GMAIL & PRIVACY LEGISLATION

Wired News: Tightening the Reins on Gmail: "California's Senate voted on Thursday to support a bill to limit a new e-mail service by No. 1 Web search company, Google, over concerns it could threaten the privacy of users. "

Froogle nuts & bolts

Questions for Froogle's Mastermind, Part 1: "Questions for Froogle's Mastermind, Part 1"

Froogle is Google's shopping search engine.

Rated very user-friendly shopping experience

Users can view search results in a list or a grid format

List view gives the product photo, product name, price, description, and link are displayed in each search result
Grid view appears with only one click & shows more product photos on one screen.
Search results can be sorted from low-to-high or high-to-low prices & you can set a price range

Nevill-Manning (CNM) : Our two overriding aims in developing Froogle are comprehensiveness and ranking quality... Froogle uses the same business model as Google -- no money changes hands in order to appear in the results, and we sell clearly marked ads on the side of the page.

Other shopping search engines have a quandary: If they charge merchants to be involved, then they can't be comprehensive. If they include others at no charge, they remove the incentive to pay for inclusion. If they take a middle road -- show the paid results first, then the unpaid results -- then relevancy suffers. With Froogle, we give away lots of valuable traffic to merchants for free but end up with a higher-quality user experience...

Ranking is done using a function that is based on the Google ranking but is tuned especially for Froogle, making use of the structured data that is unique to Froogle: name, description, price, image, etc.

Apart from comprehensiveness and ranking quality, we apply the Google formula of a simple user interface and fast response times...CNM: We have no plans to move either Google or Froogle to a paid inclusion model, for the reasons I outlined above. If you provide users with the best possible experience, it's possible to monetize it with clearly marked, highly relevant ads.


ST: Why do some Froogle search results show above Web page matches on Google?

CNM: For a fairly small subset of queries that we strongly believe indicate users are looking to purchase a product, we show three results above the Web results. They are intended to help people get the information they need as quickly as possible -- just as we show results from News or Local Search if we detect that it might be helpful.

CNM: We have a long list of features that we'd like to add to Froogle, but we'd like it to be a surprise.

India's Secret Army of Ad Clickers - Rupees for Clicks

SecurityForumX :: View topic - India's Secret Army of Ad Clickers - Rupees for Clicks: "Since the introduction of Google Ads and various other 'pay for click' advertising schemes, I have been saying that it was open to abuse and that advertisers that 'pay for clicks' are probably 'paying to support some family in India and not attracting real clients or potential customers...'.

Here is a nice little story out of The Times of India that helps explain why advertisers are getting RIPPED OFF by these ' pay for click schemes '.

Quote:


India's Secret Army of Ad Clickers
The Times Of India:

With her baby on her lap, Maya Sharma (name changed) gets down to work every evening from her eighth-floor flat at Vasant Vihar. Maya's job is to click on online advertisements. She doesn't care about the ads, but diligently keeps count � it's $0.18 to $0.25 per click.

A growing number of housewives, college graduates, and even working professionals across metropolitan cities are rushing to click paid Internet ads to make $100 to $200 (up to Rs 9,000) per month.

'It's boring, but it is extra money for a couple of hours of clicking weblinks every day,' says a resident of Delhi's Patparganj, who has kept a $300-target for the summer.

Traffic to click overseas Internet ads � from home loans to insurance � is spreading fast in India. 'I have no interest in what appears when clicking an ad. I care only whether to pause 60 seconds or 90 seconds, as money is credited if you stay online for a fixed time,' says another user.

Here's how it works: online advertisers in developed markets agree to pay hosting website each time an ad is clicked. With performance-based deals becoming dominant on the Internet, intermediaries have sprung up"

Google moves toward clash with Microsoft | CNET News.com

Google moves toward clash with Microsoft | CNET News.com: "Edging closer to a direct confrontation with Microsoft, Google is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers. "

Google Guide: Table of Contents

Essential websiite for anyone strating out optimising for google...Google Guide: Table of ContentsPart II:
Understanding Results

• How Google Works
• Results Page
• Links Included with Your Results
• Spelling Corrections (Suggestions)
• Definitions
• Cached Pages
• Similar Pages

Google Corporate Information: Software Principles

Very timely as my Yahoo! toolbar was hijacked yesterday by Mysearch...

Google Corporate Information: Software Principles: "Feedback requested: A proposal to help fight deceptive Internet software
Send your feedback to software-principles@google.com."

