AdSense and the World-Wide-Web
The Search Engines
Google wants the World-Wide-Web to work. In their paper 'The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine' it is very evident that Google realizes that the whole complex system is its lifeline and for it to continue it has to be able to grow and evolve by providing quality results. For the World-Wide-Web to work it needs people... users. For it to work it has to satisfy their need for quality information. If this is provided users will trust the system and they will continue to use it, but only as long as they are provided with what they seek.
Google has a responsibility to its users
For their own survival Google, Yahoo and all of those that have a vested interest in the Web have to try and fulfil the expectations of those that use it. Unfortunately, anyone can put material onto the net. It’s open to all and so it is inevitably full of junk.
Google needs to make sure that a users experience with its search engine is smooth and painless and that means providing them with the information they seek as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Therefore Google has to make sure that its users are protected from as much useless information (junk) as possible.
Diagram showing the relationship between the World-Wide-Web (WWW), Google and the User.
Google uses material that is freely available on the WWW to compile its search queries. But it has to make sure that it gets the best material from the Web for each search, or else it will loose its customer base.
However, it's the very same Users that are responsible for putting the material together that makes the Web.
AdSense, interconnects various sites by using paid ads as links. These paid links can be used by Users to navigate the Web.
How Google works
But Google have made a lot of progress in redressing the balance between quality information and the billions of useless information that exists within the Web. It not only indexes pages in order of relevance but more significantly it sorts out the pages in order of popularity. Google operates by recommending sites that are deemed ‘good’ by other sites, i.e. sites that have a significant number of relevant incoming links. If a site has a high number of links pointing to it, Google assumes that the site is popular and therefore must contain useful information. It then ranks the site according to the quantity and quality of the links pointing to it. A link coming from another popular (highly linked) site scores more than link coming from an unpopular (poorly linked) site. Therefore, as far as Google is concerned a sites popularity outranks the amount of relevant keywords that it might contain or the amount of time it’s been around (though these are lesser factors that can affect a sites final position). The system is clever and it obviously works as can be seen by Google’s undoubted popularity.
AdSense and Search Engines
Search engines are the functional core of the web for most users. They are often the users first point of entry into the World-Wide-Web. That is why page rank is so important for Webmasters who want their sites to be seen. Due to the brilliant way Google organizes its search results most users now only give any real relevance to the results in the first few pages of any search they carry out. So if your site is ranked on the first page for a number of popular keywords and phrases you will get a significant amount of traffic. However, if your site is on the tenth page of a search result, the traffic going through it will be markedly smaller in comparison. Even though relevant incoming links boost search engine ranking, AdSense links plays no part in the system. Having one or a hundred on your site does nothing to improve your search engine ranking in anyway. AdSense linkages is another level of web connectivity, one that is subtly driven by money.
But Search Engine Ranking (SER) does affect AdSense in two significant ways:
- The higher your SER for a particular keyword the more traffic you will get and the more AdSense revenue you will generate.
- The higher your ranking, the more money you get per click for the ads on your site.
So it is in your best interest to get a high SER for as much populay keywords as possible.