The Observer | Business | The Networker: What can't you find on Google? Vital statistics: "The computing engine that powers Google is the largest cluster of Linux servers in the history of the world...
Wall Street - with its beady eye on the forthcoming IPO - wants to know what Google does (and more importantly, what it plans to do next). Computer scientists, in contrast, want to know how Google does it...
it seems that the overall aim is to understate every aspect of Google's technology and technical performance by several orders of magnitude.
How do we know this? Mainly because of internal inconsistencies in the data provided by Google employees. One university presentation, for example, claimed that Google handled 150 million queries a day, and 1,000 per second at peak times. This prompted Simpson Garfinkel of MIT's Technology Review to do some simple calculations. If the system is handling a peak load of 1,000 queries per second, he reasoned, that translates to a peak rate of 86.4 million queries per day - or perhaps 40 million queries per day if you assume that the system spends only half its time at peak capacity. 'No matter how you crank the math', he concluded, 'Google's statistics are not self-consistent'...
But what it all comes down to is this: Google has far more computing power at its disposal than it is letting on. In fact, there have been rumours in the business for months that the Google cluster actually has 100,000 servers - which if true means that the company's technical competence beggars belief.
Now the interesting question raised by all this is: why the reticence? Most companies lose no opportunity to brag about their technology. (Think of all those Oracle ads.) Is this an example of Google behaving ultra-responsibly - being careful not to hype its prospects prior to an IPO? Or is it a sign of a deeper commercial strategy? The latter is what Garfinkel suspects. 'After all,' 'he says, 'if Google publicised how many pages it has indexed and how many computers it has in its data centres around the world, search competitors such as Yahoo!, Teoma, and Mooter would know how much capital they had to raise in order to have a hope of displacing the king at the top of the hill.' If truth is the first casualty of war, openness is the first casualty of going public."
Monday, April 26, 2004
Friday, April 23, 2004
Digital Point Keyword Tracker & Review
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
Digital Point Keyword Tracker Review: "
Pros
� Ability to track rankings as they move over time
� Track an unlimited number of keywords
� Uses the Google API
Cons
� Only tracks Google rankings
� Must setup seperate logins to track seperate campaigns
The Bottom Line - Google keyword rank and back link tracking is made easy with this free tool from Digital Point. Powered by the Google API, the system is limited to 1000 updates a day, but will track an unlimited amount of keywords over time.
Hogan has put together one of the best free keyword tracking tools available online and is offering it up to anyone willing to take the time to register for a Google API and a Digital Point account. The tool does take some time to process, but when you consider the amount of data that it is feeding back and forth to Google via the API, and the amount of time you can save in not having to go and manually search for your rankings each month, it's well worth using this system. My experience has shown that the results are extremely accurate and several of my clients use it as a way to check in on their rankings. I'd highly recommend this tool to anyone looking for a quick and speedy way to track their Google rankings over time.
Description
� Users can specify an unlimited amount of keywords and URLs to be tracked.
� Backlinks can also be entered into the system and tracked over time.
� Custom charting option allows users to track the rise and fall of their keyword rankings over time.
� Custom settings allow for the viewing of competitive search results that appear near tracked words.
� Search engine listings can be restricted to certain languages or a certain country.
� Unicode languages such as Japanese, Chinese and Russian are compatible with the system.
� The system is available in 19 languages including Turkish, French and Belarusian.
� System does not update results on its own, users can setup their own automated processes
Digital Point Keyword Tracker Review: "
Pros
� Ability to track rankings as they move over time
� Track an unlimited number of keywords
� Uses the Google API
Cons
� Only tracks Google rankings
� Must setup seperate logins to track seperate campaigns
The Bottom Line - Google keyword rank and back link tracking is made easy with this free tool from Digital Point. Powered by the Google API, the system is limited to 1000 updates a day, but will track an unlimited amount of keywords over time.
Hogan has put together one of the best free keyword tracking tools available online and is offering it up to anyone willing to take the time to register for a Google API and a Digital Point account. The tool does take some time to process, but when you consider the amount of data that it is feeding back and forth to Google via the API, and the amount of time you can save in not having to go and manually search for your rankings each month, it's well worth using this system. My experience has shown that the results are extremely accurate and several of my clients use it as a way to check in on their rankings. I'd highly recommend this tool to anyone looking for a quick and speedy way to track their Google rankings over time.
Description
� Users can specify an unlimited amount of keywords and URLs to be tracked.
� Backlinks can also be entered into the system and tracked over time.
� Custom charting option allows users to track the rise and fall of their keyword rankings over time.
� Custom settings allow for the viewing of competitive search results that appear near tracked words.
� Search engine listings can be restricted to certain languages or a certain country.
� Unicode languages such as Japanese, Chinese and Russian are compatible with the system.
� The system is available in 19 languages including Turkish, French and Belarusian.
� System does not update results on its own, users can setup their own automated processes
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
The nature of meaning in the age of Google
Some choice quotes
The nature of meaning in the age of Google. Google, Indexing, Web, Meaning: "Pity the poor Web author! Condemned to a culture of ignorance and denied any direct assertion of meaning of her content! She is encouraged to act naturally, constructing her Web content and linking to Web pages of interest. Acting naturally, however, is not without hazard in a rapidly changing, technologically complex environment where it is easy to do something 'neat' that inadvertently makes your content unpalatable to the visiting Googlebot. There is a fine line between using technology to jazz up your Web page and using technology that unintentionally limits the aggregation of your content...
The irony of constructing content for the open Web is not knowing how aggregators will use it. Any trick you employ to reduce your ignorance (i.e., you successfully spam the Googlebot) will be ultimately neutralized, throwing you back to the position of total ignorance:
Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts. (Google Information for Webmasters).
Google has always disdained structured metadata in the open Web as bad faith:Also, it is interesting to note that metadata efforts have largely failed with Web search engines, because any text on the page which is not directly represented to the user is abused to manipulate search engines. There are even numerous companies which specialize in manipulating search engines for profit. (Brin & Page, 1998)...
In its latest makeover, Google also tweaked the closely guarded formula that determines which Websites are most relevant to a search request. Google has made five significant changes to its algorithmic formulas in the past two weeks, Brin said. (Liedtke, 2004, February 18).
I argue the need for a survival guide for Web authors (without attempting to provide one here). A survival guide helps someone survive, largely by avoiding hazards, as opposed to being a bag of tricks for besting someone else...
The need for a survival guide becomes compelling when you witness someone writing for the Web, but doing it in a manner that offends the Googlebot. Google has a list of technological hazards to avoid such as Javascript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML and Flash. The penalty of inhibiting the Googlebot is limiting the exposure of your work. One would think that poets would be anxious to place their work before a large public, but consider the submission guidelines of Poems That Go:
Poems that Go publishes Web-specific new media, hypermedia, and electronic poetry, prose, and short narrative. We are open to all forms of multimedia, computer-generated, and interactive work that include (but are not limited to) HTML, Shockwave, Quicktime, streaming media, Flash, Java, and DHTML content. Because Poems that Go focuses on how sound, image, motion, and interactivity intersect with literary uses of the Web, we regretfully do not accept text-based poetry or written work in the traditional sense. (Submission guidelines).
Such is the gulf that exists between creating cool stuff for the Web and preparing something appetizing for the Googlebot."
The nature of meaning in the age of Google. Google, Indexing, Web, Meaning: "Pity the poor Web author! Condemned to a culture of ignorance and denied any direct assertion of meaning of her content! She is encouraged to act naturally, constructing her Web content and linking to Web pages of interest. Acting naturally, however, is not without hazard in a rapidly changing, technologically complex environment where it is easy to do something 'neat' that inadvertently makes your content unpalatable to the visiting Googlebot. There is a fine line between using technology to jazz up your Web page and using technology that unintentionally limits the aggregation of your content...
The irony of constructing content for the open Web is not knowing how aggregators will use it. Any trick you employ to reduce your ignorance (i.e., you successfully spam the Googlebot) will be ultimately neutralized, throwing you back to the position of total ignorance:
Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts. (Google Information for Webmasters).
Google has always disdained structured metadata in the open Web as bad faith:Also, it is interesting to note that metadata efforts have largely failed with Web search engines, because any text on the page which is not directly represented to the user is abused to manipulate search engines. There are even numerous companies which specialize in manipulating search engines for profit. (Brin & Page, 1998)...
In its latest makeover, Google also tweaked the closely guarded formula that determines which Websites are most relevant to a search request. Google has made five significant changes to its algorithmic formulas in the past two weeks, Brin said. (Liedtke, 2004, February 18).
I argue the need for a survival guide for Web authors (without attempting to provide one here). A survival guide helps someone survive, largely by avoiding hazards, as opposed to being a bag of tricks for besting someone else...
The need for a survival guide becomes compelling when you witness someone writing for the Web, but doing it in a manner that offends the Googlebot. Google has a list of technological hazards to avoid such as Javascript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML and Flash. The penalty of inhibiting the Googlebot is limiting the exposure of your work. One would think that poets would be anxious to place their work before a large public, but consider the submission guidelines of Poems That Go:
Poems that Go publishes Web-specific new media, hypermedia, and electronic poetry, prose, and short narrative. We are open to all forms of multimedia, computer-generated, and interactive work that include (but are not limited to) HTML, Shockwave, Quicktime, streaming media, Flash, Java, and DHTML content. Because Poems that Go focuses on how sound, image, motion, and interactivity intersect with literary uses of the Web, we regretfully do not accept text-based poetry or written work in the traditional sense. (Submission guidelines).
Such is the gulf that exists between creating cool stuff for the Web and preparing something appetizing for the Googlebot."
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
DMNews.com | News | Article
DMNews.com | News | Article: "For the past week, DM News has been one of the 1,000 users Google invited to test its controversial new e-mail service, Gmail.
A common complaint by Gmail critics is that scanning personal e-mail messages to place ads is invasive... the vast majority of Gmail messages have contained no advertising. Google spokesman David Krane said the company is judicious about the frequency, and users should not expect to see them in most messages...
Of the ads received, some have been impressively targeted, highlighting the potential payoff for advertisers. One e-mail message about a visit to New York to watch a Yankees game was accompanied by text listings offering Yankees tickets and merchandise...
still in testing, however, Gmail often gets it wrong. Invoices from cell-phone providers target listings for invoice services, not cell phones. An e-mail mentioning 9/11 and the war in Iraq triggered listings for online memorials. Krane said Google filtered ads from sensitive subjects and would continue to build this capacity."
A common complaint by Gmail critics is that scanning personal e-mail messages to place ads is invasive... the vast majority of Gmail messages have contained no advertising. Google spokesman David Krane said the company is judicious about the frequency, and users should not expect to see them in most messages...
Of the ads received, some have been impressively targeted, highlighting the potential payoff for advertisers. One e-mail message about a visit to New York to watch a Yankees game was accompanied by text listings offering Yankees tickets and merchandise...
still in testing, however, Gmail often gets it wrong. Invoices from cell-phone providers target listings for invoice services, not cell phones. An e-mail mentioning 9/11 and the war in Iraq triggered listings for online memorials. Krane said Google filtered ads from sensitive subjects and would continue to build this capacity."
Trademark Bidding on Google
Trademark Bidding on Google: "Google's opening up trademarked keywords for bidding is one more piece of power shifted away from corporations and toward consumers. I imagine corporations will waste little time heading to court to protect their property. In the long run, I doubt the corporations will come out on top."
Example: Branding seeks to own a concept and attach a name to it. In our brand-saturated world, names can become shortcuts for product categories. "U-Haul" means "low-cost, do-it-yourself moving." Of consumers searching on "U-Haul," some want to find a van to rent, and some specifically want a U-Haul van. Those focused on the brand will ignore competitive offers. The rest are up for grabs. A problem creeps in only if they're attracted by deception.
This is the core of the power shift away from corporations and toward consumers. If Google does a good policing job, consumers ultimately will have more power. They'll find competitive deals, better prices, and more options. It blurs the whole sales cycle we've held so dear for so long: awareness --> consideration --> trial --> purchase --> repeat. Consideration, in particular, is at risk.
Example: Branding seeks to own a concept and attach a name to it. In our brand-saturated world, names can become shortcuts for product categories. "U-Haul" means "low-cost, do-it-yourself moving." Of consumers searching on "U-Haul," some want to find a van to rent, and some specifically want a U-Haul van. Those focused on the brand will ignore competitive offers. The rest are up for grabs. A problem creeps in only if they're attracted by deception.
This is the core of the power shift away from corporations and toward consumers. If Google does a good policing job, consumers ultimately will have more power. They'll find competitive deals, better prices, and more options. It blurs the whole sales cycle we've held so dear for so long: awareness --> consideration --> trial --> purchase --> repeat. Consideration, in particular, is at risk.
Monday, April 19, 2004
Google IPO Central - Latest Investing and Stock Offering News
"SiliconValley.com is reporting that Google will be required to begin filing financial reports with the SEC beginning April 30th. According to the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 companies that have $10 million or more in assets and 500 or more shareholders must file quarterly reports with the SEC just as a publicly traded company does. Since this is generally an undesirable position for companies to be in most observers feel that Google will now file an IPO. Google officials are of course not commenting. Whether or not the Google IPO, if and when it finally happens, will make anyone money still remains to be seen. For more information on the possible Google IPO see Google IPO Central."
Google IPO Central - Latest Investing and Stock Offering News: "IPO Important Developments
Google may have to disclose earnings and revenue information, effectively forcing them to IPO"
Google IPO Central - Latest Investing and Stock Offering News: "IPO Important Developments
Google may have to disclose earnings and revenue information, effectively forcing them to IPO"
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Google & trademarks
News - Hoover's Online: "Google plans to stop limiting sales of trademarks in its popular keyword advertising program, a high-stakes gamble that could boost revenue but also create new legal problems for the company....
Google in the next two weeks will begin allowing U.S. and Canadian advertisers to bid on any keyword, including trademarked terms, sold as part of its sponsored listings service...
According to Jupiter Research, paid search will grow from $1.6 billion in sales in 2003 to $2.1 billion this year, and it will continue to grow at a compound annual rate of 20 percent through 2008... At least some of that growth could be jeopardized if legal rulings bar Google and other search engines from selling off well-known terms such as "eBay" in their advertising programs, experts cautioned...
Google's predicament goes to the heart of many Internet businesses, which rely on the sale of trademarked keywords. Shopping sites like NexTag and Shopping.com, which recently filed to go public, allow merchants to bid on trademarked terms to turn up in search results. Adware makers Claria, formerly known as Gator, and WhenU.com also make their money by allowing marketers to buy and deliver pop-up ads when consumers visit their rivals' Web sites. Claria faces numerous lawsuits related to its trademark policies.
