Category filtering feature being developed

One of the top requests we've heard from publishers is to have more control over the ads appearing on their sites. We've been working to address your feedback, and today at ADSPACE, our team announced an upcoming beta test of a new feature in the Ad Review Center called category filtering.

Category filtering will give publishers the ability to block ads that fall into specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics. Regardless of how ads are targeted, they'll be filtered if they're within one of the selected categories. We'll also show the percentage of recent revenue that ads in each category generate, so publishers can predict how filtering selections will impact their revenue.

We'll be launching category filtering as a beta to a small group of publishers to collect initial feedback about the feature. Here's a preview of what the feature currently looks like, but please keep in mind that the layout and categories may change based on feedback from beta test participants.


Although we're not able to expand the limited beta to additional publishers at this point, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to give you more control over your ads so you can ensure a positive experience for your users. We'll continue to refine this feature, and hope to be able to roll it out more widely in coming months. Please stay tuned to the blog for any updates, and feel free to leave us a comment in the meantime. 

Extending the category filtering beta for English-language ads

n April, we gave you a sneak peek into category filtering, a new feature we've been developing to give publishers more control over their ads. Today, we're excited to announce that we're extending the beta to publishers in a number of English-speaking countries including, but not limited to, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S.

As a reminder, category filtering lets you prevent ads from up to 5 specific categories such as religion, politics, and dating from appearing on your pages. Your filters will be applied to ads in English, regardless of how they're targeted. In addition, you'll be able to see the percentage that each category contributes to your earnings, which can help you understand any revenue impact you might notice as a result of filtering.

Based on feedback from our initial beta testers, we've also made a few improvements to the feature:

• Ad impression impact: To give you a better sense of how many ads you'd be filtering, we've now added an extra column to show you the percentage of ad impressions on your pages which fall into each category.
  
  
• More accurate percentages: Ad impression and earnings percentages are now calculated based on impressions from the previous 30 days instead of three. This extended time frame should provide a more accurate picture of the types of ads you're receiving and how much revenue they're contributing.
  
• Category descriptions: We've added details about each category directly within your account to help you understand the types of ads that may fall into each. 

To see whether category filtering has been enabled for your location, sign in and visit the Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. We're working on expanding this beta to additional languages and countries, and will be sure to announce any updates here on the blog. If you'd like to learn more about category filtering, please visit our Help Center.




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Category Filtering beta now available for AdSense for feeds English-language ads

Like we announced on the more general Inside AdSense blog a couple weeks ago, we have extended our category filtering beta to English-language ads on the AdSense network, which we are happy to announce includes ads that appear in AdSense for feeds.

This feature allows to you filter ads in up to five categories such as Dating, Drugs and Supplements, Weight Loss, and Get Rich Quick. Your filters will be applied to English-language ads, no matter how they were targeted.

To have these settings take effect for your feeds, from Ad Review Center, make sure you select a Client-ID that starts with ca-feed-pub. Note that this allows you to select different categories for your feed than for your site, but also means you will need to select filters for both your feed and your site in order for filters to be applied to both these content types.


To see whether category filtering has been enabled for your location, sign in and visit the Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. We're working on expanding this beta to additional languages and countries, and will be sure to announce any updates here on the blog. If you'd like to learn more about category filtering, please visit our Help Center.

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AdSense policy clarification on using AdSense for feeds and AdSense for content

This is just a quick clarification on AdSense for feeds as it relates to the AdSense for Content specific policy of only allowing three ad units and three link units per page.

Many publishers have asked the question "Since feed items often get displayed with many feed items on a single web page, can using AdSense for feeds jeopardize the status of my AdSense account?"

The answer is no. Having three ad units per page is a product specific policy for AdSense for content. Product specific policies can be read about here.

In essence, the variable ways in which feed items are displayed are controlled and optimized automatically by the AdSense for feeds application and the choices you make as a publisher in your AdSense account when configuring your AdSense for feeds ad units. This means we may automatically suppress ad impressions when we detect there are too many feed ad units being displayed, resize ads based on the size and length of your content, and adjust the ads that are displayed based on the device in which the feed is being read.

