an example of a Thin Affiliate:

http://diesel-shoes.01shoes.com/Diesel-Mens-Retro-Shoes.htm

This page has a number of marketing snippets for individual shoes, and a “More Information” button.  Clicking on More Information button launches a popup window that takes you first through qksrv.net (Commission Junction), then to zappos.com.  Zappos is known to have an affiliate program.

Clicking around the various navigational links on 01shoes.com shows more of the same design: a picture, a marketing snippet, and the link to Zappos via the Commission Junction; so, the correct rating is “Thin Affiliate.”

The qksrv.net redirect is important to note, because online merchants often use a third party affiliate provider to take care of the link tracking and payment.  Thus the presence of these domains in the links on a page, or in redirects, can strongly suggest a Thin Affiliate classification:

qksrv.net

bfast.com

myaffiliateprogram.com,

webmasterplan.de

zanox-affiliate.de

Here’s another example, this one using bfast:

http://www.internetshopping.ws/1358.htm , 
5 Usually the commission is not paid unless the user ultimately makes a purchase; contrast this with the pay-per-click schemes, discussed above.
Point you cursor to the link that says Click here to buy … and observe the status bar window on the bottom of your window: you will see “http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click” 

      http://www.internetshopping.ws/1367.htm

      http://www.internetshopping.ws/1362.htm

The www.internetshopping.ws  site has nothing but affiliate links: no content, no service to users.

The following is an example of a site that was built using the Amazon API.

http://us.store-directory.org/dvd/movie/B00005JM5E.html 

Note that all of the exits on the site for buying the product lead to Amazon.  All of the content on the product page, including reviews, pricing, release dates etc. are available as part of the feed.  The site adds nothing to the content that can be found on Amazon; it has no content value, nor does it add any service value to the user.  A Thin Affiliate.

Here is an example of a site that should not be labeled Thin Affiliate:

      http://www.bookfinder4u.com/detail/0767914104.html

At first cut it may look like yet another thin affiliate doorway to Amazon or B&N, but bookfinder4u.com is providing a value-added service to visitors by offering a comparison of prices between different online merchants.  Ultimately you will be taken to Ecampus.com, Half.com, Amazon or another affiliate online bookseller, but the fact that they have their own price comparison infrastructure is the differentiator.  To appreciate the difference, ask yourself this question: would any user want to go to www.bookfinder4u.com  rather than directly to Barnes & Noble?  To http://us.store-directory.org/dvd/movie/B00005JM5E.html rather than to Amazon?  The answer to the former question is Yes, because at Barnes & Noble, the user would not be able to see any direct price comparison between the B&N’s price and competitors’ prices for any given item; the answer to the latter question is No or Indifferent between the two.  Surely, most naïve users may not even be aware when they are redirected, thrown from one site to another, etc. But if they were advised of what is going on, would then make an informed choice to go to a totally thin, no-unique-content affiliate doorway?  

Another example of a page that does not fit the criteria of affiliate spam: http://www.mothering.com/books/books.shtml#adoption  gives a list of links that all lead to Powells.com, an on-line bookseller site.  Clearly the Mothering magazine earns something when the readers buy books from Powells; however, equally clearly, the page is not set up for the sole purpose of generating affiliate links: browse the site a bit and you will discover that it has rich contents.  Do not call a page affiliate spam when an affiliation is only incidental to the message and purpose of a website. To determine whether participation in affiliate programs is central or incidental to the site’s existence, ask yourself this question: Would this site remain a coherent whole if the pages leading to the affiliate were taken away? 

Another Example: http://books.webwab.com/item_512913.htm (clicking around on that site, you’ll realize that every page simply leads to overstock.com pages)

More Examples: http://www.thenewwidgetsite.com/prod/Kitchen-Etc/3-M-Command-Adhesive-Designer-Small-Hookss{1}Pack-of-2.html PPC and A Thin Affiliate; a spam page with evidence of multiple spamming techniques is not a rare exception.    http://www.computermonitoruk.co.uk/

http://www.malls.cheap-money.com/

http://www.mabuy.com/News–Politics-magazines/The-New-Yorker.asp   - a doorway to Amazon and to Ebay.

At times the result page does not fall under any of the above categories yet still strikes you as “fishy”.  In those cases we invite you to run the query on Google setting your preferences to show the top 20 results.6  View the first result page and try to find the URL you are rating.  (You won’t always be able to, as the result sets may have changed). If it is not in the current top 20, please rate the questionable result on the utility scale and move on.  If it is in the top 20, examine the result set observing, where available, the following features:
o Do most of the top results resemble each other, and the result you are rating, in the snippets, titles, and/or URL structure?
 
o Do the result pages, when you click on them, resemble the result page you are rating in content? Contact information? Nearly identical, templated design?  Affiliation with the same commercial entity?
 
o What about the snippets for your URL?  Do they contain dictionary-like lists of words? Repeated text? 
If your answer to several of the questions above is Yes, please rate the suspicious result as Offensive.  If suspicion seems unjustified - all checks come out negative - please do not give the Offensive rating.  Not sure?  One attribute, for example repeated text in the snippet, may or may not be a spam signal.  So, send a question!

6 http://www.google.com/preferences?q=gf&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8   Go to Number of Results and set to Display 20 results per page.

UPDATE Appendix I.  

Hotel booking sites: spam or not?

Rating hotel booking sites is not easy.  The technical questions - is it a real agency or just an affiliate? - has to be balanced against the user value considerations.  We will address this issue now by giving examples of what is and is not spam.

First off, be more stringent when hotel booking sites come up as a result to a location query than when they come up to a hotel query.  In other words, if you are dealing with a borderline case, resolve your doubts in favor of the Offensive rating if the query is for a location.  Why? It is especially undesirable to have hotel booking sites crop up to queries that might presuppose hotels in the location of search, but might also look for a million other aspects of the location, such as reviews, transportation, a municipal site, a good resource on local history and geography, and the like.  In a borderline case to a clearly hotel query (examples of such a query: [holiday inn, Cortland], [crowne plaza northstar hotel minneapolis], [Boston Park Plaza]), you may be more lenient.  This is because the user intent is more unequivocally to get information on the hotel of choice, or to get a list of hotels in a location of choice.  It can be argued that an opportunity to get a good deal on booking, the opportunity that some of the sites offer, is enough to warrant a merit-based rating for a hotel site. 