Discussion: Slashdot | Google's Software PrinciplesGoogle has just posted a new set of "Software Principles"at their [1]site on how they feel about spyware and the like. It is interesting to see the company whose motto is "Do no evil" trying to get the rest of the internet world to follow, with proposed principles dealing with upfront installation, clear behavior, simple removal, and keeping good company. The question is, though - why would a company who makes spyware (whose very nature is to be secretive and hard to remove) want to follow Google's principles?"

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - Action form

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords - Action form: "Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google AdWords"

Geico sues Google, Overture over trademarks | CNET News.com

Geico sues Google, Overture over trademarks | CNET News.com: "Auto insurance company Geico has sued Google and Overture Services for allegedly violating its trademarks in search-related advertisements, in the latest legal salvo against the Internet companies.
Geico, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company owned by Warren Buffett, filed suit against Google and Yahoo-owned Overture on May 4, in federal court in Alexandria, Va.
The insurer charged the two companies with infringing on its trademarks when they sold them as keywords to Geico's rivals, so that the protected terms could appear in sponsored search results. According to the suit, that practice causes consumer confusion, in violation of the Lanham Act, the primary federal law covering trademark registration and protection. "

Google Search: totaltravel.com -site:www.totaltravel.com

Google Search: totaltravel.com -site:www.totaltravel.com: "Results 1 - 10 of about 47,600 for totaltravel.com -site:www.totaltravel.com."

Google would not display all the links it knows linking to your website. While the exact criterion of display is not published, generally we have seen that Google displays links from web pages having a PR of 4 and above. Please rest assured that even though Google may display a lesser number
of links pointing to your site, you will get benefit from all the links Google has learned as long as they have a positive PR (i.e. PR > 0).

While there is no accurate command to find out all the sites linking to you, the following command will give you a bigger list of sites who are possibly linking to you:

yoursite.com -site:www.yoursite.com

The above syntax instructs Google to show all the pages that have the word "yoursite.com" without showing pages from your own site. While it will list a lot more sites than their standard link command does, the flaw in the above command is that all pages that mention your site name may not necessarily be linking to you. There are also instances where it shows up pages where an email address containing 'yoursite.com' is listed on the page.

Despite its shortcoming, this syntax is a good way to evaluate approximately the number of sites linking to you. Notice that in the above command the www is omitted in the first part, because sometimes sites link to your domain name without including 'www' in the text

Cre8asite forums. Google - New Sites Put Into a "Sand Box" by Google. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]

Cre8asite forums. Google - New Sites Put Into a "Sand Box" by Google. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: It appears that Google is holding out on new domain names for a 2 - 4 month period of time. So a new domain name might rank very well a few weeks after the site is launched, but soon after it will get bumped down in the results for a 2 - 4 mont period for no apparent reason.

5 Days to Success with Google AdWords

5 Days to Success with Google AdWords:

"The price you bid is almost never the price you actually pay. You almost always pay less. First, it's a little bit like Ebay: You pay 1 cent above the position below you, not the maximum that you bid"

Your Click Thru Rate (CTR) is MORE important than how much you bid.

The Click Thru Rate is the percentage of people searching who click. If 100 people search, your ad shows up 100 times, and one person clicks through, that's a 1% click thru rate.

So let's say I've got a 1% CTR and I'm paying $1.00 for position #2. Let's say you've got a 2% CTR --- you only have to pay 51 cents to get position #2 and knock me down to position #3. That means if you're 2 times as relevant, you pay 1/2 as much!

Here's an example of two ads - one got nearly twice the CTR as the other:

Simple Self Defense
For Ordinary People
Easy Personal Protection Training
www.tftgroup.com
Clickthrough Rate: 0.8%

Simple Self Defense
For Ordinary People
Fast Personal Protection Training
www.tftgroup.com
Clickthrough Rate: 1.3%

Notice what happened: Only ONE word changed - "Fast" instead of "Easy" - and the Click Thru Rate jumped from 0.8% to 1.3%. That means that the ad on the right gets almost twice as much traffic for the same amount of money.

NB Google ranks your ad higher as your CTR goes up. Overture does not do this. In Overture, the highest bidder always wins. That rewards people who have more money than brains. Which means that for the smart marketer, Google is vastly superior....

BW Online | May 17, 2004 | Just How Different Is Google?

BW Online | May 17, 2004 | Just How Different Is Google?: "if you look closely at the areas that matter in any company's operations and personality -- the dissemination of power and money -- you discover that Google isn't really different from many other tightly-run and successful emerging businesses. It is at once highly controlling and focused.

