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: “NO RIGHT TURN,” are all difficult to say briefly and effectively 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 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; maybe 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 comforting. 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 however predictable passages on how to get rid of 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 thought 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 memorise; 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 indication than when given a positive one. This method of learning, using negative reminders, 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 path next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong road 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 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 whole 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 boost 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 well known 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, yet 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 says. 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 clear: “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 states, “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 pleasant and amicable 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 conveyed 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.

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: order:, 4:4:“DON’T WALK,” are all difficult to say concisely and powerfully 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 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; 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 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” looks an even longer undertaking than the absolute “forever.”

“Don’t Worry Baby”, from the mouths of the Beach Boys is quite reassuring. 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 eradicate 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 formerly assumed 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 comparable 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 way next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong way again.

Nevertheless 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 mystical 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 matter 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 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 well-known 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, yet 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 claims. 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 states, “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 convincing than the theme that carried American Express to world recognition, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

Would it have communicated 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.

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 powerfully 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; maybe 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 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 eliminate negativity from your relationship, 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 improved by “generative learning; that people remember better when actively involved in forming an idea around, say a particular word they’re asked to memorise; 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 comparable 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 way next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong path 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 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 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 whole issue 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 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 well known 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, 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 states. 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 clear that they always get the same response:’Yeab, I know. But change it, would ja? It’s just one word.”’

Anti-negativity, he claims, “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 charming and amenable than the exaggerated 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 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.

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: “NO RIGHT TURN,” are all difficult to say briefly and effectively 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 paying attention for bad news; maybe 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 language 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 supportive. 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 however predictable passages on how to eliminate 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 formerly thought 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 memorise; 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 route 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 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 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 entire issue 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 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 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, yet 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 obvious that they always get the same response:’Yeab, I know. But change it, would ja? It’s just one word.”’

Anti-negativity, he states, “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 attractive 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 fame, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

Would it have conveyed 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.

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: “HIGH VOLTAGE, DO NOT TOUCH” are all difficult to say concisely 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 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 interested in bad news; probably 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 comforting. 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 but predictable passages on how to do away with negativity from your job, 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 thought 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 memorise; 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 way again.

Nevertheless 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 mystical 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 entire 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 boost 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 renowned 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, yet 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 states. 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 clear 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 amiable 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 fame, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

Would it have conveyed 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.

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: order:, 4:4:“DON’T WALK,” are all difficult to say briefly and effectively 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 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 interested 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 language 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” appears an even longer undertaking than the absolute “forever.”

“Don’t Worry Baby”, from the mouths of the Beach Boys is quite comforting. 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 eradicate negativity from your job, 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 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 memorise; 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 comparable 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 route 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 mystical 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 stated themselves “Not your ordinary …” or “Not for everybody” to boost up 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 well-known 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 states. 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 understandable that they always get the same response:’Yeab, I know. But change it, would ja? It’s just one word.”’

Anti-negativity, he claims, “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 charming and amenable than the exaggerated 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 convincing than the theme that carried American Express to world fame, “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.

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: “WRONG WAY, GO BACK,” are all difficult to say briefly 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 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; probably 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” appears an even longer undertaking than the absolute “forever.”

“Don’t Worry Baby”, from the mouths of the Beach Boys is quite reassuring. 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, certainly, a hundred well-intentioned however predictable passages on how to eliminate 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 thought 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 reminder 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.

Nevertheless 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 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 matter 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 boost 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 well-known 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 claims. 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 clear: “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 claims, “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 pleasant and amicable 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 convincing 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, perhaps I’m just being negative.

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: order:, 4:4:“DON’T WALK,” are all difficult to say succinctly and strongly 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 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 interested in bad news; maybe 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 language 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 comforting. 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, certainly, a hundred well-intentioned yet predictable passages on how to do away with negativity from your job, 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 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 memorise; 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 cue 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 way next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong course 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 suddenly, 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 enhance 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 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, 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 says. 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 clear: “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 asserts, “deprives a writer of one of the most effective rhetorical devices in the English language, for no good reason. Would GM still have 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 pleasant and friendly than the puffed up 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 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.

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 associated with high risks: order:, 4:4:“DON’T WALK,” are all difficult to say succinctly 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 paying attention for bad news; maybe 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 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, of course, a hundred well-intentioned nevertheless predictable passages on how to eradicate negativity from your life, 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 in fact 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 direction next time by remembering that we shouldn’t go the wrong direction again.

Nevertheless 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 suddenly, 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 issue 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 renowned 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, 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 says. 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 clear: “So apparent 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 have 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 amicable 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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 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 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,

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,

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,

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,

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,

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’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,

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 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,

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 have a smaller business, affiliation with Google can bring a healthy stream of extra revenue.

Keywords: referral program, affiliate marketplace, page impressions, ad clicks, clickthrough rate, effective CPM, advertiser, advertise,

Search engines offer affiliate programs, referral programs, and partnership opportunities that are not restricted to only those who use their advertising services.

Almost anyone with a website can become an affiliate (often now called “referrer”) or partner with a number of pay-per-click search engines.

Basically, via these type of programs, you allow the search engine to place advertising of some kind on your website in exchange for a payment made each time a visitor to your website clicks on one of the ads or conducts an online search using the PPC search engine’s box that is placed on your homepage.

Different solutions are available, based on the amount of traffic your website receives.

There are many different ways to become an affiliate or partner. In fact, although some basic rules apply to most programs, each PPC search engine has its own details and requirements.

Some are quite strict in who they allow to be affiliates; others are less stringent about who is accepted into their programs.

Nevertheless, if you decide to pursue this route, you will need to provide data about your website, such as average number of visitors, which countries your website serves, what your revenue is, and so on.

Increasingly, search engines are outsourcing their affiliate management to third-party affiliate organizations.

Most popular among the PPC search engines now is Commission Junction, which defines an affiliate as “an independent party, or Web site that promotes the products or services of an advertiser in exchange for a commission.”

Some businesses should look into the option of becoming an affiliate, unless you feel strongly about not offering any paid advertising or another company’s name on your website.

The amount of effort required to set up the process is minimal and the rewards are pretty good.

The top pay-per-click search engines offer a relatively representative look at different types of programs available for affiliates or partners, so a review of each one’s offerings should help you decide if (and where) you want to enter this arena.

Please click on the list below to learn more about them.

1. Google (www.ppcbook.info/adsense)
2. Yahoo Search Marketing (www.ppcbook. info /yahoo)
3. ePilotTM (www.ppcbook.info/epilot)
4. Searchfeed (www.ppcbook.info/searchfeed)
5. 7Search (www.ppcbook.info/7search)
6. Search123 (www.ppcbook.info/search123)
7. FindWhat (www.ppcbook.info/findwhat)
8. Kanoodle (www.ppcbook.info/kanoodle)
9. Enhance Interactive (www.ppcbook.info/enhance)

Keywords: Affiliate, Referral, PPC search engine,

Many PPC search engines have programs in place to audit for click fraud, but it is a good policy to periodically took at your traffic logs, or perhaps consider using a third-party tool to analyze the data further.

The main things to look for in your ad campaign’s statistics are:

1. Keyword performance-if you notice that some specific keywords in your ad campaign that normally do not do well suddenly become top performers, investigate. If you suspect click fraud, begin by changing the setup of your ad campaigns so that you can track each keyword by search engine and then keep all eye on the statistics of each (now) separate campaign.

In this way, you can see more clearly if one specific search engine is involved. As well, the data is broken down in more manageable portions, so that repeated visits by the same IP address may stand out more clearly than if you kept all your keyword campaigns in one log file.

Likewise, a sudden increase in the total number of clicks on all of your keywords, without there being a seasonal relationship or a special promotional campaign ill progress, could indicate click fraud.

