AdesBlog.com

I have already blogged that I receive hundreds of visitors from Google Image Search and that this could be a source of free traffic for anybody if used correctly.

As seen to the left, now my blog (and my image) comes up first when you search Google Images for the keyword ‘lost‘. Previously it’s been coming up second. Now that my image comes up first, I have been getting even more clicks. Around 500-700 unique daily, of which around 300+ visits the blog.

New type of Advertising anyone?
I was thinking why nobody advertises on Google Images (putting ads on the surface of images). I think it would be really cool if this kind of thing could kick off. Stock image providers could benefit the most, since their pitch would work better on the images. They could put an ad like this: “Need more images like this? Login to www,oursite,com”.

If such a thing could start, then I am sure this is what John Chow would want ;) (His photo on No.1 spot for the image search keyword: “make money online” ;)

Update (August 2007) My image no longer ranks No.1 on Google Images. I had my share of traffic while it was up there on No.1.

RedHerring reports that YouTube will be showing ads at the beginning of every video starting this summer. Suzie Reider, head of advertising for YouTube, reportedly told an audience at the Ad Tech conference in San Francisco Wednesday.

Good news for video bloggers is that, Google will be sharing the revenue from these advertisements with them. The idea is to generate long-promised revenues that Google can share with the more than 1,000 “premium” content creators whose video material is available on YouTube, Ms. Reider said.

That’s not bad huh? Maybe we all should get our handycams and webcams ready and start creating some good video content? So that we can have the share of video publisher program when it rolls out.

What do you think? Would you go for video blogging if there was a great money making potential in video blogging? (let me tagg these guys and see if they will respond) www.problogger.net, www.johnchow.com, www.liewcf.com/blog, www.hongkiat.com/blog You may leave your response in comments or post it in your blog.

Have you ever wondered why Google Analytics is free? After all Google Analytics previously known as Urchin did cost $495 per month before Google’s acquisition. That’s a huge amount! Why it costs “Zero” now?

Well there might be a lot of possible explanations but here is my version of explanation for this. Google’s PageRank is the most popular and widely accepted way of evaluating particular page’s importance on a scale from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest. Everybody wants a higher PageRank, that’s for sure.

As for Google, it’s a very challenging job to assign every page (of every site) on internet a PageRank. Especially when Google do not know much about the traffic of a particular site. In that case, Google has to rely on external information. It can be their own Search Engine data, Alexa data, number of links pointing to particular site…etc

Magic Formula
When Google gives you its Google Analytics for free to track your stats, they are also getting a valuable info back (complete info about your site). Because now your site becomes transparent to Google. Google does not have to predict and rely on external information to determine your pages’ PageRank. It can give you the exact PageRank your every page deserves. They can track every unique visitor, every pageview, every click, entry pages, exit pages… everything!

Here is a hypothetical situation (see image below). Let’s say you didn’t know about Google Analytics and you had a PR5 site. Then you found out about GA and installed it in your site. Suddenly next PageRank update your site gets PR3! (Or it can be vice versa too, you had a PR3 then after installing it you got PR5 or 6). But I am guessing it’s the first case most of the time.

So Google Analytics is not just a free statistical tool to track your blog’s or site’s visitors, if you are looking for a simple stats tool then there are plenty of them. By using Google Analytics you are doing much more than just to track your visitors, I am sure Google uses those stats not just for their PR prediction, maybe for their search engine results too.

P.S I hope Google won’t penalize me for this article and take away my PR7 ;)

Everybody is talking about PageRank update. Some are happy and some are not. Because higher page rank would mean more money for bloggers, for example JohnChow.com had a PR4 before, with the new update it’s PR6 now. John has already informed his blog readers that next month his ReviewMe rates will be $400 instead of the old $300.

The higher PageRank just made this blog a lot more valuable for me and a lot more expensive for advertisers. My ReviewMe price will be going to $400 next month. If you want a review at the current price of $300, make sure you get your order in before the end of this month.

AdesBlog’s PageRank stays the same, strong PR7. PR8 would have been great, but I am happy with my current page rank. If you are seeing the same PageRank for your blog, try to check at RankAlert, because it’s possible that you are seeing the data from the Data Center that is not updated yet. Google has some 72 data centers, so it will take some time (up to 1 week) to see the real (updated) page ranks.

Advertisement Options:
If you want to have your text link on this PR7 blog, do let me know. Currently text links are priced at $150/month. Limited spots available. So hurry.

