Google Ads and Expandable Product Listings

Reports have been coming through about a new Google AdWords format being tested on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Google is exploring the idea of offering a plus box option for sponsored ads, where users can expand the ad to view actual product listings (with pictures) by the advertiser.

Reports have been coming through about a new Google AdWords format being tested on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Google is now exploring the idea of offering a plus box option for sponsored ads, where users can expand the ad to view actual product listings, with pictures, by the advertiser.

Many SEO purists are concerned that the expanding ads in the top position will push organic listings too far down the page. In my opinion, its "much ado about nothing" as the default when the results page loads is the contracted version of the ads.

If a user chooses to expand the ads, then they've made the decision to view the product listings, and accordingly focus on the sponsored listings over the organic ones.

A similar AdWords test which include product listings in ads was reported at the start of this year. But the new version with images could be a sign that Google is closer to launching the format as a permanent option.

At this stage, it seems that the advertisers will need to submit their products to Google via Google base, with the listings somehow linked to their AdWords campaign/s.


No official release has been made by Google with specifications and details on the new ad format, but should it generate enough interest from advertisers, I'm sure we'll see it added to the constantly evolving Google AdWords platform.

Google Analytics Upgrade:

AdSense Reporting, Visualization Tools,.....More

Google Analytics is rolling out what it calls a “significant upgrade” to its feature set. The new tools include AdSense integration, Motion Charts, advanced segmentation, an API, custom reports, and an updated user interface to highlight these new tools better.

Online publishers may be most interested in the AdSense integration tools coming to Google Analytics. After linking an AdSense and Analytics account, you’ll be able to see AdSense data including:
• total revenue, impressions, clicks, and click-through ratio
• revenue per day, per hour, etc.
• revenue per page (what pages are most profitable)
• revenue per referral (what other sites bring you profitable traffic)
The Google Analytics API, which is currently in private beta, will open up analytics data for developers to export and use however they want. Advanced segmentation allows users to dig deeper into subsets of traffic, such as “visits with conversions,” or create their own segment types. Custom reporting lets users create their own comparisons of metrics.
Google has created a series of videos showing how some of these new tools work.

Google Warning Sites About Security Issues

Patrick Chapman explained on the Webmaster Central Blog, "We will be leaving messages for owners of potentially vulnerable sites in the Google Message Center that we provide as a free service as part of Webmaster Tools." An old version of WordPress will get singled out in a first test involving five or six thousand webmasters.

Here's the really interesting part, though: "If you manage a website but haven't signed up for Webmaster Tools, don't worry. The messages will be saved and if you sign up later on, you'll still be able to access any messages that Google has left for your site."

So we wind up with unsolicited advice that's stuck in a time capsule. This seems a little Big Brother-ish of Google, but it's hard to argue with something that improves sites' security. As most experts will agree, security tends to become more of a problem with every passing month.

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Hack Alert For CMS Programs - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Hack Alert For CMS Programs - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Google will be alerting sites to possible hacks of their CMS programs the Google Webmaster Central blog announced today. Nice addition guys.

Recently we've seen more websites get hacked because of various security holes. In order to help webmasters with this issue, we plan to run a test that will alert some webmasters if their content management system (CMS) or publishing platform looks like it might have a security hole or be hackable.

Google Webmaster Central release Updates

Google Webmaster Central has released some updates: one to the API settings and one to the crawl errors feature.
Here is new things you can do with your API settings:

• Crawl Rate: You can request that Googlebot crawl your site slower or faster than it normally would (the details can be found in our Help Center article about crawl rate control). If many of your sites are hosted on the same server and you know your server's capacity, you may want to update all sites at the same time. This now a trivial task using the Webmaster Tools GData API.
• Geographic Location: If your site is targeted towards a particular geographic location but your domain doesn't reflect that (for example with a .com domain), you can provide information to help us determine where your target users are located.
• Preferred Domain: You can select which is the canonical domain to use to index your pages. For example, if you have a site like www.example.com, you can set either example.com or www.example.com as the preferred domain to use. This avoids the risk of treating both sites differently.
• Enhanced Image Search: Tools like the Google Image Labeler allow users to tag images in order to improve Image Search results. Now you can opt in or out for all your sites in a breeze using the Webmaster Tools API.
For the crawl error feature, you now get to see the URL of the inbound link that is linking to an error page.

Google Webmaster Tools Now Provide Source Data For Broken Links

Google Webmaster Tools Now Provide Source Data For Broken Links

Ever since Google Webmaster Tools started reporting on broken links to a site, webmasters have been asking for the sources of those links.

Today, Google has delivered. From Webmaster Tools you can now see the page that each broken link is coming from. This information should be of great help for webmasters in ensuring the visitors find their sites and that their links are properly credited.

Google Want links, but what kind of links?

Google with a tutorial on inbound links. It says basically what SEO experts have been saying for years: content and inbound links are most important, and in that order.
Just because it’s old news doesn’t mean it’s bad news. Google’s had a real history of silence on the SEO side of things, and experts were often left to theorize and test—and worse, try to game. Google sent a pretty loud signal this time last year by hitting the PageRanks of paid directories, a move seeming to confirm basic white-hat SEO tactics. The virtues of naturally gained, editorial inbound links and directly denounces links appear “spammy,” or not “merit-based.”
One of the strongest ranking factors on a site is the site's content. Additionally, perhaps a site is also linked from three sources -- however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.

Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.

Here are four bullet points on how to earn merit-based links, paraphrased below:
• Start a site-related blog, writing or video, research or entertainment.
• Be interesting. Be a teacher.
• Participate in the community surrounding your industry—social media, blog comments, user reviews.
• Provide useful products or services.

In short: content, content, content, a little participation, and the links will come.

Soon you can track your business with Google RSS

Google will unveil the new RSS alert service for Web Search, which will sit aside it's current email alerts. Web search alerts make it easier for website and business owners to keep track of their listings and references in Google's web results.

Google currently offers RSS alerts for its News and Blog search services, but is the last of the top 3 search engines to offer feed alerts on its core search results. Microsoft and Yahoo! have offered RSS alerts for quite some time.

For those of you wondering what's so special about Google Search RSS alerts, it makes tracking your site/business in the search engine much easier.

You'll get an automate update every time Google indexes new content that references a particular keyword or search term such as your website or business.

For example, I have set up my main keywords for some Pages and feeds as a Google alert. So everytime Google's spiders crawl and index a web page or article that references us, I get alerted.

It helps me keep up to date on our reputation online, check some of our SEO strategies and generally keep my finger on the pulse. It's also a great way to keep on top of what your competitors are doing.

As said, RSS feeds will be an extension of Google Alerts, which currently only allow notification by email.Screen-scraping Google results was already easily possible but once live, RSS feeds should be a nice addition nevertheless, especially for all the tools out there which only work on RSS. Theres no specific launch date set for this, Google says.

Inside AdWords: AdWords Editor 6.5 for Windows and Mac

Inside AdWords: AdWords Editor 6.5 for Windows and Mac

This release includes several features to help you navigate and manage your account, such as a new Keyword Opportunities tool, horizontal scrolling in the data view, and auto-sizing columns. You can learn more about these and other new features in the release notes.