Further, since there are affiliates and affiliates, it is important to differentiate between those who provide value added and those that just copy content and features off a feed to gain affiliate revenue without investing in offering unique and helpful services for the users. 

As a fine example of the former, value-added sites, consider 

http://www.europeforvisitors.com/europe/articles/amsterdam-3-star-hotels.htm

This site has a wealth of original articles (just do a few quick clicks around).  Granted, most of the links on the above URL go through venere.com to get booking revenue, but the site as a whole offers a lot more than just stock hotel descriptions and booking links.   Also, the comments and the apparent hand-selection of links is a definite value added service by the webmaster.

[holiday inn, Cortland],

http://traveldeals.sidestep.com/Hotel_Deals/New_York/Cortland/All/Holiday_Inn_Cortland?tk=EIKTDHHPXXXX0000002   This site offers the users a download of  an application to compare prices side-by-side and search travel sites.  Not all users will find the application trustworthy, or worthy the extra time in learning how to use it in general, but we clearly do have an added service here - it’s not just the same content off a feed.  Hence, rate on the merits (Relevant).

[Boston Park Plaza]

Vital: http://www.bostonparkplaza.com/  or http://www.bostonparkplaza.com/default.asp?sID=home  (remember, duplicates get the same rating)  Not all hotels have their own homepages; for those that do, be sure to identify the uniquely authoritative nature of those pages by giving them Vital or Useful (as the case may be) ratings.  It is sometimes difficult to do the differentiation because you see the same images on the official site, on the site of true travel agents, and finally, on the multiple affiliate sites…

Let us know walk through a handful of results to this query and make a determination on spam versus relevance rating.

http://www.reservation-services.com/bostonparkplaza.html

What immediately strikes as unusual is the candor in the disclaimer:  “The telephone number, fax number and email addresses on this site DO NOT connect to the hotel.” Many affiliate sites list contact information right under the name of a hotel, so that users may be under the impression that they can call the hotel direct.  Also, this site has its own staff: http://www.reservation-services.com/about_us.html ; the names of the management staff are provided.  This is a piece of evidence in favor of merit-based rating: this is not just a site that is set up as a middleman between the customer and the true reservation site. Finally, prominently behind the logo you see the link to “Become An Affiliate” - follow the link and see the offer the site makes to hotels.  Clearly the site acts as a travel agent between the customer and the hotel, not as an affiliate of another booking site.  So we are almost ready to give a relevance rating… but wait, let us go back to http://www.reservation-services.com/bostonparkplaza.html  and check for hidden text. Sure enough, a few hidden keywords just below the copyright statement.  Offensive. Find a few other hotels on this site and check for hidden text - you will see the same keyword white-on-white under the copyright statement. 

http://boston.hotelguide.net/data/h100012.htm  

Initially seems a borderline case.  You see ppc (AdSense) on the right frame.  You also see links to other sites bundled together: MetroGuide, EventGuide, DiningGuide, etc. (left frame); clicking on the first three displays information specific to Boston, so availability of these sites can be considered a value added.  Nice to have also: links to local restaurants and nightlife.  Are they an affiliate though?  Yes; try to book and you will land on https://www.180096hotel.com/cgi-bin/bookit?SID=HG8&Dest=BOS&LKF=HGD&LANG=en&PROD=HOTEL+&DispCurr=USD&ITRK=dbP&qKey=YO330518800604&HtlId=NC+PARKP&Smk=N&Screen=0

www.180096hotel.com , travelnow.com, ian.com and hotels.com are all one group.  So you see that hotelguide.com has NO booking capability on its own and is signed up as a travelnow affiliate.  And yet it is not spam.  Why?  It offers a video, an unusual and valuable added service.  It subscribes to a travel video library http://www.travelago.com/  to get additional content and service.  This is enough to salvage http://boston.hotelguide.net/data/h100012.htm  from the Offensive classification.  Please rate on the merits to the query, taking into account that a video might make this site more helpful than other similar ones.

To reiterate: the added value provided by, first and foremost, the video, and also 

http://travel.yahoo.com/p-hotel-397998-the_boston_park_plaza_hotel-i   This is to remind you that special service pages that Yahoo provides, such as Movies, Finance, Travel, and others, should always be rated based on the merits to the query and not as Erroneous (of course not as Offensive either).  In your merit rating, consider how helpful independent reviews by others might be to those who plan their voyages:

“Old gross bathrooms, stained carpet, chipped paint on walls, moulding falling off of walls, radiator falling off of wall. Room was the size of a dorm room. The only good thing going for this place is the location. We paid about $190.00 a night - NOT WORTH IT!!”

D) http://www.boston.the-hotels.com/boston-park-plaza-and-towers.htm  You see lots of  links to other hotels.  These seem placed for search engine spiders, not human visitors. The goal of the site is to get all of the hotels indexed.  Evidence of spam.  Pictures are nice, but where do they come from? Check the properties of any image and you will see they come from travelnow (an example: http://images.travelnow.com/hotels/thumbs/NC_PARKP-rooms-1-thumb.jpg). Let us try checking rates and we get to travelnow right away (http://www.travelnow.com/hotels/hotelinfo.jsp?cid=46844&ID=122147); so this is an affiliate of travelnow that adds no value, presents the feed available by signing up as a travelnow affiliate with nothing else. Images come as part of the feed.  Spam - Offensive.
E) These two are not spam:

http://travel.ian.com/hotels/hotelinfo.jsp?cid=54608&hotelID=122147&city=Boston&stateProvince=MA&country=US and  http://www.hotels.com/best_hotels/us/ma/boston/boston_park_plaza_and_towers.jsp   Ian.com (and hotels.com with its Benny the Bellhop logo, and travelnow.com) are a group that does the reservations (see https://www.travelnow.com/itinerary/reserve.jsp?cid=46844).  They spawn affiliates but are not affiliates themselves (a critical distinction).  Whitelist them, please.
https://www.travelnow.com/itinerary/reserve.jsp?cid=46844 Tripadvisor, as you know, is whitelisted for the added value it provides in the form of reviews and rate comparisons.