Last year, auction giant eBay asked Google to block advertisers from using its trademark in sponsored search results, for example. eBay listed, in 13 pages, a wide selection of terms related to its trademarks, and Google complied with some of eBay's requests. In another example, Louis Vuitton sued Google and its French subsidiary for similar alleged trademark infringement, and a French court ordered Google to cease the practice and pay a fine.
The law is murky in the United States over how far search engines must go to police trademarks allegedly infringed in paid search services...
January, legal guidance came from a five-year lawsuit involving Playboy Enterprises and Netscape Communications. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Playboy could pursue charges that Excite and Netscape violated its trademark by selling banner ads triggered by the terms "playboy" and "playmate." Its analysis supported enough of a case for consumer confusion and brand dilution related to Playboy's trademarks that a trial was ordered. Shortly after, Netscape owner America Online settled the case with Playboy for an unspecified amount."
Google in the next two weeks will begin allowing U.S. and Canadian advertisers to bid on any keyword, including trademarked terms, sold as part of its sponsored listings service...
According to Jupiter Research, paid search will grow from $1.6 billion in sales in 2003 to $2.1 billion this year, and it will continue to grow at a compound annual rate of 20 percent through 2008... At least some of that growth could be jeopardized if legal rulings bar Google and other search engines from selling off well-known terms such as "eBay" in their advertising programs, experts cautioned...
Google's predicament goes to the heart of many Internet businesses, which rely on the sale of trademarked keywords. Shopping sites like NexTag and Shopping.com, which recently filed to go public, allow merchants to bid on trademarked terms to turn up in search results. Adware makers Claria, formerly known as Gator, and WhenU.com also make their money by allowing marketers to buy and deliver pop-up ads when consumers visit their rivals' Web sites. Claria faces numerous lawsuits related to its trademark policies.
Last year, auction giant eBay asked Google to block advertisers from using its trademark in sponsored search results, for example. eBay listed, in 13 pages, a wide selection of terms related to its trademarks, and Google complied with some of eBay's requests. In another example, Louis Vuitton sued Google and its French subsidiary for similar alleged trademark infringement, and a French court ordered Google to cease the practice and pay a fine.
The law is murky in the United States over how far search engines must go to police trademarks allegedly infringed in paid search services...
January, legal guidance came from a five-year lawsuit involving Playboy Enterprises and Netscape Communications. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Playboy could pursue charges that Excite and Netscape violated its trademark by selling banner ads triggered by the terms "playboy" and "playmate." Its analysis supported enough of a case for consumer confusion and brand dilution related to Playboy's trademarks that a trial was ordered. Shortly after, Netscape owner America Online settled the case with Playboy for an unspecified amount."
Friday, April 09, 2004
Google WebQuotes
Google WebQuotes: "WebQuotes "
Think you know everything about searching on Google? Think again. Underneath it all, there's a host of little-known features that can be used for market research. Here's three:
1. Find out what people say about your site.
WebQuotes [1], a Google Lab experiment, allows you to find out what people say about a person, Website, or product.
I suggest trying variations of your site name, such as "SitePoint", "www.sitepoint.com" and "http://www.sitepoint.com" to see if they bring up different results.
2. Do a background check.
If you type in "info:siteURL.com", Google will provide you background information about any site on the Internet. This includes links to cached copies of the site, similar and related sites, pages that link to the site, and pages that mention the site.
3. View indexed pages.
As of several weeks ago, searching for "site:www.URL.com" brings up a list of all indexed pages in Google. Prior to this being implemented, the only way to get an guesstimate as to the number of indexed page was to run a search like "site:www.sitepoint.com -asdfkljasdf", which often resulted in inaccurate results.
It doesn't make a difference where or not you put "www." in front of the URL, the result will be the same.
When running this search, I noticed that the number for SitePoint.com would switch between 163,000 and 169,000 indexed pages. I'm not sure what why this is; maybe it has to do with the server processing the query. I recommend running it a few times and going with the highest number.
Think you know everything about searching on Google? Think again. Underneath it all, there's a host of little-known features that can be used for market research. Here's three:
1. Find out what people say about your site.
WebQuotes [1], a Google Lab experiment, allows you to find out what people say about a person, Website, or product.
I suggest trying variations of your site name, such as "SitePoint", "www.sitepoint.com" and "http://www.sitepoint.com" to see if they bring up different results.
2. Do a background check.
If you type in "info:siteURL.com", Google will provide you background information about any site on the Internet. This includes links to cached copies of the site, similar and related sites, pages that link to the site, and pages that mention the site.
3. View indexed pages.
As of several weeks ago, searching for "site:www.URL.com" brings up a list of all indexed pages in Google. Prior to this being implemented, the only way to get an guesstimate as to the number of indexed page was to run a search like "site:www.sitepoint.com -asdfkljasdf", which often resulted in inaccurate results.
It doesn't make a difference where or not you put "www." in front of the URL, the result will be the same.
When running this search, I noticed that the number for SitePoint.com would switch between 163,000 and 169,000 indexed pages. I'm not sure what why this is; maybe it has to do with the server processing the query. I recommend running it a few times and going with the highest number.
Wired News: Google Gets More Gmail Guff
Wired News: Google Gets More Gmail Guff: "Twenty-eight privacy and civil liberties groups sent an open letter to Google on Wednesday urging the company to reconsider its plans for a free e-mail program that would scan the content of incoming e-mail and seed it with targeted ads.
The groups want Google to suspend its proposed Gmail plan until the company has adequately addressed privacy concerns raised last week when the company announced the program. "
The groups want Google to suspend its proposed Gmail plan until the company has adequately addressed privacy concerns raised last week when the company announced the program. "
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Google says it cannot change results
Google says it cannot change results: "What 'manual changes to the results' are depends on the precise context of the statement. It wouldn't necessarily include deleting spammy sites from the index.
Agree 100% - the key word is 'results' By 'results', they mean the sites that make it to the pool of sites to be displayed to the public - they say nothing about what goes on before that happens. "
Google Guy:(same forum)
I walked over to see David Krane and asked him about it, because I had a hunch that David was talking about the results for this particular search (the word "jew") and not our overall system. And that's the correct explanation.
To give some background: people write us all the time to say that they dislike or disagree with a particular set of search results. For example, at one point someone wrote in and claimed that one of the search results for Martin Luther King was a revisionist history and wasn't accurate. Should Google go and remove that result by hand? Who gets to decide whether a result deserves to be in the top 10? You can see where the slope gets slippery really quickly when you start bringing value judgments about the content of the site into the mix.
So historically Google has very strongly tried to follow a policy of letting our algorithmic search results stand as they are; we put our efforts much more into improving search by writing better algorithms instead of trying to fix a smaller set of searches by hand. We have a quite small set of circumstances that can result in taking manual action: things like a valid legal request (e.g. a DMCA complaint), spam and things outside our quality guidelines (e.g. off-topic porn for a person's name), and a very small amount of security-related stuff (e.g. credit card numbers on a web page). Other than that, we do our best to let our algorithms work out the results on their own. I think that's the right approach, and I think most of our users would prefer that instead of lots of hand-editing.
Does that mean every search is perfect? Of course not. With 200+ million searches a day, there will be some searches that aren't as good as they can be. But when a bad search is pointed out to us, we look to how to improve our algorithms instead of doing some one-off change.
"Isn't the traditional method of dealing with web sites containing such material (race hate) to contact the hosting company / owner and take it from there?
I'm sure that this site shows up in Yahoo! and other search engines, so why put all the emphasis on Google to sort it out?
It's like telling one tv station to stop reporting on the conflict in Iraq. It doesn't stop the others and it certainly doesn't stop the conflict."
Agree 100% - the key word is 'results' By 'results', they mean the sites that make it to the pool of sites to be displayed to the public - they say nothing about what goes on before that happens. "
Google Guy:(same forum)
I walked over to see David Krane and asked him about it, because I had a hunch that David was talking about the results for this particular search (the word "jew") and not our overall system. And that's the correct explanation.
To give some background: people write us all the time to say that they dislike or disagree with a particular set of search results. For example, at one point someone wrote in and claimed that one of the search results for Martin Luther King was a revisionist history and wasn't accurate. Should Google go and remove that result by hand? Who gets to decide whether a result deserves to be in the top 10? You can see where the slope gets slippery really quickly when you start bringing value judgments about the content of the site into the mix.
So historically Google has very strongly tried to follow a policy of letting our algorithmic search results stand as they are; we put our efforts much more into improving search by writing better algorithms instead of trying to fix a smaller set of searches by hand. We have a quite small set of circumstances that can result in taking manual action: things like a valid legal request (e.g. a DMCA complaint), spam and things outside our quality guidelines (e.g. off-topic porn for a person's name), and a very small amount of security-related stuff (e.g. credit card numbers on a web page). Other than that, we do our best to let our algorithms work out the results on their own. I think that's the right approach, and I think most of our users would prefer that instead of lots of hand-editing.
Does that mean every search is perfect? Of course not. With 200+ million searches a day, there will be some searches that aren't as good as they can be. But when a bad search is pointed out to us, we look to how to improve our algorithms instead of doing some one-off change.
"Isn't the traditional method of dealing with web sites containing such material (race hate) to contact the hosting company / owner and take it from there?
I'm sure that this site shows up in Yahoo! and other search engines, so why put all the emphasis on Google to sort it out?
It's like telling one tv station to stop reporting on the conflict in Iraq. It doesn't stop the others and it certainly doesn't stop the conflict."
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
The Observer | Focus | Google is watching you
The Observer | Focus | Google is watching you: "Jordana Beebe of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearing House said: 'The privacy implications of going through and perusing a customer's email to display targeting advertising could be the Achilles' heel for Google's service.'
Google, which has enjoyed an almost slavishly admiring press since its launch, is unused to dealing with criticism. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that its response to last week's onslaught veered from unconvincing ('The ads would be akin to coupons that shoppers get at grocery stores, based on what they've just purchased') to apologetic ('We'll learn. I'm sure our users will tell us frankly when we don't get it right, and we'll adjust accordingly') to simply bemused ('I am very surprised that there are these kind of questions,' said Larry Page.) "
Google, which has enjoyed an almost slavishly admiring press since its launch, is unused to dealing with criticism. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that its response to last week's onslaught veered from unconvincing ('The ads would be akin to coupons that shoppers get at grocery stores, based on what they've just purchased') to apologetic ('We'll learn. I'm sure our users will tell us frankly when we don't get it right, and we'll adjust accordingly') to simply bemused ('I am very surprised that there are these kind of questions,' said Larry Page.) "
Google Search: pizza near Palo Alto, CA
Page from click thhrough on one line listing Google Search: pizza near Palo Alto, CA: "Searched the web for pizza at 240 Cambridge Ave, Palo Alto, CA. Results 1 - 7 of about 10.
Domino's Pizza
240 Cambridge Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94306-1504
(650) 326-6552
Get driving directions to this location:
Start Location
N
WE
SZoom Out Zoom In
"
Domino's Pizza
240 Cambridge Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94306-1504
(650) 326-6552
Get driving directions to this location:
Start Location
N
WE
SZoom Out Zoom In
"
Google Search: pizza palo alto
What google slocal results look like....Google Search: pizza palo alto: "Local results for pizza near Palo Alto, CA
Domino's Pizza - 1.0 miles S - 240 Cambridge Ave - (650) 326-6552
Papa Murphy's Take 'N' Bake Pizza - 1.0 miles SE - 2730 Middlefield Rd - (650) 328-5200
Ramona's Pizza - 1.0 miles S - 2313 Birch St - (650) 322-2181
Pizza - Palo Alto Live... California Pizza Kitchen on 531 Cowper Street in Palo Alto. Call (650) 323-7332. Jose's Pizza on 2275 El Camino Real in Palo Alto. Call (650) 326-6522. ...
www.paloaltolive.com/entertain-dining-pizza.html - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
Dining - Palo Alto Live... Chinese Continental Deli French Indian Italian Japanese Mediterranean Mexican Pizza Seafood Singaporean ... Link to Us | Help Wanted | � 2000-2002 Palo Alto Live. ...
www.paloaltolive.com/entertain-dining.html - 13k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.paloaltolive.com ]
Pizza A GoGo San Jose Palo Alto"
Domino's Pizza - 1.0 miles S - 240 Cambridge Ave - (650) 326-6552
Papa Murphy's Take 'N' Bake Pizza - 1.0 miles SE - 2730 Middlefield Rd - (650) 328-5200
Ramona's Pizza - 1.0 miles S - 2313 Birch St - (650) 322-2181
Pizza - Palo Alto Live... California Pizza Kitchen on 531 Cowper Street in Palo Alto. Call (650) 323-7332. Jose's Pizza on 2275 El Camino Real in Palo Alto. Call (650) 326-6522. ...
www.paloaltolive.com/entertain-dining-pizza.html - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
Dining - Palo Alto Live... Chinese Continental Deli French Indian Italian Japanese Mediterranean Mexican Pizza Seafood Singaporean ... Link to Us | Help Wanted | � 2000-2002 Palo Alto Live. ...
www.paloaltolive.com/entertain-dining.html - 13k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.paloaltolive.com ]
Pizza A GoGo San Jose Palo Alto"
Press release Google Connects Searchers With Local Information
Google Connects Searchers With Local Information: "MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. March 17, 2004 - Google Inc. today announced the integration of local search results into Google.com with the availability of Google Local. This new feature enables users to find relevant local information with neighborhood business listings, maps, directions, and useful web pages"
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Google Responds to Gmail Privacy Concerns
Google Responds to Gmail Privacy Concerns: "Google's newly announced free e-mail offering has strengthened its position against Yahoo! and MSN. Before it can continue to battle its competition in earnest, however, it's working to quell privacy concerns.
The company's plans to include contextually targeted ads in its Web e-mail client are the cause for the concern, because Google intends to have its technology scan the content of e-mail messages, and target ads accordingly. Now that it's clear the initiative isn't an April Fool's joke, analysts, industry figures and individuals are debating the decision across the Net. Meanwhile a group of privacy advocates are drafting a letter asking Google to clarify its policies...
In response, Google says what's drawing concern is what computers are capable of doing, not what the company does in reality. "We pride ourselves in protecting users' data and holding ourselves to he highest standard," said Wayne Rosing, VP of engineering for Google.
"We do not keep that data in correlated form, it's separated in various ways and we have policies inside the company that do not allow that kind of correlation to happen. We consider any program or programming that correlates user data with user identity to be a violation of trust and we do not do that," said Rosing.
But Rosing stopped short of saying that the company will never correlate the data.
