Irishwonder’s Black Hat SEO Blog A blog about blackhat, general SEO issues and other things related to the life on the web

This Threadwatch.org post reports of Google’s new whim - it is now forcing AdWords users to use a Google account, like the one they’d have to have to use Gmail, Google alerts or Google Personalized search. A Quote form Google’s AdWords FAQ:

Why is Google asking me to update my AdWords login?

Soon, we’ll be changing our AdWords login system to Google Accounts. We’re doing this to help increase your security and make your life simpler with one email and password. A Google Account lets you access multiple Google services (such as AdWords, Froogle, Google Groups, and more) with a single email and password.

You’ll soon be able to update your login any time before Jan. 15, 2006, through your account. Here are some things to consider when updating your login:
< ...>
# If you already have a Google Account, you can use it as your new AdWords login. You might already have a Google Account if you use Gmail, Google Groups, Google Alerts, Froogle Shopping List, Personalized Search, Personalized Homepage, and Google Answers.
…

What an interesting move, indeed. This is enough to make half the users paranoid. Google must have some sort of a monster plan to collect all this enormous amount of - at the first glance - unrelated data under the same umbrella. Will they now charge AdWords users based on the number of Gmail emails they get every day? Will the frequency of their ads display depend on how much they use Google personalized search? If I were in their shoes, I’d probably create a separate account for AdWords, just in case…

This has me wondering now: what will be Google’s next move - switch AdSense accounts to the Unified Google Account? Burn everybody’s Google account on their forehead?

Just read on Threadwatch about Google’s innovation on Blogger: they now let you add your AdSense code and even register for a new AdSense account right from your Blogger account. I got curious and went to check for myself and this is what I found.

They added a tab for AdSense in the Template section. When you switch to it you have an option to either register a new Adsense account (I wonder if then you get approved for it automatically?) or log into an existing account. Unfortunately, I was not able to verify what happens next as as soon as I clicked on the “Sign In” button I was redirected to a page saying:

Error
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it.

Looks like either Google was a bit too early to announce the new feature or everyone was so eager to test it out right away that it crashed… Very sad….

If Blogger wasn’t owned by Google who already knows all the logins and passwords for Adsense I’d say it could be a phishing page for retrieving people’s Adsense login information.

One more important side note: the TOS has been changed again, and one thing I noticed there that drew my attention was this:

In addition, Google reserves the right to terminate without notice any account that has not generated a sufficient number of valid clicks on or valid impressions of Ads (as measured by Google) for a period of two (2) months or more.

Makes one wonder - what would that “sufficient number of clicks” be? $100 worth? more? less?

It’s been a few months now since I have first seen they are offering or going to offer AdSense for feeds. Feeds are going commercial - that’s the common tendency. Feedburner has been working on a similar program. Moreover.com has been doing it for ages now. Now AdSense. Blogger blogs have a special field in the blogs setup to paste your AdSense for feeds code in, and AdSense’s help mentions it along with the details on how to set up and optimize it. But once you fill out their form to apply for it, nothing happens. Maybe it’s just me? Or are they just taking their time to test it and see how many people would be interested? Anybody had any luck with it yet?

Judging by what’s saif on their site, Statcounter is planning to support AdSense tracking in the future. One of the options (not yet available) when the user creates a new project says:

E-Commerce StatCounter Project [In Development]
Campaign Tracking
Overture/Adwords Tracking
Upgrade Required
Coming Soon!

I haven’t seen anything mentioned as to when this option will become available. Maybe it is worth researching/reading through their press releases/site news. If they do release it and it’s going to be free like the standard Statcounter it’s gonna be good news.

Came across this plugin for Firefox on their plugins and extentions site: CustomizeGoogle. The description says:

CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam). All features are optional and easily configured from the options menu.

Funny, this sounds like AdSense/AdWords killer, doesn’t it? Also, I’d like to know just how exactly this thing removes spam and what is qualified as spam. Haven’t downloaded and installed it myself - nor do I think I will bother - but if anybody does any experimenting with it please share your impressions.

Another aspect is what Google thinks of it, considering the competitors links and the rest, and whether this can be qualified as copyright infringement.

OK, this is a bit of a speculation, I haven’t seen anything like that in AdSense TOS. But here’s a problem.

I have seen this a countless number of times, you register for a free hosting account or a free blog account onyl to find out the provider’s AdSense on your pages (a.k.a. “forced ads”). I do realize this is their way to make a living offering those free accounts - and I might have done the same if I were to host people for free. But it’s one thing when they put ANY ads on your pages - and quite another thing when they put AdSense with their ID there. See, what AdSense TOS does say is that you can’t have more than one person’s AdSense on a page - which makes all those free hosts useless for folks making money with AdSense ads themselves. Now, I haven’t really heard of anybody getting any penalties in case they put their AdSense along with the provider’s - but then I haven’t heard of these cases much either. If you have a story to share please post in the comments.

AdSense has updated its TOS and interface. It’s being discussed all over the SEO forums of all sorts. Not much has changed in the TOS, all the changes are viewed by most people just as G’s attempt to cover its arse some more.

As for the interface, I personally find it confusing how I don’t see the report I used to see first thing when logging in but the summary instead - it does look like it can be handy but it takes time to get used to these changes.