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How to Make Money With Google Adsense On Blogspot.com

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A blog on blogspot.com

1. Step1
   First, you should have an established blog on www.blogspot.com. It is recommended that you have at least 20-25 blogs already written and a few followers. You may look at my blog for an example, while you are there, check out my ads on the right hand side to see how they can look: http://hotbellymama.blogspot.com/
2. Step2
   Next, go to the "customize" option on your blogspot. Choose the "layout" option.
3. Step3
   Here, you are given the option to "add a gadget." Click on it and scroll down to the "AdSense" option and click on it. If you do not already have an AdSense account set up, you will be prompted to do so. Here is the website for AdSense: https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount. Click on AdSense.
4. Step4
   After you have set up an account with Adsense, you will want to be sure to list your blog with AdSense. This is VERY important because even if you have an ad on your blog - you will not make money until you post your blog link with AdSense.
5. Step5
   Next, promote your blog to others. You make money every time someone clicks on the ad. I made about $9 my first week. I enjoy writing my blog, so it is nice to have some bonus revenue for doing this.
6. Step6
   Change the layout of your ads on your blog. Also try placing them in different places where people can see them. And I would even let others know about it so that they can support your venture and possibly do it for themselves.
   
   
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Blogspot Template Search engine Optimization Features

I’ve been using this Blogger template myself for quite sometime (I own a few Blogspot blogs  ). SEO/AdSense Template Rounders 2 is fully search engine optimised.

Like with my WordPress AdSense/SEO themes only the home page and archive pages uses a H1 header for the name of the blog in the header area (the big blue block at the top) on single blog posts the name of the blog is within span tags instead of H1 headers (no SEO benefit wasted).

Headers are not wasted on the sidebar menu, (most Blogspot themes use a H2 header which is such a waste of SEO benefit!) on the home and archive pages the name of each blog post is within a H2 header as a link to the single post, (or archive page if you have single posts disabled: recommend you have single posts on).

On single blog post pages the title of the post is within a H1 header (on most Blogspot themes it’s a H2 because the blog name is in the H1).

This is all basic SEO 101 for me, but 99 out of 100 times missed on other templates (that’s for Blogspot and WordPress themes).

The title element is formed with SEO in mind, home page and archive pages the name of the blog is used for the title element (so ideally name your blog with a keyword or two). On single blog posts the name of the post is used as the title element: name your blog posts with SEO in mind (that’s keyword rich titles) and you’ll do well in the search engines.

Although meta tags hold no real value these days I’ve included the description meta tag and keywords meta tags. Trust me from an SEO perspective they are worth no more time discussing.

Things I don’t like about Blogger/Blogspot as an SEO consultant.

Since there’s no Categories in Blogger/Blogspot you have to use the monthly archives to get your blog fully indexed, these pages are not very good SEO wise (in WordPress I never use them, I use Categories which add SEO value). With Blogger we are stuck with them as otherwise the site won’t be fully spidered and indexed!

Unfortunately the anchor text to the archive links are useless (the anchor text format is 01/01/2010 – 02/01/2010), so you should treat the archive pages as a sitemap (they will not pull in much traffic). To protect link benefit AND more importantly reduce SEO damage caused by the poor anchor text I set the SEO/AdSense Template Rounders 2 to only show the archive links on the home page and other monthly archive pages. In this way your single blogs posts (which should pull in most search engine traffic) are not damaged by a dozen or more text links with poor date related anchor text.

AdSense Features

I’m happy with the AdSense placement etc… of this theme, if you’ve used my WordPress AdSense/SEO themes you might be a little disappointed with the lack of easy option changes, but it’s Blogger and their template code is not as easy to manipulate as WordPress code is.