"Then it gets to be an issue of what happens if we have to do something to comply with a legal situation," he said, apparently speaking of criminal cases in which the company might be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
It's worth mentioning that Google already has the power to correlate IP addresses and search queries and clicks -- something Rosing says has never occurred.
"I have been here a long time and I have no knowledge of that kind of situation [correlation] ever happening. It does not happen and every employee of Google knows they cannot do this. We have extensive monitoring of our people," Rosing said.
"We have very strict policies. We do not associate search clicks with a user's name or anything like that. And in certain cases we age data and it disappears from the system to provide enhanced privacy protection," Rosing said.
Rosing also pointed out that when computers filter spam, "they have to look at the e-mail in detail or they can't find the spam. It's nothing extraordinary or new going on here."
The company's plans to include contextually targeted ads in its Web e-mail client are the cause for the concern, because Google intends to have its technology scan the content of e-mail messages, and target ads accordingly. Now that it's clear the initiative isn't an April Fool's joke, analysts, industry figures and individuals are debating the decision across the Net. Meanwhile a group of privacy advocates are drafting a letter asking Google to clarify its policies...
In response, Google says what's drawing concern is what computers are capable of doing, not what the company does in reality. "We pride ourselves in protecting users' data and holding ourselves to he highest standard," said Wayne Rosing, VP of engineering for Google.
"We do not keep that data in correlated form, it's separated in various ways and we have policies inside the company that do not allow that kind of correlation to happen. We consider any program or programming that correlates user data with user identity to be a violation of trust and we do not do that," said Rosing.
But Rosing stopped short of saying that the company will never correlate the data.
"Then it gets to be an issue of what happens if we have to do something to comply with a legal situation," he said, apparently speaking of criminal cases in which the company might be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
It's worth mentioning that Google already has the power to correlate IP addresses and search queries and clicks -- something Rosing says has never occurred.
"I have been here a long time and I have no knowledge of that kind of situation [correlation] ever happening. It does not happen and every employee of Google knows they cannot do this. We have extensive monitoring of our people," Rosing said.
"We have very strict policies. We do not associate search clicks with a user's name or anything like that. And in certain cases we age data and it disappears from the system to provide enhanced privacy protection," Rosing said.
Rosing also pointed out that when computers filter spam, "they have to look at the e-mail in detail or they can't find the spam. It's nothing extraordinary or new going on here."
Mega blog entry....The Secret Source of Google's Power
Topix.net Weblog: The Secret Source of Google's Power:
Much is being written about Gmail, Google's new free webmail system. There's something deeper to learn about Google from this product than the initial reaction to the product features, however. Ignore for a moment the observations about Google leapfrogging their competitors with more user value and a new feature or two. Or Google diversifying away from search into other applications; they've been doing that for a while. Or the privacy red herring.
No, the story is about seemingly incremental features that are actually massively expensive for others to match, and the platform that Google is building which makes it cheaper and easier for them to develop and run web-scale applications than anyone else.
I've written before about Google's snippet service, which required that they store the entire web in RAM. All so they could generate a slightly better page excerpt than other search engines.
Google has taken the last 10 years of systems software research out of university labs, and built their own proprietary, production quality system. What is this platform that Google is building? It's a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers. Any of these projects could be the sole focus of a startup.
What are all those OS Researchers doing at Google? Rob Pike has gone to Google. Yes, that Rob Pike -- the OS researcher, the member of the original Unix team from Bell Labs. This guy isn't just some labs hood ornament; he writes code, lots of it. Big chunks of whole new operating systems like Plan 9.
Look at the depth of the research background of the Google employees in OS, networking, and distributed systems. Compiler Optimization. Thread migration. Distributed shared memory.
I'm a sucker for cool OS research. Browsing papers from Google employees about distributed systems, thread migration, network shared memory, GFS, makes me feel like a kid in Tomorrowland wondering when we're going to Mars. Wouldn't it be great, as an engineer, to have production versions of all this great research.
Google engineers do!
The downside...
Google Watch: "A look at how Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy policies are undermining the Web."
"Google's control over information is going further and further. We use his services every day. He knows us, our questions, our desires, our needs, how we live. Everything is stored into its database. Information is power, commercial power, political power. Who's controlling Google ? http://www.google-watch.org/"
Much is being written about Gmail, Google's new free webmail system. There's something deeper to learn about Google from this product than the initial reaction to the product features, however. Ignore for a moment the observations about Google leapfrogging their competitors with more user value and a new feature or two. Or Google diversifying away from search into other applications; they've been doing that for a while. Or the privacy red herring.
No, the story is about seemingly incremental features that are actually massively expensive for others to match, and the platform that Google is building which makes it cheaper and easier for them to develop and run web-scale applications than anyone else.
I've written before about Google's snippet service, which required that they store the entire web in RAM. All so they could generate a slightly better page excerpt than other search engines.
Google has taken the last 10 years of systems software research out of university labs, and built their own proprietary, production quality system. What is this platform that Google is building? It's a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers. Any of these projects could be the sole focus of a startup.
What are all those OS Researchers doing at Google? Rob Pike has gone to Google. Yes, that Rob Pike -- the OS researcher, the member of the original Unix team from Bell Labs. This guy isn't just some labs hood ornament; he writes code, lots of it. Big chunks of whole new operating systems like Plan 9.
Look at the depth of the research background of the Google employees in OS, networking, and distributed systems. Compiler Optimization. Thread migration. Distributed shared memory.
I'm a sucker for cool OS research. Browsing papers from Google employees about distributed systems, thread migration, network shared memory, GFS, makes me feel like a kid in Tomorrowland wondering when we're going to Mars. Wouldn't it be great, as an engineer, to have production versions of all this great research.
Google engineers do!
The downside...
Google Watch: "A look at how Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy policies are undermining the Web."
"Google's control over information is going further and further. We use his services every day. He knows us, our questions, our desires, our needs, how we live. Everything is stored into its database. Information is power, commercial power, political power. Who's controlling Google ? http://www.google-watch.org/"
Monday, April 05, 2004
Google Adsense Could Mean Death to Affiliate Programs!
Google Adsense Could Mean Death to Affiliate Programs!: "Allan Gardyne of Associate Programs penned an interesting and insightful article on Adsense this past week where he mentions this as an issue and predicts the death of smaller or weaker affiliate programs.
I agree.
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/adsense.shtml
Google Adsense simply requires the host site to paste in a few lines of HTML code on their pages where they want those ads to appear. Once Google has spidered your content pages, they can assess what those pages are about. Adsense serves a series of ads that match and compliment your page topics automatically without site owner participation!
I've been impressed how Adsense has performed for me in just the last week. I've actually enjoyed looking at my own sites to see what ads are served to match my content. WebSite101 demonstrates very well how Adsense works. If you visit the HTML tutorial, you see Adsense ads for web page editing software or web hosting. If you visit my email tutorial, you'll see Adsense ads for email broadcasting software and targeted email list broadcasting services. If you visit the Domain Name tutorial, you're served Adsense ads for Domain Registrars and web hosting. If you visit the Anti-Spam Tutorial, you get Adsense Ads for Spam Filtering Software."
I agree.
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/adsense.shtml
Google Adsense simply requires the host site to paste in a few lines of HTML code on their pages where they want those ads to appear. Once Google has spidered your content pages, they can assess what those pages are about. Adsense serves a series of ads that match and compliment your page topics automatically without site owner participation!
I've been impressed how Adsense has performed for me in just the last week. I've actually enjoyed looking at my own sites to see what ads are served to match my content. WebSite101 demonstrates very well how Adsense works. If you visit the HTML tutorial, you see Adsense ads for web page editing software or web hosting. If you visit my email tutorial, you'll see Adsense ads for email broadcasting software and targeted email list broadcasting services. If you visit the Domain Name tutorial, you're served Adsense ads for Domain Registrars and web hosting. If you visit the Anti-Spam Tutorial, you get Adsense Ads for Spam Filtering Software."
How Google could kill spam
How Google could kill spam: "Google struck a nerve with its announcement of a free e-mail service that could make it unnecessary to ever delete a message. GMail.com rocketed from nowhere to rank 495th among Websites visited by U.S. Internet users the day the service was announced, according to Hitwise, a monitoring service that analyzes the Web activity of 25 million users.
GMail has also caught the fancy of Seth Godin, a best selling author on Internet marketing and self-described agent of change. In his blog, Godin wrote GMail is a threat to Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) and other sites because, 'a huge percentage of the portals' traffic comes from e-mail.' Google has an opportunity to become the gold standard for spam-free e-mail, he said. What if Google decided to charge $1 a year for its service and required users to post a valid credit card, he asked. And, what if a violation of Google's (assumed) anti-spam rules would cost $20 each time? Suddenly, Google would be it. "People would happily let it through spam filters. You could trust it. People would become suspicious of anyone who used any other e-mail," Godin said
GMail has also caught the fancy of Seth Godin, a best selling author on Internet marketing and self-described agent of change. In his blog, Godin wrote GMail is a threat to Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) and other sites because, 'a huge percentage of the portals' traffic comes from e-mail.' Google has an opportunity to become the gold standard for spam-free e-mail, he said. What if Google decided to charge $1 a year for its service and required users to post a valid credit card, he asked. And, what if a violation of Google's (assumed) anti-spam rules would cost $20 each time? Suddenly, Google would be it. "People would happily let it through spam filters. You could trust it. People would become suspicious of anyone who used any other e-mail," Godin said
Google Gives Most Referrals
Google Gives Most Referrals: "The California-based Web analytics firm finds that on 23 March 2001, Google claimed just 11.93% of total search referrals while Yahoo!�s share was nearly 40%. On the same date this year, Google�s share surpasses 40% whereas Yahoo! claims just over 27% of US search referrals. "
Friday, April 02, 2004
Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring
S'pose had better flag up Googles April fool...many thought the gmail was it but iit appears not....see wired comment beneath...Google Job Opportunities: Google Copernicus Center is hiring: "Life in the Googlunaplex
The Googlunaplex is a working environment that will be unique both because of its location and its design. Based on a working model constructed by Google co-founder Larry Page from Lego� Mindstorms�, the facility features compact living quarters and a state of the art server farm that are co-mingled to maintain a delicate bio-technical balance. In traditional Google style, space will be used with extreme efficiency, with Googlunars sharing quarters with machines that generate search results as well as enough heat to warm the entire Googlunaplex and several hot tubs."
Wired News: A Fine Year for April Foolery: "Among search engines, Google led the pack in April Fool's Day promotions. Visitors who clicked on a link offering jobs that are 'out of this world' on the search engine's home page were told that 'Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center.' Google went on to say that the facility, set to open in late in the spring of 2007, will house 35 engineers, 27,000 low cost Web servers, two massage therapists and a sushi chef.
On a more serious note, Google's much-lauded announcement of a soon-to-be-launched free e-mail service called Gmail generated widespread speculation online as to whether the offering is a hoax. While the announcement received voluminous media attention, skeptics looked to the wording of Google's press release, which says the service provides a gigabyte of free storage, 'quickly recalls any message an account owner has ever sent or received' and 'can already be used to read and send e-mail in most languages (even Klingon.)'
A Google spokesman confirmed that the free e-mail offering is not a hoax. Boese, of the Museum of Hoaxes, said the e-mail offering didn't sound like a prank.
'If they say they're going to give a gig of space, it wouldn't be that clever or funny a joke because it's too believable,' Boese said. 'But they might get people talking about if this is too good to be true by announcing it on April Fool's.' "
The Googlunaplex is a working environment that will be unique both because of its location and its design. Based on a working model constructed by Google co-founder Larry Page from Lego� Mindstorms�, the facility features compact living quarters and a state of the art server farm that are co-mingled to maintain a delicate bio-technical balance. In traditional Google style, space will be used with extreme efficiency, with Googlunars sharing quarters with machines that generate search results as well as enough heat to warm the entire Googlunaplex and several hot tubs."
Wired News: A Fine Year for April Foolery: "Among search engines, Google led the pack in April Fool's Day promotions. Visitors who clicked on a link offering jobs that are 'out of this world' on the search engine's home page were told that 'Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center.' Google went on to say that the facility, set to open in late in the spring of 2007, will house 35 engineers, 27,000 low cost Web servers, two massage therapists and a sushi chef.
On a more serious note, Google's much-lauded announcement of a soon-to-be-launched free e-mail service called Gmail generated widespread speculation online as to whether the offering is a hoax. While the announcement received voluminous media attention, skeptics looked to the wording of Google's press release, which says the service provides a gigabyte of free storage, 'quickly recalls any message an account owner has ever sent or received' and 'can already be used to read and send e-mail in most languages (even Klingon.)'
A Google spokesman confirmed that the free e-mail offering is not a hoax. Boese, of the Museum of Hoaxes, said the e-mail offering didn't sound like a prank.
'If they say they're going to give a gig of space, it wouldn't be that clever or funny a joke because it's too believable,' Boese said. 'But they might get people talking about if this is too good to be true by announcing it on April Fool's.' "
Gmail
Welcome to Gmail: "A Google approach to email.
Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want.
The key features are:
Search, don't sort.
Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.
Don't throw anything away.
1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.
Keep it all in context.
Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.
No pop-up ads. No banners.
You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest"
FT.com / Business / US: "Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born,' said the company in a quirkily worded press release put out yesterday with an April 1 dateline that had many journalists (including this one) wondering whether this was another April Fool's spoof. Gmail, however, turns out to be real...
Gmail, which will go live with a few invited trial users today and has its own website (www.gmail.com) will automatically organise e-mail according to topic and allow users to search their e-mail - including sender, text and subject lines - in the same way they search the internet, Wayne Rosing, Google's vice president of engineering, said...
Gmail will be supported by 'contextually relevant' text adverts that will appear in the margins of individual e-mails - rather like the advertisements that appear down the right-hand margins of Google search results pages.
Google emphasises that users' e-mails will only be machine read and that no human eyes will be involved."
Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want.
The key features are:
Search, don't sort.
Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.
Don't throw anything away.
1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.
Keep it all in context.
Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.
No pop-up ads. No banners.
You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest"
FT.com / Business / US: "Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born,' said the company in a quirkily worded press release put out yesterday with an April 1 dateline that had many journalists (including this one) wondering whether this was another April Fool's spoof. Gmail, however, turns out to be real...
Gmail, which will go live with a few invited trial users today and has its own website (www.gmail.com) will automatically organise e-mail according to topic and allow users to search their e-mail - including sender, text and subject lines - in the same way they search the internet, Wayne Rosing, Google's vice president of engineering, said...
Gmail will be supported by 'contextually relevant' text adverts that will appear in the margins of individual e-mails - rather like the advertisements that appear down the right-hand margins of Google search results pages.