2. An abnormal number of clicks from the same IP address-although this is the most obvious and easily identified form of click fraud, it is amazing how many fraudsters still use this method, particularly for quick attacks.

They may choose a to strike over a long weekend when they figure you may not be watching your log files carefully, clicking on your ad repeatedly so that when you return to work on Tuesday, your account is significantly depleted.

3. Decline in the number of conversions-if your conversion rate is normally positive (that is, you are making a profit on your ad), and all of a sudden, conversion dives into negative numbers, this could be a sign of click fraud in action.

Click fraud causes extra clicks on your ad with no actual purchases, and your conversion rate will fall accordingly.

4. Large numbers of visitors who leave your site quickly-another indication of click fraud can be a pattern of visitors clicking on your ad, spending the minimum amount of time on your site required by your PPC search engine to establish it as a valid click (usually 30 seconds or more), and then leaving without having left the landing page at all.
5. A large number of impressions, without the accompanying click on your ad-if you notice that there are a lot more impressions (views) of your website.

This could indicate the impression fraud we discussed earlier. As we saw, artificial inflation of your ad impressions may cause your clickthrough rates to drop below the Google minimum of 0.5% and your ad will be disabled. 
 
Until you realize this, your competitors have free reign to use your keywords, sometimes at bargain prices.

As well, your relevancy ratings for search engines may drop as they record numerous impressions, but no interest shown via visits to other parts of your website, which could lead to a shutdown of your campaign.

6. Abnormally high clicks and impressions on affiliate websites-although affiliates themselves are sometimes involved in conducting click fraud schemes.

They can be victims of click fraud themselves. If one of their competitors uses this same method of excessive clicks and impressions on an affiliate’s site, the PPC search engine will soon notice an abnormally high payment to a certain affiliate and perhaps go as far as canceling that affiliate’s account, even though he or she was not engaging in any form of click fraud.

7. A large number of clicks coming from countries outside of your normal market area-using online resources such as www.dnsstuff.com and other free online sites, you can identify which country an IP address is probably coming from.

8. Accidental click fraud-there are, in fact, some cases that may be seen as click fraud, although they are actually not intentional.

However, they do have the effect of depleting your ad account. Although some individuals may accidentally click on your ad, most accidental clicks are caused by link-checking software or search engine robots clicking on the ad as they run their routines.

If you suspect this is occurring, regular checking of your logs may be all you need to get a refund from your PPC search engine.

With spider-driven extra clicks, if you have a high-cost keyword in your campaign, even a few extra clicks a day can make a dent in your account.

There are other means of click fraud that individuals use, but most fall into the above categories. 

Most people believe that the majority of the real damage is done by robot driven software, but it is impossible to adequately determine what percentage of click fraud is caused by humans themselves and what percentage is caused by robots humans developed.

One of the main reasons that robot/software click fraud is so prevalent is that there actually legitimate pieces of software that can be used to commit click fraud, although that was not the original intent for their creation.

For example, a click fraud artist may claim that he is just stress testing his analytics software program to ensure that it will catch click fraud.

Part of the problem with click fraud is that there are not yet any laws on the books dealing with the problem.

The Federal Trade Commission claims that they cannot really do anything about the problem because they are tasked with investigating consumer fraud, and cannot fit click fraud into this category.

However, the Department of Justice in the United States does have a rapidly growing division that deals with cases of cybercrime, and click fraud will likely eventually come under their review.

The difficulty is that, even if you suspect you arc a victim of click fraud, the onus generally falls on you to prove that it exists and to find those responsible.

This must happen before any action will be taken by your PPC search engine, especially those that already have some form of click fraud detection operating on their engines.

Keywords: Click Fraud, ad campaign, fraudsters, ad impressions, cybercrime,

A product of Rivergold Associates Ltd., it is definitely a research tool that every PPC advertiser needs to be acquainted with.
 
At the very least, take advantage of their free trial to see the power behind this product. If you are just beginning to use PPC, the free trial may offer you enough to get you started. You can subscribe later, when your campaign needs to be changed.

WordTracker is a subscription-based product that specializes in reporting the relative popularity and positioning of keywords.

The product provides you with information on keywords related to those you are already using, the number of’ times any keyword has appeared in their database, and typical misspellings.

It also shows how many competing pages exist for your chosen keywords from among the search engines it analyses.

In short, WordTracker is a tool that will help you immensely in choosing keywords that are not only right for your products and services, but are the most advantageous for your particular ad campaign.

It is simple to use, yet the information it provides is quick, accurate, and managed extremely well.

It takes almost all the guesswork out of which keywords are going to be most effective by showing you what keywords people are using when they searching for your type of business.

The website is clean, clear, and attractive. It is filled with information about the product and the company, and offers a quick tour of the features.

A recent addition is a ticker running along the top of the site with today’s most frequently searched keywords.

Although not inexpensive, WordTracker is a tool well worth the expense. A free weekly keyword report shows the top 500 most frequently searched keywords on the Internet, from a database of over 350 million search terms.

You call purchase longer lists if you wish, starting at $99 for the top 20,000 keywords.

If you are new to the PPC market or you are running a small campaign, you can subscribe to WordTracker for as short a period as one day for less than $10.

For those who are more involved or have larger campaigns, WordTracker subscriptions run weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly (maximum cost is about $270).

The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, with plenty of research to justify their use of metacrawlers as the basis for their database. Tutorials to help you wish with keyword selection cater to every level of Internet marketer.

Keywords: WordTracker,

Types of click fraud range from very simple to very complex and sophisticated. Here are some of the most common forms click fraud takes:

1. Automated Scripts-although not the simplest form of click fraud, for someone with computer expertise, this method can be very effective, and quite simple to set up as well.

The Most famous case of this type of click fraud is Still the Google Clique software. Basically, the fraudster creates a robot or automated script that is specifically designed to click on paid advertising.

 This type of click fraud is used by both competitors and affiliates alike.

2. Hiring People To Click On Ads-this means of perpetrating click fraud often originates from third-world Countries.

Ads are placed in local newspapers recruiting workers to spend time clicking on ads, according to directions supplied by the companies who organize these operations.

Perhaps the most infamous operation of this type of “click farm” was identified by The Times of India in an article entitled “India’s Secret Army of Ad Clickers.”

Especially interesting is that one online blogger who reported this story received 17 comments to his blog entry, most of which were placed by people seeking to find such jobs or by firms advertising that they were looking to hire workers for just such work.

Although the companies that organize “click farms” realize that they are committing fraud, those working for them do not necessarily understand the significance of what they are doing and the impact it is having on overall Internet commercial activity.

In third-world countries where annual incomes average a few thousand dollars, the additional income of $100 to $200 per month for a few hours work per day is very hard to resist, especially if the individuals involved arc not computer literate enough to realize the implications of their actions.

3. Competitors-your competitors have many methods of generating click fraud that do not involve “hitbots” or “click farms”.

If you are competing for position on PPC search engines for a particularly expensive keyword, all a competitor has to do is to click on your ad a couple of times a day from his office computer, his home computer, a laptop, a friend’s computer, an Internet café, or any variety of easily accessed computers with different IP addresses in order to deplete your account and yet not attract attention to himself personally.

In competitive industries, where the cost per click can be several dollars, if three to five of your competitors make fraudulent clicks on your ad several times a day, you can easily be losing thousands of advertising dollars a month.

If your keyword cost is in the lower range, click fraud by your competitor(s) tends to be a little more complex and sophisticated.

4. Proxy Servers-one of the most basic means of click fraud involves the use of repeated clicks on a PPC ad from the same computer.

A person could theoretically sit at their computer and click on your ad, wait the appropriate amount of time for the PPC search engine to consider it a legitimate click, perhaps even visit a few of your pages and then exit your website.