http://boston.guide-to-hotels.com/boston-park-plaza-and-towers-hotel.html   Again see a link to popular hotels by cities: Las Vegas, New York, etc.  Cannot be there for the user (you usually are intent on going to Boston when you search for [boston park plaza] and not anywhere else) so must be placed for the spider.  Is this site getting all content from an affiliate feed? Let us try sending a piece of the snippet to Google: [“The Boston Park Plaza and Towers is a traditional, landmark hotel”] 
 
Sure enough, http://travel.ian.com/hotels/hotelinfo.jsp?cid=54608&hotelID=122147&city=Boston&stateProvince=MA&country=US displays the same snippet.  This is where the content comes from (you can see in Google listing to the search many more affiliate pages with identical information.  Let us try booking on http://boston.guide-to-hotels.com/boston-park-plaza-and-towers-hotel.html   

And we immediately land on www.180096hotel.com: http://www.180096hotel.com/cgi-bin/chkrates?SID=BIO&Dest=BOS&LKF=BIO&TRK=_B4_link&PROD=HOTEL&Month=05&Day=29&Year=04&Nights=02&Adults=02&Children=00&Beds=1&Smoking=&LANG=

So the content is off a feed, the reservations are through travelnow, is there anything added? Rating information, may be? In fact, the feed gives the rating information for the affiliates themselves, as a confidence index of the hotel’s promptness in remitting the affiliate fee to the affiliate sites; it has nothing to do whatsoever with the guest satisfaction level.
Finally, if the site offers others to become its affiliates, it cannot be an affiliate itself.  For instance, on the now whitelisted site www.180096hotel.com, notice the link to “Affiliate With Us ” :

http://www.180096hotel.com/cgi-bin/hotelinfo?SID=R10&LKF=MT4&HotelId=NC+PARKP&HName=BOSTON+PARK+PLAZA+AND+TOWERS&Dest=BOS&displayAd=false

One cannot both be an affiliate of others and offer affiliation opportunities. So the presence of the link to become an affiliate is your hint that the site has its own booking functionality and can complete transactions for its visitors.

Enhance Interactive is another PPC search engine that offers two options for affiliates, one on their website and another via Commission Junction.

The Commission junction option is a standard referral program, with a $15 commission per referral.

Your commission increases by percentage from an extra 33.3% for 6-10 referrals to 233.30% for more than 51 referrals.

Thus, the more referrals made, the more you are paid for each. In addition, quarterly bonuses of $50 to $1,500 are paid for ranges of 10-121 (or more) referrals.

The program available on Enhance Interactive sends potential affiliates to Commission junction for signup.

One detail missing from the Commission junction description is that you can offer potential advertisers a $25 incentive.

They also make the point that “web sites that are geared toward Webmasters and Web site owners will generally see better commissions.”

The other options for joining with Enhance Interactive are sometimes limited to larger sites.

For instance, the reseller program is only open to sites/businesses with more than 1,000 customers.

If you do qualify, you can offer PPC listings to your customers at a discounted rate. Other options include opportunities for media agencies to bring advertisers into the Enhance network and receive payment for doing so.

Two partnership plans are also offered, both requiring you to contact the search engine for details.

The first, Distribution Partners, is geared toward search engines and targeted content sites.

Various options are available, such as a co-branding service, which is similar to a search box listing on your website but only pays when the visitor clicks on a PPC ad.

Paid listings are integrated into the distribution partner program as well. A tool called Toplinks finds the most relevant paid ads for your content and places them throughout your website in whichever format you specify.

The second plan is valued partners, companies that “provide quality products and services that we feel are complementary to our search marketing products.

We encourage you to review the partners … and if they meet your needs, use the links to explore the opportunities further.” The companies are mainly involved in web-related activities.

Enhance has outsourced its traditional affiliate program to Commission Junction, while maintaining reseller and partnership opportunities on their website.

Little detail of the cost/benefits is available without directly contacting the company – a trend on the increase.

Keywords: affiliates, Commission junction option, referral program, commission, Toplinks,

Kanoodle has two programs-a referral program through Commission Junction and a partner program via its own BrightAds service.

The Commission Junction program is for referrals only. For every referred advertiser who deposits $50 minimum, you receive $15.

An incentive program where you can offer potential advertisers a $5 free trial of Kanoodle in hopes of encouraging them to sign up with you is also part of this program.

If you refer more than five advertisers, you receive a $20 bonus; for more than 10 advertisers, the bonus is $25.

The program at Kanoodle is centered on its BrightAds option. The program is open to companies of all sizes, although websites with more than 10 million page views/month are advised to consult Kanoodle for a custom solution.

The sponsored ads placed on your website are content-relevant and can be customized in appearance to match your site.

Payment is 50% of the click charge, and is paid via PayPal or check. However, a standard 10% is deducted to account for click fraud, bad debts, etc.

Payments are made 30 clays from the last day of each month, and will not be made until your account reaches $50.00.

Detailed reports can be sorted on (late ranges and they include revenue share percentages and revenues per website, if you have more than one website signed up in the program.
The Kanoodle program does have some limitations.

As is the norm, you are expected to keep robots/spiders as far away as possible from clicks, and Kanoodle also provides you with a list of unacceptable IP addresses to integrate.

They also limit new advertisers to those targeting the North American marketplace of Canada and the U.S.

You can terminate your account by simply removing the appropriate code; if you do so, Kanoodle will usually keep your account balance if it is under $50.

Overall, the Kanoodle approach to affiliates is relatively straightforward and very clear. They will even send you the appropriate code needed to participate in BrightAds.