I have the AdSense code set to blend the colours with the theme, there are 6 AdSense code sections and if you wanted to change the colour scheme or ad sizes you’d have to manually edit all 6. If you are happy with the ad sizes and colour scheme all you have to do is search and replace my Google AdSense publisher ID with yours, You must do this on all 6 code sections, easiest way is load the template file into a text editor and run a simple search and replace.

Not a great deal I can add about the AdSense ads, they are placed in key locations that I’ve found works well.

Download the Free Blogspot SEO/AdSense Template Rounders 2

Most visitors probably saw the header above and jumped straight to this section skipping all my well thought out advice, well, if you don’t want to know the meaning of life here’s the download link 

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Click farm

A click farm is a form of click fraud, where a large group of low-paid workers is hired to click on paid advertising links for the click fraudster (click farm master or click farmer). The workers click the links, surf the target website for a period of time, and possibly sign up for newsletters prior to clicking another link. It is extremely difficult for an automated filter to detect this simulated traffic as fake because the visitor behavior appears exactly the same as that of an actual legitimate visitor. In conclusion, click farms are a product of an increasingly global economy, where a few dollars per day for relatively easy work is much sought after by workers in third world countries, who are not to blame, but rather the click farmers who are organizing the crime and collecting the money.

[edit]Filtering

Pay per click providers including as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN have made substantial efforts to combat click fraud. Automated filters remove most click fraud attempts at source. In effort to circumvent these filtering systems, click fraudsters have begun to use these click farms to simulate actual visitors.

[edit]Methods

The first method is by hiring competitor fraudsters to deplete the advertising budget of the competitor so that they will be able to have their ads shown in higher pay per click rankings at a lower cost. In this case, the competitor is weakened instead of being outbid in the pay per click bidding system. The investment on the click farm made by the fraudster is only a very small fraction of the amount lost by the competitor.

The second method is by hiring the click farm workers to click on the click farmer's own ads. This way, the money lost by the advertisers is gained by the click farmer rather than by the search engines and content networks like it is in the first method.

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Click fraud

Click fraud is a type of Internet crime^{[citation needed]} that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud.

Use of a computer to commit this type of Internet fraud is a felony in many jurisdictions, for example, as covered by Penal code 502 inCalifornia, USA.^{[citation needed]} It is illegal in the United Kingdom under the Computer Misuse Act 1990^{[citation needed]}. There have been arrests relating to click fraud with regard to malicious clicking in order to deplete a competitor's advertising budget^{[citation needed]}.

Pay per click advertising

Main article: Pay per click

Pay per click advertising or, PPC advertising, is an arrangement in which webmasters (operators of Web sites), acting as publishers, display clickable links from advertisers in exchange for a charge per click. As this industry evolved, a number of advertising networks developed, which acted as middlemen between these two groups (publishers and advertisers). Each time a (believed to be) valid Web user clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays the advertising network, who in turn pays the publisher a share of this money. This revenue-sharing system is seen as an incentive for click fraud.

The largest of the advertising networks, Google's AdWords/AdSense and Yahoo! Search Marketing, act in a dual role, since they are also publishers themselves (on their search engines)^[1]. According to critics, this complex relationship may create a conflict of interest. For instance, Google loses money to undetected click fraud when it pays out to the publisher, but it makes more money when it collects fees from the advertiser. Because of the spread between what Google collects and what Google pays out, click fraud directly and invisibly profits Google. Some have even speculated that Google's barring users of the Google Analytics system from tracing IP addresses of visitors is directly related to click fraud on the Google AdWords network and a desire to keep the true extent of click fraud from being disclosed.