Bingo! One clickthrough deducted from your account. There are cases where people will complete this process repeatedly, without even bothering to go through the simple process of changing their IP address (the Internet Protocol number that is assigned to each computer).

However, some people using click fraud in this manner use proxy servers to allow IP addresses to be changed randomly at certain intervals in order to make it appear as if the clicks are indeed coming from different computers.

5. Affiliate Programs-affiliates are an increasing source of click fraud. Because of the specifics of how the affiliate system works, affiliates have a version of the PPC ad on their websites.

Because affiliates receive a percentage of the money generated by each click made on their website, they may see little or no harm in clicking a couple of times on the ad themselves to generate a little extra income on the side.

However, affiliates who use “bots” to generate significant revenue via click fraud usually have to develop fairly sophisticated technology to get past the filters that many of the PPC search engines have in place for programs such as Google AdSense.

6. Impression Fraud-currently, this type of fraud is only practiced successfully on Google-based ads, because of a clause in the Google terms of service, usually using a robot, your competitor visits your website through normal means (not by clicking on your paid ad), thus artificially inflating your impressions and causing your clickthrough rate to drop.

 On Google, if your clickthrough rate drops below 0.5%, your ad will be disabled and your competitor can grab a top position at a much lower keyword cost.

 A secondary result of this type of fraud is that your website may be seen by the search engine as becoming less relevant, since you are getting a lot of impressions without clicks, which can lead to a shutdown of your ad campaign.

As stated earlier, these are just the most common means of click fraud.  Some suspect activity may indeed be click fraud, but is subtle enough to be impossible to label it as such.

For example, some advertisers notice that on occasion their ads are clicked much more often than usual, while their tracking shows that the visitors never go past the homepage to another area of the website.

People do mistakenly click on an ad when they didn’t intend to and some people find it easier to click on a PPC ad to find out a company’s phone number than to consult an online yellow pages directory.

So how can you tell if you are a victim of click fraud, given that its very nature is somewhat amorphous?

Keywords: Click Fraud, Automated Scripts, Impression Fraud,

Because it is limited to Yahoo searches only, and has no real definition of what constitutes a “search,” it is of fairly limited use.

They also include a Link Popularity tool, which shows how many other sites are linking to yours, using information gathered from AltaVista, Hotbot, MSN, and Google.

Although the mechanism for calculating the figures isn’t provided, this is certainly an interesting option.

A new version is due to be released soon that will offer enhanced features, most still free, but some of which will have a cost associated with them.

The key aspects to the next version of Good Keywords are a keyword organizer, a web page explorer (no details provided on exactly what that entails), a misspelled keyword generator, and a keyword phrase builder, in addition to the site and link popularity checkers.

Softnik Technologies hopes that by visiting the Good Keywords site you will become interested in their paid product, PPC, Toolkit.

Available on another website, PPC Toolkit includes Bid Reporter pro, a tool that studies the patterns of bidders and identifies just who those bidders are at search engine properties, including “Yahoo, Espotting, FindWhat, and others.”

It also includes a product called “AdMaker” and Good keywords, for a package price.

When one runs a keyword through the tool, PPC Bid Reporter Pro returns a report containing information on the first, last and median bid at various search engines, and the ranking of the keyword in 12 different search engines.

It will also show you competitor ads on Google AdWords (based on keyword) so you can tweak your own ad to compete more effectively.

You can also save different scenarios to Excel spreadsheets and download them for comparison later.

The Softnik websites have undergone recent redesigns with nice changes made to clearly offer the PPC Toolkit as a separate item.

With good screenshots showing the various products and short, but clear, explanations, the tools are easy to understand, but do not appear to offer as many functions as similar tools.

For example, there is no auto-bidding feature or automatic notification of a dip in the ranking of your ad.

A free download trial of the PPC Toolkit is offered, which is strongly suggested before purchasing this tool.

It costs $99 for a single user license (good for two years worth of upgrades) and $195 for a site wide license.

Keywords: Good Keywords, keywords.

If you purchase this product directly from MarketingRocket.com, you also receive a number of add-ons, including another tool called Ad Calculator and an ebook entitled “Free Pay-Per-Click Advertising and Other Secrets,” all for $97.

Pay-Per-Click Galaxy’s stated main purpose is to suggest a “massive number of keyword combinations” for the pay-per-click user to bid on for his or her ad campaign. How does it do this?

First, keep in mind that this is merely a tool. You, yourself, have to enter in the different words you want to use in your keyword phrases; what Pay-Per-Click Galaxy does is provide you with all possible combinations of those individual words into keyword phrases.

You can mark some keywords as optional for the phrase, if you wish to. The tool itself generates keyword combinations of all kinds based on your descriptive keywords, usually coming up with hundreds or thousands of short keyword phrases.

The actual number depends on how many keywords you told it were to be always included and which were optional.

This tool is a huge timesaver for busy users because it almost instantly comes up with a list of keyword phrases without you having to go through the manual effort of writing them down all yourself in their various permutations.

The software also has various functions built into it that make it easier to organize keyword phrases for submission to search engines.

The database currently has over 15,000 keywords and 94,000 keyword/phrase relationship listings.

A December 2004 enhancement added the ability to drill further down and receive more keyword choices, based on each of the keywords the tool initially finds for you.

Pay-per-Click Galaxy is really the only independent tool available that automates the process of keyword selection.

All you need to do is pick and choose from the lists generated (based on bid price for these keyword phrases), save the ones you want to use, and submit them to your PPC search engine(s) of choice.

Even though many PPC, search engines now offer a keyword suggestion tool, Pay-Per-Click Galaxy does automate the process more than most.

As well, as an independent product, it can act as a “click:” on your search engine’s performance in this realm for a relatively low cost.

Keywords: Pay-Per-Click Galaxy, ppc.

A typical report shows the cost of the keyword in up to six positions along with the amount of time it takes for a PPC ad to appear on the search engine.

You can adjust the parameters of your search in various ways, including which search engines to show, the number of positions per keyword, and a setting to ignore engines that take longer than a given number of seconds to respond.

The information provided can be very useful for checking out current costs across a number of the leading smaller search engines: Kanoodle, Enhance Interactive, GoClick, PageSeeker, Espotting, ePilot, FindWhat, Brainfox, and Bay9. Unfortunately, only these nine search engines are currently available.

Compare Your Clicks’ home company also offers some controversial software for purchase that, if you choose to use it, may cause PPC search engines to disable your accounts if detected.

One product is Search Engine Cloaker, a type of software not generally tolerated by search engines.

The website cautions that “Of course, you may not use Cloaker to deceive end-users through “page jacking,” “mouse-trapping,” or other techniques that promote keywords totally unrelated to the site end-users ultimately see. Cloaker is a powerful tool that must be used responsibly and ethically.”

Another product offered is Ranking Spy, which not only reveals search engine information on ranking, but can be set up to crawl your competitors’ websites, and reveal their targeting strategy.

They also provide a link to a product called TrafficSwarm, which apparently increases the traffic to our site by leaps and bounds.

An on-site forum reveals that those who use these programs are very happy with the results, and the company’s owner is very quick to respond to any questions concerning installation or set-up on an individual website.

If these products work as promised, they are relatively inexpensive and the level of support is certainly good.

The free tool, Compare Your Clicks, is a great option for advertisers, but caution is advised if you choose to integrate their other products into your ad campaigns, not just in terms of cost or effectiveness, but in how their use may affect your reputation or ranking in search engines.

Keywords:clicks,

Many search engines work on this problem as part of your agreement with them, some more successfully than others.

So, if you suspect a problem but your provider doesn’t agree that there is one, you may wish to use this tool to back up your claim.

This product has an interesting history, in that an individual who suffered from click fraud himself in his PPC campaigns founded it.

Who’s Clicking Who works with all PPC, search engines because you add the code needed to install tracking (as well as placing code on the pages of your site that you want to track).