Google emphasises that users' e-mails will only be machine read and that no human eyes will be involved."
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: The voice of the valley economy
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: The voice of the valley economy: "WebSideStory (http://www.websidestory.com), the leader in on-demand Web analytics, today announced that the Google.com domain continues to distance itself from the competition and has reached an all-time high in U.S. search referral market share. As of March 23, 2004, Google.com posted a U.S. search referral percentage of nearly 41 percent, up from 35.99 percent on the same day last year,"
Google Extends Lead as Search Referrer � MarketingVOX|SEARCH: "
WebSideStory's recent press release fills in a few gaps in reality.
recap:
Google: 41.0
Yahoo: 27.4
MSN : '.6
No wonder webmasters recoil when Google hiccups. It's that central to so many livelihoods. Yahoo's overrated, especially since it short-shrifted its flagship directory....I'd love to drill down on the stats a bit more to determine how many of the "referrals" from MSN and Yahoo are based on paid inclusion (all? most?) ... or whether *any* of the referrals coming from Google in this survey are paid for. (One assumes not.)
Google Extends Lead as Search Referrer � MarketingVOX|SEARCH: "
WebSideStory's recent press release fills in a few gaps in reality.
recap:
Google: 41.0
Yahoo: 27.4
MSN : '.6
No wonder webmasters recoil when Google hiccups. It's that central to so many livelihoods. Yahoo's overrated, especially since it short-shrifted its flagship directory....I'd love to drill down on the stats a bit more to determine how many of the "referrals" from MSN and Yahoo are based on paid inclusion (all? most?) ... or whether *any* of the referrals coming from Google in this survey are paid for. (One assumes not.)
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
News - Hoover's Online
News - Hoover's Online: "A Georgia company is suing Google over technology that the search giant uses to target advertising at Web surfers based on their location"
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Traffick | Minding the Search Engines' Business
Traffick | Minding the Search Engines' Business: "The Case for Infospace + Google
Infospace's seemingly innocuous acquisition of a local online search provider called Switchboard for $160 million in cash may be a harbinger of an impending domino sequence in the local search market and the search engine industry in general."
Intriguing theory...
Consider Metacrawler and Dogpile. Currently, these metasearch properties are significant sources of revenue for several of Google's competitors, including LookSmart, FindWhat, and Overture. By acquiring these, Google could reduce the number of paid links in Metacrawler results, especially those emanating from competitors' keyword ad networks, while taking out a bigger share of that ad revenue pie for itself. This was the same strategy used when Google acquired Applied Semantics, whose DomainSense keyword listings were a major source of revenue for Overture and FindWhat.
If ballpark valuations of Google in the range of $14 billion are accurate, then Google is worth about a dozen times more than Infospace, at least on paper. Sure, Google could raise some IPO cash and then offer Infospace a cash-plus-stock deal they couldn't refuse. But I like the idea of Google and Infospace throwing us a curveball and cooking up a reverse-takeover scheme, leaving Infospace shareholders with a fair but relatively small proportion of shares in a new public company called Google. I'm not sure a reverse takeover on that scale is even legal. But Google taking the back-door route to going public would certainly confound and infuriate the bankers, the press, and the public, who have already speculated to the nth degree about a traditional IPO for Google. Some have even dreamt up bizarro scenarios such as a "Dutch auction."
Infospace's seemingly innocuous acquisition of a local online search provider called Switchboard for $160 million in cash may be a harbinger of an impending domino sequence in the local search market and the search engine industry in general."
Intriguing theory...
Consider Metacrawler and Dogpile. Currently, these metasearch properties are significant sources of revenue for several of Google's competitors, including LookSmart, FindWhat, and Overture. By acquiring these, Google could reduce the number of paid links in Metacrawler results, especially those emanating from competitors' keyword ad networks, while taking out a bigger share of that ad revenue pie for itself. This was the same strategy used when Google acquired Applied Semantics, whose DomainSense keyword listings were a major source of revenue for Overture and FindWhat.
If ballpark valuations of Google in the range of $14 billion are accurate, then Google is worth about a dozen times more than Infospace, at least on paper. Sure, Google could raise some IPO cash and then offer Infospace a cash-plus-stock deal they couldn't refuse. But I like the idea of Google and Infospace throwing us a curveball and cooking up a reverse-takeover scheme, leaving Infospace shareholders with a fair but relatively small proportion of shares in a new public company called Google. I'm not sure a reverse takeover on that scale is even legal. But Google taking the back-door route to going public would certainly confound and infuriate the bankers, the press, and the public, who have already speculated to the nth degree about a traditional IPO for Google. Some have even dreamt up bizarro scenarios such as a "Dutch auction."
Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results
The first newsletter comments re changed layout & results...
Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results: "Google has unveiled a new look that involves dropping its famed search tabs, along with debuting a web alerts service and a personalized search results option."
Google Local Search, rolled out earlier this month, does not appear as a search link on the home page - froogle does...
"Previously found via its own tab, the Google Directory has been demoted to the More Searches page.
'We analyzed what people were using, and that had become less popular over time. As the web grows, directory structures get harder to use,' Norvig said. 'It didn't seem to be worth the real estate on the home page.'
Demoting the directory may also be a way for Google to eventually distance itself from from the Open Directory Project, which powers it."
Changes To Ad Format
On Google's search results page, the sidebar boxes that contained sponsored links are now gone. Instead, a vertical line separates sponsored links from paid results. These all come under a "Sponsored Links" heading and remain on the right-hand side of the page, as before. Other sponsored listings that appeared at the top of unpaid results in boxes appear to have been retained.
"We wanted a page that looked cleaner," Norvig said, about losing the boxes. "People are still very much clear on what's an ad and what's not."
Invisible Tabs / One Box Results
To see one box results in action, here are some specifics:
News headlines: search for iraq, and these appear alongside a newspaper icon.
Shopping search: search for canon powershot, and these appear alongside a shopping bag icon. These were added in added in December
Local search: search for san francisco dentist, and these appear alongside a compass icon. These were added earlier this month
Web Alert Service Introduced
Site owners and others have long wanted the ability to be alerted to changes in Google's web search results. In fact, the third-party Google Alert service has grown popular because of this.
A new Google Web Alerts service now allows monitoring of a number of terms on a daily or weekly basis. The first 20 results are monitored and emailed to you. A similar Google News Alerts service was introduced last August.
Neither Google Alert or the new Google Web Alerts service provide enough functionality for those interested in rank checking purposes, however. Tools like WebPosition have long been used to do this and still continue to be popular despite Google's warnings against automated rank checking.
Google has banned some users of these tools from being able to access Google's results, though it has never actually banned pages themselves from being listed that Search Engine Watch knows of, just because someone used a rank checking tool.
Personalized Search Debuts
All the major search engines have said recently that they see personalized search results as a key way to advance relevancy. Now Google is the first among them to provide a real personalized service for users to play with for web page search refinement.Google Personalized Web Search is a beta service that allows users to refine results based on their interests. You can set up a profile of your interests, then use a "slider" bar that appears above web results to see the results reshaped toward what you may like.
For example, use the profile page to tell Google that you like video games, then do a search for cars. Push the slider to "Max," and the results change so that sites generally about cars, such as Cars.com and Jaguar, get pushed below personalized selections such as pages from computer game sites GameSpy.com or GameSpot.com. Small Google "colored balls" appear next to any personalized results.
How does Google know what to deliver as personalized content. The company is categorizing pages across the web, understanding what's relevant to topics such as "video games" or "movies," Norvig said. When someone does a search, Google looks through pages associated with their interest to find matches...What's happening is that Google's system can't tell exactly which (of my) interests to target. It sees pages that are relevant to cars with various different topic areas, but it doesn't know which topic I'm most interested in.
"That's part of the reason it's on Labs," Norvig said, referring to personalized search's status as a Google Labs project. "You're right, that's one of the issues. You can certainly go back and forth and change your profile, but that's a little clunky.
Personalization Technology
Google says it does not record a personal data on its end. Instead, it remembers your general personal preferences and records these in your Google cookie. The use of cookie data by any company often raises privacy concerns...Google also is not using any type of clickthrough measurements or user feedback to associate personal preferences with pages
Google is using a blend of technology acquired during its purchase of Applied Semantics last year and its own native technology to classify pages, which is has long used to deliver AdSense contextual ads.
Not using Kaltix, Outride or Orkut
Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results: "Google has unveiled a new look that involves dropping its famed search tabs, along with debuting a web alerts service and a personalized search results option."
Google Local Search, rolled out earlier this month, does not appear as a search link on the home page - froogle does...
"Previously found via its own tab, the Google Directory has been demoted to the More Searches page.
'We analyzed what people were using, and that had become less popular over time. As the web grows, directory structures get harder to use,' Norvig said. 'It didn't seem to be worth the real estate on the home page.'
Demoting the directory may also be a way for Google to eventually distance itself from from the Open Directory Project, which powers it."
Changes To Ad Format
On Google's search results page, the sidebar boxes that contained sponsored links are now gone. Instead, a vertical line separates sponsored links from paid results. These all come under a "Sponsored Links" heading and remain on the right-hand side of the page, as before. Other sponsored listings that appeared at the top of unpaid results in boxes appear to have been retained.
"We wanted a page that looked cleaner," Norvig said, about losing the boxes. "People are still very much clear on what's an ad and what's not."
Invisible Tabs / One Box Results
To see one box results in action, here are some specifics:
News headlines: search for iraq, and these appear alongside a newspaper icon.
Shopping search: search for canon powershot, and these appear alongside a shopping bag icon. These were added in added in December
Local search: search for san francisco dentist, and these appear alongside a compass icon. These were added earlier this month
Web Alert Service Introduced
Site owners and others have long wanted the ability to be alerted to changes in Google's web search results. In fact, the third-party Google Alert service has grown popular because of this.
A new Google Web Alerts service now allows monitoring of a number of terms on a daily or weekly basis. The first 20 results are monitored and emailed to you. A similar Google News Alerts service was introduced last August.
Neither Google Alert or the new Google Web Alerts service provide enough functionality for those interested in rank checking purposes, however. Tools like WebPosition have long been used to do this and still continue to be popular despite Google's warnings against automated rank checking.
Google has banned some users of these tools from being able to access Google's results, though it has never actually banned pages themselves from being listed that Search Engine Watch knows of, just because someone used a rank checking tool.
Personalized Search Debuts
All the major search engines have said recently that they see personalized search results as a key way to advance relevancy. Now Google is the first among them to provide a real personalized service for users to play with for web page search refinement.Google Personalized Web Search is a beta service that allows users to refine results based on their interests. You can set up a profile of your interests, then use a "slider" bar that appears above web results to see the results reshaped toward what you may like.
For example, use the profile page to tell Google that you like video games, then do a search for cars. Push the slider to "Max," and the results change so that sites generally about cars, such as Cars.com and Jaguar, get pushed below personalized selections such as pages from computer game sites GameSpy.com or GameSpot.com. Small Google "colored balls" appear next to any personalized results.
How does Google know what to deliver as personalized content. The company is categorizing pages across the web, understanding what's relevant to topics such as "video games" or "movies," Norvig said. When someone does a search, Google looks through pages associated with their interest to find matches...What's happening is that Google's system can't tell exactly which (of my) interests to target. It sees pages that are relevant to cars with various different topic areas, but it doesn't know which topic I'm most interested in.
"That's part of the reason it's on Labs," Norvig said, referring to personalized search's status as a Google Labs project. "You're right, that's one of the issues. You can certainly go back and forth and change your profile, but that's a little clunky.
Personalization Technology
Google says it does not record a personal data on its end. Instead, it remembers your general personal preferences and records these in your Google cookie. The use of cookie data by any company often raises privacy concerns...Google also is not using any type of clickthrough measurements or user feedback to associate personal preferences with pages
Google is using a blend of technology acquired during its purchase of Applied Semantics last year and its own native technology to classify pages, which is has long used to deliver AdSense contextual ads.
Not using Kaltix, Outride or Orkut
Monday, March 29, 2004
Google Introduces Personalized Search Services; Site Enhancements Emphasize Efficiency
Google Introduces Personalized Search Services; Site Enhancements Emphasize Efficiency: "MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 29, 2004 - Google Inc. today released three new innovative features that demonstrate the company's ongoing commitment to improving the search experience for users. The new offerings include a revolutionary search engine that uses user preferences to match search results to their interests, a service that delivers search results via email, and an enhanced interface for Google web sites worldwide.
Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts, both debuting on Google Labs, enable searchers to specify what interests them and to receive customized results based on those interests. Changes to the Google interface improve the speed and accessibility of Google's search offerings, further demonstrating the company's focus on providing the best search experience for users.
'Today, Google takes the first step in providing personal search results based on users' preferences,' said Larry Page, co-founder and president, Products. 'We can deliver search results tailored to your interests or promptly email you new information on any topic. In addition, Google has a cleaner new interface and easy access to the comprehensive Froogle product search.'"
Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts, both debuting on Google Labs, enable searchers to specify what interests them and to receive customized results based on those interests. Changes to the Google interface improve the speed and accessibility of Google's search offerings, further demonstrating the company's focus on providing the best search experience for users.
'Today, Google takes the first step in providing personal search results based on users' preferences,' said Larry Page, co-founder and president, Products. 'We can deliver search results tailored to your interests or promptly email you new information on any topic. In addition, Google has a cleaner new interface and easy access to the comprehensive Froogle product search.'"
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Google's Local Search Goes Beta
Google's Local Search Goes Beta: "Google officially moved local search out of Google labs and into beta last week. Several noteworthy new features were added to the mix.
Google's approach to local search involves using yellow-page and business-directory information from third-party providers, integrating it with information about individual businesses from Google's main Web page index. Though the service is still in beta, Google has promoted it from its relatively obscure location in Google Labs to its own Local Search URL."
Google Local: "
Search termsUS address, city & state, or zip
Save location
Find local businesses and services on the web."
(The) additional information includes content appearing on businesses' Web sites. Mayer says including this information in the past was difficult, partly because content published on the Web isn't as clean as that included in structured services such as yellow pages or directories.
"We're ripping through the Web looking largely at addresses and phone numbers," she said. "We're also cross-correlating that with yellow pages and directory listings
Google's approach to local search involves using yellow-page and business-directory information from third-party providers, integrating it with information about individual businesses from Google's main Web page index. Though the service is still in beta, Google has promoted it from its relatively obscure location in Google Labs to its own Local Search URL."
Google Local: "
Search termsUS address, city & state, or zip
Save location
Find local businesses and services on the web."