YouTube, Now with Click-to-Buy

YouTube has begun placing click-to-buy links beneath videos. This is the beginning of a greater plan to offer YouTube as an e-commerce platform to interested companies.
Amazon, iTunes, EMI Music and Electronic Arts are among the first to get a crack at the new feature, which is currently only available in the United States.
Memo to Viacom: Instead of suing Google and YouTube, which is costing you undoubtedly large sums of money in legal fees, you might try advertising on the wildly popular online video network instead.

Advertise with online video.

Online video is becoming quite popular, and it stands to reason that opportunities for video advertising are increasing right along with that popularity.

Sure, ads in online videos aren't nearly as popular as the videos themselves. Actually, they tend to annoy users who just want to watch a TV show or whatever. It's really not that different than television, except that ad time in online video tends to be much shorter, so the ads don't drive users away.

Ads are how many online video providers monetize their sites though, and they are going to have ads regardless, so they might as well be your ads.

Apart from true online video, Google has even made it easier to get your video ads on television. They just signed a deal with NBC Universal that will see them putting ads for clients on the network's stations such as MSNBC, CNBC, Sci-Fi, Oxygen, Sleuth, and Chiller. If all goes well, they will likely add more stations as well - possibly even NBC.

The interesting part about this is that you can manage your ads from the same place as your Google AdWords account. So think about how easy it would be to transition the ads you make for online rotation to traditional television.

The bottom line is: online video is getting bigger. You don't want to be left behind and miss out on potential customers because you don’t have a presence.

Microsot's headoffice for search is moving to Norway

A New Advertising Opportunity from MySpace



MySpace has recently launched a new ad program: MySpace Music, a new service that lets people create their own playlists of songs, and offers a huge catalog of millions of major label and independent label songs to stream on demand. This can be a very big and popular service.

What they did is to start a new advertising program that MySpace announced just before the launch of MySpace Music. While it is geared toward bands to help promote themselves, since MySpace is such a great tool for them to do so, there is no reason that any small business can't utilize the same program.

It is a self-serve ad program that allows users to create their own banner ads easily, and then target them toward the audience that they wish. You can narrow your campaign down by gender, geographical area, or age, based on information that users supply on their profile pages.

Users can use MySpace's new tool to track their ads' performance, and control how much they spend on any campaign. There is a minimum of $25, but you can spend as little as that, and up to $10,000, and you only pay when your ad is clicked on.

MySpace is still very popular, and will probably grow more now that MySpace Music has been launched. Since lovers of just about every kind of music can find something they like with MySpace Music, they should make up just about every demographic you could possibly want to go after with your advertising campaign.

This Should Be Great for Small Businesses

Facts about the Yahoo-Google advertising agreement

Facts about the Yahoo-Google advertising agreement

Google has launched a new informational site designed to tell its story about why there's no need to fear an ad partnership between it and Yahoo. Within the site, you'll lots of information about the deal except for one key fact: when exactly does it start? The launch of the site suggests any day now.

Google Book Search APIs - Google Code

The Google Book Search Blog announced the new developer site for the Google Book Search APIs. The API allows developers to add Google Book Search features to their web site.

For example, you can now embed book previews, when available, to books listed on your site.With this API, anyone can:

* Embed book previews on your site
* Add book search results to your site
* Locate book information, reviews, ratings, labels, and user libraries
* Send Google user-generated content
* Link your users to Google Book Search
* and more.

More details here:

Social Networking in the Sky - Yahoo! News

Airlines are edging into online social networking, giving air travelers an opportunity to share experiences and maybe score some discounted airfares. In return, the airlines are developing a marvelous new marketing tool.

Just this week, Lufthansa, the dominant German carrier, introduced what it says is the first-ever dedicated airline-sponsored social network for college students: GenFlyLounge.com. GenFlyLounge.com allows duly enrolled student-members to compare notes on travel experiences and destinations and buy discounted student airfares on Lufthansa. Users must have current .edu e-mail addresses and present college IDs when they check-in at the airport for their flights.

Lufthansa's virtual lounge follows by 18 months KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' launch of online communities KLM Club Africa and Club China - which target road-warrior business executives who fly often to Africa and China - and Flying Blue Golf, which is aimed at duffers. This last social network is especially notable; it allows golfers to comment on their golf scores and courses they have played, use KLM frequent flyer points to buy golfing equipment and, of course, book golfing trips on KLM.

Recently, Scandinavian Airlines moved to establish close ties with a high-profile, high-income demographic group by establishing a Web site dedicated to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender/transsexual community.

Inside AdWords: Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days

Inside AdWords: Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days

Still no mention on turning on old accounts when they stop the inactive status, but they have given more details on how the Quality Score is measured including all of the CTRs in your account. This may force people to be a lot tighter with the keywords they add to their accounts so they do not have to pay higher rates for their established terms.

There are some interesting new details:

For queries without many advertisers competing for placement, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with a high level of advertiser competition may have significantly higher first page bid estimates, because you'll likely need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than your competition and show on the first page. Remember that you can bid less than your first page bid estimate and still show on subsequent pages -- as long as your keyword is relevant to our users.
Advertisers familiar with the competitive landscape for their keywords may indeed notice that the first page bid estimates provided are in line with the CPCs that they had been bidding to appear on the first page prior to the release of these Quality Score improvements, although this is not a given.

Is Crome The End To Google Toolbar PageRank?

Here are a few comments from Digital Forums


Google's new browser Chrome has been launched, but it does not support Google Toolbar, does it indicate that its end of PageRank (PR)?

yes may be its beta stage, but in my opinion Google would have came out with browser to support all its other products. I guess they might come out with updated version of toolbar with some new technology.

It's in beta and the best browser out there. Such fast. It will start to get slower as new things get added. Like google toolbar of course. I mean pagerank is their greatest invention, not chrome.

It won't mean the end of PR. In fact if anything Google will be using it to further promote it's PR calculation.
So it is the end of all toolbars! You should wait , for sure they will launch a lot of add-ons.

may be you are right, but still there is no support for Google toolbar on Chrome.
Google toolbar is something which simply displays pagerank, you can find out pagerank from many other sources. The reason it doesn't support it is because it is in beta stages, quite obviously.

I like Google Chrome. It's faster then all the other browsers I've been using before. True, a little PR icon would be cool, but since Google has revised the whole PR system latley, it'll take some time for many sites to re-obtain their new revised PR, just like my Ralf Engel dot Com blog.

Google didn't create chrome for webmasters alone. They created it for users for now and maybe they will create add ons for webmasters in their next update.

First things first. Chrome is still in beta. It is not the final version. There are tens of other things in the Google Toolbar as well, so why only Pagerank? The question should be does it indicate the end of Google Toolbar? Not Pagerank in specific. I personally think that it is NOT the ended of Google Pagerank or the toolbar itself.

Google Operating System (Unofficial Google Blog)

Google Operating System (Unofficial Google Blog)

Googling in Person to Make Friends - NYTimes.com

Googling in Person to Make Friends - NYTimes.com

It's Not Just About Adwords Anymore

Google is trying to get advertising agencies to warm up to it after years of not being their favorite entity. After all, think of all the marketing dollars spent on search engine advertising (and SEO campaigns for that matter) that agencies missed out on because of a certain search giant.