Although there are limitations, they are far fewer than many of the other PPC search engines, in terms of what will disqualify you as an affiliate, or what you are required to do to maintain your position as an affiliate.

This makes it an easy-to-use choice, especially for novices.

Keywords: Kanoodle, referral program, Commission, BrightAds, Commission Junction program,

The affiliate and partnership programs for FindWhat are handled both on-site and via Commission Junction.

The Commission Junction Program is called the Advertiser Referrer Affiliate Program. Despite its long name, this is a fairly basic affiliate program.

It pays you $10 for each advertiser you refer to the Findwhat search engine who opens an account with a minimum $50 deposit.

The referred party receives $5. A variety of text links and banner advertising is offered with the promise of constantly changing designs so advertising doesn’t become stale to visitors.

The affiliate/distribution partner program on the FindWhat site itself is called AdRevenue XpressTM.

Offering small-to-medium-sized businesses participation via ads from the FindWhat advertiser network, this program is basically a standard affiliate solution.

With a free account management interface, it is an easy program to sign up for. Payment for a visitor clicking on an affiliate ad on your website is based on the net revenue that FindWhat gets for the click, minus 15% for the administrative costs of the affiliate program, rather than a set price.

The term of the program is one year, with automatic renewal unless either party provides 30-days notice.

Their terms and conditions are just as stringent as 7Search’s, with almost exactly the same limitations on countries involved, checking for spider/robot activity, and the right of FindWhat to unilaterally declare certain clicks fraudulent.

If your account is inactive for 30 days, it can be terminated. Terminated accounts are not eligible for refunds of amounts in the account, under any circumstances.

FindWhat also offers a referral program on their site, but with a required minimum of 25 new advertisers brought in per month, this is probably not a viable option for smaller businesses to Pursue.

As with other aspects of the FindWhat PPC, search engine, expectations are that change is in the air.

It is likely that FindWhat will ultimately outsource their affiliate and referral programs to Commission Junction.

The available programs as they currently exist are not particularly attractive to smaller businesses, but may be a good source of income for larger sites.

It will also be interesting to see if a more diverse set of countries for affiliate participation will evolve now that Espotting (a European-based search engine) is part of the FindWhat corporation.

Keywords: FindWhat, Commission Junction Program, Advertiser Referrer Affiliate Program,

The Search123 affiliate and referral solutions are relatively limited in comparison to some of the other search engines.

The main offering is Traffic Partner Program, which targets and concentrates on bringing in portals, other search engines, ISPs, and category sites.

However, according to the terms and conditions, individual websites are also eligible to participate, as long as their sites are contextually rich.

All of the usual types of advertising options are available, from search boxes and contextually targeted text ads to XML feeds from larger properties and customized solutions, if needed.

Search 123 is very clear, however, that participation is limited to sites that meet their content/quality standards, have a U.S.-based consumer objective “with appropriate consumer demographics,” and a certain level (that is unspecified) of traffic quality.

If you do qualify, you will receive 50% of the revenue on valid clicks with no traffic minimums, with monthly payments via PayPal, check, or wire transfer.

Online statistics and tools to assist you arc available. Only sites from these countries are allowed to participate: Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Austria, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, France, United States, Virgin Islands (U.S.), and Virgin Islands (UK).

If you terminate the agreement, Search 123 has up to 60 days to pay out your account, in order to go through all referrals and clicks to ensure their validity.

There is no time limit on this program and neither side is required to give termination notice.

The referral program is maintained by Commission Junction, which is a part of the ValueClick company of products, which also includes Search123.

Search123 offers a $25 payment for referring an advertiser who deposits a minimum of $50.

The advertiser also receives a $20 sign-up bonus. For a limited time, if the advertiser deposits only the minimum $25 needed to open an account, Search 123 will still pay the referring party their $25.

Overall, unless you have a website with excellent content, it is unlikely that you will be approved as a Search23 partner.

The terms and conditions are a little contradictory in areas, but it is clear that Search 123 is primarily looking for partners, as that term is normally understood.

Still, the referral program is available to any advertiser, and it can be a source of ongoing profit if you wish to concentrate on finding as many sites as possible to sign on to Search123.

Keywords: Search123, affiliate program, referral program, Traffic Partner Program, Commission,

There are a lot of factors an advertiser needs to consider before deciding on contextual versus keyword-based pay-per-click options.

However, the best way to quickly discover which factors may work in your favor, with either model, is to investigate the contextual marketplace by experimenting with your ongoing ad campaigns.

Before you begin any contextual search ad campaign, ensure that your keyword-based search ad setup is working at its optimal capacity.

The first step is to ensure that the content tracking option is turned off, if you use Google or Yahoo in your basic setup.

When you first open an account with these two search engines, “content search” is automatically set to the “on” position.

However, if you are only interested in pay-per-click search ads, or you are going to test contextual advertising, you need to adjust these settings to your preferences. You can find this setting on the basic setup page of your account.

Once you have turned content matching off, take some time and look at your keywords.

Then track and analyze your data from the search network to ensure that you have your keywords positioned where you want them to be and that you arc happy with the results you are getting from your PPC search campaign(s).

Add negative keywords where appropriate, and remove any keywords that aren’t performing to your expectations.

In effect, get your search-based pay-per-click ad campaign as close to perfection as possible, so that you will be able to make an accurate comparison between it and the contextual search version you will set up.

As an example of how to test contextual advertising against the other means that visitors use to find your site, let’s use a situation based on a Google account.

You will need to set up to three separate campaigns-one that will reveal your natural or organic search results, one that will show your pay-per-click ad campaign search results, and a Final one that will show results from a pay-per-click contextual results ad campaign.

Using your base campaign, make two copies of the entire campaign, and then change the settings for “where to show my ad” to:

• One with neither box checked (this can be left out if you are not concerned about your natural ranking in search engines)

• One with “search network” only checked

Ensure that you have individual tracking set up for every keyword in each of the three campaigns, with appropriate identifiers set up in the tracking URLs, so that you can analyze the data completely.