(The) additional information includes content appearing on businesses' Web sites. Mayer says including this information in the past was difficult, partly because content published on the Web isn't as clean as that included in structured services such as yellow pages or directories.
"We're ripping through the Web looking largely at addresses and phone numbers," she said. "We're also cross-correlating that with yellow pages and directory listings
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
USATODAY.com - Google seeks consensus on personal-info issues
USATODAY.com - Google seeks consensus on personal-info issues: "Richard M. Smith, former chief technology officer at the Privacy Foundation. 'I think Google is the biggest privacy invader on the planet, no doubt about it.' "
Google to find place for Orkut network in search | CNET News.com
Google to find place for Orkut network in search | CNET News.com: "Google will integrate an online social network created by one of its engineers into its search services, perhaps within a year, according to CEO Eric Schimdt.
The quality of automated search is good, but it's still not perfect. Schmidt asked the audience if they always got the answer they wanted in the first result from every search they performed. No one said they did.
'So everyone here is dissatisfied with our service,' he said. 'Until we can answer their question every time the first time, our work is not done.' "
The quality of automated search is good, but it's still not perfect. Schmidt asked the audience if they always got the answer they wanted in the first result from every search they performed. No one said they did.
'So everyone here is dissatisfied with our service,' he said. 'Until we can answer their question every time the first time, our work is not done.' "
Herald.com: Miami & Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Dolphins & More
Herald.com: Miami & Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Dolphins & More: "Relying on secretly recorded meetings at Mountain View-based Google, federal agents this week arrested a Ventura County man for allegedly threatening to release a software program to spammers that he claimed could cost the Internet search engine company millions of dollars through bogus advertising clicks."
Saturday, March 20, 2004
AdSense Tracker Beta
Freebie... is it "permitted"?
AdSense Tracker Beta: "AdSense� Tracker by Dan Grossman of Website Goodies and Targeted Visitors
Visit adsensetracker.com for updates.
This script is free for personal/commercial
use and modification but may not be
resold or redistributed without permission."
AdSense Tracker Beta: "AdSense� Tracker by Dan Grossman of Website Goodies and Targeted Visitors
Visit adsensetracker.com for updates.
This script is free for personal/commercial
use and modification but may not be
resold or redistributed without permission."
Friday, March 19, 2004
News
News: "More than 55 million Europeans use Google as their search engine of choice according to net measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings.
The company found that, With a reach of over 47% of European internet users, Google far outstripped closest rivals MSN Search, which claims 27 million users (23.1% active reach), and Yahoo, which is used by just over 12 million (10.8% active reach).
Google also scoops the 'most number of pages viewed' prize with an average of 52, and the 'most amount of time spent on the site' award, with each person spending more than 15 minutes per month on its pages. Rivals Yahoo and MSN flailed in comparison with seven and four minutes respectively. "
The company found that, With a reach of over 47% of European internet users, Google far outstripped closest rivals MSN Search, which claims 27 million users (23.1% active reach), and Yahoo, which is used by just over 12 million (10.8% active reach).
Google also scoops the 'most number of pages viewed' prize with an average of 52, and the 'most amount of time spent on the site' award, with each person spending more than 15 minutes per month on its pages. Rivals Yahoo and MSN flailed in comparison with seven and four minutes respectively. "
Internet as research engine continues to grow - 19-Mar-04.
Internet as research engine continues to grow - 19-Mar-04.: "Internet as research engine continues to grow.
Dont expect any slowdown soon in the growing use of the internet for travel research, suggests Steve Kaufer, whose travel research site was recently acquired by IAC/InterActive Corp.
Mr Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of TripAdvisor Inc., told TravelMole: Travel research has always been at the forefront of internet activities. And that makes perfect sense. The information is there 24 hours a day. There are wonderful pictures and fresh sites.
TripAdvisor was formed in 2000 to provide a comprehensive travel search engine and directory to help consumers plan their trips. TripAdvisor.com is the 7th most popular travel website worldwide, the company says.
TripAdvisor does not sell travel, and has no intention of ever doing so, Mr Kaufer said.
Mr Kaufer said there are many good travel information sites, but none that operate like TripAdvisor. The companys search technology continuously scours the web for articles, reviews and opinions published on various travel topics such as hotel and resort properties. Ratings are then given. "
Dont expect any slowdown soon in the growing use of the internet for travel research, suggests Steve Kaufer, whose travel research site was recently acquired by IAC/InterActive Corp.
Mr Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of TripAdvisor Inc., told TravelMole: Travel research has always been at the forefront of internet activities. And that makes perfect sense. The information is there 24 hours a day. There are wonderful pictures and fresh sites.
TripAdvisor was formed in 2000 to provide a comprehensive travel search engine and directory to help consumers plan their trips. TripAdvisor.com is the 7th most popular travel website worldwide, the company says.
TripAdvisor does not sell travel, and has no intention of ever doing so, Mr Kaufer said.
Mr Kaufer said there are many good travel information sites, but none that operate like TripAdvisor. The companys search technology continuously scours the web for articles, reviews and opinions published on various travel topics such as hotel and resort properties. Ratings are then given. "
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Wired News: Think Globally, Search Locally
Wired News: Think Globally, Search Locally: "Google is introducing a new system designed to make it easier for people to find things closer to their homes, paving the way for the company to make more money selling ads to small businesses. The new algorithmic formulas will allow Google to display more local information in response to search requests that include a ZIP code or a city's name.
Google says these geographic queries are now more likely to generate phone numbers and specific addresses on its main results page. In many cases, Google also will display an icon of a compass that can be clicked upon to open another page containing a detailed map and directions to the location"
Google says these geographic queries are now more likely to generate phone numbers and specific addresses on its main results page. In many cases, Google also will display an icon of a compass that can be clicked upon to open another page containing a detailed map and directions to the location"
Monday, March 15, 2004
PR Updates once a Quarter? ; )
PR Updates once a Quarter?: "GG is joking around around. But he may he hinting at 2 things 1) PR will indeed update again, and 2) it may only happen once every 3 months. If true, we would see the next update in April."
Friday, March 12, 2004
Is 100x1 =1x100 -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Is 100x1 =1x100 -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Those 1,000 inter-site links to my home page are going to potentially raise the PR to my home page. But if my home page starts out with a low PR (under 4, if my experience counts for anything), most of those 1,000 pages will never be crawled. It's a chicken-and-egg thing, and the only way to break it is to get links from outside the web site. "
How To Beat Google's 'Brandy' Update
How To Beat Google's 'Brandy' Update: "Brin, one of the founders of Google recently said,
Google has made five significant changes to its algorithmic formulas in the last two weeks."
1) Increase in Index Size
2) Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
This is a very significant new technology that Google has always been interested in, and the incorporation of LSI has been on the cards for some time. If you are an insomniac, then Yu et al.'s Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data" paper is quite helpful in explaining the concept, but, in short, LSI is about using close semantic matches to put your page into the correct topical context.
It's all about synonyms. LSI may see Google effectively remove all instances of the search keyword when analysing your page, in favour of a close analysis of other words. For example, consider the search term 'travel insurance'. LSI-based algorithms will look for words and links that pertain to related topics, such as skiing, holidays, medical, backpacking, and airports.
3) Links and Anchor Text
Links have always been the essence of Google, but the engine is steadily altering its focus. The importance of Page Rank (PR), Google's unique ranking system, is being steadily downgraded in favour of the nature, quality, and quantity of inbound and outbound link anchor text.
4) Neighbourhoods
Now, more than ever, has the question of who's linking to your site become critical. Links must be from related topic sites (the higher the PR the better); those links are seen to define your 'neighbourhood'
again consider the example of travel insurance, big insurance companies might buy links on holiday-related sites in order to boost their ranking. These businesses will actively invest in gaining targeted inbound links from a broad mix of sites. Consequently, their neighbourhoods appear tightly focused to Google.
5) Downgrading of Traditional Tag-Based Optimisation
Google has taken big steps to downgrade standard SEO techniques in favour of LSI and linking, which are far less manipulable by the masses.
(NB Yahoo have not...)
Concludes: to optimize your site successfully for Google has become a lot more difficult
Synonyms As LSI appears to be so significant, it is important to start looking carefully at the information architecture of each major section of your site, and to increase the use of related words. It is also important to re-examine the title tags to include this concept; good title tags have synonyms and avoid repetition of the key phrase.
Outbound Links Link to authority sites on your subject. In the travel insurance example, these authority sites could include places like the State department, major skiing directories, etc. Not only will this help with LSI, it also allows Google to define the neighbourhood more easily. Furthermore, you could engage in link swaps with other companies so that you gain the benefit of an on-topic, LSI-friendly link.
Inbound Links and Link to Us Pages Based on what we have just said, sites need to formulate a link development strategy. A budget needs to be set aside to buy links and develop mini-sites. Look to set up links with university sites (.edu or ac.uk), as these seem to be valuable given Google's informational bias.
Each section of a site should have its own link-to-us page. For example, HotScripts, the major computer script directory, has a great link-to-us page. By providing people with creatives and cut-and-paste HTML, you can vastly improve your chances of attracting reciprocal links to your site. You'll need to have a separate page for each section, to maximise on-topic inbound links.
Dodgiest...Mini-Sites It is important to develop separate mini-sites (also known as satellite sites) for each key subject of your Website. This is a useful tactic that improves your chances of appearing in the SERPs for your keywords. Furthermore, as the last three Google updates have shaken things up so much, having more than one site reduces the likelihood that your business will be disrupted by the engine's updates. However, Google is likely to view satellite sites as spam, so you must take some steps to reduce the chances of your being blacklisted on this basis.
First, make it as hard as possible to for Google to detect host affiliation between your main site and its mini-sites. Google may define sites to be owned by the same person if the first 3 octets of the sites' IP addresses are the same (e.g. 123.123.123.xxx). Therefore, if you're going to run mini-sites, put them on different Web hosts.
Secondly, use different domain names for your mini-sites, rather than sub-domains of your main site. In the past, Google has not penalised sub-domains, but the early results from the Brandy update show a considerable reduction in the presence of sub-domains in the SERPs.
Finally, be very careful with the linking strategy you use between mini-sites -- Google will look at the linking structure very critically. Don't plaster each of your sites with links to the others, and don't reciprocate links between the sites.
Google has made five significant changes to its algorithmic formulas in the last two weeks."
1) Increase in Index Size
2) Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
This is a very significant new technology that Google has always been interested in, and the incorporation of LSI has been on the cards for some time. If you are an insomniac, then Yu et al.'s Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data" paper is quite helpful in explaining the concept, but, in short, LSI is about using close semantic matches to put your page into the correct topical context.
It's all about synonyms. LSI may see Google effectively remove all instances of the search keyword when analysing your page, in favour of a close analysis of other words. For example, consider the search term 'travel insurance'. LSI-based algorithms will look for words and links that pertain to related topics, such as skiing, holidays, medical, backpacking, and airports.
3) Links and Anchor Text
Links have always been the essence of Google, but the engine is steadily altering its focus. The importance of Page Rank (PR), Google's unique ranking system, is being steadily downgraded in favour of the nature, quality, and quantity of inbound and outbound link anchor text.
4) Neighbourhoods
Now, more than ever, has the question of who's linking to your site become critical. Links must be from related topic sites (the higher the PR the better); those links are seen to define your 'neighbourhood'
again consider the example of travel insurance, big insurance companies might buy links on holiday-related sites in order to boost their ranking. These businesses will actively invest in gaining targeted inbound links from a broad mix of sites. Consequently, their neighbourhoods appear tightly focused to Google.
5) Downgrading of Traditional Tag-Based Optimisation
Google has taken big steps to downgrade standard SEO techniques in favour of LSI and linking, which are far less manipulable by the masses.
(NB Yahoo have not...)
Concludes: to optimize your site successfully for Google has become a lot more difficult
Synonyms As LSI appears to be so significant, it is important to start looking carefully at the information architecture of each major section of your site, and to increase the use of related words. It is also important to re-examine the title tags to include this concept; good title tags have synonyms and avoid repetition of the key phrase.
Outbound Links Link to authority sites on your subject. In the travel insurance example, these authority sites could include places like the State department, major skiing directories, etc. Not only will this help with LSI, it also allows Google to define the neighbourhood more easily. Furthermore, you could engage in link swaps with other companies so that you gain the benefit of an on-topic, LSI-friendly link.
Inbound Links and Link to Us Pages Based on what we have just said, sites need to formulate a link development strategy. A budget needs to be set aside to buy links and develop mini-sites. Look to set up links with university sites (.edu or ac.uk), as these seem to be valuable given Google's informational bias.
Each section of a site should have its own link-to-us page. For example, HotScripts, the major computer script directory, has a great link-to-us page. By providing people with creatives and cut-and-paste HTML, you can vastly improve your chances of attracting reciprocal links to your site. You'll need to have a separate page for each section, to maximise on-topic inbound links.
Dodgiest...Mini-Sites It is important to develop separate mini-sites (also known as satellite sites) for each key subject of your Website. This is a useful tactic that improves your chances of appearing in the SERPs for your keywords. Furthermore, as the last three Google updates have shaken things up so much, having more than one site reduces the likelihood that your business will be disrupted by the engine's updates. However, Google is likely to view satellite sites as spam, so you must take some steps to reduce the chances of your being blacklisted on this basis.
First, make it as hard as possible to for Google to detect host affiliation between your main site and its mini-sites. Google may define sites to be owned by the same person if the first 3 octets of the sites' IP addresses are the same (e.g. 123.123.123.xxx). Therefore, if you're going to run mini-sites, put them on different Web hosts.
Secondly, use different domain names for your mini-sites, rather than sub-domains of your main site. In the past, Google has not penalised sub-domains, but the early results from the Brandy update show a considerable reduction in the presence of sub-domains in the SERPs.
Finally, be very careful with the linking strategy you use between mini-sites -- Google will look at the linking structure very critically. Don't plaster each of your sites with links to the others, and don't reciprocate links between the sites.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
johnny.ihackstuff.com :: I'm j0hnny. I hack stuff.
Interesting article from SecurityFocus, via TheRegister, on how you or others can use Google to find things that aren't meant to be found. Talks about use of some advanced Google search techniques, and how passwords, budgets, medical records and more can be found (and how they inadvertantly get into Google in the first place).
johnny.ihackstuff.com :: I'm j0hnny. I hack stuff.: "Googledorks!
googleDork (gOO g�l'D�rk) noun 1. Slang. An inept or foolish person as revealed by Google"
Examples: Error Messages (31)
Really retarded error messages that say WAY too much!
Files containing juicy info (35)
No usernames or passwords, but interesting stuff none the less.
