Saw this just now:

Looks like G is changing the way RSS feeds are displayed on the Personalized Homepage. I like it, the timestamps help a ton! It’s great to when things were posted because sometimes I forget what I’ve read or when something was posted.

I posted about the AdSense policy update last week and mentioned I emailed my AdSense rep to find out if I could run IntelliTXT. Last time my AdSense rep said “No” but said he would keep me updated leading me to believe there was a change coming down the pipe. After the new policy was released, I emailed again. This time my rep forwarded the email to their genereal support and I got a favorable response elaborating on the new policy. They said in general publishers can run 3rd party advertisements as long as they do not look similar to the AdSense ads on your site. Not just the page, but the entire site. So as long as you aren’t using the same color scheme or the same/similar layout for your other advertisements, it sounds like you should be fine running IntelliTXT, Kontera, Miva, Amazon, or any of the other in-line text programs or contextual programs.

Hope that clears things up a little.

ThreadWatch is running a story on Wikipedia’s new policy of adding ref=”nofollow” to all of their external links. Blogs did this over a year ago and it hasn’t stopped comment spam, why does Wikipedia think this will stop people from spamming them? There is still value from having links in Wikipedia, since Google ranks most articles very highly, the traffic you can get from an external link is still worth it.

Try again Wikipedia, this isn’t gonna stop SEOs or anyone else for that matter from spamming articles.

Well, I got tagged by Matt so here goes:

1. In High School I moved a car that parked in my spot across the parking lot. Later that day I was arrested for “Grand Theft Auto.” The charges were later dropped by the kid who’s car I moved.
2. I used to have an unhealthy obsession with CB radios. I would make these wild antennas in my bedroom so I could talk to people in other states. My handle was stimpy and later skyhawk. The numbers 133 which I currently attach to skyhawk were ever other number in the serial number of my base station CB radio.
3. I’ve never been West of Grants, New Mexico. While I’ve lived in many different places including Germany and England, I’ve never made it West of New Mexico. No Vegas, no San Francisco, no Seattle. Nothing.
4. In elementary school, I played soccer even though I was alergic to grass and had terrible asthma.
5. My favorite food is Tuna Noodle Casserole.

Alrighty, lets see here. I’m gonna tag Rex, Brent, Mark, and Max

The Google AdSense Policy was updated this evening. The one thing that wasn’t surprising was the new reference to images near ads:

• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
• May not place misleading images alongside individual ads

This isn’t new information, the AdSense team made this clear in a blog entry a few weeks ago. But there is a major change that will take a lot of publishers by surprise. The implications of their Competitive Ads policy are far reaching:

In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

This means if you were running ANY ads that resembled AdSense ANYWHERE on your site, they have to be removed, or changed significantly as to not look like any of the colors or AdSense layouts. Apparently you can still run YPN on the same site, but you can’t use the same color palette. I would actually interpret that statement to say you CAN’T run YPN because the layouts are similar, but Jensense says you can run YPN as long as the colors aren’t the same.

One thing I noticed was the reference to other contextual ads being removed. I don’t have the old policy saved so I can’t confirm this at the moment, but it would appear that as long as you aren’t running ads that look like AdSense, you can still run contextual ads. This should open the door for IntelliTXT and Kontera as well as Amazon.

I’ve emailed my AdSense rep to get clarification. This may be the end of Google telling publishers “NO” to IntelliTXT.

I’m seeing a Toolbar PageRank update today. Matt Cutts confirms this. It was nice to see all my PR from the old directory structure at Dream.In.Code move to the new directory structure. Looks like Google finally got a good handle on 301’s.

I’ve been doing a little work with Pay Per Post advertising the past weeks and after having relatively good success with PayPerPost.com I decided to try ReviewMe.com. There is a big difference in the pricing model at ReviewMe but I was willing to try it out. I picked a highly targetted site related to programming. For $250 the blogger would write a review of my site in whatever tone he/she felt was best. It didn’t have to be positive. The blogger declined my offer. So I tried another… and another… and another. Four blogs later and what would have been close to $800, no one accepted my offer. It’s not like I was promoting russian brides or kiddy porn.

ReviewMe, you might want to look at this a little closer because now I have absolutely no desire to even attempt another offer with your company. While I might not get near the traffic I would on a popular blog, the overall value from a $5.00 offer at PayPerPost far outweighs getting nothing from your bloggers.

I’m also in the process of trying out BlogsVertise and so far am not impressed with them. Maybe I missed something, but paying $20 for the exact same quality I got at PayPerPost for 1/5th that makes no sense to me.

I’ll follow up in a few days with my findings from PayPerPost and BlogsVertise.

