Google pulls out of ad deal with Yahoo

Google pulls out of ad deal with Yahoo

Search giant seeks to avoid 'protracted legal battle' over partnership

(MarketWatch) -- Google Inc. pulled out of its proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc. under pressure from regulators and clients Wednesday, leaving Yahoo's future in question as it struggles to maintain its share of the growing market for search advertising on the Internet.

However, by Wednesday afternoon shares of Yahoo said four months of antitrust review of the Yahoo partnership made clear that regulators and some advertisers "continue to have concerns" about it.

"Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners," Google's chief counsel, David Drummond, said in the statement. "That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement."

What does this mean for the future of paid search ads? Yahoo said it was disappointed by Google's move, and maintained that the scuttled partnership would have been constructive for everyone. Yahoo had anticipated seeing hundreds of millions in additional annual revenue as a result of the deal...

Google 'reintroduces' gambling ads to Adwords | Internet Marketing News and Blog | E-consultancy.com

Google 'reintroduces' gambling ads to Adwords | Internet Marketing News and Blog | E-consultancy.com: "“Google AdWords allows online gambling advertisements to target Great Britain (England, Scotland, or Wales) as long as the advertiser is registered with the Gambling Commission and provides a valid operating license number. Advertisers based outside the UK and within the European Economic Area who wish to target online gambling ads to England, Scotland, or Wales must be licensed to advertise online gambling in their respective country.”

Gaming operators are advised to create a new account specifically for gambling-related campaigns (even if they already advertise with Google), and then apply by filling out a form and making various legal declarations.

Ads can only be targeted to England, Scotland and Wales. Failure to comply with this rule may result in account termination. Affiliates need to comply with these rules too, so be careful out there.

Although the new policy will open things up, there have been plenty of gambling ads on Google during the ban. A misspelling can do wonders. This can be seen today. A search on ‘online gambling’ yields no results (not for long, I suspect), but a cheeky typo makes all the difference.

Anybody who types in ‘online gmabling’ will see ads from brands such as 888, Cantor Casino, Bet 365, with ad text that leaves nothing to the imagination"

No news so far as to changes for adsense publishers who run sites that promote gambling....watch this space though as I cannot see advertisers being happy if their ads cannot appear on such sites.....

Emily Bell: If Google should falter, how many others will follow? | Media | The Guardian

Emily Bell: If Google should falter, how many others will follow? | Media | The Guardian: "If Google should falter, how many others will follow?

US research company Efficient Frontier put out a report saying that Google took 77.4% of all search ad spending in the second quarter (April-June). In fact Efficient Frontier did the maths and came to the conclusion that Google actually now takes $1.10 for every dollar spent in search advertising. This is not some wonky Sats marking, it means that both Microsoft and Yahoo! were losing search advertising money in that quarter - to Google...

Online advertising is projected to grow overall by something like 6% for the financial year - although this doesn't reflect the explosive growth in some very new areas of activity, such as the mobile internet and online video, or the fact that search advertising is going up by about 14%"

Google adds Flash to search tools - vnunet.com

Google adds Flash to search tools - vnunet.com: "Google has announced that users will now be able to index and search Flash media files.

The company has added the code into its indexing algorithm which will allow its indexing bots to gather text from the SWF files used to present Flash content.
Google users will be able to search through code contained within the Flash file itself, as well as Flash banners, buttons and menus"

Will be very interested in how well this works....given that "Images will not be indexed by the software, and Flash files which rely on JavaScript will not be accessed by the search tools."

12 Quick Tips To Search Google Like An Expert

12 Quick Tips To Search Google Like An Expert: "If you’re like me, you probably use Google many times a day. But, chances are, unless you are a technology geek, you probably still use Google in its simplest form. If your current use of Google is limited to typing a few words in, and changing your query until you find what you’re looking for, then I’m here to tell you that there’s a better way"

Even has the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything!

Yahoo-Google Search Advertising Deal Runs Into Resistance

Adage reports "Yahoo's agreement with Google for online search ads may be generating some pricing and antitrust worries from advertisers, but in Congress the deal is increasingly raising broader concerns about ad targeting, privacy and competition....could reinvigorate a 10-year-old fight over privacy issues and lead to closer congressional oversight of online marketing activity."