Files containing passwords (22)
PASSWORDS, for the LOVE OF GOD!!! Google found PASSWORDS!
johnny.ihackstuff.com :: I'm j0hnny. I hack stuff.: "Googledorks!
googleDork (gOO g�l'D�rk) noun 1. Slang. An inept or foolish person as revealed by Google"
Examples: Error Messages (31)
Really retarded error messages that say WAY too much!
Files containing juicy info (35)
No usernames or passwords, but interesting stuff none the less.
Files containing passwords (22)
PASSWORDS, for the LOVE OF GOD!!! Google found PASSWORDS!
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
'Traditional' airlines gaining online share - 09-Mar-04.
'Traditional' airlines gaining online share - 09-Mar-04.: "EasyJet remains the clear leader in the UK online transport sector according to the latest statistics from Hitwise, but full service schedule airlines like BA have gained ground.
The no-frills airline notched up a 12.9% share of visits to UK transport sites in the week ending 28 February. This has fallen from an average 14.4% share during December 2003.
However, the share was not taken by no-frills rival Ryanair, which remains in second spot with an 8.5% share of visits to UK transport sites. This hasn�t moved significantly from 8.3% in December 2003.
The largest gain by an airline in the top ten was made by Flybe, which came seventh in the table with a 2.8% share. It previously had less than 2% of the share of visits and didn�t make the top ten. Two other airlines increased their share of visits. BA went up from fourth place to third place with a 6.7% (it was 6.3% in Dec 2003) and bmi came tenth (below bmibaby in fifth) with a 2.35% share of visits.
Three rail websites remained in the top ten but all lost share in UK visits to transport sites since December. National Rail dropped from 7.1% in December to 5.4% in the week ending 28 February, thetrainline.com also lost share from 4.2% to 3.3% and the thetrainlinestore.com lost share from 3.4% to 2.7%. "
Martha Lane Fox cashes in - 09-Mar-04.: "Martha Lane Fox, has reportedly sold off two million shares in the company, raising some GBP4.6 million in the process."
Cross-channel travellers 'desert' airlines for the train - 09-Mar-04.: "Eurostar says travellers are deserting no-frills carriers to take the train.
The train operators ebullient attitude came amid news of record passenger numbers in January and February. Eurostar carried over 1.02 million passengers in the first two months of 2004, an increase of over 20% year-on-year. "
The no-frills airline notched up a 12.9% share of visits to UK transport sites in the week ending 28 February. This has fallen from an average 14.4% share during December 2003.
However, the share was not taken by no-frills rival Ryanair, which remains in second spot with an 8.5% share of visits to UK transport sites. This hasn�t moved significantly from 8.3% in December 2003.
The largest gain by an airline in the top ten was made by Flybe, which came seventh in the table with a 2.8% share. It previously had less than 2% of the share of visits and didn�t make the top ten. Two other airlines increased their share of visits. BA went up from fourth place to third place with a 6.7% (it was 6.3% in Dec 2003) and bmi came tenth (below bmibaby in fifth) with a 2.35% share of visits.
Three rail websites remained in the top ten but all lost share in UK visits to transport sites since December. National Rail dropped from 7.1% in December to 5.4% in the week ending 28 February, thetrainline.com also lost share from 4.2% to 3.3% and the thetrainlinestore.com lost share from 3.4% to 2.7%. "
Martha Lane Fox cashes in - 09-Mar-04.: "Martha Lane Fox, has reportedly sold off two million shares in the company, raising some GBP4.6 million in the process."
Cross-channel travellers 'desert' airlines for the train - 09-Mar-04.: "Eurostar says travellers are deserting no-frills carriers to take the train.
The train operators ebullient attitude came amid news of record passenger numbers in January and February. Eurostar carried over 1.02 million passengers in the first two months of 2004, an increase of over 20% year-on-year. "
BW Online | March 9, 2004 | Google's Ads -- and Minuses
BW Online | March 9, 2004 | Google's Ads -- and Minuses: "commerce and conflict sit poorly on the same Web page. Likewise, control and transparency often exist as opposing forces. How Google, the world's No. 1 search engine, balances these tensions could change the shape of the Internet.
'Google can make choices about what people see and what they don't see, and how it's ordered,' says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. 'As more and more people use Google to access the Internet, that definitely raises some important policy questions.'"
Google has also been selling contextual advertising that associates specific ads with content, regardless of whether a keyword has been purchased. For example, in Google's AdSense program, an article about the Copacabana nightclub might draw ads from Brazilian resorts -- even if none of them had purchased the keyword Copacabana. This means that Google could be exercising editorial policy on third-party sites that are unaware Google is making these choices for them
'Google can make choices about what people see and what they don't see, and how it's ordered,' says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. 'As more and more people use Google to access the Internet, that definitely raises some important policy questions.'"
Google has also been selling contextual advertising that associates specific ads with content, regardless of whether a keyword has been purchased. For example, in Google's AdSense program, an article about the Copacabana nightclub might draw ads from Brazilian resorts -- even if none of them had purchased the keyword Copacabana. This means that Google could be exercising editorial policy on third-party sites that are unaware Google is making these choices for them
Monday, March 08, 2004
Google PageRank Lunacy
Google PageRank Lunacy: "The quest by some to improve their Google PageRank score seems to have reached the point of sheer madness. Even common decency may be abandoned in futile attempts by desperate (or simply less educated) online marketers and others who will seemingly stop at nothing to try and gain links in hopes of seeing more green in their Google toolbar...
Programming a spam bot to relentlessly seek out guest books and comment areas to dump links back to your own pages is a "brute force" method that will produce little search engine gains, in my view.
But even if you don't believe me and my writings about effective link building (PDF), are you really prepared to commit yourself to the virtual desecration of someone's memorial site and bring pain to their loved ones to sell a ring tone? If so, then why not head out to your nearest cemetery with a can of spray paint and plaster your URL's on the tombstones. Your actions in the virtual world of the web are the same
"
Programming a spam bot to relentlessly seek out guest books and comment areas to dump links back to your own pages is a "brute force" method that will produce little search engine gains, in my view.
But even if you don't believe me and my writings about effective link building (PDF), are you really prepared to commit yourself to the virtual desecration of someone's memorial site and bring pain to their loved ones to sell a ring tone? If so, then why not head out to your nearest cemetery with a can of spray paint and plaster your URL's on the tombstones. Your actions in the virtual world of the web are the same
"
The future of search engine technology
Future...
The future of search engine technology: "Google?Ds AdSense can provide the contextual ad technology that would scan an email?Ds content to determine which ads are the most relevant to display.
With this technology in place, a simple provision within any Google Email Terms & Conditions would give the world?Ds largest search engine the necessary permission to serve up relevant ads to all users of its free email service"
The future of search engine technology: "Google?Ds AdSense can provide the contextual ad technology that would scan an email?Ds content to determine which ads are the most relevant to display.
With this technology in place, a simple provision within any Google Email Terms & Conditions would give the world?Ds largest search engine the necessary permission to serve up relevant ads to all users of its free email service"
Search engine news, on Web searching and search engine optimization
Search engine news, on Web searching and search engine optimization: "Google remains No. 1
(February 24 2004) According to a survey made by Nielsen/NetRatings, 39 percent of active US Internet surfers (59.3 million unique viewers) searched the Net using Google in January.
Right behind come Yahoo (30 percent) and MSN (another 30 percent). Next came AOL (15%) and Ask Jeeves (8%).
However, given that Google is no longer powering Yahoo's searches, this has really been a month of falling ratings for Google."
Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com
Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com: "In January, 39 percent of active Internet surfers--or 59.3 million unique viewers--used Google to do searches, while the search tools at Yahoo and MSN attracted approximately 30 percent each, according to data released by Nielsen/NetRatings on Monday. Yahoo had 45.7 million unique users, and MSN, 44.6 million...
Overall, 39 percent of Americans, or 114.5 million people, used a search engine during January, Nielsen said. That accounts for about 76 percent of the active online population. Each person spent about 40 minutes using search engines during the month. "
(February 24 2004) According to a survey made by Nielsen/NetRatings, 39 percent of active US Internet surfers (59.3 million unique viewers) searched the Net using Google in January.
Right behind come Yahoo (30 percent) and MSN (another 30 percent). Next came AOL (15%) and Ask Jeeves (8%).
However, given that Google is no longer powering Yahoo's searches, this has really been a month of falling ratings for Google."
Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com
Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com: "In January, 39 percent of active Internet surfers--or 59.3 million unique viewers--used Google to do searches, while the search tools at Yahoo and MSN attracted approximately 30 percent each, according to data released by Nielsen/NetRatings on Monday. Yahoo had 45.7 million unique users, and MSN, 44.6 million...
Overall, 39 percent of Americans, or 114.5 million people, used a search engine during January, Nielsen said. That accounts for about 76 percent of the active online population. Each person spent about 40 minutes using search engines during the month. "
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Soople; easy search in Google. Advanced calculator
For newbie searchers maybe?
Soople; easy search in Google. Advanced calculator: " site that softens all the fantastic (advanced) functions Google offers... This site is therefore meant for all those who are not yet familiar with all the functions and required syntaxes. This way Soople enables an 'easy expert search'"
Soople; easy search in Google. Advanced calculator: " site that softens all the fantastic (advanced) functions Google offers... This site is therefore meant for all those who are not yet familiar with all the functions and required syntaxes. This way Soople enables an 'easy expert search'"
Monday, March 01, 2004
Google co-founder bugged by IPO speculation | CNET News.com
Google co-founder bugged by IPO speculation | CNET News.com: "Google co-founder Larry Page said on Thursday that he and other company executives have made no statements about an initial public offering and said he was 'dismayed' by the amount of conjecture reported as fact."
Thursday, February 26, 2004
What people want from search Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com
Google tops the search charts | CNET News.com: "Google started off the year as king of the hill among search engines, even as No. 2 Yahoo gears up to reclaim the throne.
In January, 39 percent of active Internet surfers--or 59.3 million unique viewers--used Google to do searches, while the search tools at Yahoo and MSN attracted approximately 30 percent each, according to data released by Nielsen/NetRatings on Monday. Yahoo had 45.7 million unique users, and MSN, 44.6 million. "
"When conducting a search, people seemed to value relevance over accuracy
In the survey, 52 percent of respondents said that the thing they valued most in a search engine was the ability to find relevant information
while 34 percent said they were looking to get credible results
An even one-third said they wanted to get results quickly
Lesser considerations were the interface's ease of use and whether the search engine has a 'cool' design."
ResourceShelf: "ay, February 24, 2004" comments
These numbers could be used to illustrate many issues including:
1) The "principle of least effort" that Thomas Mann wrote about pre-web is alive and well. No surprise.
2) People don't know where to turn for more credible info or how to use a web engine, analyze web content, or create a more precise search that might avoid certain types of sites.
3) Finally, as Jenny pointed out in a chat, survery participants assumed that if it's relevant, it must also be credible. Regardless, it's sad.
In January, 39 percent of active Internet surfers--or 59.3 million unique viewers--used Google to do searches, while the search tools at Yahoo and MSN attracted approximately 30 percent each, according to data released by Nielsen/NetRatings on Monday. Yahoo had 45.7 million unique users, and MSN, 44.6 million. "
"When conducting a search, people seemed to value relevance over accuracy
In the survey, 52 percent of respondents said that the thing they valued most in a search engine was the ability to find relevant information
while 34 percent said they were looking to get credible results
An even one-third said they wanted to get results quickly
Lesser considerations were the interface's ease of use and whether the search engine has a 'cool' design."
ResourceShelf: "ay, February 24, 2004" comments
These numbers could be used to illustrate many issues including:
1) The "principle of least effort" that Thomas Mann wrote about pre-web is alive and well. No surprise.
2) People don't know where to turn for more credible info or how to use a web engine, analyze web content, or create a more precise search that might avoid certain types of sites.
3) Finally, as Jenny pointed out in a chat, survery participants assumed that if it's relevant, it must also be credible. Regardless, it's sad.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
ABCNEWS.com : Persons of the Week: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
ABCNEWS.com : Persons of the Week: Larry Page and Sergey Brin: "
The two have interesting life philosophies.
'We have a mantra: 'Don't be evil,' which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone,' Page said. 'So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.'
Brin added, 'Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.'"
The two have interesting life philosophies.
'We have a mantra: 'Don't be evil,' which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone,' Page said. 'So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.'
Brin added, 'Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.'"
USATODAY.com - New Yahoo really something to see
USATODAY.com - New Yahoo really something to see: "Google took a huge hit last week when Yahoo dumped it and created its own search engine. Google had 78% of Internet searches, according to comScore Networks. Subtract Yahoo, and it falls to 51%."
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Complete analysis of new AdSense Terms, Policies & FAQ
Complete analysis of new AdSense Terms, Policies & FAQ: "new AdSense Terms, Policies & FAQ"
"Well, Google has definitely brought some major changes with their new terms, policies and FAQ. The biggest concern? The following statement that is now listed under 'site may not include: Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site's search engine ranking, e.g., your site's PageRank.
"Well, Google has definitely brought some major changes with their new terms, policies and FAQ. The biggest concern? The following statement that is now listed under 'site may not include: Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site's search engine ranking, e.g., your site's PageRank.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
For backlinks in Google
Google Search: "www.totaltravel.com"-site:www.totaltravel.com
Searched the web for "www.totaltravel.com"-site:www.totaltravel.com. Results 1 - 10 of about 52,600.
vs toolbar: Searched for pages linking to http://www.totaltravel.com/. Results 1 - 10 of about 240.
Searched the web for "www.totaltravel.com"-site:www.totaltravel.com. Results 1 - 10 of about 52,600.
vs toolbar: Searched for pages linking to http://www.totaltravel.com/. Results 1 - 10 of about 240.
InfoWorld: The Google way: February 20, 2004: By Chad Dickerson: E-business Strategies
InfoWorld: The Google way: February 20, 2004: By Chad Dickerson: E-business Strategies: "Quite simply, the Google philosophy can be expressed in five general principles: Work on things that matter, affect everyone in the world, solve problems with algorithms if possible, hire bright people and give them lots of freedom, and don’t be afraid to try new things. As a general practice, Google also requires that its engineers spend 20 percent of their time working on personal technology projects unrelated to their primary projects....