Even if your PVC search engine already tracks click fraud, you may wish to try out Who’s Clicking Who to compare the two results.

This product tracks clickthroughs in a variety of ways, including IP) address, placing a unique number string (usually via a cookie) in an individual’s browser, as well as tracing time stamps of transaction times, keywords used, and search engines used.

User location and information on the browser and operating system, as well as the name of the PPC, search engine from whence the click came, and the keywords used to reach your site, are also usually available.

As part of your subscription, you will also have access to IP histories in order to catch more subtle forms of click fraud, and you will have the ability to set up custom reports.

One of their products, ClickMinder, is activated after five repeated clicks on your website, sending a pop-up window (which you can customize) to the user informing them they arc being audited, couched in terms that won’t appear threatening if it is a legitimate user, but alerting click-fraud operators that you are monitoring your PPC ads.

Free installation is available, and if you feel you have a click fraud problem, this tool is worth the investment, with a one-month subscription currently costing just under $50 for 50,000 clicks per month.

Additional groups of 10,000 clicks can be purchased for $10 each per month, if you have a lot of traffic on your site. Until PPC search engines completely solve the click fraud problem themselves, PPC users need tools like Who’s Clicking Who to protect their investment.

Keywords: Who’s Clicking Who, tool.

This happens because many PPC search engines base keyword pricing on how popular a term is and how many people are competing for it.

Therefore, if click fraud is directed at a certain keyword, the cost of that keyword can increase for all advertisers, not just the particular competitor who may have been the target of the click fraud attack.

One notable case of click fraud affected an advertiser in a manner that few would have foreseen.

John Carreras, President of Impact Displays, Inc., had long been a proponent of online advertising, but he suspected that his competitors were clicking on his paid ads.

However, because he advertised so extensively across so many search engines, he decided the that problem was probably not large enough to justify the expense of analyzing his traffic logs in detail And, perhaps, he was just being a little “paranoid,” as Carreras himself says.

However, after returning from a large trade show a few years ago, he checked his PPC ads and discovered that he had only about half the usual number of clicks during the trade show timeframe.

Carreras found this disturbing enough to convince him that the reason for the decrease in his PPC clicks was likely due to the fact that his competitors were all at the trade show and thus not spending time clicking on his various ads.

Carreras responded a little bit differently than one might expect. Of course, this was before PPC search engines themselves were actively involved ill pursuing click fraud, so Carreras decided to develop software designed to identify click fraud.

After two years of development, he released a third-party tool called WhosClickingWhoTM, which remain, one of the top tools available to advertisers today to combat click fraud.

As for Carreras’ own ad campaigns, once he put his software into practice on his own ads, his PPC ad campaign expenditures went down 20%, while his sales remained virtually the same.

Few advertisers have either the resources or the zeal to combat click fraud in the way that Carreras did, but many have benefited from his experience and the resulting software lie developed.

Other tools to combat click fraud have been developed since, we’ll discuss some of them later in a post.
Keywords: Click Fraud, Advertisers, ad campaign accounts,

The tool also tracks ad campaigns in other settings such as email ad campaigns, banners, affiliate links, search engine results, and even offline advertising.

Clicklab’s website concentrates on click fraud, with a free white paper on the subject. The click fraud detection tool is quite robust, including an innovative product called the Click Inflation Index, “calculated as the ratio of fraudulent visitor sessions to the total number of visitor sessions and is expressed as a percentage.”

Fraudsters are identified via a scoring algorithm that suspects click fraud above a certain score threshold. They also provide a warning message popup with repeat paid clicks on your ad.

This product goes well beyond click fraud detection, however, to offer a full array of web analytics and tracking.

Using what they have identified as Key Performance Indicators (KPI), the user can customize their needs by choosing from dozens of available KPIs, including ones that analyze data by date, landing page, ROI, traffic source, search engine keyword, referring URL, and others.

In fact, almost any aspect of tracking the performance of your ad is covered in one wav or another.

One can track all the way down to the individual visitor to your website to see where they went and if the path they took led to a conversion. Post-visit analysis is included, as is the ability to view visitor segmentation.

Clicklab uses ASP and thus is a hosted solution, with no need to download or set up anything. Access to your statistical information is available 24/7 via their website.

There is no doubt that a lot of time, thought, analysis, and scientific theory has gone into the development of the Clicklab tool.

Clicklab is not necessarily a low-cost option, and fees have recently increased, with a standard $1110 activation fee added as well.

Conflicting information on the website makes it unclear as to which pricing is currently in place.

For example, Web Analytics (which doesn’t include click fraud detection) is said to cover three websites and up to 60,000 page views for $60 per month, while on time general pricing page the Web Analytics package is priced at eight sites and 300,000 page views for $60/month. Support is offered with a 48-hour turnaround guarantee, but phone support is charged per incident.

Long a standard in web analytics, Clicklab is definitely worth investigating as a full service analytics solution.

Keywords: Clicklab, click fraud,

During 2004, the product was improved with added reports on number of click throughs, number of sales or leads, sales revenue, ad spending (if any), conversion rate, and ROI. Tracking of offline ads is available as a custom feature.

Unfortunately, if you use log files, there is a one-day delay before you can view reports based on the data.

Using cookies and Java-based code, KeywordMaxTM, offers data feeds from PPC, search engines Google AdWords, FindWhat, Yahoo, Ah-Ha, and Kanoodle.

The four major features include “ROI Tracker,” which handles all types of online campaigns, including shopping sites.

“Click Auditor” only uses IP addresses to detect fraud, but does offer to send an email to your competitors to capture their IP address.

“Bid Director” manages your keywords aggressively from every aspect, including offering currently controversial jamming and gap surfing.

“Keyword Builder” suggests alternative keywords and then estimates how much traffic you can expect, based on data from Google and Yahoo.

Available reports are very appealing visually, but do not include all expected data. You call track all factors, including leads, and compare the performance of multiple PPC search engines.

Reports can also be sorted by keywords, landing pages, different search engines, and so on. Novices may find the reports difficult, at first.

Two main products are available. The first, “Merchant Standard” ($99/month), does not include “Bid Director” and is limited to 75,000 clicks/month and one domain name, although you can add extra domains at $10 each and pay for additional clicks.

The second, “Merchant Pro” ($199/month), doubles the number and type of clicks to 150,000 per month (clicks counted are only bid change activity and ROI clicks, which oddly are described as “ROI Tracker tracks each visitor to your site as 1 click”).

Extra clicks and domains cost the same as in the standard version. From here, you call choose from two agency-related packages at up to $999/month, whose major advantage is branding tracking.

A page that that compares the KeywordMaxTM features is interesting, but only includes Yahoo Search Marketing and GoToast (now Atlas OnePoint), and doesn’t Include other, more relevant competitors.

A handy resources page provides links to three free SAO tools, as well as articles on various topics.
Keywords: KeywordMaxTM ,

ClickTracks offers a large number of visual demos, and tutorials on the features of the different versions of the product, as well as extremely useful free webinars that allow advertisers to see all the product’s features (not all of which are included in the free trial version).

Reports are the strong suit of ClickTracks. While viewing a report, your live website appears, with percentage-style statistical analysis tags superimposed on the various links on your site.

Clicking on one will bring up all relevant details related to the type of report you are viewing, be it navigation or a total site overview.

The software compresses log files when importing your data, so different factors can be added to and recalculated within seconds, in any report.

“Labels” is a key feature, allowing you to identify a group of visitors and analyze their activity based on specific behavioral actions.

For example, you can drill down to data on visitors who spent only a short time on your site, seeing where they went, how they entered your site and from which page they left, all of which may prompt you to experiment with the website to see if you can change visitors’ behavior.

You can view different label groups side-by-side in reports.

A nice feature is the ability to keep some IP addresses out of the dataset, allowing you to exclude employee clicks while they are working on the site.