Could this be another nail in a coffin for Yahoo?

Wicked Google PageRank Rumours

At Google Rumours some possible far reaching changes in how Google ranks websitesare outlined, these include:

Google PageRank To Be Reset
PageRank to be reset to zero and replaced
Two clicks for AdSense
rel=”nofollow” replaced by rel=”dofollow”

True or not these are thought provoking ideas...

Google Changing How it Ranks Sites from Links to Relevance

Jim Hedger at ISDB theorises that "Google is radically reworking its primary ranking algorithms" mainly because "Internet users are beginning to use their social networks as web-portals, the same way they once used Google and Yahoo!. Social networks are all about linkage however many if not most links found within social networks are useless from a search ranking perspective."

He also looks at recent patent applications by Google and concludes that " Relevance and location are in, links are likely on their way out."

He does concede that links are still needed for the search engine spiders to find and spider web sites but that relevancy to users will be uppermost - as usual with Google - this releveancy measure will come from Google tracking the path of searchers from query to exit, so to optimise for Google Search Engine Optimisers will have to consider how Google perceives the paths taken by each site-visitor on pages and sites.

Google instant site indexing ..almost

It seems from Matt Cutts official Google blog that Google’s index is getting fresher and fresher. No more waiting trembling with fear for 3 months to find out what the next Google Dance will do to your search engine rankings.. Matt Cutts writes that "Now some documents can show up in minutes instead of hours or days"

The example he gives relates to blog postings and I have to wonder if this applies equally to all blogging formats or just blogger blogs?

This rapid indexing does open up an opportunity - if Google is indexing content almost immeduiatly, it means website owners have chance to rank prominently for important key words and phrases faster than ever before.

To deter spammers using this as another way to fool Google it seems thatthe bloggers being indexed instantly are longstanding bloggs which also tick the other boxes of the Google algorithms.

Google's GBuy Could Be 'Revolutionary' - Forbes.com

Another move away from the "pure" motive of organising the worlds knowledge to compiling commercially usefull knowledge?

Google's GBuy Could Be 'Revolutionary' - Forbes.com: "RBC Capital Markets maintained an 'outperform' rating on Google in light of the impending launch of the company's online payment system, currently known as 'GBuy.'

Consumers using GBuy, which is set for release on June 28, will be taken off the merchant's site to complete the payment...This will enable Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) to capture e-commerce transaction data, driving more precise targeting in future searches.

"If harnessed, the precision of this targeting could be revolutionary," wrote RBC analyst Jordan Rohan

On its core search results pages, Google will designate each merchant accepting GBuy as a "trusted GBuy merchant." "

Why I'll Never Be a Google VP

Me neither!
Why I'll Never Be a Google VP: "Mayer holds many of the personality traits of tech super-stars, the interview also demonstrates two key reasons why I'll never be a Google VP. First, I need more than 5 hours of sleep a night, second, I like spending time with my husband and daughter. ;)"

Google Inc. Tweaks Its Video Service - Forbes.com

Wonder what percentage of video uploads are porn? 90+?

Google Inc. Tweaks Its Video Service - Forbes.com: "Internet search leader Google Inc. is making it easier to post and share online videos on its site, hoping to widen the appeal of a service that so far has been eclipsed by upstart YouTube.com.

Until the system was changed late Tuesday, uploading a video to Google's site required a special piece of software to be installed on a computer. The Mountain View-based company has retooled its service so that step is no longer required...

As online video becomes more popular, Google is trying to gain ground on much smaller company in San Mateo, Calif-based YouTube.

Since its debut a year ago, the video-sharing site has blossomed into a cultural phenomenon. YouTube says viewers watch more than 40 million videos daily on its site."

