Revenue Sharing – the Click Fraud Risks
July 28th, 2006 by Sarah KingMy attention was drawn today to another discussion about newbies and their click-n-fraud requests made on their own sites, along side their links on other sites and in emails. Google (and hopefully the other ad networks) quickly blitz these fraudsters and they find themselves without any advertising at all.
A quick search on Google comes up with examples like this:
Now that’s easy situation, but what about when the site involves revenue sharing via a joint account? Read the rest of this entry »
Testing Google Alerts
July 8th, 2006 by Sarah KingA couple of days before the launch of WDANZ I thought I’d use the opportunity to analyse how effective Google Alerts are. I wanted to test the breadth of indexing and how quickly the reactions of bloggers might be picked up.
In the table below you can see how Google indexed the sites talking about this breaking news item.
Curiously, the reports seem to be out of date – the ComputerWorld example is the best – by the time the alert comes through the story had been buried in the archives.
This doesn’t spell doom for Google’s alerts – where they can direct you to a permalink – but it does render the homepage alerts virtually worthless. Read the rest of this entry »
Social Networking, Traffic and Ethics
July 5th, 2006 by Sarah KingPerhaps those three were never meant to go together!
Social Networking sites, and Digg.com in particular, aim to give users the chance to read the latest news, to vote on it and to share anything they’ve found.
They rely on group participation to provide content and to provide a reason to keep returning.
There’s a story entitled How much a digg worth? (someone is buying digg!!) where the following comment is made:
it is quite disgusting how people using digg for their own gain
And that in itself is comical. Isn’t Digg about gaining knowledge, gaining experience, gaining entertainment, gaining traffic and gaining exposure? Gain is the underlying motivation of every user who visits Digg.
Perhaps it’s just the taint of money that turned that user off?
Personally I’m unashamed that I use Digg for personal gain – it’s a great tool to keep abreast of the latest tech news – as judged by my peers – and to promote this blog. So for the rest of this entry I’ll make myself a case study.
I’m not a big user of Digg.com but you’ll find my profile at http://www.digg.com/users/sarahk/. Read the rest of this entry »
vBulletin and Spammers
July 4th, 2006 by Sarah KingI’m a moderator on a few forums, one phpBB and the rest are vBulletin. One was a surprise – I hadn’t realised until I started getting reported posts 
Personally I find the vBulletin forums better to moderate than phpBB but it’s a relatively close call – until you start banning people and looking for cheats. Then vBulletin comes into it’s own. Read the rest of this entry »
Web Developers in New Zealand
July 4th, 2006 by Sarah KingToday’s the day!!! The Web Developers Association of New Zealand is officially launched.
The NZ industry has had informal networking groups such as the PHPUG and Meetup.com organised gatherings but has no national identity. Something which is sorely needed.
Dennis Smith has taken the bull by the horns and started up the WDANZ. There are three levels of membership and it’s primarily aimed as a training and marketing tool for local developers.
I spoke with Dennis last month about Read the rest of this entry »
MSN Ad Tool points a girl in the right direction…
July 1st, 2006 by Sarah KingNow, if I could just get this on an API it would be great.
I ran the MSN Ad Demographics tool past some of my favourite sites and learnt Read the rest of this entry »
