The Hat Play

Google Shutting Down AdSense Direct Test Google launched a test of AdSense Direct in January of this year. The feature, which allowed AdSense publishers to sell inventory directly to advertisers, apparently didn’t test well and is being pulled in November. The company notified publishers via email on October 24 that they decided to kill the beta after looking at the initial results. AdSense Direct will officially end on November 25, Google says in the email: “We recommend that you remove the URL for the AdSense Direct link from your site or sites by November 25, 2014. Advertisers will no longer be able to book campaigns through the AdSense Direct link after this date” The test ran only in the U.S. Payments had to be made via Google Wallet, and Google set a minimum campaign price and recommended price based on a multiple of the AdSense unit’s average daily earnings on the site.

A New Click Through Rate Study For Google Organic Results Advanced Web Ranking has released a study showing fresh data on the click-through-rate from Google’s organic search results. The data was taken from Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries reports from large accounts back in July 2014. On average, 71.33% of searches resulted in a page one Google organic click.  Page two and three get only 5.59% of the clicks. On the first page alone, the first 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks and the results from 6 to 10 account for only 3.73%. A New Click Through Rate Study For Google Organic Results Here is a chart showing the click through rate by exact position: A New Click Through Rate Study For Google Organic Results The study was first presented at SMX East yesterday by Philip Petrescu of Caphyon, who has written a more detailed write-up on our Search Engine Land sister site: How Ads Influence Organic Click-Through Rate On Google The full details of the study break down des...

TopSEO: We Have Not Been Banned By Google Despite Google apparently dropping two of its domains this week, TopSEO denies that it has been banned and says it’s in contact with Google to discuss the situation. On Wednesday, Mark Jackson at Vizion Interactive posted that TopSEO had been deindexed in Google’s search results. Sure enough, Google searches that day for site:topseo.com returned no results, and the domain still appears to be gone from Google’s index: TopSEO: We Have Not Been Banned By Google After this happened, the company moved its website to a new domain, topseosglobal.com , which I saw was being indexed by Google on Thursday. But sometime in the past 24 hours or so, Google de-indexed that domain, as well. TopSEO: We Have Not Been Banned By Google After that, TopSEO began using a third domain, topseos-global.com . As of about 11:00 am PT today, that domain was showing close to 700 URLs in Google’s index. TopSEOs: We’re Not Banned In an email exchange today, TopSEO CEO Jee...

Google Allows You To Disable The Sitelinks Search Box, To Search Within The Google Search Results In early September, Google introduced the Sitelinks search box that gives webmaster the ability to control how Google handles searches conducted within the search within this site, in the Google search results snippet area.  Google is now letting webmasters disable the feature completely. For example, if you search for in Google, Google will add a box under the first YouTube result, that lets you search within just the youtube.com domain, this also known as a site command search. Developers have more control over how those searches work and if they land on your internal site search pages or not. Now, as spotted by Menashe Avramov, Google added a new feature to disable the sitelinks search box from showing up completely. You can disable the Sitelinks Search feature by using a new meta tag named nositelinkssearchbox. Here is the meta tag: nositelinkssearchbox Webmasters who add this tag to t...

AdWords Scripts & Macros Users: Google Analytics Columns To Be Renamed In AdWords Google has said it will be updating several of the Google Analytics reporting column names in AdWords to reflect the names as they appear in Analytics itself. If you use AdWords scripts or macros to automate reporting downloads, be prepared for the switch to come on November 10, 2014. The change affects these three columns: Pages / visit will become Pages / session Avg. visit duration (seconds) will become Avg. session duration (seconds) % new visits will become % new sessions. AdWords Scripts & Macros Users: Google Analytics Columns To Be Renamed In AdWords

 What experts are saying about Facebook’s Atlas n an effort to better compete with Google, the Web’s premier ad server, Facebook re-launched Atlas yesterday. It’s expected to be a game-changer for the social network, keeping in step with the company’s cross-platform goals. Several industry experts have recently weighed in on Atlas and what it means for social advertising moving forward. David Serfaty, Director of Social Advertising, Matomy Media Group: The relaunch of Atlas as Facebook’s new ad platform represents an important shift in Facebook’s advertising model. The ability to provide advertisers with audience-based targeting and cross-device measurement capabilities shows that Facebook is taking the lead on solving the industry-wide problem of how to accurately measure and attribute users’ long and winding path toward conversion. As a performance-based marketing company, we at Matomy are happy to see Facebook continue to make improvements like those it has made with Atlas to its ad...

Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam Google has updated their webmaster guidelines, specifically in the little or no original content guideline, to add “low-quality guest blog posts” as an example of “scraped content.” Brian Ussery first spotted this change, noting how Google has been fighting the use of guest blogging and posting around link building. Specifically when Google’s head of search spam said guest blogging is done for SEO purposes. Since then, Google has penalized several guest blog networks and continues to set their targets on low-quality guest blogging that aims at manipulating their search results. Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page before the change: Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page after the change: Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam

- One day when I had nothing to do (well, actually, I had a lot to do, but I didn't want to do any of it), I decided to play the Google game. This is the one where you input your own name or something else into the field in quotes to see how many search results you get. Because my most recent book, Queen Geeks in Love, was coming out soon, I decided to search the term "geek." What I found astounded me. I got more nearly 70 million hits from the word "geek." That's million One day when I had nothing to do (well, actually, I had a lot to do, but I didn't want to do any of it), I decided to play the Google game. This is the one where you input your own name or something else into the field in quotes to see how many search results you get. Because my most recent book, Queen Geeks in Love, was coming out soon, I decided to search the term "geek." What I found astounded me. I got more nearly 70 million hits from the word "geek." That...

- When it comes to meeting deadlines, one way to manage your timetable effectively is to divide the large jobs and farm them out to several freelancers. Let’s say you’ve been awarded a writing job to write an e-book on childcare with 10 chapters for $2,000 over a 45 day period of time. Bid out each chapter separately among 10 freelancers and allocate, say, $100 for each chapter over a 25 day period. This way you don’t have to worry about the deadline because you’ve given you... When it comes to meeting deadlines, one way to manage your timetable effectively is to divide the large jobs and farm them out to several freelancers. Let’s say you’ve been awarded a writing job to write an e-book on childcare with 10 chapters for $2,000 over a 45 day period of time. Bid out each chapter separately among 10 freelancers and allocate, say, $100 for each chapter over a 25 day period. This way you don’t have to worry about the deadline because you’ve given yourself a 20-day buffer and you stand t...

- Authoring as a Risk-Taking Endeavor Being an unpublished novelist poses all sorts of dilemmas. Writing is entrepreneurial in nature, more than most people realize, and it is fraught with make or break decisions. Which side of the political spectrum do you show yourself? Do you embellish this or that social issue, perhaps the one most fashionable, or do you hide from them all? If your goal is publication for its own sake, and you've decided to write, say, Gothic romance ... Authoring as a Risk-Taking Endeavor Being an unpublished novelist poses all sorts of dilemmas. Writing is entrepreneurial in nature, more than most people realize, and it is fraught with make or break decisions. Which side of the political spectrum do you show yourself? Do you embellish this or that social issue, perhaps the one most fashionable, or do you hide from them all? If your goal is publication for its own sake, and you've decided to write, say, Gothic romance number 214,386, then you do need to ...

- Matt Matcherson is a writer musician and humorist. Sometimes he even writes funny music. His site MatchTales brings dating stories, site reviews and free dating support forums to the web. One of my first "Big Dates" was a Cotillion dance in 8th grade...or was it seventh? Cotillion was an attempt by a local "grande dame" to nurture refined manners in a group of young teens along with ballroom dancing instruction. I think it was a truly nerve wracking experience for most of ... Matt Matcherson is a writer musician and humorist. Sometimes he even writes funny music. His site MatchTales brings dating stories, site reviews and free dating support forums to the web. One of my first "Big Dates" was a Cotillion dance in 8th grade...or was it seventh? Cotillion was an attempt by a local "grande dame" to nurture refined manners in a group of young teens along with ballroom dancing instruction. I think it was a truly nerve wracking experience for most o...

- Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of http://Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Rob Costelloe, author of Coinage of Commitment. Good day Rob and thanks for participating in our interview. Norm: When did your passion for writing begin? What keeps you going? Rob: I wrote earlier in life, including a teeth-cutting first novel, then I abandoned writing altogether. But I continued to study romantic love as a potential source of fulfillment in people’s... Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of http://Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Rob Costelloe, author of Coinage of Commitment. Good day Rob and thanks for participating in our interview. Norm: When did your passion for writing begin? What keeps you going? Rob: I wrote earlier in life, including a teeth-cutting first novel, then I abandoned writing altogether. But I continued to study romantic love as a potential source of fulfillment in people’s lives, and I enjoyed studying love stori...

- Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of http://Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Helen Barer author of Fitness Kills. Helen is a native New Yorker and has spent many years as a writer of non-fiction ranging from cookbooks to television documentaries Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of http://Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Helen Barer author of Fitness Kills. Helen is a native New Yorker and has spent many years as a writer of non-fiction ranging from cookbooks to television documentaries. Norm: Good day Helen and thanks for participating in our interview. Helen: I'm delighted to have been invited. Norm: How did you happen to write a book about a fitness ranch in Baja and could you also tell us a bit about Fitness Kills? Helen: I'm a big fan of fitness spas - I've been going to one or another for more than 20 years. About 12 years ago, while struggling through an aerobics class at a spa in Baja California, I looked a...

- Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of http://www.Bookpleasures.com, is excited have as his guest Frank McGee, author of  A Song for the World: The Amazing Story of the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen: Musical Diplomats. Frank has built a distinguished career as a writer and journalist over half a century. In the tumultuous 1960s he covered stories as far a field as Brazil, Indonesia, and Viet Nam. As managing editor of Pace magazine, a contemporary of Life, Look, and Today, Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor of http://www.Bookpleasures.com, is excited have as his guest Frank McGee, author of  A Song for the World: The Amazing Story of the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen: Musical Diplomats. Frank has built a distinguished career as a writer and journalist over half a century. In the tumultuous 1960s he covered stories as far a field as Brazil, Indonesia, and Viet Nam. As managing editor of Pace magazine, a contemporary of Life, Look, and Holiday, he worked with th...

What makes it hard is not writing itself but how people make it hard than it really is ? No one is born a novel writer. But do you believe that we all have the capability to be writers? Impossible as it may seem but the answer is yes! If we have the passion for it and if we strive to make it happen, novelwriting can be as easy as writing ABC. Writing is actually not a very complicated thing. It is just like drawing, painting, and even cooking. It is an art! Your imagination is all that it takes to get it started. What makes it hard is not writing itself but how people make it hard than it really is. The first key to writing a novel is the ability to dream and imagine. Think back to when you were a little child and dreamed. Your imagination took you to places you've never been before. It made you do things you never thought you could do. Having superpowers...being in strange places...the conditions are limitless. Writing a novel is actually imagination translated into words. You clo...

Types of things to watch out for with agents: * Charging the author a fee up front, to be accepted as a client. Can be called a reading fee, or a monthly "office expenses" charge. The best agents, and most successful ones, only charge a percentage fee of royalties the author earns, typically 15%. Suppose a realtor charged you a fee to come over and tour your house before getting the listing? How quickly would you show that realtor the door. . . * Charging back unusually... Types of things to watch out for with agents: * Charging the author a fee up front, to be accepted as a client. Can be called a reading fee, or a monthly "office expenses" charge. The best agents, and most successful ones, only charge a percentage fee of royalties the author earns, typically 15%. Suppose a realtor charged you a fee to come over and tour your house before getting the listing? How quickly would you show that realtor the door. . . * Charging back unusually large "postage and cop...

There are hundreds of articles out there telling you how to succeed as a freelance writer - and they're all good.  But sometimes instead of telling what you should be doing, it's far quicker and easier to tell you what you shouldn't be doing 1.  Don’t set yourself a writing routine or stick to it. 2.  Always make sure that doing your writing is at the bottom of your list of priorities, and even when you are writing, if something else you have to do that day springs to mind, then go and do that instead. 3.  If one of your friends comes round to invite you out for coffee, just go, no matter how busy you are with your writing. 4.  Whenever you’re writing, answer the phone every time it rings and answer the door every time someone knocks. 5.  Always feel guilty for doing your writing instead of doing what other people want you to do. 6.  Don’t read any articles about writing, especially if it’s written by an expert. 7.  If anyone ever tells you of a s...