Finally, I think hiring bright people and giving them freedom is a required element of an innovative organization, one that implicitly supports trying new things. The 20 percent personal projects requirement is not unfounded: It�s really an implementation of the organizational �slack� that Tom DeMarco details in his book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork and the Myth of Total Efficiency. An IT organization running at full throttle all the time is ultimately self-defeating � take it from Google"
Finally, I think hiring bright people and giving them freedom is a required element of an innovative organization, one that implicitly supports trying new things. The 20 percent personal projects requirement is not unfounded: It�s really an implementation of the organizational �slack� that Tom DeMarco details in his book Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork and the Myth of Total Efficiency. An IT organization running at full throttle all the time is ultimately self-defeating � take it from Google"
Friday, February 20, 2004
"Adapt or die? " The Next Step With Search Engines
Whats The Next Step With Search Engines -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum:
>:Remember the old adage that has always applied to SEO's? Adapt or die? It's been too long since this applied to Search Engines because there was no competition with deep enough pockets to rival Google and it's wonderful algorithm. Most new kids on the block which had promise were bought out before they could become a threat...The phrase applies once again to the Search Engines.
>:Remember the old adage that has always applied to SEO's? Adapt or die? It's been too long since this applied to Search Engines because there was no competition with deep enough pockets to rival Google and it's wonderful algorithm. Most new kids on the block which had promise were bought out before they could become a threat...The phrase applies once again to the Search Engines.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Interview with Sergey Brin re Google and Newspapers
Google and Newspapers: "interviewed Brin via e-mail about Google's plans for the future and its partnerships with the newspaper industry."
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Search wars are about to get personal | CNET News.com
Search wars are about to get personal | CNET News.com: "Google may become more portal-like with 'my' territory of its own. The company recently updated a domain-name registration of the Web address 'MyGoogle.com' with Network Solutions, which was first created in 2000. "
Google Achieves Search Milestone with Immediate Access to More Than 6 Billion Items
17th Feb 2004 Google Achieves Search Milestone with Immediate Access to More Than 6 Billion Items: "Google Inc. today announced it expanded the breadth of its web index to more than 6 billion items"
"Google Image Search has been significantly updated," said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of Technology. "We've doubled the index to more than 880 million images, enhanced search quality, and improved the user interface."
"Google Image Search has been significantly updated," said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of Technology. "We've doubled the index to more than 880 million images, enhanced search quality, and improved the user interface."
Monday, February 16, 2004
Google bans environmental group's protest ads
Google bans environmental group's protest ads: "Google bans environmental group's protest ads"
spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey. "We do reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site,"
spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey. "We do reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site,"
Future search
ResourceShelf: "'One thing [Google's Craig] Silverstein does like to talk about is his long-range goal for search technology, which he believes is still in its infancy. 'It's clear that the answer [to search] is not a ranked list of Web sites,' he says. No one expects to approach a librarian, ask a question about the Panama Canal, and get 50 book titles in response, he argues. Silverstein thinks information retrieval experts should aim high, building software that is every bit as good at pointing users toward the specific resources they need as a well-trained reference librarian.'"
Update Brandy Part 3 - Googleguy says...
Update Brandy Part 3: "People post around here about filters, blocking, penalties, etc. etc. A far better explanation is 'things which used to work before don't receive the same amount of credit now.' It's natural for people who are way out there with their linking strategies or their page-building strategies to think of a drop as an over-optimization penalty, but it's more realistic to conclude that Google is weighting criteria differently so that over-optimized sites just aren't doing as well now. "
Thursday, February 12, 2004
- Becoming an Authority - Recovering from Florida/Austin. Hubs & Authorities Cornell Paper
Cre8asite forums. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Becoming an Authority - Recovering from Florida/Austin. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: "it is important to clarify the differences of authorities and hubs, plus show you how a search engine will use both concepts to rank a page.
Authority: What makes a page an authority? There is strong belief that an authority is determined by the value of their InDegree (an InDegree in our terms is the number of pages linking from page A to page B). The larger the number, the more authoritative that page is in terms of the types of themed pages that are linked to that page. A page within a theme is stronger based on the number of times a query term is found within the page.
This works just fine by itself for ranking pages if we did not have words with double or even triples meanings (windows, java, etc.). To make up for this factor we need something called 'hubs' to help determine the best possible returned results for a keyword phrase.
Hubs: What makes up a hub? A hub can be defined as a site or page that has many links from pages that have the same links. So page A links to page B and page C, page B links to page A and page C, page C links to page A and page B and so on. The more similar and related links, the larger the hub is.
By looking at the authority of a page (InDegree) plus the hub or hubs the page is within (the similarity), the search engine can provide a better results page then just by looking at authority. "
Authority: What makes a page an authority? There is strong belief that an authority is determined by the value of their InDegree (an InDegree in our terms is the number of pages linking from page A to page B). The larger the number, the more authoritative that page is in terms of the types of themed pages that are linked to that page. A page within a theme is stronger based on the number of times a query term is found within the page.
This works just fine by itself for ranking pages if we did not have words with double or even triples meanings (windows, java, etc.). To make up for this factor we need something called 'hubs' to help determine the best possible returned results for a keyword phrase.
Hubs: What makes up a hub? A hub can be defined as a site or page that has many links from pages that have the same links. So page A links to page B and page C, page B links to page A and page C, page C links to page A and page B and so on. The more similar and related links, the larger the hub is.
By looking at the authority of a page (InDegree) plus the hub or hubs the page is within (the similarity), the search engine can provide a better results page then just by looking at authority. "
Google monopolizes search engine awards
Sexy Whitehouse.com domain for sale: "Google was named the Internet's 'Outstanding Search Service' in the 4th annual awards competition conducted by editors of Searchenginewatch.com. 'Google remains the top choice for anyone who wishes to start their web search quest. Much more often than not, it continues to help you locate what you are looking for. The service has maintained the consistency of its search interface, a relief when competitors seem to be constantly redesigning,' the award citation said.
In fact, Google placed first in 8 of the 11 categories, also taking honors for Best News Search, Best Image Search, and Best Paid Placement Service. Yahoo Shopping (YHOO: news, chart, profile) was ranked first in the shopping category and Dogpile was honored as the Best Meta Search Engine. Editors Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman surveyed their readers for advice and then made the selections."
In fact, Google placed first in 8 of the 11 categories, also taking honors for Best News Search, Best Image Search, and Best Paid Placement Service. Yahoo Shopping (YHOO: news, chart, profile) was ranked first in the shopping category and Dogpile was honored as the Best Meta Search Engine. Editors Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman surveyed their readers for advice and then made the selections."
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Google: The Reverse eBay - comments on personalisation
Posted in full as online version is only available to subscribers.
Business 2.0 - Web Article - Google: The Reverse eBay: "gle: The Reverse eBay"
Don't think of tech's latest star as just a search engine. Think of it as a keyword marketplace.
By Erick Schonfeld, February 06, 2004
Most of us know Google as a trusty Internet search engine and the most hyped, most anticipated IPO since Netscape. But there is another side of Google that is familiar to marketers and advertisers. Through a part of Google's site called AdWords, advertisers can bid on the search terms we all type into Google's search box 200 million times a day. AdWords, which launched two years ago, is now believed to account for the vast majority of Google's annual revenue of $700 million to $1 billion (the exact figure is not known, since Google has yet to file its IPO registration statement). If this is true, then Google makes most of its money as a keyword marketplace.
In a sense, Google is becoming a reverse eBay (EBAY), where the customers are advertisers and the inventory is made up of consumers' desires as expressed by their search terms. Google auctions off the search terms and connects businesses to consumers who are looking for what those businesses have to offer. Whoever bids the most for a term and receives the most clicks appears in a sponsored advertisement link either at the top or along the side of the search-results page.
This form of online advertising appears to be working. Paid search is on the rise while less effective forms of online advertising are waning. Overall industry revenues from paid search surpassed banner ads in the third quarter of last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. And Google counts more than 150,000 advertisers in its paid-search program, up from zero in 2002.
One reason paid search is working is that it is not an annoyance to consumers. It turns out that a lot of people go to Google to either research a purchase or buy a product. "A big percentage of queries we get are commercial in nature," confirms Salar Kamangar, Google's director of product management. Kamangar came up with the AdWords concept and oversees that part of the business today.
Does he think of Google as a keyword marketplace? "You bet," he says. "It is a marketplace where the advertisers tell us about themselves by telling us how much each lead is worth. They have an incentive to bid how much they really want to pay, because if they underbid, their competitors will get more traffic."
Paid search is the ultimate in targeted advertising because consumers type in exactly what they want. For this reason, a general search term like "tropical vacation" is worth less than a more specific term like "Hawaiian vacation." Advertisers pay only for terms that Web surfers actually click on. They enter the keywords they want to bid on and the maximum amounts they want to pay per click and per day, and then Google determines a price and a search ranking for those keywords based on how much other advertisers are willing to pay for the same terms. Some keywords are 5 cents a click and some are $3 or more. With millions of clicks a day, that starts to add up pretty fast.
A big part of AdWords's success is its simplicity. "We built AdWords so it is as easy to use for advertisers as possible," Kamangar says. The goal, he says, is that "five minutes out, the advertiser can start getting leads." But Google is also improving the ability to target ads. Advertisers can choose to display ads only to Web surfers in particular countries or even smaller geographical regions, and they can broaden their terms to include synonyms, common misspellings, and plurals. Google now also offers a way to track the number of clicks that lead to purchases. Expect more refinements down the pike.
The fact is that Google already knows a lot about its users. So why not build deeper profiles by incorporating information about where they've just come from or what they have searched for in the past? Kamangar professes that Google is not interested in such profiling. For one thing, it would raise a whole host of messy privacy issues. For another, Google's business is based on the trust of consumers, so it would not be wise to risk destroying that trust.
But there is an even better reason not to do such demographic profiling: It represents an old way of thinking from which advertisers need to free themselves. Predicting human behavior based on who someone is or what she has done in the past is not something you should build a business around. "There has been research on this," Kamangar says, "but it is not very promising. The searches people do are so unique and diversified that it is hard to predict what they will want based on their past profile." And when you think about it, why would you even want to? Through their actions and words, searchers are giving advertisers a great gift. "The users have very narrowly defined in their own words what they are looking for," Kamangar says. Google is proving that it is much better to let consumers target themselves.
Business 2.0 - Web Article - Google: The Reverse eBay: "gle: The Reverse eBay"
Don't think of tech's latest star as just a search engine. Think of it as a keyword marketplace.
By Erick Schonfeld, February 06, 2004
Most of us know Google as a trusty Internet search engine and the most hyped, most anticipated IPO since Netscape. But there is another side of Google that is familiar to marketers and advertisers. Through a part of Google's site called AdWords, advertisers can bid on the search terms we all type into Google's search box 200 million times a day. AdWords, which launched two years ago, is now believed to account for the vast majority of Google's annual revenue of $700 million to $1 billion (the exact figure is not known, since Google has yet to file its IPO registration statement). If this is true, then Google makes most of its money as a keyword marketplace.
In a sense, Google is becoming a reverse eBay (EBAY), where the customers are advertisers and the inventory is made up of consumers' desires as expressed by their search terms. Google auctions off the search terms and connects businesses to consumers who are looking for what those businesses have to offer. Whoever bids the most for a term and receives the most clicks appears in a sponsored advertisement link either at the top or along the side of the search-results page.
This form of online advertising appears to be working. Paid search is on the rise while less effective forms of online advertising are waning. Overall industry revenues from paid search surpassed banner ads in the third quarter of last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. And Google counts more than 150,000 advertisers in its paid-search program, up from zero in 2002.
One reason paid search is working is that it is not an annoyance to consumers. It turns out that a lot of people go to Google to either research a purchase or buy a product. "A big percentage of queries we get are commercial in nature," confirms Salar Kamangar, Google's director of product management. Kamangar came up with the AdWords concept and oversees that part of the business today.
Does he think of Google as a keyword marketplace? "You bet," he says. "It is a marketplace where the advertisers tell us about themselves by telling us how much each lead is worth. They have an incentive to bid how much they really want to pay, because if they underbid, their competitors will get more traffic."
Paid search is the ultimate in targeted advertising because consumers type in exactly what they want. For this reason, a general search term like "tropical vacation" is worth less than a more specific term like "Hawaiian vacation." Advertisers pay only for terms that Web surfers actually click on. They enter the keywords they want to bid on and the maximum amounts they want to pay per click and per day, and then Google determines a price and a search ranking for those keywords based on how much other advertisers are willing to pay for the same terms. Some keywords are 5 cents a click and some are $3 or more. With millions of clicks a day, that starts to add up pretty fast.
A big part of AdWords's success is its simplicity. "We built AdWords so it is as easy to use for advertisers as possible," Kamangar says. The goal, he says, is that "five minutes out, the advertiser can start getting leads." But Google is also improving the ability to target ads. Advertisers can choose to display ads only to Web surfers in particular countries or even smaller geographical regions, and they can broaden their terms to include synonyms, common misspellings, and plurals. Google now also offers a way to track the number of clicks that lead to purchases. Expect more refinements down the pike.
The fact is that Google already knows a lot about its users. So why not build deeper profiles by incorporating information about where they've just come from or what they have searched for in the past? Kamangar professes that Google is not interested in such profiling. For one thing, it would raise a whole host of messy privacy issues. For another, Google's business is based on the trust of consumers, so it would not be wise to risk destroying that trust.
But there is an even better reason not to do such demographic profiling: It represents an old way of thinking from which advertisers need to free themselves. Predicting human behavior based on who someone is or what she has done in the past is not something you should build a business around. "There has been research on this," Kamangar says, "but it is not very promising. The searches people do are so unique and diversified that it is hard to predict what they will want based on their past profile." And when you think about it, why would you even want to? Through their actions and words, searchers are giving advertisers a great gift. "The users have very narrowly defined in their own words what they are looking for," Kamangar says. Google is proving that it is much better to let consumers target themselves.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Why Google is such a great brand: February 09, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern
Why Google is such a great brand: February 09, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: "Google has clarity and focus. Google knows that great brands serve a purpose. They are useful. Google genuinely believes in the motto: the searcher is king. It demonstrates that you can put the customer first and make a profit. Google keeps it simple and wins.
What do you think of the following heading?
Solving tomorrow�s challenges. Today.
Why is it, do you think, that you would never find this sort of heading on the homepage of Google? "
What do you think of the following heading?
Solving tomorrow�s challenges. Today.
Why is it, do you think, that you would never find this sort of heading on the homepage of Google? "
Monday, February 02, 2004
Google Guide: Interactive Tutorial Making Search Even Easier
For newbies? Google Guide: Interactive Tutorial Making Search Even Easier: "Why Take The Google Guide Tutorial? "
Nancy Blachman ... has written a book on Google searching, How to do everything with Google, together with Fritz Schneider and Eric Fredricksen, software engineers at Google...
However, before you invite her to do a workshop for your institution, you might want to take a look at her Google ~Guide web site. There she gives away a lot of web search information for free.
