Working at Home on the Internet

Google AdWords Dissing Canadians?

 

 

It seems so.

 

I just read an article over on the JenSense blog that a Canadian company can not become a qualified Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) company.  Your company can only qualify if it is based in the US, Europe, Middle East or Africa.

That would exclude any company in the Western Hemisphere that is not US Based.  So, not only is Canada being dissed, but Mexico and All of South America.

I’m not sure but it seems to me that the exclusion would also include the Far East.  That would include Japan, India, and China not to mention Australia and New Zealand.  That is an awful lot of the World to ignore.

So, Canada, you are not alone in being dissed by Google.  I guess they like to pick who’s money they want to accept.

 

Has your company or one you know of been declined acceptance for this reason?  How do you feel about it?

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September 20th, 2006 at 03:05pm | Posted by Joe | Advertising, Affiliates, Blogging, Google, Keywords | reader remarks | Print This Post

Technorati, AdSense and Me

For the last few weeks I hadn’t been getting indexed by Technorati*. I talked to Liz from Successful-Blog** since she has a working relationship with Dave Sifry at T-rati.

She suggested I leave a comment on her Blog in the Technorati Put Your 2 Cents In post. This I did and Dave answered in a timely manner. He told me that my Blog was on hold for review due to the unusual advertising mechanisms and copious SEO.

That day, he made sure everything was indexed properly and I thought my problems were over. Everything is fine with T-rati now, but in subsequent comments HART brought another (related) problem to my attention.

Although I have used AdSense since the beginning, I found out that there could be a bigger problem brewing. I had set up the ads as I have seen on many blogs, and (I thought) according to the TOS of AdSense.

Upon looking at the Source Code for the Blog, it seems there are multiple occurrences of the AdSense code. You are allowed 3 instances of ads on a page. Since I had only 2 Ad codes, a Google search and an affiliate link everything would be OK.

I sent an E-mail to AdSense right away, and found out they counted all of the occurrences, which came to 8. How I got that many, when the most I should have had was 4, I don’t know. It most likely is that they don’t count a Post or Enrty as a Page as I did.

Needless to say, I am worried I could lose my AdSense account. I have rearranged and deleted some code and sent another E-mail to them to re-review my Blog.

At present, I am awaiting a response from them, and hopefully things will be resolved with an outcome that is in my favor.

Check out my source code, and if you have any suggestions on how to put an Ad at the end of ONLY the First or Second post, Please let me know.

Referenced:
* Technorati
** Successful Blog

April 19th, 2006 at 11:22am | Posted by Joe | Advertising, Google, Keywords, SEO, Tools | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

Watch Your Keywords

While going over some of the articles I use for research, I came across something I found both amusing and disturbing.

The article in question is about Working at Home. It really turns out to be a positive post on the subject of finding a niche. But I think the use of Keywords leaves a lot to be desired.

Excerpt from: Work at Home Is A Reality…Don’t Give Up!

Ads by Goooooogle

Karen’s K-9 CareDaycare.
Grooming. Boarding. Trng. Our passion drives our service.www.karensk9care.com

Pet Supplies at PetSmart
Exactly what great pet parents need That’s Smart - PetSmart.www.PetSmart.com

“First of all, in order to get an online business going you will need to find your niche. Have you considered what you would enjoy doing? Take a subject or product that you have some knowledge and/or interest in. You wouldn’t want to be selling pet supplies when you can’t stand animals and have no knowledge of their care. Or your hobby is daily target practice at the neighbor’s cat! It really is difficult to sell something you know nothing about or don’t care about.”

Not only does the Ad not reflect the theme of the article, it doesn’t even reflect the tone of the paragraph it was derived from… hobby is daily target practice at your neighbor’s cat… I don’t think the advertisers had that in mind.

It is important to use keywords in articles, but make sure they are pertinent to the subject you are really writing about.

When using AdSense, don’t forget that the ads are computer generated. No one reads your copy before sending the ads to your site.

Now, I hope I don’t get Ads for Pet Food after showing you this. Please let me know if I do…
I used the tag to help in identifying keywords.

Update:

The tag didn’t work, as I’m sure you noticed.

March 10th, 2006 at 01:08pm | Posted by Joe | Blogging, Keywords, SEO | reader remarks | Print This Post