Back in Nov 2009 I posted Chitika + Adsense Ad Placement Guide. Chitika is still my 2nd largest make money online revenue stream. Since Nov 2009 my Chitika income increased significantly in parallel to the increase in the number of referrals and blog posts. The best is yet to come. Today I would like to share a very good news about Chitika.  I am very excited to let you know that Chitika is expanding their ad display to show to more than just your search traffic! What this means to you? Your Chitika ads will now show to some of your non-search traffic so you can generate more revenue. Great, isn’t it?

The new ads are called Chitika Select. Using their click-prediction technology, Chitika will display Select ads on your blog when there is a higher chance the ad will be clicked.

How will this affect your revenue/stats?

Whenever Select ads are displayed on your blog it will result in more impressions to your Chitika ads automatically. The more impressions to your Chitika ads, the higher revenue. Chitika estimates Select ads could give bloggers a 5 – 10% revenue increase on top of Premium alone. Not so bad, huh?

The good thing is, you do not have to make any changes to your Chitka ads; this will happen automatically starting Monday, March 8th, 2010. Excellent news!

You might have some questions about the new ads. Bearing this in mind, I copied FAQ section from the official announcement for your easy guidance:

Can I Still Use Chitika | Select With Google AdSense?

Yes! Just like the Chitika | Premium ads you can use the new Chitika | Select ads and AdSense together on the same page.

How Can I Upgrade My Chitika | Premium Ads?

You don’t need to, it will happen automatically Monday, March 8th 2010.

Are Chitika | Select Ads PPC (Pay-Per-Click)?

Chitika | Select will always show the highest-paying ads possible. This will include PPC ads as well as CPM image/banner ads (which pay per impression, whether a user clicks or not).

Will Chitika | Select Ads look different than Chitika | Premium?

Sometimes. Similar to how Google shows image/banner ads if they determine that it is the highest paying ad for a certain user visiting the site, we will do the same. Some of your users will see ads with the Chitika | Premium format and others will see ads that look different but will pay more.

It’s been a few months since I last posted on my blog. That period was a bit hectic for me; I established my own company Stradiji.  Basically we provide SEO, Social Media, and Business Blogging services. I will later address it in a seperate issue. I would like to talk about meta descriptions and their increasing importance in 2010.

What Is a Meta Description?

It is the text snippets of the webpage you see in search results. They used to be an important ranking factor until 2009. In 2009 both Google and Yahoo! officially announced they no longer used Meta-descriptions in their search algorithms. However, recent developments in Google’s search algorithm bring Meta description back to life as an important ranking factor.

Google did not make an announcement about the Meta descriptions. However your site’s meta description can now significantly affect your rankings. I will explain how it happens.

How Can Meta Descriptions Affect Your Rankings Again?

In Jan 2010 Google announced that they would be tailoring everyone’s search results based on their search history whether users are signed into Google or not. Actually Google has been customizing peoples SERPs (search engine results pages) for quite a while already, but until this year it only happened when you searched while signed into your Google account. This year, signed in or not everybody gets personal results.

Whether you’re signed in or not into Google account, all the searches you run on Google are stored in your browser cookies. This data is called  ‘Web History’ and Google uses it to customize your search results. If you’re not signed in, your Web History is stored for 180 days, then old data is deleted and replaced with new searches. If you’re signed in, there’s no time limit and you can easily manage your Web History.  The thing is either way the searches you run and sites you visit will affect your future search experience.

The sites you visit more often will be ranked higher in the search results on related queries. For example if you search for ‘problogger’ and visit www.searchforblogging.com. Next time when you search for ‘problogger’ you may see www.searchforblogging.com in top 10 results even if it doesn’t rank there in the general impersonalized search.

Although Meta descriptions are no longer part of the ranking algorithm they can significantly affect your site’s positions in the personalized search results. Your Meta description is a crucial factor that determines the CTR (click-through-rate) of your site in search results. The more compelling your description is, the more searchers will click it. When they click through to your site from search results this is recorded in their Web History. Next time they search for a product or service related to your site, it may appear high up in their personalized search results. Got it?

What Should You Do?

You should keep in mind that Google does not always show the Meta description you provide. Sometimes it just brings a random text snippet from your page that contains the keywords used in the query. But you can easily locate the keywords where your Meta description shows up by searching for them on Google.

All you need is to take a look at your Meta descriptions. Check and see how your website appears in the search results and find ways to improve it.  Having a compelling text in your search results snippet will get you more clicks, more visitors and eventually more customers.