Nancy Blachman ... has written a book on Google searching, How to do everything with Google, together with Fritz Schneider and Eric Fredricksen, software engineers at Google...
However, before you invite her to do a workshop for your institution, you might want to take a look at her Google ~Guide web site. There she gives away a lot of web search information for free.
Friday, January 30, 2004
Google faces trademark suit over keyword ads | CNET News.com
Google faces trademark suit over keyword ads | CNET News.com: "A lawsuit filed this week has intensified an ongoing dispute over whether Google's policy of selling ads related to search terms is legal or involves trademark infringement. "
About.com : http://www.seoinc.com/seo-newsletters/seo-enewsVol6-Google-Hilltop.html#Google-Removes-DNS-Entries
About.com : http://www.seoinc.com/seo-newsletters/seo-enewsVol6-Google-Hilltop.html#Google-Removes-DNS-Entries: "Google removes DNS entries from the data base = No more Google Dance Tools?"
GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004
SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004
Here is what the Hilltop Algorithm looks like:
Old Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} New Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} * {(1-f)+c (LS)}
Google quickly found that the Hilltop algorithm also had flaws. So Google created a two-step search process that combines PageRank technology and the Hilltop algorithm.So how do companies continue to enjoy top rankings on Google?Getting top rankings on Google depends on meeting the criteria of PageRank and Hilltop. Therefore, companies have to receive significant numbers votes or quality links from authority sites (PageRank) and have meaningful / relevant hypertext links (Hilltop) inbound to their web pages. Just as it has always been, Content is critical and linking is now more important that ever.Two Conclusions can be drawn from our research:
1.Google is not trying to force companies to buy keywords; it is simply trying to improve its algorithm.
2.The search engine optimization methodology and strategies used to achieve top placements just became significantly more complicated with the addition of Hilltop With Google handling 75 to 85 percent of all search requests, companies doing business on the Web must retain top rankings in the search engines in order to survive. And that means making sure that your firm satisfies the criteria of the two algorithms.
Here is what the Hilltop Algorithm looks like:
Old Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} New Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} * {(1-f)+c (LS)}
Google quickly found that the Hilltop algorithm also had flaws. So Google created a two-step search process that combines PageRank technology and the Hilltop algorithm.So how do companies continue to enjoy top rankings on Google?Getting top rankings on Google depends on meeting the criteria of PageRank and Hilltop. Therefore, companies have to receive significant numbers votes or quality links from authority sites (PageRank) and have meaningful / relevant hypertext links (Hilltop) inbound to their web pages. Just as it has always been, Content is critical and linking is now more important that ever.Two Conclusions can be drawn from our research:
1.Google is not trying to force companies to buy keywords; it is simply trying to improve its algorithm.
2.The search engine optimization methodology and strategies used to achieve top placements just became significantly more complicated with the addition of Hilltop With Google handling 75 to 85 percent of all search requests, companies doing business on the Web must retain top rankings in the search engines in order to survive. And that means making sure that your firm satisfies the criteria of the two algorithms.
SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004
SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004: "ogle removes DNS entries from the data base = No more Google Dance Tools?"
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Major Google Update
Major Google Update -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "there seems to have been another major update on google"
labs.google.com - Papers by Googlers
labs.google.com - Papers by Googlers: "Below is a partial list of papers written by people now at Google, showing the range of backgrounds of people in Google Engineering"
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Google spawns social networking service | CNET News.com
Google spawns social networking service | CNET News.com: "A Google representative said that the site is the independent project of one of its engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten, who works on user interface design for Google. Buyukkokten, a computer science doctoral candidate at Stanford University before joining Google, created Orkut.com in the past several months by working on it about one day a week--an amount that Google asks all of its engineers to devote to personal projects. Buyukkokten, with the help of a few other engineers, developed Orkut out of his passion for social networking services...
The goal of a social networking service is a far cry from Google's long-stated mission of organizing the world's information. Instead of helping connect people to information on the Web, it would be helping people connect with other people.
It also once again raises the notion that Google aspires to become a portal like Yahoo, something that the company has long denied. Google already helps people shop, read news, thwart pop-up advertisements, get stock information and publish to the Web"
orkut - helpMembership to orkut is by invitation only.
If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join.
The goal of a social networking service is a far cry from Google's long-stated mission of organizing the world's information. Instead of helping connect people to information on the Web, it would be helping people connect with other people.
It also once again raises the notion that Google aspires to become a portal like Yahoo, something that the company has long denied. Google already helps people shop, read news, thwart pop-up advertisements, get stock information and publish to the Web"
orkut - helpMembership to orkut is by invitation only.
If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join.
Friday, January 23, 2004
eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis
eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis: "BT Openzone Access Points at Railway Stations
BT Openzone will be available at 13 key railway stations by spring of this year - with more to follow. The roll out will mean that passengers will be able to surf the web wirelessly at broadband speed from stations in the capital at Euston, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, Victoria, Fenchurch Street, Paddington, Cannon Street, and Charing Cross. (1/23/2004)
In other parts of England, commuters and other passengers will be able to sample the benefit of BT Openzone service at Birmingham New Street, Leeds City, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street. North of the border, Edinburgh Waverley will have its own BT Openzone access point.
In addition, BT Openzone access points will be installed at London Bridge and Glasgow Central by summer, taking the total to 15 stations."
BT Openzone will be available at 13 key railway stations by spring of this year - with more to follow. The roll out will mean that passengers will be able to surf the web wirelessly at broadband speed from stations in the capital at Euston, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, Victoria, Fenchurch Street, Paddington, Cannon Street, and Charing Cross. (1/23/2004)
In other parts of England, commuters and other passengers will be able to sample the benefit of BT Openzone service at Birmingham New Street, Leeds City, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street. North of the border, Edinburgh Waverley will have its own BT Openzone access point.
In addition, BT Openzone access points will be installed at London Bridge and Glasgow Central by summer, taking the total to 15 stations."
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports
Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports: "charts based on your
Google AdSense Reports"
Google AdSense Reports"
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Search Engine Theme Pyramids
Search Engine Theme Pyramids: "The whole Themes theory is to look at the site as a whole and compartmentalize it. Start with broad content (1 keyword) and work your way down to the specific keywords you want to target. Then link to the topics above and below, but not across, to reinforce the pages with link text and insite link popularity"
Semantics -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Semantics -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: This "paper that describes the processes that were going on over at Applied Semantics before Google bought them up. It's long and you probably won't even be able to get it in a single read - pretty heavy stuff in there. If you can muscle your way through and then go back to the stuff you aren't clear on, you'll have an excellent foundation for understanding how all this works.
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
This paper doesn't deal specifically with Google, but is an overview of the entire thing (though it does explain some potential uses for it - a search engine included). Once you wrap your mind around the concepts, you can almost look at Google and see it happening.
Also bear in mind that this is only part of it. There's Topic Sensitive PageRank and LocalRank that are also somewhat new to the game (within the last year) and vastly overlooked (I suppose due to the complexities of it all) by most. With the semantics kicking in, the levels of integration of these two are also boosted considerably....
Interesting theory:
So, in your competitive markets where people vie for the same terms and everyone is optimizing pages for the "terms" and not the "concept" of a "martin guitar" owned by "Scott Rahin", the whole semantics thing falls apart.
In the end, if there's a sector like this (think "real estate" and "hotels" and "airfares" and other highly optimized and competitive areas) then the semantics have no hope of working so it either works poorly, or Google has something in there to kick that part of the algo out. ...
Comments re:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com): "Amazon, remember, scooped up Alexa a while back. Alexa isn't so much a "search" property, but rather, an "indexing engine" which is, as this article points out, the primary problem with the Semantic Web - you have no way of indexing all the documents...
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
This post about navigational structure helps you understand how you can use site structure to achieve the same types of results. The pyramid scheme (in this case, that's a good thing) allows your "pointers" to be pointing to concepts on the deeper pages and not on the same page as in the first example.
----
I should point out that these techniques now work very well on larger sites.
...the semantics portion of the algo is only going to increase in importance. It does work - if you are presenting the data to them in the right way. There will be a grace period (how long? I dunno) where you'll be able to rank well using the "keyword" model but over the next 12-24 months, expect that model to slowly and progressively become less effective as more and more SEOs embrace the new technology and those patterns and semantic extrapolations become more the norm in web design."
NEW CONCEPTS: TSPR (Topic Sensitive PageRank) and LocalRank
ARTICLES & PAPERS REFERRED TO ABOVE:
:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
Scientific American: The Semantic Web: "The Semantic Web
A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities
By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila "
Integrating Applications on the Semantic Web: "For the Web to reach its full potential, it must evolve into this Semantic Web, providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people"
RDF Semantics: "This is a specification of a precise semantics, and corresponding complete systems of inference rules, for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema (RDFS)."
Heavy:
Sitemaps? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "The page relationships are derived from linking structure, not URL structure. "
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
Learn From A Forum's Structural Design -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "a sitemap is murder on your PR. PR works in a way where a page has a certain 'number' assigned to it. 80% of that number is divided up equally amongst all the outgoing links on that page and passed along to the next page. So if you had regular navigation that passed through a couple of pages, your site would start with a high PR out front and get a little lower at the next level and a little lower at the next level and so on. Your 'broader' less focused pages (the ones with the more general and more competitive search terms) will have a higher PR and your more specific pages (the ones with focused terms that aren't as competitive and don't need as much PR to rank well) get less PR.
When you link through the sitemap, though, all of your pages get an equal share of a highly dilluted amount of pagerank.
---
Oh - and Google's only going to crawl a certain number of links on a page. I think their site says 100, but I suspect that it may be higher in some cases. PR of the page with all the links on it seems to have a bearing upon how many of those links on it Google will bother to crawl.
So, if your site has 125 pages, then 25 pages of your site will never get crawled. "
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
This paper doesn't deal specifically with Google, but is an overview of the entire thing (though it does explain some potential uses for it - a search engine included). Once you wrap your mind around the concepts, you can almost look at Google and see it happening.
Also bear in mind that this is only part of it. There's Topic Sensitive PageRank and LocalRank that are also somewhat new to the game (within the last year) and vastly overlooked (I suppose due to the complexities of it all) by most. With the semantics kicking in, the levels of integration of these two are also boosted considerably....
Interesting theory:
So, in your competitive markets where people vie for the same terms and everyone is optimizing pages for the "terms" and not the "concept" of a "martin guitar" owned by "Scott Rahin", the whole semantics thing falls apart.
In the end, if there's a sector like this (think "real estate" and "hotels" and "airfares" and other highly optimized and competitive areas) then the semantics have no hope of working so it either works poorly, or Google has something in there to kick that part of the algo out. ...
Comments re:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com): "Amazon, remember, scooped up Alexa a while back. Alexa isn't so much a "search" property, but rather, an "indexing engine" which is, as this article points out, the primary problem with the Semantic Web - you have no way of indexing all the documents...
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
This post about navigational structure helps you understand how you can use site structure to achieve the same types of results. The pyramid scheme (in this case, that's a good thing) allows your "pointers" to be pointing to concepts on the deeper pages and not on the same page as in the first example.
----
I should point out that these techniques now work very well on larger sites.
...the semantics portion of the algo is only going to increase in importance. It does work - if you are presenting the data to them in the right way. There will be a grace period (how long? I dunno) where you'll be able to rank well using the "keyword" model but over the next 12-24 months, expect that model to slowly and progressively become less effective as more and more SEOs embrace the new technology and those patterns and semantic extrapolations become more the norm in web design."
NEW CONCEPTS: TSPR (Topic Sensitive PageRank) and LocalRank
ARTICLES & PAPERS REFERRED TO ABOVE:
:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
Scientific American: The Semantic Web: "The Semantic Web
A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities
By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila "
Integrating Applications on the Semantic Web: "For the Web to reach its full potential, it must evolve into this Semantic Web, providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people"
RDF Semantics: "This is a specification of a precise semantics, and corresponding complete systems of inference rules, for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema (RDFS)."
Heavy:
Sitemaps? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "The page relationships are derived from linking structure, not URL structure. "
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
Learn From A Forum's Structural Design -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "a sitemap is murder on your PR. PR works in a way where a page has a certain 'number' assigned to it. 80% of that number is divided up equally amongst all the outgoing links on that page and passed along to the next page. So if you had regular navigation that passed through a couple of pages, your site would start with a high PR out front and get a little lower at the next level and a little lower at the next level and so on. Your 'broader' less focused pages (the ones with the more general and more competitive search terms) will have a higher PR and your more specific pages (the ones with focused terms that aren't as competitive and don't need as much PR to rank well) get less PR.
When you link through the sitemap, though, all of your pages get an equal share of a highly dilluted amount of pagerank.
---
Oh - and Google's only going to crawl a certain number of links on a page. I think their site says 100, but I suspect that it may be higher in some cases. PR of the page with all the links on it seems to have a bearing upon how many of those links on it Google will bother to crawl.
So, if your site has 125 pages, then 25 pages of your site will never get crawled. "
CNN.com - Sources: Google developing ad service for e-mail - Jan. 19, 2004
CNN.com - Sources: Google developing ad service for e-mail - Jan. 19, 2004: "Google developing ad service for e-mail"
Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle.
In an e-mail response to questions from Reuters, (Google) spokesman David Krane said, "Google has a number of projects in the works to test monetization in various scenarios.
"In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of e-mail newsletters," he said
Future????
Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion: "You log into your GoogleMail account, and it has emailed you an entire evening's worth of web crawling for the data you were looking for. It's searched for places for your for your next vacation, and has managed to provide you with not only information, but Froogle'd for the best prices too. It's suggested things you'd like to do, and gone out and found the most popular sites about that as well. All you have to do is log into your Google HomePage and accept its suggestions, or negotiate with your own little GoogleBot for other venues.
Could this be the beginning of intelligent software agents? It would seem that if anyone could bring such a thing to us, it would be the Google folks"
"
Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle.
In an e-mail response to questions from Reuters, (Google) spokesman David Krane said, "Google has a number of projects in the works to test monetization in various scenarios.
"In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of e-mail newsletters," he said
Future????
Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion: "You log into your GoogleMail account, and it has emailed you an entire evening's worth of web crawling for the data you were looking for. It's searched for places for your for your next vacation, and has managed to provide you with not only information, but Froogle'd for the best prices too. It's suggested things you'd like to do, and gone out and found the most popular sites about that as well. All you have to do is log into your Google HomePage and accept its suggestions, or negotiate with your own little GoogleBot for other venues.
Could this be the beginning of intelligent software agents? It would seem that if anyone could bring such a thing to us, it would be the Google folks"
"
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