Set the campaigns to run at the same time and let them run for a reasonable amount of time-anywhere from a week to as long as a month-so that you can collect enough impressions on each separate campaign to have adequate data to analyze.

Once the ads have run long enough to generate sufficient data, stop the campaigns and then reactivate your original campaign.

At this point, you must analyze the data from the separate campaigns in order to determine whether PPC search ads resulted in more positive results than did the PPC contextual ads.

Although you can use the tracking tools available in Google to analyze the data, we recommend that you also use a third-party tool to compare the different analyses.

If you do not own a third-party tool, some of the more popular ones do have trial periods available that would allow you to download the software and analyze the data from the test period.

Be aware that trial software often does not have the full features of the program enabled.

Finally, look at the data yourself. Invest as much time as necessary to fully understand the different results you most likely received from the different ad campaigns, concentrating particularly on clickthrough rates and conversions.

If you discover that the campaigns received a lot of impressions, but not as many clickthroughs as you had expected, you may need to revise your keywords and ads a little more.

If this is the case, re-run the trials and see if the results come out any clearer.
Most analysts say that contextual ads lead to fewer conversions than PPC search engine ads, due to the timing of when the visitor sees the ad, in terms of his or her stage in the buying cycle.

Those who reach your website via PPC search tend to be further along the sales cycle. This means that they arc drilling down with more specific keywords and actively looking for businesses that sell the product they are searching for, in order to make the final decision.

Given this, many advertisers at first see contextual advertising as a poor choice if their sole intent is to sell products online.

However, there are some distinct advantages to be gained via contextual search advertising, as long as the advertiser realizes that conversions will likely be smaller.

One of the main advantages is that keywords in contextual advertising tend to cost less than keywords used in PPC search.

Therefore, an ad campaign based on content can cost less, so fewer conversions can still result in a decent ROI.

As well, one cannot discount the exposure of your product and website in any format online, but particularly in content-rich pages.

Typically, visitors who are reading such content online already have a high degree of interest in the topic.

Therefore, they may be more likely to notice your ad or at least make note of your website as a possible avenue to explore when they arc closer to the end of the sales cycle and ready to purchase.

This can be particularly beneficial to smaller websites, who face a great deal of difficulty in building brand recognition in the Internet marketplace.

By attracting the attention of a reader who is already interested in the product, it may give a small business owner a leg up on larger competitors, who rely on their brand name to bring shoppers directly to their websites.

Another advantage of contextual advertising is that it may have more appeal to those Internet users who find the search process difficult and frustrating.

If a user has tried to find the product lie is looking for by placing keywords in a search engine’s search box and has repeatedly been unable to find relevant results frustration will set in.

Some may instead click on the contextual results that come up, such as links to online magazines or review sites.

If your ad shows up when they are investigating those secondary sites, their frustration at the whole process may lead them to click onto your ad and propel them further into the sales cycle on that basis alone.

Keywords: advertiser, ad campaign, keywords, pay-per-click ad campaign, contextual advertising, pay-per-click contextual results ad campaign, ad,

7Search offers a slightly different affiliate and referral program. Affiliates use a 7Search search box (which pays 5 cents per qualified click), join the Pay Per Text program (puts linked text on your site that takes the visitor to a search results page based on keywords in the text, for a 40% commission), and receive 1 cent for each click on a site-based 7Search browser toolbar.

Accessory Ads places actual ads from others on your site, but via category, to ensure that a competitor’s ad does not appear.

Five layout options and color choices are available. With specializations in gaming, dating, travel, and website ownership advertising, some affiliates may not wish to participate in this program.

If you do take part, you are encouraged to create “zones” of ads, which pay 60% of the revenue from their traffic.

The usual referral system pay 10% on all ad spends for one year after the referred advertiser signs on with 7Search.

The main reseller program is ValidatedSite Reseller, where you receive 30% of recurring revenue.

Overall, the options offered by 7Search are subject to some fairly strict rules, including ensuring not only that affiliates, but also servers, managers, and owners, are from English -speaking countries.

No more than 25% of an affiliate’s traffic can come from non-English speaking countries.

Methodologies of calculating affiliate performance are not based strictly on actual traffic, but use “traffic and condition counters and ratios that compare you to the rest of our clients.”

So, if your traffic looks to 7Search as if it may contain click fraud, they will pull you from the program.

Using cookies, 7Search monitors your affiliate activity, and will terminate your account for inactivity, based on unspecified parameters from an analysis of ratios of clicks versus page views.

Many other rules apply; 7Search maintains their “stringent rules” keep costs down. As well, “All traffic to your pages is measured by an independent . . . methodology similar to AC Nielsen TV ratings using several thousand surfers . . . to build a statistically significant sample to calculate a nearly exact number of visitors to your pages,” which implies click numbers aren’t used.

Affiliate payments are monthly, with a minimum balance of $25. Referral checks are issued mid-month.

Some of these variations on affiliate/referral system are worth looking into if you advertise on 7Search, but track your account details to make certain the programs are working for your particular situation.

Keywords: 7Search, affiliate program, referral program, AccessoryAds, ValidatedSite,

What makes contextual advertising different is that your ads do not appear on search engine result pages.

Rather, they appear directly on pages of content found on websites. In effect, if you visit a website that has information about digital cameras, you may encounter contextual advertising of related products, such as memory cards, camera cases, zoom lenses, battery rechargers, etc.

Although many analysts consider contextual advertising to be a new phenomenon, it has actually been present since the Internet became a commercial enterprise, mainly in the form of banner advertising, popups, and other ads.

In the past, consumers considered these means of advertising undesirable and even an unwanted part of their search experience, viewing them as unnecessary clutter that detracted from the actual information available on a web page.

For example, most of us have had the experience of visiting a website and then being prompted to allow the download of software, which, once installed on our computer, will allow contextual ads in the form of popups, etc. to be shown as you travel through various websites.

