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