Aggressive Advertising

It's not unreasonable to suspect that Google has its own best interests in mind. Why wouldn't it? The company does seem to be working its way further into the advertising world more aggressively than ever. For example, they're talking about not even waiting for Federal approval before going forward with their ad deal with Yahoo.

B2B Lead Generation Tips

B2B Lead Generation Tips

The goal of many B2B search marketing programs is to generate online inquiries and leads. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) programs are designed to find highly-qualified prospects and drive them to targeted landing pages where people register to receive valuable information or complete contact forms. Below I share five simple yet effective tips to improve landing pages and registration forms - two critical elements of any lead gen program.

Could CROME be the start of an operating system

Today, Google has made a significant step toward becoming a Web-based operating system by launching a beta version of the open-source Google Chrome browser, which has been optimized to run Web applications rather than simply rendering HTML on a page.

"All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."
Chrome's main features include a beefed-up Javascript engine (aka V8), which will improve performance of AJAX apps like Gmail and Google Docs. It also offers better memory allocation, and an architecture that keeps apps running in separate windows as isolated processes -- so a crashed app won't bring down the browser, and security is markedly improved.

The browser includes its own URL box, which Google is calling the "Omnibox." It incorporates features from Google Suggest, browser history and search history.

As with the Google Toolbar before it, Chrome will also present an opportunity for Google to collect more user behavioral data. On the plus side, that could help Google develop better Web analytics applications. More cynically, Google can also take this mountain of user data and use it to better monetize its ad platforms.

Google Chrome: Google Open Source Browser [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Chrome: Google Open Source Browser [SearchEngineWatch]

Google will lounch their own Web brower. Read more.

Blogger Buzz: Show off your Followers

This could make RSS more popular !

Google's Blogger is unleashing some new features to make blogs using the platform more social. They will be rolling out these features over the next several weeks.
They want bloggers to be able to view the people that read their blogs, and will provide a gadget allowing users to display those people on the actual blogs. The way they are accomplishing this is through a "Follow this Blog" link that will appear on all Blogger blogs. Who is following whom will then be shown on the Blogger dashboard and in Google Reader, for those who use it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web chalks up what Blogger is doing as Google's attempt to push RSS into the mainstream:

For all its supposed simplicity, Really Simple Syndication or RSS has continued to confuse and intimidate millions of people online years after its introduction...

"Follow this blog" is a clear call to action and those words will soon grace the header of every blog on Blogger.com around the web. When users click that link they'll be taken to either a tab on their Blogger dashboard, presumably if they have an account and are logged in, or be introduced to Google Reader, the company's RSS reader. It's a simple, brilliant plan and we wonder what took so long.

Will MS IE8 help Microsoft in the search battle?

Microsoft is throwing whatever it can lay its hands on, at Google. The latest evidence is the upcoming Internet Explorer 8"being built with a few tricks to try and knee-cap Google.
"We didnt design this with Google in mind," insists Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch.
The new browser comes with a search box in the upper right-hand corner and, just below that, a row of tiny logos for various search destinations, such as Yahoo, Ebay and MySpace. You can select which destinations you want to include hereAnother Google-dodging feature in the new browser: Highlighting a street address on a Web page launches a map, with the default set to Microsofts Live Maps (though you can change this default to Google Maps).
Will it be enough? Not on its own"especially as Mozillas Firefox continues to eat away at IEs market share. But, if Microsoft can throw enough pots and pans new products at Google, maybe it can at least prevent Google from reaching 100% search share.
What do you think? Will IE8 help Microsoft in its battle with Google?

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Improved Flash indexing

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Improved Flash indexing

No More Need to Trash the Flash

Google has delighted web designers the world over with the announcement that they are now indexing Adobe Flash files better than ever before.

Google can now index any kind of textual content embedded in Flash files. They can also discover URLs. From the official Google blog post:

“Q: What content can Google better index from these Flash files?

All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.

In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we’re also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into our crawling pipeline—just like we do with URLs that appear in non-Flash webpages. For example, if your Flash application contains links to pages inside your website, Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.”

Google AdSense to Be Migrated into Google Analytics

A rumor circulating that Google Analytics will soon be adding Google AdSense data to the web analytics package. Amit managed to secure some screen shots of the AdSense related reports. The AdSense specific content seems to be found under the "Content" tab and includes:

(1) AdSense ad clicks per page
(2) AdSense Revenue generated per page
(3) CTR and CPM on a per page basis
(4) Also, a "Top AdSense Referrers" report that shows you which referring sites will generate the most ad clicks for you.

Many forum members are excited at this possibility. One says that it "might "eliminate the hassle of comparing adsense impressions to google analytics page views," which is certainly true. It's better to combine the greatest features than to have them scattered throughout for sure.

The only concern is for those who share their analytics data with clients or colleagues; in this case, those sharing analytics data may not want others to see financial information. However, you can likely use a filter -- or Google may come up with a good solution to hide this information from those sharing the analytics account

Inside AdWords: New features in Website Optimizer

Inside AdWords: New features in Website Optimizer

Some days ago, the Google Adwords and Google Website Optimizer blogs reported some new updates to Google Website Optimizer.

*
Experiment Pruning: This allows you to disable one or more combinations from taking part in your Website Optimizer experiments. Pruning can help you achieve faster, more meaningful results by allowing you to remove poorly performing or illogical combinations. This is especially helpful in cases where your experiment may have too many combinations relative to the amount of traffic it receives.

In the past, there wasn't an easy way for you to disable low performing or
illogical combinations. You'd have to stop a test, make a copy, lose all your test data, and then launch a new test. That's all changing starting today. Now, you can simply select any number of page variations from your experiment report, click our new "Disable" button, and you're done. Easy as that. All your future traffic will be sent to your remaining page variations, and you'll be on the path to quicker, more actionable test results

*
A/B Offline Validation: You'll now be able to just upload a copy of your tagged page and Website Optimizer will make sure that everything is tagged properly.
*
More Intuitive Reporting: We've enhanced our reports to more clearly show how your combinations are performing, and to better indicate when we've found one or more high-confidence winning combinations. This will help prevent you from drawing false conclusions from results or from ending experiments prematurely.

Inside AdWords: Quality Score improvements

Inside AdWords: Quality Score improvements

The Google AdWords blog announced three major changes happening to the AdWords marketplace. First, Google will now calculate the quality score of your keywords at the time of the search query. Second, Google has removed the "minimum bid" metric and replaced it with "first page bid." Finally, Google will no longer mark search ads as "inactive for search."

(1) Google will no longer assign a keyword a "static" quality score, instead, Google wil calculate the quality score at the time the search is done. The quality score will take into account the searchers location, query phrase and other factors. If Google sees that for a specific advertiser, a searcher in one location, who searches for a longer tail version of the advertiser's keyword is more relevant, then that ad will receive a higher quality score at the time of the search.