Google news - Aussie internship program: ZDNet Australia: News: Software

ZDNet reports that Google has a new program to recruit Australian university students work in projects in Google's Sydney office. Lars Rasmussen, Google's local head of engineering said 5-10 technical and non-technical positions would be on offer. The report also states that Gmail is now available in Australia

Google plans Aussie internship program: ZDNet Australia: News: Software: "Search giant Google will this summer launch a student internship program that will see Australian university students work on projects in its new Sydney headquarters...

as....part of Google's ongoing plans to operate a fully fledged research and development centre in Sydney. The spacious new office next to Google's old quarters in Sydney's Darling Harbour will give those plans a boost...
The local developments will also see well-known Google software engineer Rob Pike split his time between Australia and the United States in an effort to help build Google's Australian engineering offices.

Pike is known for his work on the original Unix, Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems at Bell Labs.


Google also revealed today that it had given Australians the option of signing up to use Google's popular "GMail" Web e-mail service."

Google Press Center: new techie bits

Google Press Center: Press Release: "May 10, 2006 - Today, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced new technologies to enhance and improve the search experience. Three new products � Google Co-op, Google Desktop 4, and Google Notebook � advance the state of the art in search by helping users worldwide find and share more relevant information. The products all incorporate new capabilities that leverage user communities, enabling users to either share more information with others or benefit from other users' expertise to improve the accuracy of search results....

As a first step, Google has worked with partners to annotate web pages related to health and city guides and to offer dozens of subscribed links to specialized content such as restaurant and movie information. Going forward, the broader online community will begin building out new topic areas and subscribed links to help improve the way people find and discover information online.

Users can subscribe to content and providers at www.google.com/coop/directory. Google Co-op is available today on all English language Google domains including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom...

Google Trends builds on the Google Zeitgeist to help users find facts and trends related to Google usage around the world. Google Trends enables users to learn how popular a particular search term has been on Google over time and see the relevant news articles that ran on that subject.

"For the first time ever, Google is making it possible to sift through billions of search queries from around the world to see what people are thinking about," said Marissa Mayer, vice president, Search Products and User Experience, Google Inc."

Google goes back to its search roots - vnunet.com: "Google goes back to its search roots ...New products focus on core business...

"All these [new] products are centred around search," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience. "Our core, and where we innovate most, is inside search"

Google Press Center: new techie bits

Google Press Center: Press Release: "May 10, 2006 - Today, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced new technologies to enhance and improve the search experience. Three new products � Google Co-op, Google Desktop 4, and Google Notebook � advance the state of the art in search by helping users worldwide find and share more relevant information. The products all incorporate new capabilities that leverage user communities, enabling users to either share more information with others or benefit from other users' expertise to improve the accuracy of search results....

As a first step, Google has worked with partners to annotate web pages related to health and city guides and to offer dozens of subscribed links to specialized content such as restaurant and movie information. Going forward, the broader online community will begin building out new topic areas and subscribed links to help improve the way people find and discover information online.

Users can subscribe to content and providers at www.google.com/coop/directory. Google Co-op is available today on all English language Google domains including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom...

Google Trends builds on the Google Zeitgeist to help users find facts and trends related to Google usage around the world. Google Trends enables users to learn how popular a particular search term has been on Google over time and see the relevant news articles that ran on that subject.

"For the first time ever, Google is making it possible to sift through billions of search queries from around the world to see what people are thinking about," said Marissa Mayer, vice president, Search Products and User Experience, Google Inc."

a href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2155794/google-emphasises-search">Google goes back to its search roots - vnunet.com: "Google goes back to its search roots ...New products focus on core business...

"All these [new] products are centred around search," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience. "Our core, and where we innovate most, is inside search"

Google admits to being disorganised - vnunet.com

Page comments that being disorganised is part of Google culture...how does that reflect on the mission to organise the worlds knowledge? Such internal contradiction may well be Google's achilles heel....

Google admits to being disorganised - vnunet.com: "Google is growing too quickly and has become 'disorganised' as a result, according to the company's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin."


Google Corporate Information: Company Overview: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. "

Schmidt's Google Goes To Authorities About MSN - Forbes.com

Fair or unfair? Schmidt's Google Goes To Authorities About MSN - Forbes.com: "Google, led by Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, seems to be feeling the heat already from the impending update of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the Web browser which is used by 85% of the world's PCs and which is set to be released with Windows Vista later this year as an updated version 7....