In addition, ClickTracks Way, which offers contextual-based tips on each page, can be enabled or disabled quickly.

Late in 2004, ClickTracks added the ability to track metrics on email marketing, exit tracking (did the visitor exit or just click on an external link), and regional geographic data, which can be set at city level.

ClickTracks admits that integration with shopping sites and shopping carts can be problematic (especially for novices) because of extra coding needed.

They advise you to contact your shopping cart provider to achieve proper integration.

ClickTracks offers direct downloads of Yahoo and Google data, while for other search engines, you may choose to use either raw data logs or hosting data.

Your choice affects pricing-choosing log files means you pay a flat purchase price; choosing hosting results in a monthly fee.

Although pursuing the small-to-medium-sized business market, cost remains an issue. Users do not have access to key items, such as ROI and cookie tracking, or to multiple domains, unless they use the “professional” versions, costing $179 per month for the hosted version (versus a flat $2,995 for your own web server).

The lowest price is $49/month for Analyzer Hosted, a much less robust tool. ClickTracks is definitely an excellent product, but price remains a stumbling block for many PPC advertisers.

Keywords: ClickTracks,

If you don’t track where your visitors are going on your website, how many visitors came to your site through a particular ad campaign, how many visitors convert into buyers, your ROI, and so on, you cannot be certain if a particular ad campaign is worth continuing or not.

If you are using comparison ad campaigns to see which is most effective, the most important point to remember is to make only one change each time you run a test of the ad.

For example, if you are testing to see which landing page works better, do not test any other aspect at the same time.

If you test more than one aspect at a time, you and your tracking tools will not be able to differentiate between the two and give you a definitive answer on which change led to more effective performance of file ad.

One unforgettable example is from an individual who had a PPC account with one of the major PPC search engines for which he paid almost $1,000 per month for all the various keywords he used.

His sales revenues were quite acceptable, so he knew he was making money from his website.

Naturally, he assumed that most of the sales were coming from his ad campaign on a major search engine, because he believed that lower-cost ads placed on smaller search engines would produce lower results.

It wasn’t until he became aware of ad trackers and ad tracking software that the decided to find out exactly where his sales were coming from.

Using a simple ad tracker, he discovered that the vast majority of his sales were not coming from the major search engine, but instead were coming from the niche search engines, where his product had more appeal to their visitors.

He also discovered that he could drop that campaign altogether because the sales he was getting from the larger search engine equaled the amount of money lie was paying for that ad campaign.

Without a relatively simple form of ad tracking, this individual would have continued believing that “bigger is better,” and that his sales were coming from the larger search engine.

This case also emphasizes, again, the importance of using the tools that are available.

Although this case occurred before search engines provided much data on account activity, and certainly didn’t offer any form of conversion tracking, this individual may have become suspicious a lot sooner if he had investigated the statistics that were available from his search engines.

This example also reiterates the importance at looking at your statistics critically and in person, not just accepting that things are proceeding as they should.

Close scrutiny will allow you to tweak an ad or cancel it before clicks on it drain your account completely.

Luckily, with both PPC search engines and third-party tracking tools competing for the market, the advertiser comes out a winner.

Each side is adding more and more features, many of them free, as they compete for market share among advertisers.

Keywords: Tracking, ad campaign, ad trackers, ad tracking software,

AdWatcher is a full-service tracking tool that can analyze any type of online ad campaign, and I must admit that the number of tracking features is impressive for such a low-cost tool.

Click fraud monitoring is done by analyzing the incoming traffic for suspicious patterns, alerting you of the potential fraud that may be taking place via email.

It also displays warning messages to repeat offenders notifying them that the campaign is being monitored.

The tracking part of the software is extremely precise. It can even filter duplicate leads/sales and clicks, which in turn improves accuracy.

It offers complete support of all major search engines, which makes keyword tracking a breeze.

Another feature worth mentioning is its split-test tracking (allows you to track multiple landing pages to see which perform better), which is something only higher-priced products usually offer.

They offer transparent link tracking, a feature that allows you to Use your domain name rather than AdWatcher.com for your tracking links.

Customizable email reports are available, which makes it easier for small business owners to always be aware of what’s going on.

It is coupled with an impressive feature that allows the user to access their account via a WAP-enabled phone or a PDA from anywhere on the road, instead of having to wait until you are back at your office or home.

For those who do not want to depend on someone else when it comes to marketing, or who have large advertising budgets, the AdWatcher Download version allows you to install their tracking software onto your servers.

This is a great option for those who prefer to do everything in-house, rather than use third-party software, but without all the costs associated with developing your own system.

Multiple options are offered when it comes to customer support. AdWatcher will even help you set up your account and campaign group tracking for free, allowing you to start tracking your acts within a few hours.

Lastly, AdWatcher costs only $19.95 per month with a 30-day free trial. All that, backed up by the Company’s experience, reputation, and a money back guarantee, makes AdWatcher a perfect tool for any small business.
Keywords: AdWatcher, tracking tool,

An automated tracking tool that manages keyword bidding on your ads on 29 PPC search engines, they are an approved partner of Yahoo.

The company also offers other solutions, including ProfitTracker for ROI tracking, ShopTracker for shopping site advertisers, and customized PPC consultation.

There are four key components to PPCBidTracker: BidSleep lets you lower your bids to the engine’s minimums during some days or times of the day.

If phone contact is your primary means of contact with potential buyers, with BidSleep you can set your bids to “sleep” during the times your salespeople are not available, and then re-enter the bidding when they are.

AutoEnhancer manages auto bidding on Yahoo or FindWhat to ensure you do not pay your maximum bid. This tool not only adjusts your maximum bid accordingly, but keeps it hidden from your competitors.

BidCat allows you to categorize your keywords by product, bid price, or many other options.

The BidSaver feature allows you to set up conditions under which the tool will automatically look for rankings that will save you money and not follow the “rules” you set into effect if the result will be a new ranking that is just a little below your competitors, but half the price, for example.

By itself, this tool is only one part of an analytics solution, albeit a fairly robust one. It is relatively expensive, with cost based on a combination of the number of keywords and the number of times per day you want them checked.

Monthly cost can range from $49.95 for tinder 50 keywords checked 6 times per day, to a maximum of 10,000 keywords checked 48 times per day for $9,999.95, for U.S. search engines (Google, Yahoo, FindWhat, Enhance, Kanoodle, ePilot and Searchfeed.

International search engine coverage is a minimum of $39.95/month and a maximum of $1,199.95, but only for some of the Yahoo and Espotting international versions.

PPCBidTracker has been very popular with users in the past, but recent changes that separate tracking and individualized consulting into different products may impact that.

The website is confusing in describing the situation, however. The BidTracker section still includes pages on how it covers ROI tracking and custom solutions, yet they are represented as separate products under different categories.

However, there is a 14 day free trial for either (or both) of their versions, if you wish to look more closely at this product. Keep in mind that it is a relatively expensive tool for its functionality.

Keywords: PPC, Bid, Tracker,

Therefore, if you arc a die-hard Yahoo client, this product is well worth investigating. There is a non-Yahoo version for Google AdWords and about 10 other PPC search engines.

The tool not only manages your campaign once it has begun, but offers assistance in building a campaign and picking keywords.

Its strong points include automatic monitoring, either once per hour or just once per day, but on a 365-day, 24-hour-per-day basis.

Focusing on the number-three position as its basis point, Dynamic Bid Maximizer works to keep you in that position or move you up, if Possible (of course keeping in mind the budget you have set).

It also strives to keep the bid gal) between the top three positions as small as possible.

This is not Much different from the Yahoo Search Marketing built-in product, but the offer of a free demo version and a 30-day money-back guarantee make it hard to resist giving this tool a trial run if your marketing dollars are all Placed on Yahoo.