(2) Google is doing away with the popular "minimum bid," replacing it with "first page bid." Why? Well, Google is no longer marking ads as "inactive for search," and thus there is no minimum bid for a search ad to be displayed. Google does explain that a past ad that had a high minimum bid or that was placed as "inactive for search," would likely not perform well with the new quality score because of the nature of the ad. So by changing it from "minimum bid" to "first page bid," Google is able to give advertiser's "better guidance on how to achieve your advertising goals."

(3) Inaction for search is no longer going to be used, meaning, search ads will never be inactive. All your ads have the ability and chance to show up for keywords, expect for the ads you have paused or deleted. Google adds that keywords previously marked as inactive, will likely not perform well, "because their combined per-query Quality Score and bid probably isn't high enough to gain competitive placement."

Verktøy for nettredaktører

Google Launches Enhanced 404 Widget

Google has launched a new tool within Google Webmaster Tools that allows Webmasters to create custom 404 pages.

To access the tool, go to Google Webmaster Tools, then click on tools on the left and then click on "Enhance 404 pages." You can then copy and paste the widget code from the Google site, into your page template.
Google is not the first search company to offer such a tool. Microsoft launched a similar tool back in June. For more information on how that works, see this page.

Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo Buzz is now open to all publishers and web sites. Yahoo announced that any Yahoo user can now "buzz up" any content from any publisher on the Web.

Yahoo Buzz launched in February of this year, as a Digg competitor. It was locked down to about 100 publishers and grew to over 400, since then. Yahoo said they have over 5 million users that have participated in the site. But now, any user can submit any web page, on the web.

Google feeds publishers with new AdSense option | Googling Google | ZDNet.com

Google feeds publishers with new AdSense option | Googling Google | ZDNet.com

No need for Feedburner anymore....

When most publishers use RSS feeds to syndicate their content, most are hoping readers click through to the original content, and then they can monetize it from there — unfortunately, consumers of this feed data are often just looking for a quick fix, and not really that interested in the actual source of the information. This has made monetizing content a bit tricky when providing full-text feeds.

When Google bought Feed Burner, they instantly got access to a whole bunch of new ad inventory — which has largely remained untapped. Google has finally publicly launched their solution to that problem — AdSense for Feeds.

Google Launches AdSense for Feeds

Google Launches AdSense for Feeds

I noticed a new option in my AdSense account: AdSense for feeds, a program that displays contextual and placement-targeted ads in FeedBurner feeds. FeedBurner announced in May that AdSense for Feeds will be available to a small number of publishers and now it seems that everyone can use it.

FeedBurner has recently closed FAN, its advertising network. "No new applications for FAN publishers are being accepted and we expect the broad variety of options provided through AdSense (including the new AdSense for Feeds product, powered with FeedBurner feeds) will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential," says a FeedBurner/Google employee.

Google Search Results Show Metadata for Scientific Papers

Google Search Results Show Metadata for Scientific Papers

Google started to integrate in the search results information about the scientific papers included in Google Scholar. Below the snippet, Google lists the authors, the number of citations and links to related articles and other versions available online. The integration is not perfect and the search results look cluttered, but it's yet another class of results that have richer snippets.

Official Google Blog: New enhancements on the Google content network

Official Google Blog: New enhancements on the Google content network

Inside AdSense: A picture isn't always worth a thousand words

Inside AdSense: A picture isn't always worth a thousand words

Google Adsense Ads and Relevance

Google Adsense team helped users understand how to get higher quality and more relevant Google Adsense ads to display within your content:

1. Use text in addition to images when possible. Please note that the crawler can't read text contained within images.

2. If you use images, be sure to title them appropriately and provide descriptive ALT tags.

3. Try imagining your site without pictures or dynamic content. This will give you a good idea of what our crawler reads. If you lack imagination, you can try turning the images off in your web browser.

If your site uses a lot of these features, make sure you provide enough text-based content in one of our supported languages to effectively convey the topic of your site. If our crawler doesnt find enough text, you may get poorly targeted ads

Inside AdWords

Inside AdWords

Google Insights for Search
Google recently added search volume estimates to their keyword tool. They also recently launched Google Trends, Google Hot Trends, Google Trends for Websites, and the Google Ad Planner. And now Google hits the competitive research market with yet another product - Google Insights for Search.

Google upgrades Search Appliance with bigger index, added enterprise features

Google upgrades Search Appliance with bigger index, added enterprise features

Google on Wednesday announced a new version of its enterprise-oriented Google Search Appliance that the company said can index up to 10 million documents in a single box — up from 3 million previously — while also giving IT managers more control over the search results that end users see.

For instance, the new version lets IT admins set pages with certain metadata, such as a particular author's name, to show up higher in search results. Or they can bias results so that engineers get pages that have particular keywords or come from certain data repositories, while marketers typing in the exact same search terms see different results, according to Nitin Mangtani, Google's lead product manager for enterprise search.

Knol: a unit of knowledge

Knol: a unit of knowledge

Wikipedia receives loads of traffic from Google, and to be honest, there's no clear sign that this will change. But Google has gone so far as to launch a sort of would-be competitor, "KNOL".

Like Wikipedia, Knol encourages users create articles (also called knols). A key difference is that one user (or a small group of them) is actually given credit and pictured at the top of every piece. After that, other people are allowed to suggest changes, and the original authors can accept or reject them as they please.

Google’s Begun Growing Very Fast - Profy.Com

Google’s Begun Growing Very Fast - Profy.Com

Russian contextual ad network Begun, purchased by Google from Rambler Media, saw a quick uptick in its business through the start of 2008.

Google profits from international business more than domestic business. It's a simple fact of the company's earnings announcements; more revenue comes in to the Googleplex from outside the United States.

The situation prompted Google to continue its expansion by purchasing Begun for $140 million. They may have picked up a steal of a deal.

At Profy.com, Svetlana Gladkova cited Begun's announcement of a bountiful start to 2008. First half profits exceeded all of 2007's by 25 percent, she said.

"The profit achieved is explained not only by the mere number of new advertisers it attracted - advertisers also spend more on contextual ads: an average monthly spending limit is 9% higher now," said Gladkova.

LinkedIn Fires Up DirectAds | SmallBusinessNewz

LinkedIn Fires Up DirectAds | SmallBusinessNewz

The professional network LinkedIn opened a new advertising service that may be of use to small businesses seeking certain classes of potential business customers.

Targeted advertising promises a more valuable return for the advertiser. By narrowing the scope of a campaign by demographic and/or geographic variables, a small business should see better conversions from a targeted campaign

What Should You do When Quality Score Kills Your Keywords?

What Should You do When Quality Score Kills Your Keywords?

One of the biggest frustrations for an AdWords advertiser is when a minimum bid for highly relevant keywords jump from a few cents to a few dollars without any seemingly reasonable explanation. The keyword, ad copy, and landing page can all be highly relevant. The CTR could be above 5%. The keyword converts well. Users are obviously happy to be clicking on your ads. However, when Google updates the quality score, there are days when logic and minimum bids seem to disagree.

Besides screaming at Google and calling the AdWords system illogical, what should you do next? Below is a step by step diagnosis procedure for trying to find the hole in your quality score chain.

Read More....