The complaint has initially prompted some to chortle at what looks to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black--Google happens to have its own search tool integrated into Microsoft's rival web browsers Firefox and Opera. But Google is deadly serious. A spokesman for the search giant, Steve Langdon, said that the company had approached the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission about the issue, though no formal complaint had been filed.

"We have spoken with the commission as part of its investigation of Vista," Langdon said. "We have expressed our concerns that Microsoft's approach to setting search defaults in IE7 benefits Microsoft while taking away choice from users." He added that Google was not aware of a similar investigation in the U.S. but had also spoken to the Department of Justice "generally about our business and the importance of preserving competition in the search market."
....this points to the fact that Google will not rest on its laurels when it looks like its share of the market is at stake. "

Google - Notifying webmasters of penalties

Does this mean that sites not signed up to Google sitemaps are more likely to be penalised? Cutts writes that Google is testing notiying webmasters of spam issues with their site via the Google sitemaps webmaster interface.


Cutts writes somewhat confusingly as if the spam detection is done by humans carrying the inference that is done manually but it is Google , the entity, that contacts webmasters....

"if the webspam team detects a spammer that is creating dozens or hundreds of sites with doorway pages followed by a sneaky redirect, there’s no reason that we’d want the spammer to realize that we’d caught those pages. So Google clearly shouldn’t contact every site that is penalized–it would tip off spammers that they’d been caught, and then the spammers would start over and try to be sneakier next time."

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Notifying webmasters of penalties

Google’s Webspam team is working with our Sitemaps team to alert some (but not all) site owners of penalties for their site. In my world (webmasters), this is both a Big Deal and a Good Thing, even though it’s still an experiment. Sign up for Sitemaps to try it out.

....as Google grows, we get more of a chance to “go back and fix things,” to build the ideal search engine. And part of doing that is having more and better communication with webmasters...

Pages Dropping Out of Big Daddy Index

Most posters blame duplicate content issues for pages dropping from the Google index....Pages Dropping Out of Big Daddy Index at the Boston PubCon Matt Cutts confirmed that Google is to change the process used to spider pages.

Caching will be implimented on the spider and thus reducing the requests that Googlebot will be required to make of a page."

google travel - Google News

I was hanging fire to blog this to see if anything came of the rumours....not yet it would appear....google travel - Google News: "Travel looks like Google's next target Times Online, UK - Apr 17, 2006
... has kept the subject of the press briefing tightly under wraps, and it is by no means necessarily the case that the London briefing will involve Google Travel. ...

Google Travel Coming Soon?
Search Engine Watch - Apr 17, 2006
... Google: Senior Account Executive, Travel Vertical.' Russell explains that the job posting details 'sounds' that 'Google is building a Google Travel brand.' I ...

Google to launch travel portal?
Monsters and Critics.com, UK - Apr 18, 2006
... account executive for a travel vertical, was posted before the Easter weekend and analysts are speculating that the travel vertical will be Google Travel. ...
Is Google going to launch a travel portal? Eye For Travel
Google Travel Rumor On The Road WebProNews"


Yahoo flexes its muscles in travel search business - Technology - International Herald Tribune: " Yahoo flexes its muscles in travel search business By Bob Tedeschi The New York Times THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2006

Yahoo announced last week that it had integrated its FareChase technology into its main search engine, so that it could scan multiple sites for airlines, hotels and car rentals and show the lowest-price offers directly in results whenever someone typed in, say, 'lowest fares to Las Vegas.' Previously, users had to click around Yahoo's site to gain access to FareChase, or turn to one of the handful of competing so-called meta- search sites like SideStep, Kayak or Mobissimo for a similar specialized search. The move is perhaps the most aggressive countermeasure a major search engine has taken against the growing number of sites that specialize in searching specific categories, like jobs, medical information, shopping or travel.

Indeed, the competition between Yahoo and its travel-specific counterparts appears to be moving to a new level. Yahoo initially responded to the threat in 2004 by buying FareChase, then SideStep's chief competitor, for an undisclosed sum. FareChase became an obscure corner on Yahoo's site, while speculation mounted as to how the company would ultimately use the technology.