If your computer is not set up to prompt you before downloading software, you, may actually have such programs installed on your computer, without even knowing it.

Sometimes these types of program encourage the visitor to download the software by offering free benefits, such as access to coupon sites or dictionary/encyclopedia resources.

This practice is best known as copyware/adware and is regarded very negatively among online users.

By the Near 2003, contextual advertising had become a form of advertising that consumers did not generally respond well to.

And many users began to install popup blocking software to cut down on the incidence of unwanted ads suddenly appearing a new window or as part of the current browser window.

However, also in 2003 a new facet was introduced into contextual advertising that changed its public perception, and it has become a fast-growing means of capturing new traffic for advertisers.

What makes pay-per-click contextual advertising different from pay-per-click search engine advertising is not just how and where it appears, but also the type of user it appeals to.

Pay-per-click contextual advertising is designed to appear on pages of a website that have content that is highly relevant to the ad.

Depending on which search engine is delivering the advertising, the ads may appear on the right side (or the top or bottom) of the web page, and be similar in appearance to standard PPC ads, with a title, description, and URL to click on.

The types of websites that typically carry contextual ads are news sites, magazine sites, educational sites, product review sites and other reference sites.

There is little-to-no incentive for an advertiser to add contextual ads to their own websites, because competitors’ ads could wind up being shown there as well.

While contextual ads arc mostly text-based, a relatively new development in contextual search is the introduction by Google of the ability to include images in contextual ads, thus allowing the advertiser the opportunity to show a product as well as provide a link to the related website.

Another difference between the two is the delivery method. Contextual ads are generally served up via a complex algorithm that determines which ads to display on a website that is in the contextual ad business.

Thus, the advertiser does not have as much control as with PPC search, where they determine their positioning via keyword bidding.

Bidding is a part of contextual search, but usually on a group of keywords, a channel, or a category level.

In addition, contextual ads tend to be clicked on by visitors who are in a different stage of the buying cycle and may not be interested in purchasing a product at all.

Because they appear in the websites of, for example, online newspapers, a contextual ad may be shown just because the text of the article mentions the type of product, even if the intent of the article has nothing to do with selling that product.

The person reading the article may have no intention of purchasing that product at that time, but may, out of curiosity, click on the contextual ad just to see what it’s talking about and to get a little more information about a product they might not know much about.

Pay-per- click ads on a search engine, however, are more often clicked on by visitors who are interested in purchasing the product in question.

Although many may still be in the research phase, they more often have a purchase in mind.

Therefore, contextual ads usually have a lower conversion rate or ROI than search pay-per-click ads, because of the intent of the visitor clicking on the ad. Nevertheless, the contextual ad campaign is still charged for each click on the ad.

Given this, advertisers are divided in their view of contextual advertising. Some think it is a worthwhile endeavor, while others see it as an ineffective method that they do not wish to expend ad dollars on.

Some advertisers also express concern that their ad could be served up on a website that has little relevance to their product, if the algorithm is not constructed appropriately, as reportedly has happened on occasion.

However, there are positive points about contextual advertising that have contributed to its growth of use:

• Contextual ads tend to have more online exposure than search pay-per-click ads, because their placement on partner sites of the search engine is determined by their relevance to the content of those sites, and is not totally dependent upon keyword bidding to achieve placement.

• Contextual ads are a good source of revenue for the partner sites that include them. Because the ads are not in competition with the “product” being offered by the content website, they are generally seen as a plus by content partners.

Keywords: ads, contextual advertising, contextual ads, advertising, advertisers, PPC ads, Bidding, Keyword Bidding,

Searchfeed has a robust affiliate/partner program. They offer a two-tier program, based on clicks and referrals.

The affiliate (clicks) program offers either a search box and customized results page to match your website’s design or the traditional inclusion of paid advertising, with topic-oriented grouping, on your website (the Category Chaser option). Detailed reports show visitors’ actions.

The affiliate program returns an estimated percentage of click revenue of between 35% and 50%.

Payments are made within 20 days of the end of a calendar month, with a fairly low minimum amount to release payment of $25. Payment can be made via PayPal, check, or wire transfer.

The terms and conditions are very detailed and cover a number of areas not often specified in other PPC search engine agreements.

For example, Searchfeed will filter out what it considers fraudulent clicks from affiliate sites and you “will have no right or recourse in connection with such reduction of Earned Revenue.”

Prohibited activity is clearly detailed, such as stress testing the mechanism or collecting tracking data on your own.

They also require you to make “reasonable efforts” to stop robots/spiders from activating clicks that will result in revenue to you, and blocking IP addresses that Searchfeed sends you for blocking.

A one-year term is automatically renewed unless either party gives a 30-day notice of cancellation, although the search engine retains the right to immediately terminate your account if they suspect you are breaking any of the terms.

You will receive a 30-day notice of termination if your account is inactive for more that 30 days. With termination, you forfeit any money remaining to be paid out to you.

A separate program is available for the Searchfeed geo-targeting tool, where you call add in clicks from the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

Referrals can also be a source of revenue. The commission for referring an advertiser is 5% to 7%, depending on how many advertisers you refer.

If you refer partners (the definition of which is not really made clear), you will receive anywhere from 2% to 5% of their revenue.

Overall, this is a robust program well worth investigating. However, ensure that you read and understand the terms and conditions before signing up to avoid any unanticipated restraints that may be placed upon you.

Keywords: Searchfeed, affiliate program, commission, referring, advertiser,

How did the turnaround in the overall opinion of contextual advertising in the popup from to its current popularity come about?

Largely, the switch in viewpoint toward contextual advertising developed out of the vision by Google to use contextual search as a means of delivering more relevant ads to its network of partners and advertisers.

Google was one of the first search engines to offer content targeting in a program called AdSense that launched in March of 2003, but initially limited those eligible to participate to its larger partnered websites (those with a minimum of 20 million page views per month).

It wasn’t until June of 2003 that Google expanded the program to allow smaller sites to participate and simplified the sign-up process, so that a publisher could sign up outline.