[edit]Non-contracting parties

A secondary source of click fraud is non-contracting parties, who are not part of any pay-per-click agreement. This type of fraud is even harder to police, because perpetrators generally cannot be sued for breach of contract or charged criminally with fraud. Examples of non-contracting parties are:

• Competitors of advertisers: These parties may wish to harm a competitor who advertises in the same market by clicking on their ads. The perpetrators do not profit directly but force the advertiser to pay for irrelevant clicks, thus weakening or eliminating a source of competition.
• Competitors of publishers: These persons may wish to frame a publisher. It is made to look as if the publisher is clicking on its own ads. The advertising network may then terminate the relationship. Many publishers rely exclusively on revenue from advertising and could be put out of business by such an attack.
• Other malicious intent: As with vandalism, there is an array of motives for wishing to cause harm to either an advertiser or a publisher, even by people who have nothing to gain financially. Motives include political and personal vendettas. These cases are often the hardest to deal with, since it is difficult to track down the culprit, and if found, there is little legal action that can be taken against them.
• Friends of the publisher: Sometimes upon learning a publisher profits from ads being clicked, a supporter of the publisher (like a fan, family member, or personal friend) will click on the ads to help. This can be considered patronage. However, this can backfire when the publisher (not the friend) is accused of click fraud.

Advertising networks may try to stop fraud by all parties but often do not know which clicks are legitimate. Unlike fraud committed by the publisher, it is difficult to know who should pay when past click fraud is found. Publishers resent having to pay refunds for something that is not their fault. However, advertisers are adamant that they should not have to pay for phony clicks.

[edit]Organization

Click fraud can be as simple as one person starting a small Web site, becoming a publisher of ads, and clicking on those ads to generate revenue. Often the number of clicks and their value is so small that the fraud goes undetected. Publishers may claim that small amounts of such clicking is an accident, which is often the case.

Much larger-scale fraud also occurs^[2]. Those engaged in large-scale fraud will often run scripts which simulate a human clicking on ads in Web pages. However, huge numbers of clicks appearing to come from just one, or a small number of computers, or a single geographic area, look highly suspicious to the advertising network and advertisers. Clicks coming from a computer known to be that of a publisher also look suspicious to those watching for click fraud. A person attempting large-scale fraud, alone in their home, stands a good chance of being caught.

One type of fraud that circumvents detection based on IP patterns uses existing user traffic, turning this into clicks or impressions ^[2] Such an attack can be camouflaged from users by using 0-size iframes to display advertisements that are programmatically retrieved using JavaScript. It could also be camouflaged from advertisers and portals by ensuring that so-called "reverse spiders" are presented with a legitimate page, while human visitors are presented with a page that commits click fraud. The use of 0-size iframes and other techniques involving human visitors may also be combined with the use of incentivized traffic, where members of "Paid to Read" sites are paid small amounts of money (often a fraction of a cent) to visit a website and/or click on keywords and search results, sometimes hundreds or thousands of times every day ^[3] Some owners of PTR sites are members of PPC engines and may send many email ads to users who do search, while sending little ads to those who do not. They do this mainly because the charge per click on search results is often the only source of revenue to the site. This is known as forced searching, a practice that is frowned upon in the Get Paid To industry.

Organized crime can handle this by having many computers with their own Internet connections in different geographic locations. Often, scripts fail to mimic true human behavior, so organized crime networks use Trojan code to turn the average person's machines into zombie computersand use sporadic redirects or DNS cache poisoning to turn the oblivious user's actions into actions generating revenue for the scammer. It can be difficult for advertisers, advertising networks, and authorities to pursue cases against networks of people spread around multiple countries.

Impression fraud is when falsely generated ad impressions affect an advertiser's account. In the case of click-through rate based auction models, the advertiser may be penalized for having an unacceptably low click-through for a given keyword. This involves making numerous searches for a keyword without clicking of the ad. Such ads are disabled automatically, enabling a competitor's lower-bid ad for the same keyword to continue, while several high bidders (on the first page of the search results) have been eliminated.

[edit]Legal cases

[edit]Class action lawsuits

• Disputes over the issue have resulted in a number of lawsuits. In one case, Google (acting as both an advertiser and advertising network) won a lawsuit against a Texas company called Auction Experts (acting as a publisher), which Google accused of paying people to click on ads that appeared on Auction Experts' site, costing advertisers $50,000. ^[4] Despite networks' efforts to stop it, publishers are suspicious of the motives of the advertising networks, because the advertising network receives money for each click, even if it is fraudulent.

