AdMoolah News and Views

WordPress has released version 2.6.5. If you you WordPress, Since the latest version includes a security fix, I highly recommend you upgrade now.

I have started upgrading my sites, and have not found any problems yet.

MediaWhiz (who owns Text Link Ads) just announced a new product called inLinks. (Sign up with my affiliate link.)

inLinks is a advertising network that places plain text ads within the content of blog pages. This is similar to what services like Kontera do, but with one major difference. These are real HTML text links instead of javascript based links. That means these links will flow PageRank from sites. Much like the original Text Link Ad servce, this is a link buying service, the difference is that these links will be within the content of pages.

Google and other search engines have always frowned upon link buying schemes, and will obviously not like this one either. In fact, Google’s Web Spam Guru, Matt Cutts sent TechCrunch a harshly worded email stating that Google does not approve, saying: “Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines.”.

With MediaWhiz’s other product, Text Link Ads, it is pretty obvious that the links are paid. The links were put into the sidebar of pages and grouped together. I’m sure Google could pretty easily discount links like these. Since this new service embed the links right into the content of pages, they will be much harder for search engines to detect.

So, although this is a new money making opportunity for bloggers, be warned that Google will be on the lookout for these links.

Google did something yesterday that they rarely do, give us a glimpse into new features that they are working on. They posted an entry on the Inside AdSense blog about ad filtering and mentioned that they were working on better filters:

We’ve heard your feedback about how quickly filters take effect and the ability to block specific categories of ads, and we’re working hard to improve our current controls and provide more powerful ones in the near future. Over the next couple weeks, we plan to improve the speed of your filters, and we’re working towards filters in the future that will take effect in less than an hour. We’ll also continue improving the Ad Review Center, giving you ways to block entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads. We are also working on ways for you to establish guidelines for the type of ads that will be acceptable to your users, so you can “set it and forget it,” while feeling comfortable that users will have a good ad experience.

I’m sure much of their feedback was about Propostion 8, a controversial issue in California that seeks to ban gay marriage. Californians surfing the web before the election on Tuesday saw a lot of ads supporting this proposition. I saw them on my own sites and quickly used the competitive ad filter to stop them.

Many publishers who use AdSense often complain about ads that are inappropriate for their sites, so hopefully these new filtering techniques will help.

I recently installed the WP Super Cache plugin on most of my WordPress blogs. This plugin in makes blogs much speedier to view by caching pages as static HTML files. The first time someone visits a page, it is served up as PHP like normal and the page is saved as an HTML file, and the next time someone views the page, no PHP is run, the page is served up from a cache, which is quicker for the visitor and saves a lot of processor time on the server.

The one downside of the plugin is that you have to remember to disable it when making any changes to your site, otherwise you don’t see the changes. I keep forgetting to do that and find myself cursing when my changes don’t work.

Elite Retreat 2009 is now available for registration. It is taking place in San Fransisco February 18-19.

For those of you not familiar with Elite Retreat, it is a very exclusive event, with only 35 attendees allowed to register. It has some great speakers such as: Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney), Neil Patel, Chris Winfield, and Kris Jones. The Keynote speaker will be Gary Vaynerchuk.

This is a very good opportunity to get some individual advice from some very popular experts in the industry.

I am seriously considering going this year. I wanted to go last year but had a travel conflict.

PubCon Las Vegas 2008 is next week. I wasn’t going to go, but then I realized I had booked a trip to Las Vegas (I go there a lot) that just happened to overlap with PubCon. So, I decided to get an exhibit hall pass and check things out.

If you want to meet for a beer, let me know. I’ll probably be hanging around the Convention Center on the 11th.