Inside AdWords: Summer school's in session with Google AdWords

Inside AdWords: Summer school's in session with Google AdWords

Google Slaps Affiliate Marketers (Again) » Adotas

Google Slaps Affiliate Marketers (Again) » Adotas

In the good old days of yesteryear, you would pay an advertising company for placement and as long as your advertisement was not in violation of their terms of service, the deal was consummated and nothing changed from that point forward. These days you can be running a campaign very profitably and effectively using Google Adwords only to encounter that Google now has a problem with your campaign. When was the last time an advertising company decided they knew more about your business than you did?

The issue that search engine marketers have is that they are forced to read their digital tea leaves wondering “what changed” and why Google now is penalizing them. Google is a pretty smart company. What myself and industry experts alike cannot understand is why Google does not step forward and clearly communicate exactly what it is that they need and want. Like I said, sometimes brilliant companies and individuals sometimes do some really stupid things. Regardless how Google’s Public Relations Department spins it, they are coming across as more and more of a digital bully.

Read more....

Microsoft Testing Self Serve Publisher Advertising Product For The First Time

Microsoft Testing Self Serve Publisher Advertising Product For The First Time

Microsoft is testing their self-service AdSense/YPN product named Content Ads. They have started this pilot earlier this year.

Content Ads is still a very exclusive and limited beta test. Google AdSense is widely used by publishers, Yahoo's Publisher Network follows but is still also in beta, and only accepting US publishers (even after three years in beta), while Microsoft's Content Ads has been accepting on a very limited basis.
Microsoft told TechCrunch that they intend on expanding their "high quality network and relevant audience gradually and intelligently over time for our advertisers." Microsoft also hopes to "evaluate customer interest and product performance as we move through the private pilot, but we have no specific launch plans to announce at this time."

Internet Advertising and Marketing Articles

Inside AdWords: Use keywords and placements together on the content network

Inside AdWords: Use keywords and placements together on the content network

The Google AdWords Blog announced that AdWords advertisers can now combine keyword-targeted and placement-targeted campaigns in the same ad group. This allows for the targeting of keywords on contextually relevant pages and at the same time the ability to use placements to set specific bids or restrict your targeting to specific sites. In the past, you were not able to manage your campaign this way.

This is a feature available within the content network and is optional. For more information, check out the Google help document.

Internet Marketing

Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Ranking

Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Ranking

Google ranking is a collection of algorithms used to find the most relevant documents for a user query. We do this for hundreds of millions of queries a day, from a collection of billions and billions of pages. This same collection of algorithms is used for other Google search services, like Google Images, Google News, YouTube and Google Maps.

You might be thinking that this is something we all know, but what has divulged is that the Google ranking is broken down into three core parts:

1. Best locally relevant results served globally - The best relevant results are provided in what Google calls "no query left behind."

2. Keep it simple - Google likes to keep it simple without compromising on the quality of results.

3. No manual intervention - The rankings are powered by algorithms that reflect the behavior and linking patterns of the people in the whole web community.

Google's "Edit Search Results" Experiment

Google's "Edit Search Results" Experiment

Google tests an enhanced version of last year's experiment that allowed users to hide search results and to move some results at the top of the page. The new experiment adds an option to comment on a search results and to view everyone's edits.

Yahoo! Search Blog: BOSS -- The Next Step in our Open Search Ecosystem

Yahoo! Search Blog: BOSS -- The Next Step in our Open Search Ecosystem

Yahoo! has just unveiled the next phase in their plan to spur search innovation by providing search-related resources to developers. The Yahoo! Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) enables developers to access Yahoo! search results, combine them with other sources, rerank them, and define their appearance. Yahoo! says they are making BOSS available in attempt to spur innovation in the search space and disrupt the market. They point out that unlike with other web companies, a search startup has many obstacles: from cost (it takes a lot of machines to process all the web’s data) to expertise (some of the world’s smartest PhDs work at the major search engines) to historical data (which search companies can only get a hold of by that old-fashioned method of waiting).

So what is BOSS?
BOSS is a new, open platform that offers programmatic access to the entire Yahoo! Search index via an API. BOSS allows developers to take advantage of Yahoo!'s production search infrastructure and technology, combine that with their own unique assets, and create their own search experiences. While search APIs have been available for some time, BOSS removes many of the usage restrictions that have prevented other companies from using them to build innovative new search engines.

Internet marleting
Online Annonsering

Inside AdWords: Keyword Tool updated with search volume data

Inside AdWords: Keyword Tool updated with search volume data

Interactive TV ads are clicking with viewers - USATODAY.com

Interactive TV ads are clicking with viewers

Looking for ticket buyers, the Los Angeles Sparks women's pro basketball team recently tried a new ad play: A TV commercial during which viewers could press a button on their remote to get a team brochure.

Hundreds responded. "Whoever was on our billing information as head of household got the information," says Jim Heneghan, ad sales chief for cable company Charter Communications, which created the "interactive" TV ad and sold the time to the Sparks.

Cable operators such as Charter, as well as their satellite TV rivals, all are experimenting with such ads. Their goal: battle Internet media for ad dollars by merging a TV commercial's impact with former Web-only selling points such as interactive content, ad targeting based on consumers' personal data and precise effectiveness measurement based on how many people click on an ad for more information.

Nokia and Telenor sign Internet services deal

The world's top cellphone maker Nokia said on Thursday it had signed a cooperation agreement with Norwegian telcom group Telenor for its "Ovi" Internet services platform.

"As part of the collaboration, specific Nokia devices will be customized to provide easy access to both companies' selected services, such as Nokia Maps, N-Gage and Telenor Music Store and Mobile TV," Nokia said in a statement.

From Internet Marketing

Banned from Google? Get Back in the Game [SearchEngineWatch]

The Official Google Webmaster Central blog has posted steps on how to get reincluded in the search results should you find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being exempted. Mariya Moeva, of the Search Quality Team, hosts an entertaining how-to vid explaining the steps you should take when your site is Google-less. For those who can't or don't want to view the video.

1. Check your access. Log into your account and check the Overview page to see what happened when Googlebot visited your site last. Also, check your robots.txt file to make sure there aren't any pages blocked that you want seen by Google.
2. Check your messages. There could be a message in your Message Center inbox of your Webmaster Tools account regarding your site.
3. Read the Guidelines. Make sure you know what Google does and does not allow for sites it lists in its search results.
4. Help Group. When all else fails, join the webmasters help group where other webmasters and Googlers can help determine what's going on.
5. Fix your site! Once you know what's wrong, fix your site!
6. Submit a Reconsideration Request. After you've made the fixes, submit a request for Google to check your site again.

Google Affiliate Network A Platform for Advertisers

Google Affiliate Network A Platform for Advertisers

The Google Affiliate Network is quite like any other affiliate advertisement network, where advertisers earn via successful sales through their websites. As of now, Google Affiliate Network will work as a standalone advertising platform, entirely separate from Google AdSense. However, speculations are that, Google would merge these two platforms into one to create a bigger and better advertising platform. However, the merger is only expected to happen, if Google Affiliate Network shows the desired results.