THE BOTTOM LINE. How do they run the company? The simple answer is that they seem to run a tight ship. Larry and Sergey each made a base salary last year of $150,000, with $206,000 in bonuses. And they were smart enough to pay Eric Schmidt, the CEO, more than themselves -- $250,000 of base salary, plus a $301,000 bonus. For a company with nearly $1 billion of revenue last year, the executive compensation is quite modest. Equally impressive is that directors haven't been receiving cash compensation. Yes, the stock they received in the past is now quite valuable, but it wasn't always that way.

Perhaps most impressive is one statistic that hasn't received a great deal of attention: last year's $961.9 million of revenue, when apportioned among Google's 1,907 employees, translates into more than $500,000 revenue per employee. That is a hefty number for a young fast-growing company -- a number likely to grow substantially as the company cashes in further on its dominance of online information retrieval. "

Google to Give New Advertisers Jumpstart

For the UK?? Google to Give New Advertisers Jumpstart: "Google is angling for new AdWords advertisers with the promise of a helping hand for those who open new accounts and make a $299 pre-payment.
Marketers participating in the new offering, called Jumpstart, have Google 'specialists' assigned to write ads, choose relevant keywords, and set cost-per-click amounts -- within a specified budget -- designed to maximize ad exposure. Google laid out the terms of the program on its Web site, although it hasn't yet been officially announced.

Though Google offers larger advertisers and publishers assistance with its AdWords and AdSense programs, this is its first major service initiative designed for smaller advertisers. It's not clear how many staffers will be assigned to the new offering. Google didn't respond to requests for comment by press time

The search company has been testing technologies designed to parse Web sites for appropriate keywords, according to search engine marketers. That technology, along with a service team, is apparently being deployed in this new offering.

Those interested in participating in Jumpstart fill out an application, confirm their e-mail addresses, and wait two to five business days for their Web site to be reviewed and a campaign created. Then, they review the campaign and activate it. Google encourages advertisers to handle further tweaks and optimization themselves, though it also says it will respond to customer service requests in one business day."

How Much Does Your Adwords Position Impact Ctr? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

How Much Does Your Adwords Position Impact Ctr? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Here is my advice.....This might not work on Adwords but it works on Overture and other PPC Search Engines.

Take a minute to look at which companies are actually bidding over you. I did manage a campaign on Overture and I saved a lot of money by using the following strategy:

Let's say I was managing a campaign for a company selling candy... I then found out that the best keyword related to candy was 'Great Tasting Candy.'

I found that the number 1 bid was for a company trying to get people to sign up for a pay service that gave great recipes for candy. Hence, people signed up, paid money and got a recipe telling them how to make Great Tasting Candy.

The number 2 bid were selling a really bad product.

I therefore, chose to go as the number 3 bid, because I really believed that 90 percent of the people searching for 'Great Tasting Candy' wanted to buy Great Tasting Candy.

The best part was that the number 1 bid was trying to intimidate the bidders buy bidding over $1.00. The crappy product company then bid .99 so I bid .98 but only paid around .35 cents for every click.

This way the people looking for 'Great Tasting Candy' clicked on the number one bid. They found out that this was not what they were looking for. They then clicked on number 2 just to see that they had a crappy product. Then they clicked on the company I was bidding for and boom....I had made my two biggest competitors lose a buck each.

It took around 2 weeks before they realized that they could not compete and crawled behind me.

However, be aware this was an exceptional case but it illustrates that you need to know what companies you are bidding against. In Adwords it might be harder to see who you are bidd"

Cre8asite forums. Google - PageRank is not dead. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]

Cre8asite forums. Google - PageRank is not dead. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: "Who remembers talking to clients about the meaning of pagerank?

Now I see myself telling clients and prospects to take PageRank as 'materiality', like Bill said. It is kind of like Alexa's ranking numbers, in the sense of it being an ego trip for someone.

Of course I do not own a PR9 site, only PR6s. I might have a different view if I ran a PR9 or 8 site. But the SERPs do not lie, many pages in the top rankings have an average PR and rank above the higher PRs."