Google has positioned content search as a means for advertisers to have their ads appear on highly relevant websites automatically, stating that the program will increase an advertiser’s ROI and reach, and save them time and money via their “extensive network of high-quality partner sites and products.”

In fact, contextual advertising is more suited to the Google AdSense program, in that its main purpose is to increase revenue for publishers by providing relevant ads for their websites.

Google feels that, by providing targeted advertising throughout a website (particularly small websites with small advertising budgets), these sites will benefit from increased traffic, while the advertiser will benefit if a visitor clicks on the ad and visits their site, perhaps making a purchase.

The program is robust enough that it can apparently differentiate between different meanings of amnion words, such as “mouse” as either in annual or a computer peripheral device, and thereby not serve up an ad for a computer mouse act on a medical research website.

It also has a filtering process to eliminate matching ads with articles reporting bad news, thus not placing car ads on content pages discussing a recent car crash, for example.

Some degree of manual review of potential matches of ad to content is also now in place, in addition to the automated algorithm placement method.

The Google program also allows the publisher to block specific URLs they do not want to appear on their site, thus eliminating the risk of a competitor’s ad showing up on their website.

There is also the option of serving up a “standard” ad if the Google software doesn’t find an appropriate ad to place on your content page. They also allow you to customize the colors in the ad to fit with your general web design.

Monitoring tools and reports are also offered, which include the clickthrough rate, the number of impressions, and the number of clicks. You can also group results by URL, ad type, domain name, category, and other parameters.

Earnings from contextual advertising arc displayed and easily accessed, so the publisher can quickly check how much revenue they are generating and then make decisions about changes easily and in a timely manner.

Soon after Google began offering contextual advertising, its competitors jumped onto the bandwagon.

By July of 2003, Yahoo had developed its answer to Google-Content Match. Content Match basically offers the same features as the Google contextual ad program, but of course, delivers results to different partners.

The Yahoo Search Marketing program concentrates more on involving its major partners, such as Yahoo, CNN, ESPN, and MSN, in contextual advertising.

Fewer tools are offered by the Yahoo program to date, although as competition increases, Content Match will undoubtedly adapt and add such functionality.

Other PPC search engines that offer contextual search include:

• Kanoodle.com and its product, ContextTarget (ads may appear on partners such as MSNBC, USAToday.com, MarketWatch/Dow Jones) and BrightAds

• FindWhat.com product, Xpress contextual ads

• EnhanceInteractive.com contextual advertising option, considered a combination of different options available to PPC advertisers

In addition, a number of web properties also offer a form of contextual advertising, although because they are not search engines, per se, the network of websites that your content-related ad may appear on is much smaller. Some examples to investigate include:

• www.Clicksor.com
• www.BidCix.com
• www.BannerBoxes.com
• www.Bidcriser.com
• www.ContextAd.com
• www.Quigo.com – The AdSonar Exchange

Keywords: contextual advertising, AdSense, advertising, Ads,

ePilot, the PPC search engine arm of Interchange Corporation, concentrates on a system of referrals (which they sometimes still call affiliates) and partnerships for their advertisers, rather than an affiliate program like Google, where you serve up ads on your own website.

ePilot’s referral program is very easy to understand and participate in. For each advertiser that you refer to the search engine that is accepted, you will receive a commission equal to 10 percent of the total initial deposit made by that advertiser, as long as the deposit is over $99.99.

Only the first deposit counts, however. Subsequent deposits made to the advertiser’s account do not result in any commission paid to you.

Payments are made on the 15th, day of each month. Commissions must have reached an amount of at least 599.99 in order to be paid out. ePilot limits its referral program to a year-long term.

The opportunity to become an ePilot partner by placing advertising for the PPC search engine on your website is more complex, because relationships have to be worked out individually and are dependent on your applicability to interchange’s plans and programs.

Their Advertising Network Program currently consists of over 290 properties, with hundreds of thousands of advertisers in the search engine’s network of partners.

ePilot also offers a Search Distribution Partner Program, which allows you to earn a percentage of each paid click that comes from traffic on your website.

Eligibility requirements include having traffic only from Canada or the United States and a minimum of 100,000 hits per month. You also must have a means of filtering out fraudulent clicks that meets their standards.

All in all, the restrictions make it difficult to partner with ePilot if you are a smaller business.

However, given the enormous changes in the search engine since its acquisition by Interchange, alterations to their affiliate/partnership opportunities are likely to be made as they increasingly reflect Interchange’s overall online goals.

Keywords: ePilot, referrals, referral program, affiliates, ePilot’s referral program, commission,

We’ve spoken briefly about PPC search engines and how they have responded to various incidents of click fraud.

Not all search engines have programs in place that routinely check ad accounts for warning signs of click fraud, but more and more are instituting such programs in light of the increasing incidence of click fraud and pressure from their advertisers to deal with the problem.

The two largest search engines, Google and Yahoo, both have publicly admitted that click fraud is a problem that is a significant threat, not just to their “business model,” but to their overall success.

In the recent pre-IPO filings by Google, for example, the company included a paragraph pointing to click fraud as a risk potential investors should consider before purchasing Google stock. They stated that:

“We have regularly paid refunds related to fraudulent clicks and expect to do so in the future…If we are unable to stop this fraudulent activity, these refunds may increase…If we are unable to remain competitive and provide value to our advertisers, they may stop placing ads with us, which would negatively affect our net revenues and business.”

Each of the two major PPC search engines defines click fraud in a slightly different manner.

Google defines it as “invalid clicks, as any method used to artificially or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions” (Salar Kamanagar, Director of Product Management, Google).

The Yahoo definition is “clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site to purchase goods or services or to obtain information.” (Dina Freeman from Yahoo Search Marketing).

Obviously, the Google definition is much more specific than that proposed by Yahoo, and its response to click fraud at this point is a touch more detailed and drills down further into the raw data.

Still, both search engines have proprietary in place, which are constantly being upgraded as new methods of click fraud become apparent or the level of detected click fraud increases.