• In July 2005, Yahoo settled a class-action lawsuit against it by plaintiffs alleging it did not do enough to prevent click fraud. Yahoo paid $4.5 million in legal bills for the plaintiffs and agreed to settle advertiser claims dating back to 2004 ^[5] In July 2006, Google settled a similar suit for $90 million ^[6][7].

• On March 8, 2006, Google agreed to a $90 million-settlement fund in the class-action lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts & Collectibles. ^[8] The class-action lawsuit was filed in Miller County, Arkansas, by Dallas attorneys Steve Malouf, Joel Fineberg, and Dean Gresham. ^[9]

[edit]Michael Anthony Bradley

In 2004, California resident Michael Anthony Bradley created Google Clique, a software program that he claimed could let spammers defraudGoogle out of millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks. Authorities said he was arrested while trying to blackmail Google for $150,000 to hand over the program, believed to be the first arrest for click fraud.^[10]

Charges were dropped without explanation on November 22, 2006; both the US Attorney's office and Google declined to comment. Business Week suggests that Google was unwilling to cooperate with the prosecution, as it would be forced to disclose its click fraud detection techniques publicly, as it also makes money from fraudulent clicks.^[11]

[edit]Solutions

Proving click fraud can be very difficult, since it is hard to know who is behind a computer and what their intentions are. Often the best an advertising network can do is to identify which clicks are most likely fraudulent and not charge the account of the advertiser. Even more sophisticated means of detection are used^[12], but none is foolproof.

The Tuzhilin Report^[13] produced as part of a click fraud lawsuit settlement, has a detailed and comprehensive discussion of these issues. In particular, it defines "the Fundamental Problem of invalid (fraudulent) clicks":

• "There is no conceptual definition of invalid clicks that can be operationalized [except for certain obviously clear cases]."

• "An operational definition cannot be fully disclosed to the general public because of the concerns that unethical users will take advantage of it, which may lead to a massive click fraud. However, if it is not disclosed, advertisers cannot verify or even dispute why they have been charged for certain clicks."

The pay-per-click industry is lobbying for tighter laws on the issue. Many hope to have laws that will cover those not bound by contracts.

A number of companies are developing viable solutions for click fraud identification and are developing intermediary relationships with advertising networks. Such solutions fall into two categories:

1. Forensic analysis of advertisers' web server log files.
   This analysis of the advertiser's web server data requires an in-depth look at the source and behavior of the traffic. As industry standard log files are used for the analysis, the data is verifiable by advertising networks. The problem with this approach is that it relies on the honesty of the middlemen in identifying fraud.
2. Third-party corroboration.
   Third parties offer web-based solutions that might involve placement of single-pixel images or Javascript on the advertiser's web pages and suitable tagging of the ads. The visitor may be presented with a cookie. Visitor information is then collected in a third-party data store and made available for download. The better offerings make it easy to highlight suspicious clicks, and they show the reasons for such a conclusion. Since an advertiser's log files can be tampered with, their accompaniment with corroborating data from a third party forms a more convincing body of evidence to present to the advertising network. However, the problem with third-party solutions is that such solutions see only part of the traffic of the entire network. Hence, they can be less likely to identify patterns that span several advertisers. In addition, due to the limited amount of traffic they receive when compared to middlemen, they can be overly or less aggressive when judging traffic to be fraud.