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords: "So.... when they began to sell Pay Per Click advertising, they were extremely concerned that advertisers also put out messages that were highly relevant.
Google rewards you for being relevant, and they let people who are searching vote for you. If your ad gets clicked on, it's relevant. If it doesn't, it's not. It's that simple.
If you can't get 5 out of 1000 people (0.5%) to click on your ad, Google disables your ad. The higher your click thru rate, though, the less you have to pay for the position you want.
So this creates a 'Darwinian' effect, a deliberate natural selection that weeds out bad advertisers and rewards good ones. What's good for Google's customers is good for Google and good for you.
When all the dust has settled, what really matters is that your ads and your content be relevant to the keywords you're bidding on. Your message must match what the person is thinking.
So... what were they really thinking when they typed in 'California butterflies?' That is the question. Figure that out and put it in front of them, and you'll win on Google. Write an ad that matches exactly what they're searching for and you'll beat your competitors by a country mile."

New $$$ spinner by Kalena Jordan...Search Engine Marketing Courses - Search Engine College

Search Engine Marketing Courses - Search Engine College: "Here at Search Engine College we offer a range of search engine marketing short courses designed to teach you everything you need to know about successfully promoting a web site via search engines"

Google's IPO and SEM: Predictions

Google's IPO and SEM: Predictions:

Increased contextual inventory

Increased search inventory. Media hype over Google's IPO has increasingly more people trying Google, and even the Internet in general. The entire search engine marketing (SEM) space will see increases in search inventory as new searchers come online

Smarter searchers. Media focus on Google will result in the public learning how to search more intelligently. This may accelerate the current trend of longer search queries (searchers using more keywords in a phrase). This shift in behavior will force marketers to embrace campaign management strategies that align well with searcher behavior. Broad campaigns and broad match listings will become the norm. XML paid inclusion, the automation of ad creation from data feeds, site crawls, or programming scripts/spreadsheets,, will increase

More advertisers, consequent higher costs (CPCs). Marketers who are either sitting on the SEM sidelines or just dabbling in it will begin to understand SEM's true power. This trend is already underway as engines, agencies, search optimizers, and nonprofit organizations such as SEMPO, AIM, and the IAB educate the marketplace on search's value.

Ironically, because SEM is a zero-sum game, the return on investment (ROI) on both paid and organic search for all participants will drop as the marketplace learns more about and adapts SEM. The auction marketplaces for search clicks will become more efficient, and competition for organic search engine optimization (SEO) positions will require more work from internal IT and marketing staff, SEO agencies, and consultants."

Product enhancements

Government scrutiny on the industry.The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other government agencies are busy fighting e-mail spam, with limited success. Although the FTC has released disclosure guidelines relating to the labeling of paid search listings, thus far the level of scrutiny has been relatively low. Google's IPO and the related media visibility, in combination with a major election year, could result in additional guidelines and event regulation. Links explaining what sponsored links are may become larger and more prominent. The resulting FAQ pages may be more standardized. If the scrutiny is high enough, regulation could even extend to organic SEO practices (though I doubt it).

CitySearch teams with Overture | CNET News.com

CitySearch teams with Overture | CNET News.com: "CitySearch said Thursday that it has signed a deal with Yahoo's Overture Services to run the latter's paid ads in its local search listings for select cities and categories.
Overture specializes in selling advertising links that accompany search results on sites such as Yahoo and MSN. Under the deal, Overture ads will appear in categories where CitySearch has available ad inventory, such as home services, professional services and medical specialists. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The move comes little more than a year after CitySearch, which is owned by InterActiveCorp, introduced its own advertising service to compete with Overture on a local level. The company unveiled a pay-per-click ad service, called Local Pay for Performance, which reflected the business model of Overture's national ad network. CitySearch sought to match up advertisers with consumers searching for local dining, entertainment and shopping services. Advertisers pay for the ads only when people click through.
Under terms of the deal, Overture ads will appear as 'sponsored results' when a customer uses CitySearch for conducting a local search.
Local search has been the rage of late. Last month, Google launched what it called Google Local, a service that helps Web surfers find local businesses by typing in a search term and a city name.
The market for local advertising online is small, but analysts are predicting it will eventually take a larger chunk of the $12 billion overall market for local ads in the United States. CitySearch had been talking with Google about a partnership."

Google Adding Image Ads to AdWords Search Engine News Journal

Google Adding Image Ads to AdWords Search Engine News Journal: "Google Adding Image Ads to AdWords "

Google AdWords Support: "My image ads

�How do I create an image ad?
�What are the image ad requirements?
�What do image ads look like?
�Will you show image ads on Google?
�What are image ads?
�How do you decide whether to show my image ad or my text ad?
�Why is Google offering image ads?
�How are image ads different from traditional banner ads?
�Where are my images stored?"