Today I was doing some research on classified ads and found an interesting new way of getting noticed in the search engine listings. Of course you first have to get in the top 20 or preferably in the top 10. But once there here is a screenshot of someone who really figured out how to get most of the clicks out of his free listing:

As you can guess the search query was ‘free classified ads‘ and the top 3 paid ads have exactly this heading. But take a look at the non-paid search results. Inetgiant has counted the exact number of characters and written a meta description that fits exactly with the 2 lines in the SE listing. The first line repeats some of the main keywords in a real sentence. The second line uses special characters, with a centered layout, to attract the eye of the user. Personally I haven’t seen such a remarkable way of using the SERP listing before. Although Mr. G will probably catch on soon with this new ‘trick’. Or will they?

Using caps
Another ‘trick’ that can be seen often lately is the use of CAPITALS in Google ads. According to the TOS this is forbidden, and usually the ad isn’t accepted. Paul Bourque (our Uberaffiliate)  wrote a post about a guy who did this in combination with total Google ad domination (this advertiser ‘owned’ all ten side spots). But there are many more examples and apparently Jonathan Volk has found a way of how you can have all caps in your ads. My guess is that it works with dynamic keyword insertion in combination with the use of symbol characters. Below is another example of using caps:

I have been following this search query (’free ringtones’) for some time now. And the above ad has been around for weeks (and probably months). So Google either has problems in identifying the use of this trick or they do not care so much. I haven’t seen it in Yahoo ads until now. And when you try to write all caps in your ad it will automatically be corrected by the Yahoo ad system.

Anyway, I wouldn’t call the use of capitals in ads ‘blackhat’. It is against the TOS, but some of these ads are online since months’ in a row. It is a fact that it gets harder and harder to get noticed. Lets just say that there are very creative people out there. What dou you think?

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