[edit]Click fraud in academia

The fact that the middlemen (search engines) have the upper hand in the operational definition of invalid clicks is the reason for the conflict of interest between advertisers and the middlemen, as described above. This is manifested in The Tuzhilin Report ^[13] as described above. The Tuzhilin report did not publicly define invalid clicks and did not describe the operational definitions in detail. Rather, it gave a high-level picture of the fraud-detection system and argued that the operational definition of the search engine under investigations is "reasonable". One aim of the report was to preserve the privacy of the fraud-detection system in order to maintain its effectiveness. This prompted some researchers to conduct public research on how the middlemen can fight click fraud. Since such research is presumably not tainted by market forces, there is hope that this research can be adopted to assess how rigorous a middleman is in detecting click fraud in future law cases. The fear that this research can expose the internal fraud-detection system of middlemen still applies. An example of such research is that done by Metwally, Agrawal and El Abbadi at UCSB. Recent work by Majumdar, Kulkarni, and Ravishankar at UC Riverside proposes protocols for the identification of fraudulent behavior by brokers and other intermediaries in content-delivery networks.

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AdWords

AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD$21 billion in 2008^[1]. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Sales and Support for Google's AdWords division is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan^[2], the company's third-largest US facility behind itsMountain View, California, headquarters and New York City office.^[3] Engineering for AdWords is based in Mountain View, California.

Pay-Per-Click advertisements (PPC)

Advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they will pay per click. When a user searches Google's search engine on www.google.com or the relevant local/national google server (e.g. www.google.co.uk for The United Kingdom), ads (also known as creatives by Google) for relevant words are shown as "sponsored links" on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results.

The ordering of the paid-for listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the "quality score" of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser's keywords.^[4] The minimum bid takes into consideration the quality of the landing page as well, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business.^[5] Though Google has released a list of full guidelines for sites,^[6] the precise formula and meaning of relevance and its definition is in part secret to Google and the parameters used can change dynamically.

The auction mechanism that determines the order of the ads is a generalized second-price auction.^[7][8] This is claimed to have the property that the participants do not necessarily fare best when they truthfully reveal any private information asked for by the auction mechanism (in this case, the value of the keyword to them, in the form of a "truthful" bid).

[edit]Placement targeted advertisements (formerly Site-Targeted Advertisements)

In 2003 Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Using the AdWords control panel, advertisers can enter keywords, domain names, topics, and demographic targeting preferences, and Google places the ads on what they see as relevant sites within their content network. If domain names are targeted, Google also provides a list of related sites for placement. Advertisers may bid on a cost per impression (CPI) or cost per click (CPC) basis for site targeting.^[9]

With placement targeting, it is possible for an ad to take up the entire ad block rather than have the ad block split into 2 to 4 ads, resulting in higher visibility for the advertiser.

The minimum cost-per-thousand impressions bid for placement targeted campaigns is 25 cents. There is no minimum CPC bid, however.

[edit]AdWords distribution

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google's partner networks. The "search network" includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches.

The "content network" shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search engines. These content network sites are those that use AdSense, the other side of the Google advertising model. AdSense is used by website owners who wish to make money by displaying ads on their websites. Click through rates on the content network are typically much lower than those on the search network and are therefore ignored when calculating an advertiser's quality score. It has been reported that using both AdSense and AdWords may cause a website to pay Google a commission when the website advertises itself.^[10]

Google automatically determines the subject of pages and displays relevant ads based on the advertisers' keyword lists. AdSense publishers may select channels to help direct Google's ad placements on their pages, to better track performance of their ad units. There are many different types of ads you can run across Google's network, including text ads, image ads (banner ads), local business ads, mobile text ads, and in-page video ads.

Google AdWords' main competitors are Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

[edit]AdWords account management

To help clients with the complexity of building and managing AdWords accounts search engine marketing agencies and consultants offer account management as a business service. This has allowed organizations without advertising expertise to reach a global, online audience. Google has started the Google Advertising Professionals program to certify agencies and consultants who have met specific qualifications and passed an exam.^[11]. Google also provides account management software, called AdWords Editor.

Another useful feature is the My Client Centre available to Google Professionals (even if not yet passed the exam or budget parameters) whereby a Google professional has access and a dashboard summary of several accounts and can move between those accounts without logging in to each account.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool provides a list of related keywords for a specific website or keyword.^[12]

Recently, numerous complaints have been filed with the San Jose Better Business Bureau (BBB)^[13] regarding treatment small businesses have received from Google Adwords customer service. As a result, the company now has a B- rating with the San Jose BBB.