Google has developed a separate team that deals solely with click fraud issues. One part of the team is responsible for constantly revising the automated software detection system, so that it can detect the differences between normal, human clicks and those made by robots.

Basically, the system analyzes traffic to websites to see if they fit known patterns of activity that indicate click fraud, such as never leaving the landing page, repeated clicking within a certain timeframe from the same IP address, and so on.

The second part of the Google click fraud team is composed of individuals who manually look at individual cases of suspected click fraud.

These investigations may come about as a result of a complaint filed by an advertiser who feels they have been a victim of click fraud, or cases that have been identified by the automated system.

Although all search engines are very tight-lipped about revealing how much they have refunded to advertisers on click-fraud claims, Google has refunded money lost by advertisers, and publishers have had their payments adjusted if they are suspected of affiliate-related fraud.

Despite their stated good intentions, and evidence of quick action on claims by advertisers of suspected click fraud, many advertisers feel that Google is not doing enough to combat the problem and are frustrated in their attempts to reach the level of proof that Google expects in order to qualify for a refund.

No doubt it is in this search engine’s best interests to keep its advertisers happy, but it is a complex problem.

Yahoo Search Marketing, like Google, has proprietary software designed to detect click fraud.

This software has been refined on a regular basis since 1998, and now checks at least 50 points of data, from the more obvious ones, such as IP addresses, cookie information, or the visitor’s browser’s information, to more sophisticated recognition of patterns of behavior on an individual website.

If the cumulative number of data points concludes that the activity is likely not valid, the advertiser is not charged for the click (although Yahoo is unable to remove the information from the advertiser’s logs, leading some to question how far Yahoo is actually going to combat click fraud).

Yahoo also encourages advertisers to report suspicious behavior that they end in their own tracking of ad activity, and will investigate further and issue refunds when appropriate.

Keep in mind that if your claim is denied, you should appeal and get them to take it seriously.

Some other PPC search engines also have formalized systems in place to detect click fraud.

Chief among these are I.ookSmarts TrueLeadTM system and FindWhat. Other PPC search engines, however, do not have formal click fraud systems in place, but do monitor traffic on an informal basis.

All will consider any claims made by an advertiser who claims to be a victim of click fraud.

Keywords: Click Fraud, advertiser,

The Yahoo Search Marketing affiliate and partnership program is not very visible on their website, and is usually limited to very large websites.

The affiliate program is in fact a referral program, where you receive a certain amount of money for referring other websites to some of the Yahoo Search Marketing PPC advertising products.

You receive $80 for each Sponsored Search Fast Track referral, $20 for Sponsored Search Self Serve referrals, and $20 for Local Match referrals.

If your volume of sales increases significantly, your commission may likewise be increased.

As an added incentive, those you refer will also receive a bonus from Yahoo Search Marketing on their PPC ad programs-a $25 credit for new Sponsored Search Self-Serve accounts, or $50 off the service fee for the Fast Track program.

For Local Match, advertisers you sign up as affiliates receive a $20 credit on their new account.

The program is handled through Commission Junction and is only available to U.S. and Canadian advertisers.

Commission Junction provides a nice, easy- to-understand report of your ongoing affiliate account.

Yahoo Search Marketing also offers partnerships, but few small-to-medium-sized businesses will quality for this program, because your website needs to have a minimum of 2 million searches per month (30 million page views a month) to quality as a partner site.

You also need to supply your top three traffic sources from among the countries in which Yahoo Search Marketing appears.

If you are a media agency or a reseller and manage PPC accounts for your clients, Yahoo Search Marketing offers an “Ambassador” program.

If your total client accounts reach an aggregate spend of at least $20,000 per month, you may join the program and receive account management and free customized proposals for your client, among other perks.

Yahoo Search Marketing offers a separate program for their three “match” PPC advertising programs, but the benefits look the same for each.

A product called Marketing Console is the means by which you access the details of your Ambassador program results.

It provides Information on the overall performance of the program, but also allows you to drill down to detailed reports on an individual advertiser’s sales data.

Terms and conditions for all the affiliate and partner/ambassador programs are equal in intensity to Google.

Likewise, partners continue to receive a percentage of the income from clicks and searches made via the Yahoo Search Marketing fed advertising they have on their websites.

Keywords: referral program, affiliate program, Local Match referrals, Search Fast Track referral, Sponsored Search Self Serve referrals, partnerships, Ambassador Program,

The Google affiliate program (Google AdSense) offers ads placed on your website along one side or via a Google search box on your site.

There is no additional cost to join Google AdSense, and you can opt out of content search if you wish.

Once you provide the relevant information to Google, there is usually a 2-3 day turnaround period (mostly for them to verify and check out your website) to be approved. You can terminate the relationship at any time.

Although you receive a percentage of the revenue that each click on these ads or the search box generates, Google does not disclose what that percentage is.

Over time, as you analyze the data in their reports, which indicates the total number of page impressions, ad clicks, clickthrough rate, effective CPM, and total earnings, you will be able to assess its effectiveness for you.

Google also offers a separate referral program, through which you receive a flat fee of $20 for each advertiser or publisher you refer to Google.

Checks for the referral program are sent out monthly, but only after your total reaches $100.

Your referred advertiser must spend $20 or more on their Google AdWords campaign. You can also refer other websites to Google AdSense and earn your commission once they have earned $75 or more from clicks in Google AdSense.

The Terms and Conditions Agreement clearly lays out what types of activity you are allowed to engage in, but doesn’t go into as much detail as some of the smaller PPC search engines do about specific aspects of their major policies.

The penalty for breaking the rules is immediate termination of your affiliate account.

Google goes a little further than other search engines, by stipulating that you not reveal any details of the program, such as the method of tracking URLs, etc., for a full two-year period after either you or Google terminates your relationship.

The Google program is very easy to use and understand. Despite the mystery concerning the details of what percentage your commission will be, as the leading PPC search engine, Google is a leader in the affiliate marketplace.

If you already advertise on Google AdWords, and ha