I have used FeedDemon for reading blogs and news for a long time. It’s a nice software, it’s easy and usable. However there was one disadvantage using a stand-alone desktop software like FeedDemon. I could only use it at home, while I am on my PC (or on my laptop which 98% of the time stays at home too).

To solve that problem I had signed up with bloglines and exported all my blogs from FeedDemon to Bloglines. FeedDemon has a feature to export all or some blogs as OPML file. So Bloglines worked great, my accessibility problem was solved!

However now, there was another problem, problem of logging into one more extra website while I am online. Usually I will log into my Gmail, Yahoo!Mail, My Blog, AdSense and the list goes on… So logging into one more website was not fun. And then I thought, I use my Gmail everyday so why not I just use Google Reader instead? Because when you log into Gmail you are automatically logged into your Google Reader as well. And the link is just there, easy to access… right inside the Gmail.

So far so good, I am not sure what other issues might arise by using Google Reader. But for now, I am satisfied with the solution.

According to Webmaster World post, Google AdSense is paying its publishers the highest (Q1 2007) since it started in 2003, to be precise 83.7% of Google Adsense revenue is going out to publishers as a payment. The author of the post has came to this conclusion after calculating Publisher Revenue VS Publisher Payouts from the reports at Google Financial Release.

Even though (assuming that) Google has been paying more to publishers, it would not necessarily mean more money to every publisher. Because some publishers are large companies, and some are premium publishers that have a special pricing arrangement with Google. So it’s difficult to say that overall, all the publishers are earning more money now.

My Google Earnings
Overall my Google Earnings have been going down and down. See the a downward sloping chart below (From middle of 2005 throughout 2006). However in 2007 it has improved little. Is that (yellow box) the payout increase that Google made? ;) Maybe, I don’t know. I am more concerned about the end of my chart line, it’s going down! ;)

via Sabahan.com

Al-Jazeera, the English-language version of the Qatar-based television news station has launched it’s YouTube channel. They plan to publish 10-15 new programs every week. Al-Jazeera started broadcasting it’s satellite news channel in English in Nov 2006. It is accessible through internet by subscription at their site here.

I think to get a different perspective on Middle East issues, one should definitely watch Al-Jazeera. You can also read the news online at english.aljazeera.net/English/

After my post about ABC’s popular show Lost back in December 2005. I started to notice more and more traffic to my blog coming from Google Images. Here is the post, it was about the animal trainer hand that was seen in the Episode 9, Season 2 (which was not supposed to be seen). At the moment, my screenshot image comes up second in the Google Image results when someone searches for keyword “Lost”.

Currently according to MyBlogLog stats (I should get a better stats service, any ideas?) I am getting around 300 hits a day from Google Images. I have no idea how the Google rates the images, there must be thousands of Lost related images, pictures, posters, screenshots…etc

So how come my image is second in the results? I do not have the answer for that, but I do have some guesses (tips), here are they:

• Be the first to blog about it (whatever it is), because when you are the first your post becomes the source of reference.
• Blog about something different, that the current blogosphere is NOT blogging about, that way you can stand out!
• Name the images that you upload to your post with a descriptive names, for example my image name was lost.jpg

Update (August 2007) My image no longer ranks No.1 on Google Images. I had my share of traffic while it was up there.

While we are still in the Apple topic, here is an interesting history news. Google X was a Mac-like interface for Google (see above image) that was developed in Google Labs in 2005. Apparently the application was only live for one day. After which Google has removed it to prevent a suit from Apple.

Thanks to ElliotBack you can see the functional Google X here. You may also download the Google X homepage in a zip file here.

You can see more of Google’s discontinued services at googlesystem.blogspot.com.

Here is an eBook (55 ways to have fun with Google) that consists of 228 pages, and 55 Chapters.

Chapters

1. Egogoogling: Susan Is…
2. The Google Snake Game
3. Memecodes: Survival of the Fittest Web Pages
4. The Google Irritation Game, and the Google Image Quiz
5. Googling Proverbs
6. Browsing Images of a Site
7. A Brief History of Googlesport
8. What is Google, and what do people consider fun about it?
9. How Much Time Google Saves Us
10. Google Cookin’ a Lemon Chicken
11. Douglas Adams and the Google Calculator
12. Oops, I Googled Again
13. The Disappearing Google Logo, a Magic Trick
14. Fun With Google Maps, the Wiki Way… more

You can download the eBook in PDF here or Word Doc here.

www.55fun.com/