Key features also include continuing keyword help, monitoring of URI, rankings, customized reports, and the ability to export data to an Excel database, among many other useful features.

Good customer support and attention to irresponsible bidding that unnecessarily drives up keyword bids (the infamous “competition killer mode”), plus advance notice when one of the supported search engines is anticipating an outage, can help save money for the user.

With six levels of programs available for purchase (starting at just under $100), this product fits the needs of the small business owner with less than 100 keywords all the way up to the user who wants the flexibility of unlimited numbers of keywords and accounts (for a cost of $499).95).

A new product called Dynamic AdManager was launched on February 1, 2005, suggesting that the company may be poised to replace their Dynamic Bid Maximizer (both the Yahoo and non-Yahoo versions), as the new product includes a robust PPC bid management component.

Potential users should check the new product before committing to either version of Dynamic Bid Maximizer or at least contact Apex to see if they plan to continue to offer both products simultaneously.

Keywords: Dynamic Bid Maximizer,

BidRank is a stand-alone piece of soft-ware, so there is no monthly fee, but the user pays for software upgrades.

BidRank is available in two formats. The first, appropriately called “BidRank for Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing),” only manages keywords in the Overture PPC environment, not just in the U.S., but also in a select number of countries in Europe and elsewhere.

The second product, “BidRank plus,” supports keyword management ill the following search engines: Searchfeed, Xuppa, Enhance Interactive, Kanoodle, FindWhat, Espotting, Mirago (in certain countries), Lifetips, 411web, BrainFox and Que Pasa!.

Pricing for each of the products is also different. The Yahoo version (with the Yahoo official seat of approval) ranges from $129 for 50 keywords to $999 for up to 10,000 keywords. For BidRauk Plus, the price ranges from $119 for up to 50 keywords to $699 for up to 10,000 keywords.

The user may wonder why they would need BidRank, given that Yahoo Search Marketing itself has various keyword bidding options, including an auto-bidding function.

BidRank maintains that it is because they go beyond Yahoo by allowing bidding by rank and gap surfing, while Yahoo will only auto bid to your maximum amount.

BidRank allows the user to access Yahoo Marketing Console via BidRank itself.

Marketing Console is basically an ROI tool and is also offered at various pricing levels, depending upon the number of leads generated. BidRank also offers a toolbar with a link to news and information from BidRank, such as news releases, user tips, upcoming scheduled downtimes, and so on.

Users seem to like BidRank. It has a reputation for excellent customer service, which is very important to people involved in any type of marketing.

Aside from its convincing on-site testimonials, their management keeps a close eye on user forums and responds to any complaints they see by implementing changes -I very effective -way of keeping customers satisfied.

Directions are clear and the interface is direct and easy to follow. The website itself is quite informative and customer service is quick and efficient.

BidRank is on the expensive side, however, so be sure this will work for your particular type and style of ad campaigns before purchase.

BidRank offers a 15-day trial offer of a fully functional version of the basic package of up to 50 keywords, with a usage of once every 15 minutes.
Keywords: BidRank, management tool,

The PPC-related products offered arc BidManager and ProfifBuilder, the latter covering ROI tracking and web analytics.

BidManager is a robust tool that allows bidding control across more than 30 search engines, which includes major properties as well as a sampling of Yahoo and the foreign engines of Mirago.

Results are fed to Atlas, and then BidManager automatically reviews and adjusts your bids across all the engines you have chosen, making strategic bids that help keep you in the same position.

BidManager is arguably the best tool currently available for auto bidding that is not dependent or built into the PPC search engine you are using.

Its Rules-Based Bidding feature lets you customize your bidding to include up to 18 very aggressive variables, including a bidding war component that will apparently deal with “attacks” on your bids.

Analysis of 50,000 page views using ProBuilder is included in any BidManager account, obviously to encourage the advertiser to add that service once the page views have been used up.

ProfitBuilder adds functionality onto ROI, including total visitors, total sales, total cost, average cost per sale, average cost per click, average sale, conversions and conversion percentage, and Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS).

You can also look at details of the path visitors took through your site and on shopping cart sessions that were not completed.

The analytics provided allow you to sort the data by parameters such as date range, different search engines, different ranks within the PPC ad block, and individual PPC promotions.

All of this is extremely powerful and useful information, and it is presented in a clear, easy-to-understand format. Cost begins at $49.95/mouth for 50,000 page views and increases in increments of page views to a maximum of $1,499.95/month for up 5 million page views/month.

A $75 set-up fee is included in the cost of the products, if you need assistance with placing tracking code.

Both products provide detailed reporting features and email reports. They are offered in packages, but custom packages can be set up.

The Beginner package is really just basic BidManager (after comparing the costs) and offers 100 bid reviews across to engines and tit) to 50,000 ProfitBuilder page views for $79.95/month.

The next package up includes all the Atlas products and costs $649.90/month. Atlas does offer a 14-day, free trial of their products, which is well worth experimenting with to see how the product can be integrated into your ad campaigns and how it performs for you specific circumstances.

Keywords: Atlas one point, management tool,

Placing an ad on pay-per-click search engines is only half the battle. The other half is ensuring that your ad campaigns actually generate a profit for your business and are not just a waste of ad dollars.

A number of tools have been developed to help advertisers managing their ad campaigns. Some are included with your pay-per-click ad campaigns, but others arc available from third parties. Both can be useful in running and optimizing PPC campaigns.

The management and tracking tools provided by your PPC search engine are often impressive.

However, if you want to be certain that the information you receive is as accurate a reflection of reality as possible, you should consider investing in one or more third-party tools designed to validate the data from your search engine or to supply information that they do not provide.

Depending upon your individual skill set and experience, such tools can take a lot of the burden of manual checking of ad campaign data off of the individual advertiser.

Although you should always keep an eye on your ad campaigns, and manual checking of parts of your campaign should be routine, the use of an ROI tracking tool, for example, can save you a lot of time normally spent calculating the bottom line on any number of ad campaigns.

Thus, whether you are a novice and feel better having an expert backing up your observations of how your ad campaign is progressing, or a seasoned PPC campaigner who is managing dozens of comparative ad campaigns, independent third-party tools are useful and can make management of your ad campaign(s) easier and less time-consuming.

User forums are full of entries from advertisers who have seen profitable ad campaigns turn into nightmare, account-draining entities within a few days with no real explanation from their PPC search engine.

A third-party tool may provide you with the answer behind such a dilemma, specifically because it is the only unbiased partner in the trio of the advertiser, the, PPC Search engine, and the third-party tool.

Its function is solely to carry out certain operations. Because you are paying a fixed fee (either up front via download or in a monthly/yearly arrangement), there is no real incentive for the owners of third party tools to be anything other than as unbiased as possible.

The same cannot always be said for your search engine, whose purpose is to supply a service, but who also needs to make a profit if it is to continue.

Although they may offer you access to tools that are the same as a third-party tool, the advertiser has no way of knowing how those tools were structured, or if they are as accurate as they should be.

The Types of Pay-Per-Click Tools Available
There are many different PPC tools available, but they fall into three main categories:

• Management of your ad campaigns and all associated aspects
• Keyword generation and/or bidding tools
• Tracking tools for calculating ROI, detecting possible click fraud, etc.

Of course, some tools overlap these categories and may offer both a bidding tool and a conversion tracker, so it is important to fully check all the features available to ensure you are getting the most robust tool at the lowest cost.

In terms of cost, PPC tools tend to fall into two groups; either they are offered as a piece of software that you download for use, or they are offered as a subscription service on a monthly or yearly basis.

It is really up to the individual advertiser to decide which is best for their ad campaign style.

Generally speaking, unless you have the time to learn how to use a new piece of software and perhaps have time to maintain the data in the tool itself, most novices will be better off trying a subscriber-based system to begin with.