For all our readers, who might be interested in the new Google Affiliate Network, all you need to do is to sign up for the programs and create an account. However, Google has some criteria that your website needs to meet and the criteria revolves around your website traffic. You should be adept in the following fields:

1. You can manage a site that attracts a desirable audience.
2. You can test advertising offers and nurture the most productive relationships.
3. You are an expert in driving and converting visitor traffic.
4. You adhere strictly to Google Affiliate Network quality standards and advertiser policies

Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content

Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content

Historically, search engines have been unable to extract content, such as text and links, from Flash (SWF) files. Subsequently, much of the Flash-based content on the web has been unavailable in search results. This situation has been frustrating for web developers, who have tried to come up with workarounds to help get search engines to index and rank their Flash pages.

Google can now crawl and index Flash files

Google has been working on improving how they crawl and index rich content (such as Flash and JavaScript) for some time, and in fact, have been able to extract some text and links from Flash files for a while. However, their methods weren't perfect, and they tell me that this new technology from Adobe makes Google's algorithms "less error prone" and enables them to access content created in any version of Flash in a variety of languages.

Inside AdWords: Free online webinar for Google's analysis products

Inside AdWords: Free online webinar for Google's analysis products

Google Adds API To Webmaster Tools

Google Adds API To Webmaster Tools

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they now have APIs for developers and webmasters to tap into. You can now access some of the data you see in Google Webmaster Tools through an API.

API features currently include:
-- Managing Sites
-- Retrieve a list of your sites in Webmaster Tools
-- Add your sites to Webmaster Tools
-- Verify your sites in Webmaster Tools
-- Remove your sites from Webmaster Tools
- Working with Sitemaps
-- Retrieve a list of your submitted Sitemaps
-- Add Sitemaps to Webmaster Tools
-- Remove Sitemaps from Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools AP Developer's Guide.

Official Google Video Blog: Suggestions on Your Search

Official Google Video Blog: Suggestions on Your Search

Google Video has introduced related searches and suggestions in a horizontal layer just below the search box. These suggestions broaden or alter the scope of the original search query. It's a way to drive additional volume and page views on Google video. However, YouTube accounts for 98 percent of video viewing on Google-owned properties according to comScore.

Web 2.0 scores success in the enterprise

Web 2.0 scores success in the enterprise

Incorporating Web 2.0 social networking concepts into enterprises offers great benefits but also challenges, said implementers of these technologies such as Best Buy, Serena Software and Oracle during an industry event Tuesday evening in Silicon Valley.

Social networking in corporate environments, also referred to as Enterprise 2.0, increases collaboration and idea-sharing among employees as well as customers and can even lower employee turnover, panelists said at a Churchill Club presentation entitled "From 'Dilbert' to Dude: Succeeding with Web 2.0 Within the Enterprise," given in Santa Clara, Calif.

Get Ready For A New Platform War. Google Gears Drives Straight At Microsoft’s Profits.

Get Ready For A New Platform War. Google Gears Drives Straight At Microsoft’s Profits.

Google launched Gears last May, and for the first year of its release it was considered a minor, niche product that a few developers and users may take advantage of to allow offline access to web applications. You can probably recall the arguments at the time: who needs offline access, connectivity is everywhere anyway, not enough apps will support this etc. It wasn’t until a year later and only a few weeks ago, that Google revealed its ace card: Gears-powered messaging for MySpace that is super-accelerated. Google had entered the race to provide the new web API, and for a year almost nobody had noticed.

Google prepping broadband-monitoring tools | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Google prepping broadband-monitoring tools | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

"We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let (ISPs) know that they're not happy with what they're getting--that they think certain services are being tampered with," Google Senior Policy Director Richard Whitt said Friday morning during a panel discussion at the Innovation '08 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. "If the broadband providers aren't going to tell you exactly what's happening on their networks, we want to give users the power to find out for themselves."

From O.J.V at internet marketing Articles

Changes are on the way for MySpace.
Later this month, the social networking powerhouse will roll out new features such as a new home page and new profile-building tools. The result could turn MySpace into a significant threat to portals like Yahoo. But first, MySpace will have to get over its own past.

If all goes to plan, MySpace would go beyond being a site where people build personalized profile pages and hang out online with friends, and become more of a gateway to the Web, where users can read news headlines, listen to music, watch videos, and more easily communicate with pals.

MySpace embarks on this makeover with five new features. On June 18, the company will relaunch its homepage. Instead of seeing a few boxes for "cool new videos" and "cool new people," users will see items such as news stories, ways to call up local weather, links to entertainment portions of the site, and images of top MySpace bloggers.

Inside AdWords: Track online impact of Google TV Ads using Google Analytics

Inside AdWords: Track online impact of Google TV Ads using Google Analytics

Inside AdWords: Pump Up Your Site with Website Workout

Inside AdWords: Pump Up Your Site with Website Workout

Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft Clarify robots.txt Support

Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft Clarify robots.txt Support

Today, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have come together to post details of how each of them support robots.txt and the robots meta tag. While their posts use terms like "collaboration" and "working together", they haven't joined together to implement a new standard (as they did with sitemaps.org). Rather, they are simply making a joint stand in messaging that robots.txt is the standard way of blocking search engine robot access to web sites. They have identified a core set of robots.txt and robots meta tag directives that all three engines support:

For robots.txt, they all suport:


* Disallow

* Allow

* use of wildcards

* Sitemap location

For robots meta tags, they all support:


* noindex

* nofollow

* noarchive

* nosnippet
* noodpt

Google and Yahoo! already supported and documented each of these and Microsoft supported most of them before this announcement. In their posts, they also list the directives they support that may not be supported by the other engines.

E-Commerce News: Search: Google Gives Firms Site Search Tinkering Tools

E-Commerce News: Search: Google Gives Firms Site Search Tinkering Tools

Google's updated site search service gives site owners more control over how internal search results are presented. The service, formerly Custom Search Business Edition, is particularly useful for e-commerce sites, Google said. Site owners can manipulate search results to steer customers toward promotional items, for example.

Internet Marketing

Google Launches Google Merchant Search [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Launches Google Merchant Search [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Merchant Search has quietly launched as a test program to compare products and services in shopping comparison engine fashion. Google Merchant Search is a test feature, apparently in the UK, and is not available for every search. You may see it when conducting some searches but not others.

Lead gen providers like Bankrate.com in financial services, one of Google's largest customer segments, can't be too pleased with Google offering a free service that competes indirectly with theirs.

Online Annonsering

Forget Competition, the Search Wars are Over - Search Engine Watch

Forget Competition, the Search Wars are Over - Search Engine Watch

The other search engines should just give up and declare Google the winner. Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask, and the thousands of search utilities on the Internet should direct traffic to Google because it's clearly the best search engine.

Yahoo should proceed with outsourcing search advertising to Google. Since Google will be the only search engine for nearly all searchers, Microsoft can dissolve its search efforts and the other search sites should just follow suit.

Or not.

Online Annonsering

Advertisers Cloaking AdWords URLs To Get Around Display URL Policy

Advertisers Cloaking AdWords URLs To Get Around Display URL Policy

Remember Google announced that they will be strictly enforcing the AdWords display URL policy a few months back? Well, they actually started enforcing the policy at the beginning of this month. Some advertisers who had display URLs that did not match their destination URLs were impacted. It appears that some of those advertisers are now cloaking their URLs in order to get around that AdWords policy.

