Googling for gold

While most of us know Google as THE Internet Search company, it is no less THE advertisement services driven company. Most users who have an internet presence, whether as a company or a personal web page such as a weblog (blog), already place Google's context sensitive ads into their web pages. This is a free affiliate program that anybody with a decent web page can apply for and obtain relatively easily. Money is generated for the web page owner through metrics such as CPM (cost per thousand) and CPC (Cost per Click). Many are just happy that the dollars and cents are trickling into their affiliate accounts with Google to bother too much about these metrics.

Are there any other means of earning money besides ads with Google? Do you know the inner workings of your Adsense membership programme and how to maximise your earnings? How about profitting from Adult sites? These, and many other less well known facts of Google advertising is explored in the the book, "Google Advertising Tools" by Harold Davis. The book is divided into 4 parts. The first 2 parts delves into how the Google uses the internet surfing habits of people to generate advertising eye-balls, which leads to part 2 on the details of Google's Adsense programme and how to maximise the amount of money you make.

Parts 3 and 4 focuses on how advertisers can maximise eye-balls through Google's AdWord programme and its related API (Application Programming Interface).

I suspect that Adsense users would not be that interested in AdWords and vice versa. But therein lies the attraction, or the bain, of this book - it is good for people who are more interested in making more money advertising or for people who want to drive business to their web sites through effective and customized ad placements. One doesn't have to read this book cover to cover before coming away with a few useful tips either way although I suspect that both parties would have preferred if their interest (making money advertising or advertising to make money) enjoyed greater coverage. As it is, both areas receive fairly even coverage.

One thing I learnt is that your website's Google Pagerank will increase the more other websites' webpages (and that include blogs) link to your website. So the next time you find other pages linking to your website or blogs (even deep-linking ones), be happy. That only means that someone values your content. This comes at the expense of bandwidth, of course, but then, that's why you publish, isn't it? On the other hand, if you have got Google adsense code, it can only be a good thing, right?

As always, O'Reilly titles are worth the time and money spent.