SEO Tycoon

**VirtuosiMedia** · 09-10-2008, 02:56 PM

A couple weeks ago I was putting some AdSense code on a friend's site. The ads he was getting matched one of more prominent words on the site, but in an unexpected way that was less than desired. I made a quick change to the page titles and the ads changed almost instantly (for the good) and that started me thinking...

I would assume that the technology that AdSense uses to serve contextual advertising is at least similar if not the exact same as the technology Google uses to determine what a site is about for placement in its search rankings. If you need to know how making certain changes will affect how Google views your site, AdSense would seem to be a quick and safe way to test changes without having to wait for your actual rankings to change. If the resulting changes in AdSense are positive, keep the changes; if not, reverse them.

Now, I haven't done any testing of this, so I'm not sure how effective or ineffective it might be. I'm sure that someone else somewhere on the Internet has probably suggested something similar, but I haven't stumbled across it yet in any of my SEO readings. However, I just thought I would throw it out there for discussion's sake to see what people think. Are there other ways this could be used as well? If you have the time to test it (I don't just yet), please let us know the results.

**Learning Newbie** · 09-10-2008, 04:23 PM

I doubt the technology is exactly the same, if for no other reason than that Google doesn't want to tip its hand. A lot of innovative companies like to run X of their best algorithms in parallel, and compare the results, so it would make sense to have 2 different implementations and see which one is best overall.

That caveat out of the way, I agree, they're probably very similar, and probably grow out of a common code base.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 09-10-2008, 06:46 PM

I'm sure they have competing algorithms just with AdSense itself, for testing purposes.

**chuggingalong** · 09-10-2008, 06:51 PM

That certainly is an interesting theory, though. Since Adsense supposedly matches the ad content to what your site is all about, I should think this would be a valid way to see what Google perceives as your site's main keywords. I'll have to experiment with this just to see how useful it would be.

**vangogh** · 09-10-2008, 07:03 PM

VM I've thought of that too. I would imagine there are similarities between the algorithms. You might be able to get the same information through other Google tools, but why not learn what you can from AdSense. Certainly worth experimenting with.

**Learning Newbie** · 09-10-2008, 10:46 PM

First, I think there's a lot of value to what you've suggested. So don't take this the wrong way. But, I'm a lifer in programming, which means I nitpick minor details by force of habit. I'm not writing to disagree, only to (hopefully) contribute more precision to your knowledge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

I'm sure they have competing algorithms just with AdSense itself, for testing purposes.

Depends what testing purposes mean, but I'd interpret that as general stability, etc, and on that note, allow me to suggest another reason to run differing algorithms in parallel.

Evolutionary or genetic programming is all the rage these days. It's used everywhere, even places you might not expect, like text parsing, data mining, et cetera. This is to fit the (biological) evolution paradigm.

Open Source has been described as a "Darwinian, massively parallel drunkard's walk" meaning that a lot of hobbiest programmers write code, and the best projects make it all the way through the SDLC to become a successful project. It's massively parallel because there are legions of programmers. It's a drunkard's walk because it's essentially random - people do what they want to, not what their boss tells them. Darwinian because, like real evolution with gene mutations competing for existance, the best of these go on, and often mate to form new product lines from merges. The best win out - it's the survival of the fittest.

This is another reason Google would run two different algorithms in two different applications. (With different objectives, so that's a hole in my theory, or at least complexity they'd have to deal with.) I've probably not contributed that much by pointing this out, but, for what it's worth, that's the refinement I can offer to the theory.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 09-11-2008, 01:56 AM

Well, I'm probably way out of my league because I haven't had a lifetime in programming or even any formal training, so I'm really just speculating based on what I would do and on my single year of 'experience', which has been sparse, to say the least.

In another life, I was a writer. (Turns out that doesn't pay quite as well).

In the case of AdSense, general stability didn't even occur to me when I made that comment. I was referring more to testing purposes in the sense of producing higher conversion rates because the ads served are of greater relevancy to the content. With Google's scale, they don't have to wait weeks and weeks to find out if something is converting at a higher rate. They also aren't limited to testing only two algorithms at a time. They have enough volume to run multiple sets of tests with controls and variations and still not have it affect more than a handful of the ads served.

Thinking very abstractly, for both search and AdSense, a site will be crawled and indexed in some manner. For search, a search term will be entered, a SERP will show the results, and finally a site will be reached. For AdSense, the order is mixed a little: first the site is loaded, then the associated page theme is found, then the ad is served. Even for Google, is it cost effective to index and categorize them twice? I'd like to theorize that there is some correlation with the search term as the equivalent to the page theme and the SERP as the counterpart to the ad served.

Here is something else to throw out there: Does Google use its search engine to determine ad display and do AdSense conversions affect a position on a SERP? In evolutionary terms, what if the fittest survive because they cooperate?

I would guess that sites with a higher position in the results pages might be served with higher paying ads because there is a greater chance of someone going to the site and then clicking on the ad. Or might the opposite be true? Do sites higher in the search rankings get served with lower paying ads because they might be more relevant to a user's search. If they can answer the question the user was asking, the search might end and fewer ads will be clicked as a result. Turning that around, it would be interesting to see if pages with lower conversion rates (in terms of ad clicks) rank higher or lower in the results pages than a similar page with a higher percentage of ad clicks.

Google certainly has some interesting choices. Do they put pages with higher AdSense conversions higher in the rankings so that they can make more money or do they base their results completely off relevancy? Are sites with AdSense more likely to be at the top than sites without? When you stop to think about it, if not for AdSense, Google doesn't make a whole lot of money from being a search engine. We see them trying to break into other markets, with varying degree of success, but AdSense is their cash cow.

I really don't have the resources to test much of this in any meaningful way, but it might be an interesting topic to bring up on Sphinn, Steven. I'm sure a few of the people there would be able to put something together. Again, I'm just theorizing from what little I know, so take it for what you will. I suspect there might be something there, though, and I think it's definitely an avenue worth at least exploring a little more.

**extraspecial** · 09-11-2008, 10:59 AM

well google needs to show ads and therefore adsense webpages can do better in searchs although it's not that easy to get a adsense ID

**Learning Newbie** · 09-11-2008, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

Here is something else to throw out there: Does Google use its search engine to determine ad display and do AdSense conversions affect a position on a SERP? In evolutionary terms, what if the fittest survive because they cooperate?

Absolutely they do!

Humor me for one paragraph.

Evolution happens at the gene level, not the species (or any other group) level. Natural selection favors a number of things, but, among them, it selects for cooperation. Sharp, razor like teeth are all well and good, unless they show up in an ant eater or any type of vegetarian. New genes succeed (make it into the population and survive the ages) by fitting in well with their environment, which is largely other genes. A cheetah has muscles to power fast runs, and a bone structure that supports its weight being thrown around quickly.

For whatever it's worth, your theory seems to match with the facts.

**VirtuosiMedia** · 09-11-2008, 04:16 PM

Just to point out, if you use either Yahoo or Microsoft's publishing programs, you might be able to use the same method for their search engines as well.

I just submitted this thread to Sphinn, so it'll be interesting to see what they think.