[edit]Click-to-Call

Google Click-to-Call was a service provided by Google which allows users to call advertisers from Google search results pages. Users enter their phone number, Google calls them back and connects to the advertiser. Calling charges are paid by Google. It was discontinued in 2007.^[14]. For some time similar click-to-call functionality was available for results in Google Maps.

[edit]History

The original idea was invented by Bill Gross from Idealab who, in turn, borrowed it from yellow pages. Google wanted to buy the idea but the deal would not close.^{[citation needed]} Google did not want to give up and launched AdWords in 2000.^[15]. AdWords followed Bill Gross' model to a significant extent. In the course of legal action Google and Idealab settled the dispute.

At first AdWords advertisers would pay a monthly amount, and Google would then set up and manage their campaign. To accommodate small businesses and those who wanted to manage their own campaigns, Google soon introduced the AdWords self-service portal. Starting in 2005 Google provided a campaign management service called Jumpstart^[16] to assist advertisers in setting up their campaigns. However, this service is no longer available, so companies needing assistance must hire a third-party service provider. See example of third-party service provider, Leonard Tan Khang Hwee.

In 2005, Google launched the Google Advertising Professional (GAP) Program to certify individuals and companies who completed AdWords training and passed an exam. Due to the complexity of AdWords and the amount of money at stake, some advertisers hire a consultant to manage their campaigns.

In 2008, Google launched the Google Online Marketing Challenge (http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/), an in-class academic exercise for tertiary students. Over 8,000 students from 47 countries participated in the 2008 Challenge and over 10,000 students from 58 countries took part in 2009. The Challenge runs annually, roughly from January to June. Registration is at the instructor rather than student level.

In 2009, Google revised the AdWords interface, introduced Local Business Ads for Google Maps and Video Ads.

[edit]Legal context

AdWords has generated lawsuits in the area of trademark law (see Google, Inc. v. Am. Blind & Wallpaper Factory and Rescuecom Corp. v. Google, Inc.), fraud (see Goddard v. Google, Inc.), and click fraud. In 2006, Google settled a click fraud lawsuit for US$90 million.^[17]

Overture Services, Inc. sued Google for patent infringement in April 2002 in relation to the AdWords service. Following Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, the suit was settled in 2004 with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license under the patent.^[18]

[edit]Technology

The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use a commercial database (Oracle) instead. The system became much slower, so eventually it was returned to MySQL.^{[citation needed]} The interface has also been revamped to offer better work flow with additional new features, such as, Spreadsheet Editing, Search Query Reports, and better conversion metrics.

[edit]Policy and restrictions

As of April 2008 Google AdWords no longer allows for the display URL to deviate from that of the destination URL. Prior to its introduction, Google paid advertisements could feature different landing page URLs to that of what was being displayed on the search network. Google expounds that the policy change stems from both user and advertiser feedback. The concern prompting the restriction change is believed to be the premise on which users clicked advertisements. Users were in some cases, being misled and further targeted by AdWords advertisers.^[19]

Google has other restrictions, for example the advertising of a book by Aaron Greenspan called Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era, was restricted from advertising on AdWords because it contained the word Facebook in it. Google's rationale was that it was prohibited from advertising a book which used a trademarked name in its title.^[20]

[edit]Allowed keywords

Google has also come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on a wide variety of search terms in the US and Canada, including the trademarks of their competitors^[21] and in May 2008 expanded this policy to the UK and Ireland. Advertisers are restricted from using other companies' trademarks in their advertisement text if the trademark has been registered with Advertising Legal Support team. Google does, however, require certification to run regulated keywords, such as those related to pharmaceuticals keywords, and some keywords, such as those related to hacking, are not allowed at all. These restrictions may vary by location.^[22] From June 2007, Google banned AdWords adverts for student essay writing services, the move was welcomed by universities.^[23]

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