Internet Marketing

Search Engine Watch Blog: Search Marketing News

Search Engine Watch Blog: Search Marketing News

Viacom President and CEO Philippe Daumann joined Kevin Johnson, President of Microsoft, onstage last Wednesday at the Microsoft advance '08 client sumnmit to discuss the Future of Search. They didn't discuss copyright infringement or Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. Perhaps they should have.

Google, YouTube's owner, claims the $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit questioning YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off YouTube.com threatens the free exchange of information on the Internet.

Google's lawyers filed papers on Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in response to Viacom's lawsuit alleging that the Internet has led to "an explosion of copyright infringement" by YouTube and others.

Inside AdWords: More partner site examples from the Google content network

Inside AdWords: More partner site examples from the Google content network

YouTube Tops UK Social Media Sites for April 2008 [SearchEngineWatch]

YouTube Tops UK Social Media Sites for April 2008 [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Earth Gets Layer for News [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Earth Gets Layer for News [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Earth has a new layer: Google News. Writing on the Google LatLong blog, Brandon Badger, Product Manager said, "By spatially locating the Google News' constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide."

Internet Marketing

Nielsen: Google Hits New Search Share High

Nielsen: Google Hits New Search Share High

Here are the percentage shares for the top five search engines shown in the pie chart above:

* Google: 62.0%
* Yahoo: 17.5%
* Microsoft: 9.7%
* AOL: 4.3%
* Ask: 2.1%

Note that in the chart above, traffic from Ask.com-owned My Web Search is not combined by Nielsen with the Ask figure. If it were, the Ask figure would rise to 2.8 percent.

Where does Google go next? - May. 12, 2008

Where does Google go next? - May. 12, 2008

No matter what your attitude towards the Google-Yahoo-Microsoft triangle may be, such a title definitely makes you ask yourself a few questions. “The Real Google Killer”, no question mark? Nope, not this time. Yes, the real Google killer is out there and it’s only a matter of time until the inevitable occurs.

Am I referring to Microsoft? Even if they’d be willing to invest a pretty penny in order to make that happen, they don’t have what it takes at this point. What about Yahoo!? Given the way things stand financially as far as this company is concerned, they are hardly in such a position. Maybe Ask.com? You’ve got to be kidding me!

Internet marketing Articles

Inside AdWords: Improvements to AdWords Conversion Tracking

Inside AdWords: Improvements to AdWords Conversion Tracking

According to the Google AdWords Blog, Google has implemented some improvements to the AdWords Conversion Tracking. You will now be able to define actions that are most beneficial to your business and can perform individual conversion tracking on these actions.

Importance of Conversion Tracking:

Different keywords lead to conversions of varied frequencies, hence it is vital to know about the performance of a particular keyword as it affects your bid. In short, Conversion Tracking helps you improve your ROI (return on investment).

Methodology:

Usually, a small snippet of a code is embedded into specific pages on your websites, that denotes the occurrence of any important event. For example, when a user reaches the order confirmation page after a purchase, AdWords registers it as a Conversion. This data is then sent to your account and you can view it as account statistics and reports.

Improvements:

You can now define and track multiple conversions, which empowers you with more specific details about how conversions occur on your website. Use of AdWords Conversion Tracking brings you one step closer to Conversion Optimizer.

MySpace to allow users to share data with Yahoo, others - Yahoo! News

MySpace to allow users to share data with Yahoo, others - Yahoo! News

Social networking site MySpace said Thursday it will soon enable users to quickly share profile data with Web sites operated by Yahoo Inc., eBay Inc. and others.
MySpace aims to save its users keystrokes and allow them to export their photos, videos and lists of friends.

"There's this concept that social networks are walled gardens," said Amit Kapur, MySpace's chief operating officer. "We're taking those walls down."

Other sites that can receive the MySpace data include Twitter and Photobucket. Like MySpace, the photo-sharing site Photobucket is a unit of News Corp.

Google Friend Connect Launched

Google Friend Connect Launched

Google released Friend Connect, a service for webmasters to add such gadgets as comments, reviews, or contact lists to their site. Furthermore, Friend Connect supports any creation from the Google gadget initiative OpenSocial, and also adds social features to a given site which connect the site to the social network site of a user.

The latter, Google argues, holds the potential to increase your traffic, like when they post the event Pete added a review at I-Love-Movies to Orkut, which may make people visit I-Love-Movies. You may think of Friend Connect as a kind of People Sense, which is a code name Google gave the product; whereas Google AdSense provides an attachable ad layer for your site, this service lets you to attach a social layer.

Internet Marketing articles

Google Introduces "FriendConnect" Social Widgets For Site Owners

Google Introduces "FriendConnect" Social Widgets For Site Owners

Contrary to some earlier reports, Google's new FriendConnect, launching today, is not focused on data portability or a direct answer to MySpace "Data Availability" or the new Facebook Connect. While there's a data portability dimension, it's focused on the flip side of the equation: site owners who want to make their sites more "social." It's more like a Ning competitor accordingly.

Online Annonsering
Internet Marketing

iMedia Connection: Is Yahoo sniffing Glue?

iMedia Connection: Is Yahoo sniffing Glue?

AdWords Adds Landing Page Load Time as factor for Quality

AdWords Adds Landing Page Load Time as factor for Quality

Google has announced, that it will now be displaying load time evaluations or Landing Page Load Time on the Keyword Analysis Page.
Depending upon the loading speed of the keywords with landing pages, the Quality Scores will be determined. The slower the landing page, the lower would be the quality score and vice-versa.
As of now the Landing Time will only be displayed in the Keyword Analysis page.

Online Annonsering

Google AdWords Displaying Quality Score Variables

Google AdWords Displaying Quality Score Variables

Reports are surfacing today that some Google AdWords ads, especially on Google.de (their German TLD), are displaying what may be variables used in determining quality scores: Pscore, mCPC and thresh. The numerical values have been spotted in both sidebar and shaded results:

Yahoo Makes the World a Safer Place

Yahoo Makes the World a Safer Place

Yahoo will now display warnings on SERPs to indicate that some of the sites listed in their results may not be entirely safe.

Yahoos new advisories are based on McAfees Site Advisor findings and are used to denote sites that may feature dangerous downloads (including dangerous downloads disguised as or packaged with legitimate downloads) and unsolicited email harvesters.

These are sites that can stealthily harm a users computer or install malware simply by visiting the site. Beginning today, any such sites or pages included in McAfees data will be removed from search results automatically.

Internet Marketing
Online Annonsering

Does Google Need An Ethics Policy Like The New York Times

Does Google Need An Ethics Policy Like The New York Times

Google is really a publisher. It publishes its search results. It adds paid advertisements and the more you pay the more visible your Adwords will be. It is trying to maintain that the non-Adwords content is commercial free. However it realizes that big advertisers may well spend money to get higher in the organic results ( the publication side of the business). It needs to be visible in trying to preserve the integrity of that noncommercial content.

