It is really freaky to go to Google and discover they’ve turned the lights out.

I thought they’d been hacked until I read the little message:

We’ve turned the lights out. Now it’s your turn - Earth Hour.

Good idea. I’m turning the lights out and going back to bed.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Google’s advertising product and main source of revenue. Adwords offers pay-per-click advertising for text and banner ads. When advertisers use Adwords to promote their product or service, their ads appear on any related website that is using Adsense.

Adwords advertisements are short, and consist of a title and two content lines. Advertisers pick keywords that relate to that their ad, and then bid on these keywords. They pay each time someone clicks on their ad. The advertisement will take the clicker to the merchant’s website.

Keywords cost more when they are more popular. If a lot of people are bidding on the word “internet marketing” the cost per click will be much higher. Depending on the keyword, a click may cost anywhere from $0.10 to several dollars.

Mastering the use of Google Adwords and effective pay-per-click campaign management is one of the keys to success in online business.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Google runs this ad serving programs that allows website owners to gain revenue by displaying ads on their websites. Google provides text, image and video advertisements that appear on participating websites. These ads appear based on the keywords and content present on the website.

Adsense has become one of the most popular methods to gain revenue from a website through advertising space. Adsense ads are less intrusive than traditional ads. Since the ads are picked based on the content of the website, the ads are also more relevant than traditional banners.

Web masters are paid when an Internet user clicks on an ad on their web page. Depending on the ad, the revenue may be a few cents up to a dollar per click. The ads used in Adsense are gathered from participants in Google’s Adwords advertising program.

Since web masters are paid regardless of whether anything is purchased at the advertiser’s site, it may be tempting for the web master to click on all of the ads on his or her site. However, Google watches for this type of activity, which is called “click fraud.” If a web page is showing signs of click fraud, a web master may lose their access to Google Adsense permanently.

Web masters can discreetly encourage clicks on their website by using three main techniques:

• They can use a wide range of traffic generating techniques to get more visits to their website.
• They can add valuable content to their site, to attract Adsense ads that pay higher per click.
• They use copy on their website to encourage visitors to click on the ads. Some of the most common phrases are “Sponsored Links” and “Advertisements.” It is against Google Adsense policy to post statements like “Please click on my Adsense links.”

Popularity: 26% [?]

Google’s making changes and the Page Rank for many sites is going up — or down.

Say what?

Code Monkey at vbModder says the Page Rank on his site has been nuts for the past couple of days. He said, on January 23:

This current Page Ranking export looks like it ended without completing. Lets take vBulletin Modder for example.

Our front page went to Page Ranking 4. It’s predicted at 6 which is meaningless, but with a three month old snapshot PR 4 would probably right for the toolbar. However, our forums are still PR 2. And the google webmaster site keeps switching between the two as the top PR page and has been since before the alleged snapshot date.

On top of that, we have newer forums that are now Page Ranking 4 and contain posts that are PR 4. Which would indicate the result of a front page at 6 and a forum home at 5 or 6. Then , we have older forums from when I started this site that still have 0 PR. What the heck is that. And to add insult to injury, (but I will take the PR) we have an archive page for a forum that has two threads that is a PR 5. This is bleepin nuts if you ask me.

There are authority sites out there right not that have 10’s of thousands of backlinks that were Page Ranking 7 before this export that now have 0. Something is seriously wrong and the bad part is it’s costing people money.

The updates appear to be done now — and I’m happy. This site used to rank 0, but now it’s a 4. Woohoo!

My vbMojo site was a 0 when I created it Dec. 5, 2006 — but now  in February 2006 it’s ranked 3. I’ll take that for two month’s work.

So, how’re your sites doing?

Popularity: 25% [?]

Changing dynamic pages to appear static is not necessary anymore in most cases.

Do a google search for adjustable baby slings and you’ll see plenty of sites with dynamically generated URLs.

If you’re wanting to optimize your site, you’re better off focusing on your keyword phrases, content and backlinks. Once you’ve done that, you can help the search engines spider more of your site by adding a sitemap.

Considering Google, Yahoo and MSN together have a corner on more than 80% of US searches, I wouldn’t waste my time worrying about anyone else.

And those three SEs are perfectly capable of indexing a dynamically generated site.

There are a couple of caveats. If your URL (website address) contains more than one or two non-alphanumeric characters, like an ampersand or a question mark, there is a very good chance that the search engine bots won’t index the site beyond the home page.

Also, it is important that you include the main keyword phrase for each page in your filename. If you are generating dynamic URLs that don’t contain the keyword phrase, you could be missing out on better search engine rankings.

My advice: Find a shopping cart that either creates URLs with only one non-alphanumeric character — or a cart that will create static pages on the fly. In either case, make sure that your file names contain the keyword phrase for each page.

UPDATE: Version 2.6 of Shop Kit Plus now contains the ability to create static pages with the keyword phrase using mod_rewrite. (This means you don’t have two sets of pages. The server is programmed to rename the pages for you.)

Popularity: 34% [?]