Google last year began offering some travel-specific search results where users who typed in a travel route and dates were given a search box with some information already filled in, along with links to online travel agencies to find prices and book the flights. But analysts say Google's offering is far less sophisticated than Yahoo's or that of meta-search competitors. (Google declined to comment on such comparisons.)

Other analysts say they believe that Google and MSN may simply follow Yahoo's lead and buy the niche search players. "If someone wants to play catch-up fast, that's the way to go," said Dougherty, of Nielsen/NetRatings.

Life just got easier for travelers looking for bargains on the Web, while for some of Yahoo's competitors, things just got a bit more complicated.

Yahoo announced last week that it had integrated its FareChase technology into its main search engine, so that it could scan multiple sites for airlines, hotels and car rentals and show the lowest-price offers directly in results whenever someone typed in, say, "lowest fares to Las Vegas."

Previously, users had to click around Yahoo's site to gain access to FareChase, or turn to one of the handful of competing so-called meta- search sites like SideStep, Kayak or Mobissimo for a similar specialized search.

The move is perhaps the most aggressive countermeasure a major search engine has taken against the growing number of sites that specialize in searching specific categories, like jobs, medical information, shopping or travel.

Indeed, the competition between Yahoo and its travel-specific counterparts appears to be moving to a new level. Yahoo initially responded to the threat in 2004 by buying FareChase, then SideStep's chief competitor, for an undisclosed sum. FareChase became an obscure corner on Yahoo's site, while speculation mounted as to how the company would ultimately use the technology.

It also comes on the threshold of a major media campaign by a rival travel search engine, Kayak.com.

"This is a very smart move for Yahoo," said Heather Dougherty, an analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet measurement company. "It's the first time any of the big search engines have tried to integrate this type of searching into their results. And FareChase finally isn't going to be off sitting on its own."

Rather, it is central to a Yahoo user's experience, or at least close to it. Last week, for instance, typing in a search for "flights New York to San Francisco" returned the lowest price for that flight over the next few months - $279 for a trip from May 5 to May 9 - and a box offering the chance to search other dates. If a user's location has been indicated in previous Yahoo searches - on the site's Local or Maps sections, for instance - simply typing in "flights to San Francisco" will produce the same result.

"This is definitely a step for Yahoo, and a step for the industry," Jasper Malcolmson, director of Yahoo travel services, said about the integration of meta-search with general search results. The integration of FareChase highlights a series of upgrades to Yahoo's travel offering, including introduction of a satellite map service showing hotel locations.

Yahoo's new functionality could significantly increase user exposure to this type of service, which has until now struggled to attract attention. Just 12 percent of Internet travel shoppers now visit such meta-search sites, according to a recent survey by Forrester Research, a technology consulting firm. But that figure is twice what it was just a year ago, despite the fact that none of these services has done much advertising at all.

Roughly 4.4 million people visited such sites in March, according to Nielsen/NetRatings - a tiny number compared with the number of visits to Expedia, the leading travel commerce site, which attracted 16.4 million.

But FareChase and its two biggest competitors, Kayak.com and SideStep.com, offer a significantly different experience from other travel sites. SideStep, for instance, scans the inventories of 100 airline sites, as well as that of the online travel agency Orbitz.com, and lists the best fares on a single page.

In terms of revenue, travel search sites have much ground to make up to challenge the general travel sites. SideStep and Kayak are privately held, and Yahoo does not break out revenue figures for its FareChase division, but analysts said these sites earned only a small fraction of what the big travel agencies did, because they handle far fewer bookings and have fewer sources of revenue....

Kayak and SideStep earn undisclosed commissions for customers they refer to suppliers, but as Rob Solomon, SideStep's chief executive, said, "The challenge for all of us is scale - how to go from three to five million users to seven to 10 million."

Google last year began offering some travel-specific search results where users who typed in a travel route and dates were given a search box with some information already filled in, along with links to online travel agencies to find prices and book the flights. But analysts say Google's offering is far less sophisticated than Yahoo's or that of meta-search competitors. (Google declined to comment on such comparisons.)

Other analysts say they believe that Google and MSN may simply follow Yahoo's lead and buy the niche search players. "If someone wants to play catch-up fast, that's the way to go," said Dougherty, of Nielsen/NetRatings"