Google Considers Connection Between Banking Practices and The Money Suckers To Be Irrelevant
Conceptual disconnect is symptomatic of global financial problem by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Friday, November 26, 2010
As part of my efforts to promote my novel, The Money Suckers, I decided to attempt to use Google AdWords to promote my book. My novel is about the monetary, financial, and banking system and the role it played in the Financial Crisis of 2008. Google considers my novel's thesis, that the banking, financial and monetary system itself (as it was originally designed) caused the financial crisis, to be irrelevant to the keywords related to banking and finance. Sound crazy? Yes, it sounds crazy to me, too, but that's Google official position, as described by a member of their Adwords team in response to my email to them requesting support. Here's how it all happened.
I set up my Adwords accounts and began looking for keywords directly related to the thesis and content of my novel. The list I developed included the following keywords: subprime mortgage, banking, foreclosures, paper money, monetary policy, recession, money supply, money supplies, federal reserve crisis, federal reserve bank, money debt, monetary, the fed, economic crisis, federal reserve conspiracy, expansionary monetary policy, bailout, bank failures, international monetary system, financial crisis, federal reserve, financial meltdown, debt money, fractional reserve banking system, monetary system, fiat money, fractional reserve banking, monetary systems, the federal reserve system, u.s. monetary system, fractional reserve lending, the monetary system, fractional reserve, world money supply, global recession, causes of financial crisis, monetary policy tools, total money supply, fractional reserve system, global economic crisis, economic meltdown, global financial crisis, world monetary system, money as debt, bank bailout, debt based monetary system, current financial crisis, fractional banking system, debt based money, end the fed, fractional reserve banking definition, causes of global financial crisis, fractional reserve banking explained, fractional reserve banking fraud, make money supply, money supply growth, fiat currency, current money supply.
All of those terms are obviously directly or closely related to my topic. Yet, Google claims that my topic is irrelevant to ALL of those terms, and they enforce this determination by refusing to allow my ad for my book to be included in advertising for any of the above terms. That's right, despite the fact that many of those search terms currently have as few as zero or one advertisers in Google's system for those terms, my ad gets excluded for searches on those terms!
Here's what Google's Adwords representative wrote back to me in response to my inquiry as to why my ad was being rejected:
I see that your product is a book about a fictional story about a bank's financial hold over the world. However, you have used keywords like 'subprime mortgage' and 'banking' which seem to relate more to a finance related industry. This is why your keywords are being affected with a low relevance.
The rest of the email suggested that I come up with relevant keywords and reorganize my account to properly track those keywords. They also suggested that I ad an "about us" section to talk more about the book. Specifically, the Adwords rep wrote:
I suggest you use keywords that relate directly to your product. I also suggest that you create an 'About Us' section in your website that talks more about what your product is. Currently, your website only gives the plot summary for your book, and talks about financial fraud. In the about us section, you can focus more on your product being a book.
I have to admit: I did a double-take when I read their reply. How much more relevant do the keywords have to be? How much more relevant does my landing page have to be in order for Google to detect a connection between the fraudulent nature of the monetary and banking system and my novel?
Want to see the landing page I prepared? Here it is. Even now, I can't fathom what more Google wants.
I wrote back the following via email to the Google Adwords rep who replied to my initial message:
Thanks for your reply. I must admit to being perplexed. In particular, let me focus on some of your comments.
I then quoted the section of their reply I reproduced above, and followed it with this:
That's precisely the point of my book. Banking, as it is practiced today. is literally the cause of our financial problems and is the method by which banks gain their financial hold over the world. So when Google claims that my keyword choices are irrelevant, what they're actually saying is that the premise of my book is irrelevant. I wrote the book as a fictional novel to make it more interesting to read. However, the principles I present in the novel are accurate to real life. So when Google claims in their scoring that "banking" as a keyword is irrelevant to the thesis behind my novel, Google is essentially claiming that my thesis ITSELF is irrelevant.
I have no idea whether Google will reply. If they do, I'll do what I can to make the adjustments they suggest. Frankly, though, I don't see any possibility for improvement here.
At this point, the only thing I can think to do is to add a separate section to my landing page (the web page that I intend people to see when they respond to my ad) to include statements that equate all of those keywords to my novel's premise and claim that in each case there is a relationship between them and to show that relationship descriptively in a short format. I've never liked or approved of the idea of cramming keywords into a web page or web site in order to satisfy a search engine's algorithm. This is a practice I would normally avoid, but at this point I have to say that Google has left me little choice in the matter.
For those unfamiliar with Adwords, it's Google's main advertising vehicle and the source of the overwhelming majority of the company's revenues. Those ads you see on the right-hand side of the page of a Google search (and in some cases at the top of the page) are sold via the Google Adwords program. Also, many of the ads you see on other websites are Google Adwords ads, placed on those sites via the Google Adsense program, which shares ad revenue between Google and the website's publisher. In fact, this website also sells ads via the Google Adsense program. Most of the ads you see in the right-hand column next to each article on this site are Google Adsense ads, sold to advertisers who advertise their goods and services using the Google Adwords advertising program.
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