We all know how important branding is. I’m sure each of you know of the brand leader in a few niches. In the programming niche, Experts Exchange is one of the brand leaders. For PHP scripts, HotScripts is the brand leader. For reviews, CNet is a brand leader.
If a lot of your traffic comes from search engines, you can help brand your site for free. Add the name of your site to the titles of your pages. Do it in a way that won’t upset your rankings though (i.e. no extraneous keywords). In my case I simply added “| DreamInCode.net” to my titles. This way users see my name in the SERPS and if they see it enough may think of my site when they think “programming help”.

I’ve been monitoring my rankings for a few weeks now and I haven’t seen any drastic changes. I modified around 200,000 pages and google has picked up several thousand of them so far. On average I’ve seen a +1 increase in rankings, but that can be attributed to some link building.

A few years ago I signed up for TradePub, a free magazines CPA program. I ran it for about 6 months and made about $15 I think. So, I ditched it. A few months ago, I was turned on to it again and decided to give it another try. I’m glad I did. In total, I’ve made around $1000 since September. My account manager, Laurie, has been amazing. She’s very proactive and keeps me up to date and motivated.

If you have a site related to any sort of trade, or are interested in getting some of the free publications, check out TradePub: http://dreamincode.tradepub.com

Primarily CPM Based Ad Networks

• 121Media
• 24/7 RealMedia
• Accelerator-Media
• Ad Solutions Network
• Ad World Network
• AdAgency1
• AdBonus
• AdDynamix / Pennyweb Networks
• AdOrigin
• AdPepper
• AdSmart
• Adtegrity
• AdZuba
• Ampira Media
• Bannerconnect
• BannerSpace
• BlueLithium
• BURST! Media
• Casale Media
• Claxon Media
• Click Agents
• ClickBooth
• CPX Interactive (Formerly Buds Media)
• EuroClick
• Experclick
• FastClick/ValueClick
• Federated Media
• Gold Group
• Gorilla Nation Media
• Hurricane Digital Media
• Impression|Up
• InterClick
• Interevco (Interactive Revenue Company Ltd.)
• Joetec
• Mamma Media / FocusIn
• MaxOnline
• Oridian
• Premium Network
• Quake Marketing
• Quin Street
• RealCastMedia
• RealTechNetwork
• Revenue.net
• Right Media
• Rydium
• The Robert Sherman Company
• TMP
• Tribal Fusion
• Valuead.com
• Yes Advertising

Primarily CPA/CPL Ad Networks

• Advertising.com
• Axill
• Azoogle Ads
• ClickBank
• ClickXChange
• Commission Junction / BeFree
• CoverClicks
• DarkBlue
• DrivePM
• emarketmakers
• Linkshare
• Maxbounty
• Meta Reward
• ProfitCenter
• Revenue.Net
• ShareASale
• Strategic Affiliates
• WebSponsors

Primarily CPC AND/OR Text Based/Contextual Ad Networks

• Google AdSense
• Yahoo! Publisher Network
• AdForce
• AdHearUs
• AdKnowledge
• AdSonar
• Affiliate Sensor
• All Clicks
• AllFeeds
• BannerBoxes
• BClick
• BidClix
• Bidvertiser
• CBprosense
• Clicksor
• ExpoActive
• IndustryBrains
• Mirago
• Miva
• Nixxie
• One Monkey
• Oxado
• TargetPoint
• Textads Dot Biz
• TextWise
• Text Link Ads
• Vibrant Media
• WebAdvertising.ca
• AdBright
• HyperBidder

Shopping/Comparison Networks

• TTZ Media
• PriceGrabber
• Chitika
• Shopping.com
• CNet Shopper

“Non-Standard” Ad Networks (PopUps, Expandables, Pay Per Post, etc.)

• 7AdPower
• Opt-Media
• PayPopUp
• PointRoll
• PopUpTraffic
• Tremor Network
• WhenU
• PayPerPost
• ReviewMe
• CreamAid

Specific Demographic Ad Networks

• Absolute Agency
• AVN Ads (*****WARNING: ADULT NETWORK*****)
• BlogAds
• CrispAds Blog Advertising Network
• HerAgency
• HispanoClick
• Pheedo RSS & Weblog Marketing Solutions
• Qumana Adgenta Blog Ads
• WayPointCash (*****WARNING: ADULT NETWORK*****)

NON-US Primarily CPM Based Ad Networks

• ClickHype
• DMO Global

NON-US Primarily CPC AND/OR Text Based/Contextual Ad Networks

• Response Republic
• PeakClick

NON-US Primarily CPA/CPL Ad Networks

• TradeDoubler
• Commission Monster
• Affiliate Future
• AdLink