I’ve be reluctant to post this, but after I’ve seen countless people ask this question and get the wrong answer from the people we look to for these types of answers I thought I’d try to let the truth to come out.
First off let me start by saying this topic of can using Adwords give you an increase in the natural rankings in Google was first addressed by the now famous AdWordsAdvisor & GoogleGuy in December of 2003. [webmasterworld.com...] Why do I mention this well its one of only a couple times in history that Both AdWordsAdvisor & GoogleGuy replied to the same question. In fact the two postings came within 4 hours of each other and were actual one right after another. Again strange why would both Google representatives reply to the same question with roughly the same answer? The answer is I believe is they wanted to make sure you the user would believe what they said.
Google is a great company and has a great public image of being a down to earth, couple guys in front of a computer feel, but they also have a very corporate core, which most users never see. Well we got into this corporate side of Google and it’s helped our corporation use and understand Google better. One of the things that we’ve been able to document was by using Adwords, Google can affect you within the natural Google results. This is 100% documented by Google and is available to people that can access some of the corporate Google information.
Does this mean that Google does this for every website that uses Adwords, NO! Actually we were only able to officially document 4 cases of this. I will quote AdwordsAdviors as he did said it best “I really think it amounts to a numbers game. With roughly 4,285,199,774 pages in the SERPs - and many tens of thousands of advertisers in AdWords, there are bound to be coincidental intersections between the two.” [webmasterworld.com...] So they do this, but maybe the fact that they do it only for select advertisers makes it more unfair then them doing it at all. What are your thoughts?
As for specifics, I have sent a “sticky” to AdWordsAdvisor & GoogleGuy to let them respond to this posting and to give you the specifics I’ve left off this posting.
I would like Google to redeem itself by apologizing for this and correcting this if their official policy is "No connection between search and AdWords" which was stated by AdwordsAdvisor [webmasterworld.com...]
AWA and GG tend to have sticky mail disabled ...
there is NO link, repeat NO link.
Shak
The top spenders on adwords would naturaly rank well because their sites would be authority sites.
or take it 1 step forward/sideways, would KNOW the value of quality targeted traffic and use all avenues of generating traffic = SERPS, PPC et al ...
Shak
Give it a day for GG or AWA to review this, I've also sticky you with the sticky to them so you can see mroe about this.
But its 100% documented by Google that this does happen.
As for the big spenders and Adwords 3 out of the 4 cases we could find document are Adwords advertisers spending over 10,000 USD a month.
Again give it a day and then the truth will come out direct from GG or AWA.
suppose 1st I should say welcome to webmasterworld.
Am happy to wait for GG and AWA to reply.
however I have been doing PAID google advertising earlier than 99% of the people on this board, and along the way have learnt a thing or two about how Google works.
Shak
You might have something with the time of things, as the first post by AWA & GG on this was in Dec 2003 and they might not have even worked for Google when this policy was in place. As 3 out of the 4 documented cases we could find were in 2002 and the 4th was in March 2003 several month before any word form AWA & GG about this. I hope that AWA & GG can confirm that this policy has since stopped and that they will stop increasing these 4 and other websites rankings that we couldn't document by their use of Adwords.
Yes I did say “stop” as currently Google still is actively increasing these 4 website rankings. Wish that our corporation was one of them, am sure we all wish this.
As for Google being able to deny this, that’s impossible or rather silly as it’s officially documented by Google, only thing that they could do was destroy these documents, remove any trace of their existence and use our Google Desktop to search and destroy these documents on our computers. Bu this won’t happen, I’m sure that the current policy is not to affect rankings of advertisers using Adwords, but just want them to correct this policy back to the days when they did affect these rankings.
Yes I did say “stop” as currently Google still is actively increasing these 4 website rankings
Maybe, just maybe, it might be that these four websites in question are being good SEO's? Just an idea...
it’s officially documented by Google
Where is it officialy documented by Google btw? We must have all been on holiday when they issued the press release...
Why not show us the evidence?
As for why I didn't post the documents, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I fear that there are more then the 4 that we could find. We have the 4 identified and documented, now if Google comes back and says they've corrected xyz.com 123.com abc.com 098.com (examples) and the ones that we have documented are different it will confirm our fears that there are more and at the same time open this up to a lot more scrutiny.
For you would want to find this information for yourself, look for the corporate Adwords information. Adwords runs 2 Adwords sites 1 for the end users the other for corporations, agencies, and major accounts within this other Adwords accounts you'll find what I'm talking about.
As for SEO, all 4 of the sites are doing very well with SEO, which means they actually don't need this help from Google, but for what ever reason Google has selected these 4 to get a benefit from using Adwords.
A lot of words and talk about coverup and convoluted ramblings, and in the end, a big waste of everyone's time.
My two cents.
AdWords terms say the user must be able to click back to Google with 1 click on the back button. What you probably got was the standard refusal mail for redirected pages.
Most big advertisers on adwords are also advertisers on OV.
Let's say, hypothetically, that through a strange glitch, loophole, something that it is possible, if done correctly, to have an OV ad link show up as a backlink on google for the site.
One step further, OV has lots of people who publish their paid search results. A precious few of those coders may unwittingly through the design of their site cause a site that has lots of paid ads on OV to appear to have lots of backlinks in google which may cause the site to do better in google.
Not saying it's true, I am just saying think about it.
We all remember when Google offered “select” Adwords users a 30% discount off their Adwords spending. Now we were one of these select few, but sadly a really good friend of ours wasn’t. When we told our friend that we were getting this discount it upset him and he contacted his account rep at Google and asked why he didn’t get this same promotion. You know what the account rep did, sure several of you when though the same, he denied its existence. It took us sending him the actual Google document saying that we get 30% off our Adwords, the rep then came back with this reply “I wasn’t aware of this promotion as it's handled by a different department” and you know what they still refused to offer my friend this promotion.
Again Google has a very corporate core that very few people access, we’re probably not even at the core of Google’s services but we have had the chance to look behind the curtain.
you are half talking some BS
Shak
So, are you promoting the Google Adwords program, and suggesting that companies should spend money on Adword advertising so as to increase Google PR?
Could present an interesting scenario on keywords such as "sex"!
Matt
There's no "Does this person advertise on AdWords?" flag or ranking component that improves someone's ranking in SERPs. I don't believe there is any direct connection between advertising using AdWords and doing better in Google; if there were even indirectly, it would be viewed as a bug to be fixed. I certainly recall no official Google documents that say what you're claiming. But if you send me concrete details, I'd be happy to ask someone at Google to look into it.
Best wishes,
GoogleGuy
diamondgrl, I've heard these rumours as well. Do you know of any documentation at the plex that can confirm this? :)
But if you send me concrete details...
Don't hold your breath.
“I really think it amounts to a numbers game. With roughly 4,285,199,774 pages in the SERPs - and many tens of thousands of advertisers in AdWords, there are bound to be coincidental intersections between the two.”
... and read it as an admission of "guilt". Maybe it's just a case of misunderstanding what was meant?
diamondgrl, and who's the pigeon handler (remember, the pigeon search April fool's page?)? AWA?
I think his complaint is that some of our testimonial pages have hyperlinks and some don't. I'll post my reply over there.
admin note:
the new thread that GoogleGuy
referenced above is now spliced below
[edited by: tedster at 2:45 am (utc) on Dec. 7, 2004]
Do you believe everything the Government tells you?
As for the documents these were all obtained directly from Google and are made available freely from the Google website. Each one of the 4 cases we could find had a direct increase given to there websites by Google from using Adwords. Each document was solely created from the advertiser’s use of Adwords and each document was written, edited, and hosted by Google under the google.com domain/servers.
In each of the documents you’ll see direct links to these Adwords advertisers websites, this not only passes along a PageRank of 8 but its Google giving these select 4 Adwords advertisers an increase in their ranking for using Adwords. Wouldn’t we all want to get a link form a PageRank 8 page, not to mention from a Google.
Now how can Google claim that there is "No connection between search and AdWords" when these documents contradict this. If Google wanted to stay in impartial to Adwords advertisers they would have never posted the links within the documents. This obvious diversion to this policy bring up the question what more do they do that they won’t tell us. Again if we didn’t scrutinize the Government where would America be?
So what are the advertisers that Google has given an increase to, they are:
ForRent.com, AutomationDirect.com, Talk.com, ImpactEngine.com
The documents that confirm this are currently located on Google servers at:
ForRent.com [google.com...]
AutomationDirect.com [google.com...]
Talk.com [google.com...]
ImpactEngine.com [adwords.google.com...]
When Google corrects these problems you’ll still be able to see these in the cache for awhile and you can check the Way Back Machine if the cache gets updated to show the “corrected” pages.
Is Google wrong for doing this?
In my opinion yes. Why?
1. they denied that anything like this happened.
2. they only did it to 4 Adwords advertiser, why not help the other 25 “success stories” or to help 150,000+ other advertisers.
What are your thoughts...
If that was the case then all 25 as you say case studies would have the same benifit. That wasn't the case Google selected these 4 Adwords advertisers out of the 25 current "success studies" to get this benifit.
But no matter what the reason case study or not this does affect these websties in the ranking at Google and this increase came from the use of Adwords.
Its impossible for Google to claim impartiality when it come to affecting the search results and then activly post links to select Adwords users websites.
If ForRent.com is a 'model advertiser' so to speak, Google.com has the right to make a testimonial page about them. A small PR linking gain may be a side effect, but it clearly was not the motive for google to increase Forrent.com rankings. As with any testimonal, the motive was for Google.com to get people to join adwords! Anything ForRent.com may have gained from the link is coincidental side effect, and rightfully earned by being a 'model advertiser' worthy of being testimonialized!
[edited by: PPCBidder at 12:46 am (utc) on Dec. 7, 2004]
And even if they did who really cares? The links aren't hurting anyone, they pass a nice bit of PR to the featured parties as a bit of a bonus and I'm sure if they were your sites you wouldn't mind all that much, I certainly wouldn't! And as we all know these days PR isn't the bee all and end all of ranking.
I DID kill JFK. I did it from the grassy knoll.
But the CIA MADE me do it. And the FBI. And the Warren Commission.
