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Google AdSense: Is It a Google Search Ranking Factor?

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google adsense is it a google search ranking factor via sejournal mattgsouthern

AdSense is a Google ad product that allows publishers to monetize their content by displaying targeted advertisements on their website. Publishers earn money when people view or click on these ads.

So why do some people believe AdSense is a ranking factor? Ads have nothing to do with organic ranking, right?

Well, the belief is that sending traffic to pages with ads served by Google also serves Google’s interests as a company.

When a website is monetized with AdSense, it becomes another platform for Google’s advertisers to serve ads on.

Ethics aside, there’s an incentive for Google to send traffic to pages displaying AdSense ads.

More traffic means more ad clicks and views, which means Google’s advertisers are happy to pay for more ads.

But would Google let its interests as a company get in the way of delivering unbiased organic search results?

That’s the theory shared amongst those who question whether AdSense is a ranking factor.

Conversely, there are concerns AdSense ads could impact rankings in a negative way, as Google has specific guidelines on proper ad placement.

Let’s dive further into these claims, then look at what the evidence says about the impact of AdSense on search rankings.

The Claim: AdSense is a Ranking Factor

There are various claims related to AdSense as a ranking factor.

AdSense is a Positive Signal

One theory suggests that putting AdSense ads on a page has a positive effect on rankings because those ads generate profit for Google and its advertisers.

With Google having many of its services intertwined – such as organic search, Google Ads, and AdSense – there’s bound to be speculation that they share signals between each other.

Just as theories circulate about Google Ads being a ranking factor, which we debunk in another chapter, the same line of thinking gets applied to AdSense.

Lack of trust in Google?

An element connecting all these theories appears to be a distrust for Google.

People believe these claims because there isn’t enough trust in Google to keep search results fair and objective.

Google’s reputation as a trustworthy company has been damaged by lawsuits and investigations into alleged anticompetitive business practices.

Government officials have accused Google of such things as favoring its own apps on Android, and favoring its own products in search results.

Antitrust charges have been filed against Google in Europe and the United States in the past. Google is often under the microscope of the U.S. Department of Justice for claims related to anti-competitive behavior.

Despite being ordered to pay fines, Google maintains it didn’t do anything to stifle competition.

Continued investigations into Google’s practices do significant damage to its image of being a company people can trust.

That’s why AdSense continues to come up in discussions about ranking factors.

AdSense is a Negative Signal

Another claim suggests site owners have to tread lightly when participating in AdSense.

Using too many ads, or using them in the wrong places, is thought to negatively impact rankings.

This theory stems from the fact that Google is gradually putting more emphasis on pages that offer a good user experience.

Crowding a page with ads creates a poor user experience in a number of ways that Google considers important.

An abundance of ads can make the main content difficult to identify, cause the page to load slower, and cause the page to move around as it’s loading.

Each of these could lower a site’s page experience score. That’s why AdSense may come up as a negative ranking factor.

According to claims, AdSense either boosts rankings or lowers them. Which one is it?

Here’s the evidence.

The Evidence: AdSense As A Ranking Factor

This section is separated into two parts for each of the adjacent claims.

AdSense is a Positive Signal

The question of whether AdSense affects a site’s search rankings comes up so often that Google addresses it in the official AdSense Help guide.

Google confirms that AdSense does not impact a site’s position in the SERPs:

“Participating in Google AdSense does not affect your site’s rank in Google search results and will not affect the search results we deliver.

Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web.

Our search results are unbiased by our relationships with paying advertisers and publishers. We will continue to show search results according to our PageRank technology.”

Site owners shouldn’t use AdSense under the assumption it will have a positive impact on search rankings, as that’s confirmed to be untrue.

It’s worth keeping this in mind if you’re doing a competitive SERP analysis. If a competitor is using AdSense and your site is not, you don’t have to worry about it being a factor that will contribute to better rankings.

Will it lead to worse rankings? Here’s the evidence on the other claim.

AdSense is a Negative Ranking Factor

As we learned in the above section, AdSense doesn’t impact rankings either positively or negatively.

Advertisements in general can, however, degrade the user experience in Google’s eyes and lead to lower rankings.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with putting ads on a website. But the ways in which they’re used can cause trouble for SEO.

When it comes to ad placement, Google asks site owners to follow the Better Ads Standards which list unacceptable placements of ads on mobile and desktop.

In addition, the AdSense Help Center has a section on best practices for ad placement, which site owners are asked to follow.

Lastly, Google’s page experience update takes into consideration how a site uses ads.

In communication to site owners regarding the page experience update, Google says:

“A site must not use advertising techniques that are distracting, interrupting, or otherwise not conducive to a good user experience.”

There are various ways sites can use ads that negatively impact rankings, but that isn’t exclusive to AdSense.

To that end, Google has gone on record saying AdSense is not exempt from the negative signals that ads could potentially generate.

Invasive AdSense ads are treated the same as any other type of invasive ad.

Google AdSense as a Ranking Factor: Our Verdict

Google AdSense: Is It a Google Search Ranking Factor?

Google confirms that AdSense is not a ranking factor.

The way AdSense ads are used on a page could lead to lower rankings, but that’s true of all ads. Therefore it’s not accurate to say AdSense is a potential negative ranking factor, either.


Featured image: Paolo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Google AdSense: Is It a Google Search Ranking Factor?

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Google’s Next-Gen AI Chatbot, Gemini, Faces Delays: What to Expect When It Finally Launches

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Google AI Chatbot Gemini

In an unexpected turn of events, Google has chosen to postpone the much-anticipated debut of its revolutionary generative AI model, Gemini. Initially poised to make waves this week, the unveiling has now been rescheduled for early next year, specifically in January.

Gemini is set to redefine the landscape of conversational AI, representing Google’s most potent endeavor in this domain to date. Positioned as a multimodal AI chatbot, Gemini boasts the capability to process diverse data types. This includes a unique proficiency in comprehending and generating text, images, and various content formats, even going so far as to create an entire website based on a combination of sketches and written descriptions.

Originally, Google had planned an elaborate series of launch events spanning California, New York, and Washington. Regrettably, these events have been canceled due to concerns about Gemini’s responsiveness to non-English prompts. According to anonymous sources cited by The Information, Google’s Chief Executive, Sundar Pichai, personally decided to postpone the launch, acknowledging the importance of global support as a key feature of Gemini’s capabilities.

Gemini is expected to surpass the renowned ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, and preliminary private tests have shown promising results. Fueled by significantly enhanced computing power, Gemini has outperformed GPT-4, particularly in FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second), owing to its access to a multitude of high-end AI accelerators through the Google Cloud platform.

SemiAnalysis, a research firm affiliated with Substack Inc., expressed in an August blog post that Gemini appears poised to “blow OpenAI’s model out of the water.” The extensive compute power at Google’s disposal has evidently contributed to Gemini’s superior performance.

Google’s Vice President and Manager of Bard and Google Assistant, Sissie Hsiao, offered insights into Gemini’s capabilities, citing examples like generating novel images in response to specific requests, such as illustrating the steps to ice a three-layer cake.

While Google’s current generative AI offering, Bard, has showcased noteworthy accomplishments, it has struggled to achieve the same level of consumer awareness as ChatGPT. Gemini, with its unparalleled capabilities, is expected to be a game-changer, demonstrating impressive multimodal functionalities never seen before.

During the initial announcement at Google’s I/O developer conference in May, the company emphasized Gemini’s multimodal prowess and its developer-friendly nature. An application programming interface (API) is under development, allowing developers to seamlessly integrate Gemini into third-party applications.

As the world awaits the delayed unveiling of Gemini, the stakes are high, with Google aiming to revolutionize the AI landscape and solidify its position as a leader in generative artificial intelligence. The postponed launch only adds to the anticipation surrounding Gemini’s eventual debut in the coming year.

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Google Brings Bard Students Math and Coding Education in the Summer

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Google Brings Bard Students Math and Coding Education in the Summer

Google is stepping up its AI efforts this summer by sending Bard, its high-profile chatbot, to summer school. The aim? To boost the bot’s math and coding smarts. These developments are excellent news— when Bard first debuted, it was admittedly not a finished product. But Google is steadily plugging away at it, and have now implemented implicit code execution for logical prompts, and handy Google Sheets’ integration to take it to the next level.

Thanks to implicit code execution, Bard can respond to inquiries requiring calculation or computation with Python code snippets running in the background. What’s even more amazing is that coders can take this generated code and modify it for their projects. Though Google is still apprehensive about guaranteeing the accuracy of Bard’s answers, this feature is said to improve the accuracy of math and word problems by an impressive 30%.

In addition to this, Bard can now export directly to Sheets when asked about tables. So, you don’t need to worry about copying and pasting, which comes with the risk of losing formatting or data.

From the company’s I/O keynote address, it is clear that they are focused on making the most of what Bard can offer. As they continue to speak highly of the chatbot, we’re sure to expect more features and capabilities when the summer comes around.

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Google Bard vs. ChatGPT: which is the better AI chatbot?

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Google Bard vs. ChatGPT: which is the better AI chatbot?

Google Bard and ChatGPT are two of the most prominent artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots available in 2023. But which is better? Both offer natural language responses to natural language inputs, using machine learning and millions of data points to craft useful, informative responses. Most of the time. These AI tools aren’t perfect yet, but they point to an exciting future of AI assistant search and learning tools that will make information all the more readily available.

As similar as these chatbots are, they also have some distinct differences. Here’s how ChatGPT and Google Bard measure up against one another.

Which is better, Google Bard or ChatGPT?

This is a tricky question to answer, as at the time of writing, you can only use Google Bard if you’re part of a select group of early beta testers. As for its competition, you can use ChatGPT right now, completely for free. You may have to contend with a waitlist, but if you want to skip that, there’s a paid-for Plus version offering those interested in a more complete tool the option of paying for the privilege.

Still, when Google Bard becomes more widely available, it should offer credible competition for ChatGPT. Both use natural language models — Google Bard uses Google’s internal LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), whereas ChatGPT uses an older GPT-3 language model. Google Bard bases its responses to questions on more recent data, with ChatGPT mainly trained on data that was available prior to 2021. This is similar to how Microsoft’s Bing Chat works.

We’ll have to reserve judgment on which is the more capable AI chatbot until we get time to play with Google Bard ourselves, but it looks set to be a close contest when it is more readily available.

Are Google Bard and ChatGPT available yet?

As mentioned, ChatGPT is available in free and paid-for tiers. You might have to sit in a queue for the free version for a while, but anyone can play around with its capabilities.

Google Bard is currently only available to limited beta testers and is not available to the wider public.

Banner of Google Bard intro from February 6.

What’s the difference between Google Bard and ChatGPT?

ChatGPT and Google Bard are very similar natural language AI chatbots, but they have some differences, and are designed to be used in slightly different ways — at least for now. ChatGPT has been used for answering direct questions with direct answers, mostly correctly, but it’s caused a lot of consternation among white collar workers, like writers, SEO advisors, and copy editors, since it has also demonstrated an impressive ability to write creatively — even if it has faced a few problems with accuracy and plagiarism.

Still, Microsoft has integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine to give users the ability to ask direct questions of the search engine, rather than searching for terms of keywords to find the best results. It has also built it into its Teams communications tool, and it’s coming to the Edge browser in a limited form. The Opera browser has also pledged to integrate ChatGPT in the future.

ChatGPT Google Bard
Accessible through ChatGPT site. Only text responses are returned via queries. Integrated with Google Search. You only need to change a Google setting to get your regular search results when using Google Bard AI, and vice versa.
ChatGPT produces answers from its trained database from 2021 and before. Google Apprentice Bard AI will be able to answer real-time questions.
Based on GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). Based on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).
Service has a free and paid plan option (called ChatGPT Plus). Service is free.
Has built-in plagiarism tool called GPT-2 Output Detector. No built-in plagiarism detection tool.
Available now Still in beta test phase

Google Bard was mainly designed around augmenting Google’s own search tool, however it is also destined to become an automated support tool for businesses without the funds to pay for human support teams. It will be offered to customers through a trained AI responder. It is likely to be integrated into the Chrome browser and its Chromium derivatives before long. Google is also expected to open up Google Bard to third-party developers in the future.

Under the hood, Google Bard uses Google’s LaMDA language model, while ChatGPT uses its own GPT3 model. ChatGPT is based on slightly older data, restricted in its current GPT3 model to data collected prior to 2022, while Google Bard is built on data provided on recent years too. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it more accurate, as Google Bard has faced problems with incorrect answers to questions, even in its initial unveiling.

ChatGPT also has a built-in plagiarism checker, while Google Bard does not, but Google Bard doesn’t have the creative applications of ChatGPT just yet.

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