Many tools offer trial periods or incentives, which can be useful in the assessment process.

The goal is to find the tool(s) that will work best for you as an individual, and that best fits the way your PPC ad campaign(s) are set up and the amount of data you currently receive from your search engine.

Let’s look at 13 of the most popular PPC tools currently available to advertisers and review the service they are offering, their usefulness, pros and cons, and associated costs. Some are simple, one-function tools, but most offer a variety of features.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the tools available on the marketplace, and new ones are coming online each day, but this should give you a base from which to start investigating some of the more popular options and an opportunity to judge if they may fill your needs

Click on the to learn more about them.

Pay-Per-Click Management Tools

1. Atlas OnePoint
2. BidRank
3. Dynamic Bid Maximizer
4. PPCBidTracker
5. AdWatcher
6. ClickTracks
7. KeywordMaxTM
8. Clicklab
9. Who’s Clicking Who
10. Compare Your Clicks
11. Pay-Per-Click Galaxy
12. Good Keywords
13. WordTracker

Keywords: PPC Tools, Ad Campaign, advertisers, ad campaigns,

This type of ad is very similar to a classic PPC ad, except that your listing includes a toll-free number to call to reach you.

Some search engines bring up a page specific to your business if the visitor clicks on the ad at no extra charge.

That is, you are not charged for the clickthrough unless the visitor actually makes the call.

The toll-free number then redirects the visitor to your actual phone number and you receive the phone call from the interested buyer at your business location.

The usual parameters of bidding on keywords or categories (which are usually high, in the $2-$20 range) are augmented by specification of which degree of geographic coverage you wish-national, regional or local.

Pay-per-call advertising is of particular interest for those businesses that do not have a website or do not want to invest in setting up and maintaining a website, but yet want to take advantage of advertising on the Internet.

Some companies find it a useful addition to their PPC campaigns, particularly to avoid charges on their pay-per-click campaigns by those users merely seeking a phone number to reach the advertiser.

A clear advantage is that once an advertiser has a prospect on the phone, they are in their “comfort zone” as far as sales are concerned, particularly smaller businesses.

They are used to selling over the phone and the direct contact means that they can answer a prospect’s questions in real time.

Although pay per call is still in its infancy, and analysts have yet to decide if it is effective and produces adequate conversions, early reports indicate it can be a very successful means of increasing ROI, especially in the local market.

If you are interested in pursuing this type of advertising, some of the search engines that currently offer pay-per-call ads are FindWhat.com, some of the Internet yellow pages sites, and many local shopping directories.

In conclusion, given the growth potential of pay per click, an advertiser should carefully research his or her options before committing to any ad campaign, and small- to-medium-sized businesses (with smaller ad budgets than the large companies online) have to be especially careful.

It is also good to consider spreading your ad dollars into different types of PPC advertising.

This can be as simple as placing PPC ads on different search engines and then analyzing the results to see which program provides you with a higher ROI.

You should also consider who provided the best customer service experience for you, the advertiser.

These are two key components in any advertising campaign, but they are especially important in pay-per-click advertising, where the online factor takes marketing your product/service to a whole new level where the difference between a successful and unsuccessful campaign may be affected by more factors than in offline advertising.

Smaller businesses, in particular, are often reluctant to enter the online paid advertising marketplace, feeling that they have little chance of success, given the competition.

However, many small businesses are succeeding in garnering successful ROI by carefully investigating and exploring the different options available to them.

As well, the relatively recent increase in bringing a local aspect to pay-per-click advertising should serve the small-medium-sized business community well.

Finding the right search engine(s) for your online marketing campaign is one of the most important tasks, but you must also investigate tools and methods of keeping track of the performance of those campaigns.

Keywords: pay-per-call, paid advertising, advertising, ad, advertiser, PPC ad, PPC campaigns, PPC ads, advertising campaign, online marketing,

Most comparison shopping search engines provide a lot of information to shoppers to make informed decisions, including not just merchant reviews, but also reviews from magazines and “experts”. Results pages can usually be sorted by the different headings, such as price.

Once you click on a seller or product, you are taken to the seller’s website and you purchase the item there.

Comparison shopping search engines do not conduct actual transactions; instead they act primarily as an information center as well as a pay-per-click search engine, sending the visitor to the advertiser’s website to make the actual purchase.

Merchant information is available via a simple click underneath each individual product for sale and often reviews of merchant/advertisers are available that are compiled from user feedback.

In fact, most of this type of search engine rely at least somewhat on users to report any differences in pricing, product availability, or other details when they actually check the product out on the seller’s website.

Some larger sellers arrange data feeds to the search engine, but smaller advertisers need to ensure that their product line data is kept up-to-date to avoid negative user reports and perhaps removal from the site.

Shopping comparison sites are becoming more popular with consumers because of the variety of information they offer in one place, thus saving the consumer valuable time.

If you wish to advertise on a shopping comparison search engine, you will probably have two options.

The first is basically pay-per-click advertising for your product(s), for which you pay a standard set amount per click to be included in a specific category.

The process of advertising is usually very easy, often with a step-by-step walkthrough that leads you through creating your listing, setting your pricing, methods of payment you will accept, adding an image, describing the product, and so on.

Although setup is usually free, there arc various charges associated with most options that are needed for a competitive listing, and restrictions on terms such as what kind of payment options you can offer.

Sometimes your ads are limited to certain categories and the search engine changes you when an item is sold.

An example might be $1 plus 4.75% of the sales price, including, shipping and handling charges.

In all cases, you are responsible for ensuring that the proper taxes are charged, collected, ad delivered to the appropriate authorities.

Many are beginning to offer more sophisticated reporting to their advertisers, moving from providing data only on the number of sales, etc., to cost-per-click analysis and ROI conversion tracking.

Sales are usually monitored, as are purchases and users each day, in order to assign you to a category that dictates your maximum selling limit over the next 30 days.

You may not list anything for sale at a price above this limit, to ensure that only active sellers are participating.

Comparison shopping sites are concerned with maintaining a high-quality shopping experience for their visitors-thus, many restrictions and rules are tracked and enforced on advertisers.

The second option for selling, especially if you wish to sell in higher volumes, is to become a merchant. At this level, more tools and options are available to you, but you still need to adhere to numerous rules and constraints.

Usually, you will need to work with an account manager and pay a setup fee to integrate the data feed necessary to keep your sales information as up-to-date as possible.

The usual tracking tools are provided in the program-number of sales, cracking of sales in a very close to real-time environment, etc.-with reports available by category, brand, or product.

Comparison shopping sites act as an intermediary in all ways, sending you to the seller/advertiser to make the actual purchase.

They typically have a multitude of rules and restrictions, and additional costs and penalties for what might be expected to come with an advertising package, so sellers need to keep track of a lot of information in order to manage their accounts and not lose sight of their ROI.

Typically, pricing for advertising is on a pay-per-click basis, but with a specific cost per category, rather then keyword bidding.

Since visitors to such a site are motivated to buy, many factors may already have been decided by them (such as brand name, price they are looking for, unique features, etc.).

Because they have the ability to sort a results page by factors such as price or availability of the product, ranking on the page at some point moves beyond the control of the advertiser or the search engine itself.

Market expectations are that comparison shopping search engines will continue to grow and evolve in the near future, mostly in response to the success of pay per click on standard search engines.

Shopping Sites offer so much information in one place for the consumer that listings on them can cut the usual buying cycle timeframe of 12 weeks down to one day.

Impulse purchases are also often made as visitors browse through pages of results with images of the products and all the relevant information they need to make a buying decision right at their fingertips.

Smaller advertisers may feel that the brand name sellers dominate comparison shopping PPC search engines, and to some extent that is so.

However, if your pricing is competitive, your listings are up-to-date, and your website has an easy and intuitive shopping cart, many smaller advertisers report good conversions on shopping sites.