Internet Marketing
Online Annonsering

Google Makes Reader a Social Tool

Google Makes Reader a Social Tool

Search giant Google (News - Alert) this week has moved to make its Google Reader RSS tool a more social instrument by adding features that allow users to share content anywhere on the Web.
Google Reader will now constantly check favorite news Web sites and blogs for new content, where previously the tool only allowed feeds that users had registered for.

"As it turns out, there's all sorts of information 'out there' just waiting to be streamed, shared and otherwise consumed by you and your friends," wrote Jenna Bilotta, on the official Google Reader blog. "Now you can finally show all of your Reader friends that awesome talking cat video you found, your favorite grilled trout recipe or reviews of the best brunch places in your neighborhood -- all without a subscription."

Inside AdWords: Landing page load time now available on the Keyword Analysis Page

Inside AdWords: Landing page load time now available on the Keyword Analysis Page

Google Reader gets social features News - PC Advisor

Google Reader gets social features News

Google is making the Google Reader RSS tool more social, adding features that let users share content and add notes as to why they're sharing it.

The updates provide users with "bookmarklets" to share content from web pages from any site, even those that don't have a feed, Google said. Users can also select some text from the page before clicking on a bookmarklet to allow the selection to appear as the item's body.

"As it turns out, there's all sorts of information 'out there' just waiting to be streamed, shared and otherwise consumed by you and your friends," noted Google's Jenna Bilotta.

"Now you can finally show all of your Reader friends that awesome talking cat video you found, your favorite grilled trout recipe or reviews of the best brunch places in your neighbourhood - all without a subscription."

The updated Google Reader also provides a place for users to add notes with comments about why they are sharing specific content.

Internet Marketing
Online Annonsering

SEOmoz | 10 Clear Questions for the Engines that Deserve Some Answers

SEOmoz | 10 Clear Questions for the Engines that Deserve Some Answers

Beware: Google AdWords Phishing Attempts Continue

Beware: Google AdWords Phishing Attempts Continue

Emails disguised as official Google AdWords emails are being sent to advertisers asking them to update their billing information. When an advertiser goes through the link and updated their billing information, their credit card information is being sent to hackers across the globe. I have a copy of the email at the Search Engine Roundtable, where I first reported this back in March.
If you look at the link, embedded in those phishing emails, it might appear that you are taken to Google.com, but in reality, you are taken to a URL that looks something like this: http://adwords.google.com.fr4ck.cn/select/Login.

Internet Marketing
Online Annonsering

What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability

What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability

In an effort to differentiate themselves from competitors, many SEO/SEM firms come up with interesting unique selling propositions (USPs). Some SEO/SEM firms emphasize search engine advertising and create quite useful tools to help manage PPC campaigns. Some SEO firms specialize in training, again creating tools that help newbie and experienced SEO professionals optimize existing web pages. For the past two to three years, I have been watching SEO/SEM firms increasingly focus on the user, specifically offering website usability services.

Although I laud the evolution of SEO/SEM firms to increasingly focus on the user, I admit that I find some of their conclusions and methodologies rather troubling. Recently, I worked with a company who was happy with their SEO firm, but when they showed me the heuristic analysis I was dumbfounded. The SEO firm actually told this company to remove the primary call to action on product pages because it interfered with keyword density. There were countless other mistakes in the heuristic analysis, and it is that report that inspired me to write this article.

Online Annonsering
Internet Marketing

Inside AdWords: Place ads on television with Google TV Ads

Inside AdWords: Place ads on television with Google TV Ads

Television is a great way to reach new customers who might not be familiar with your product or service. Research shows that 37% of online search users were prompted to perform a search as a result of exposure to television advertising.* Now, you can launch a national television ad campaign right from your existing AdWords account.

Google VisualRank

Google VisualRank

Google researchers at a web conference in Beijing announced they work on some kind of PageRank specifically aimed at images. Called VisualRank, the technology was so far only applied to a smaller test set of images, as apparently applying it to all images Google indexed would be too computing-intensive (even arguably the worlds largest super-computer cant do everything imaginable yet). According to the New York Times yesterday, visual rank is an algorithm for blending image-recognition software methods with techniques for weighting and ranking images that look most similar, and in Googles internal scoring tests it achieved far higher quality results.

Online Annonsering

Google AdWords Displaying Quality Score Variables

Google AdWords Displaying Quality Score Variables

Reports are surfacing today that some Google AdWords ads, especially on Google.de (their German TLD), are displaying what may be variables used in determining quality scores: Pscore, mCPC and thresh. The numerical values have been spotted in both sidebar and shaded results.

Internet Marketing

Google Discovers Holy Grail of Image Search But Will it Scale

Google Discovers Holy Grail of Image Search But Will it Scale

Google has a lofty ambition when it comes to image search. The worlds largest search engine hopes to do for image search what it did for regular text search"make it a whole lot more reliable. How it plans to do this is outlined in a new research paper written by two Google scientists.

Internet Marketing

Google Showing Ranking Scores On AdWords?

Google Showing Ranking Scores On AdWords?

Google Will Bank on VisualRank - PageRank for Images [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Will Bank on VisualRank - PageRank for Images [SearchEngineWatch]

On Thursday, Google Research engineers presented a paper at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing on PageRank for Google Images (pdf) to improve search results for photos, art and graphics. The system promises better image results than are currently available when searching in Google Images and may eventually improve Google Universal Search SERPs.

Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Google Product Search Gets More Useful

Google Product Search Gets More Useful

In the past, Google Product Search just showed you results, but did not group stores offering to sell the same product, with reviews and technical specifications. Now, for some searches, Google groups store results, shows reviews on Google and also shows product specifications.

From Online Annonsering

Yahoo Paper: Finding The Local "Center" Of Search Queries

Yahoo Paper: Finding The Local "Center" Of Search Queries

A new research paper from Yahoo and Cornell University -- with search legend Jon Kleinberg as one of the coauthors -- provides a fascinating look at how a search query such as "red sox" or "hurricane deal" can be centered around a physical location -- including one that changes over time.

From Internet Marketing
and Online Annonsering

Yahoo to expand data sharing among friends online | Technology | Internet | Reuters

Yahoo to expand data sharing among friends online | Technology | Internet | Reuters

Yahoo Inc is working to rewire the dozens of services across its site so that users can manage all information about themselves in a single place and share it with friends across the Web.

"We are not building another social network," Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh told more than 1,000 attendees at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco on Thursday. "We are building social into everything we do."

The effort is part of a larger plan to make it easier for users to share information about themselves with other Yahoo users and on websites that run applications using Yahoo features, seeking to help the world's biggest Internet media company keep pace with social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

From Online Annonsering

Yahoo to radically open its platforms, boost social networking strategy

Yahoo to radically open its platforms, boost social networking strategy

Yahoo Inc. is swinging the doors of its Web platforms wide open to let outside developers create applications across its network of sites and is radically stitching together its online services under the social profile concept.

The idea is to let the hundreds of millions of people who use its Web mail, instant messaging, calendar, photo management and other online services replicate the social experience that social networks like MySpace and Facebook have made so popular.

This means that Yahoo users will have profiles under which their Yahoo services will fall. They will be able to customize the profiles by adding applications. The profile is also intended to simplify the map of connections among Yahoo users so that they can find one another and interact more easily and efficiently.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering