2 replies to this topic

[AskJoanne]

Hello all,

I was doing some research for a presentation and found something interesting I wanted to ask about.

One of the sites that came up #2 in Google for a particular phrase had very few mentions of the keyword in titles, content, header tags, etc. and NO backlinks according to Google, BUT they did have Adsense ads running right on the top of the page.

Has anyone experienced improved rankings because of running adsense??

Thank you,
Joanne

[Jill]

Has anyone experienced improved rankings because of running adsense??

Many of claimed it, but it's doubtful that there's a real correlation.

[torka]

NO backlinks according to Google

Google's link reporting has been deliberately broken for a long time now. They only report at best a random selection of the links that they know of pointing to any given page. If the page is in Google's index, it's almost certain it has at least one link pointing to it.

You simply can't rely on what Google tells you about the links pointing to the page. Not at all.

That said, they've also been quite clear that there are no connections between AdSense and the "regular" SERPs. As those links are served via JavaScript, I'm not sure the spider would even be able to index them to start with.

Whatever causes that page to rank highly for that term, I'd lay odds it's not the AdSense ads. I'm betting it's a combination of 1) poor optimization and/or low competition for the term on the part of others and 2) links that Google knows about and counts in the page's favor but just isn't telling you about at the moment.

--Torka