Although there are literally hundreds of these types of sites on the Internet, a few do stand out from the rest namely PriceGrabber.com, NetTag.com, BizRate.com (now known as Shopzilla.com), and mySimon.com (a CNET property).

These types of search engines should be investigated if you sell products and want to compete with the “big guys.”

You may be pleasantly surprised at the results in this type of shopping environment. As always, keep in mind that with pay-per-click advertising, diversity in the types of search engines you place your advertising dollars on is often the key to success.

Keywords: comparison shopping search engines, shopping comparison sites, Shopping Sites, shoppers, advertisers, advertising, ad, pay-per-click,

Some of the smaller PPC search engines are in fact niche engines, because they have found that by concentrating on getting advertisers who are all selling related products and services on one search engine, traffic specific to that market area will be highly targeted.

Thus, visitors to niche search engines often are more motivated and more likely to convert into buyers than visitors to general PPC search engines.

Of course, with a niche search engine, pay-per-click advertising may not be as worthwhile, particularly if the engine is small and is not capable of delivering enough traffic to justify the expense and time needed for au ad campaign.

The trick for the advertiser wishing to investigate PPC on niche search engines is to find a niche search engine that has quality, targeted natural listings, because their visitors will consider a paid ad valid if they value the utility of the search engine itself.

On the other hand, it a niche search engine’s organic results bring up too many listings unrelated to the original search term, perhaps due to a lack of advertisers and few or no partnerships with content-rich search engines, it is questionable that your ROI from an ad campaign will be sufficient.

For example, a fast-growing type of niche search engine deals with fitness. The topic of fitness is one that most people arc concerned about to sonic extent or another, and fitness-related search engines have sprung up and began to attract advertisers via pay-per-click options.

For example, www.fitness.com offers pay-per-click listings within its directory-style search engine starting at 5 cents per click with a $50 deposit.

Even though it is a niche search engine, this fitness-related site offers real-time statistics and the ability to change your keywords at any time, with only a couple of days to get your ad online.

Niche search engines should be a part of your marketing campaign if your product/service fits into a certain category.

Many places on the Internet have listings of niche search engines specific to particular industries, and you may find that your ROI from such a source is equal to, and sometimes better than, competing fit the general market.

People who are very interested in a specific industry, be it a type of product or an interest or hobby, such as fitness, weddings, collectibles, travel, or genealogy research, will look for niche search engines or hear of them from fellow enthusiasts.

If the search engine is well organized, attractive, and returns relevant results, those visitors will come back again and again.

If you decide to investigate niche search engines, do ensure that the results are relevant and content-rich by doing sonic investigation on your own before committing to any PPC campaign.

Without quality results, a niche engine has little chance of being a good place to put your advertising dollars, because traffic will be too low to provide enough conversions to justify your time investment.

Niche search engines can be just one more tool in your arsenal of putting together a PPC campaign.

You can concentrate on a larger search engine if you find your ROI is good with them, then experiment with sonic niche search engines to see if they are worth investing more ad dollars in.

Keywords: Niche search engines, marketing, marketing campaign,

Several events in 2004 in the search engine marketplace helped increase the interest in placing PPC ads on international search engines.

For one thing, Google and Yahoo operate search engines in a large number of countries throughout the world.

Although you may think that you cannot compete in an international marketplace, there is definitely a market for U.S. products from consumers abroad.

It may not be a large source of sales, but keyword costs can be lower in such markets, thus your overall conversion rate may be worth the investment.

In addition, the acquisition of Espotting, a United-Kingdom based on search engine, in 2004 by FindWhat, and its subsequent merging of international listing options into their PPC program, offered a simple and familiar way to experiment in the international market. Mirago.com also offers a robust international presence.

Some advertisers just do not want to become involved in the additional factors involved in international sales, but if your company already has an international presence, pay-per-click advertising for international websites is a natural fit.

Most search engines offering international placement only do so for countries that are English-speaking, at this point.

There is a valid reason for this-if your PPC ad in Korean entices someone to click on your ad and they are taken to an English-only website, it is doubtful that the ad will be appreciated by the visitor, which can rebound, not just on the advertiser, but on the search engine’s reputation.

Therefore, if you plan to explore the PPC market in non-English- speaking search engines, be sure that your website has an excellent mirror site in the language(s) of the country you are targeting.

The Spanish/Hispanic market is currently positioned for huge growth. Therefore, experimenting on Spanish-based PPC search engines with a professionally translated mirror website may be quite effective.

The Hispanic population in the United States is becoming such a significant and growing part of the market that expansion into Spanish version of your website and involvement in Latin American search engines is following suit.

Keywords: advertisers, ad, PPC ads, PPC search engines, market, marketplace, mirror website,

At that point, with less competition on search engines because fewer companies had a web presence, natural rankings often worked, but paid inclusion was a guaranteed way to get listed on a search engine.

It usually was a one-time fee per year for guaranteed inclusion in the search engine’s index of sites.

Because pay-per-inclusion ads are virtually indistinguishable to the average user, as the Internet grew as a commercial enterprise, the market gradually began to move away from paid inclusion, for a number of reasons.

For example, the development of search engines whose ranking was based on algorithms and robot crawls, who did not offer paid inclusion as an option, led to a perception by many that these “organic” results were more “genuine” than a those listings that had appeared in search results as a result of payment.

However, there are benefits to using paid inclusion, the major one being that it bypasses the typical delay of weeks in getting your website listed on a search engine.

If you enter a pay-per-inclusion program on a search engine, your site is usually included within a few days and the search engine robot will regularly crawl your site as well, so changes you make to your site will be reflected in a timely manner.

Consequently, for many advertisers, paid inclusion has been a method to get online quickly instead of relying on SEO and robot crawls to do their magic before having their websites show up under relevant searches.

Paid inclusion underwent a total reversal in general opinion soon after Google began to flourish.

Google has consistently said they would never offer paid inclusion because they believe it taints the search process by artificially ranking paid inclusion sites higher.

Search engines offering paid inclusion took an opposite view, but in general, the Google viewpoint prevailed and search engines moved away from paid inclusion.

In March of 2004, Yahoo reopened the debate by announcing their decision to include paid listings again in their search results, stating that there would be no ranking advantage from a pay-per-inclusion submission.

The end result of the strong debate over this strategy was that Yahoo retained paid listings, and Google reasserted its position (in its IPO, late in 2004) that it believes natural search is the only guarantee of a “free and open” marketplace.

Although Yahoo is still the only standard search engine that technically offers pay per inclusion, since it is partnered with so many other search engines, paid listings, are often found in many search engine results.

In fact, paid inclusion can be a cheap supplement to keep among your online marketing strategies, especially if the cost per click of your keywords is making it difficult to maintain your pay-per-click position.

People still do act on general search results, so some analysts do suggest advertisers consider experimenting with the Yahoo program, especially if you are finding PPC on your keywords out of your dollar reach.

Remember, however, that with paid inclusion, clickthrough rates may be higher. As well, the rising popularity of PPC ads leads analysts to believe that at least 40% of all conversions come from pay-per-click ads, a trend that is expected to increase.

Some search engines offer, in addition to other paid advertising, a PPC listing fee setup. One of the leaders in this type of marketing is the search engine LookSmart.

For example, LookSmart charges $29 to set up a listing and $19 to change it. They also impose a $15 minimum per month spend, so be sure to include all the costs involved when determining whether or not paid-per-inclusion PPC is an option you wish to experiment with.

Like any paid form of advertising online, and despite the feeling many have that paid listings are tainted, there is no denying that it can’t hurt to get your website listed with those search engines that support pay per inclusion.

Keywords: Pay-Per-Inclusion, paid inclusion, paid advertising, pay-per-inclusion ads, Search Engines, organic results, natural rankings,