No apologies for posting this in full for posterity...Newsday.com: Text of Open Letter from Google's Founders: "Text of Open Letter from Google's Founders
The 'Letter from the Founders' is an open letter attached to Google's April 29, 2004 IPO filing'
LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS
"AN OWNER'S MANUAL" FOR GOOGLE'S SHAREHOLDERS (1)
INTRODUCTION
Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one. Throughout Google's evolution as a privately held company, we have managed Google differently. We have also emphasized an atmosphere of creativity and challenge, which has helped us provide unbiased, accurate and free access to information for those who rely on us around the world.
Now the time has come for the company to move to public ownership. This change will bring important benefits for our employees, for our present and future shareholders, for our customers, and most of all for Google users. But the standard structure of public ownership may jeopardize the independence and focused objectivity that have been most important in Google's past success and that we consider most fundamental for its future. Therefore, we have designed a corporate structure that will protect Google's ability to innovate and retain its most distinctive characteristics. We are confident that, in the long run, this will bring Google and its shareholders, old and new, the greatest economic returns. We want to clearly explain our plans and the reasoning and values behind them. We are delighted you are considering an investment in Google and are reading this letter.
Sergey and I intend to write you a letter like this one every year in our annual report. We'll take turns writing the letter so you'll hear directly from each of us. We ask that you read this letter in conjunction with the rest of this prospectus.
SERVING END USERS
Sergey and I founded Google because we believed we could provide a great service to the world--instantly delivering relevant information on any topic. Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority.
Our goal is to develop services that improve the lives of as many people as possible--to do things that matter. We make our services as widely available as we can by supporting over 97 languages and by providing most services for free. Advertising is our principal source of revenue, and the ads we provide are relevant and useful rather than intrusive and annoying. We strive to provide users with great commercial information.
We are proud of the products we have built, and we hope that those we create in the future will have an even greater positive impact on the world.
LONG TERM FOCUS
As a private company, we have concentrated on the long term, and this has served us well. As a public company, we will do the same. In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to "make their quarter." In Warren Buffett's words, "We won't 'smooth' quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."
If opportunities arise that might cause us to sacrifice short term results but are in the best long term interest of our shareholders, we will take those opportunities. We will have the fortitude to do this. We would request that our shareholders take the long term view.
Many companies are under pressure to keep their earnings in line with analysts' forecasts. Therefore, they often accept smaller, but predictable, earnings rather than larger and more unpredictable returns. Sergey and I feel this is harmful, and we intend to steer in the opposite direction.
(1) Much of this was inspired by Warren Buffett's essays in his annual reports and his "An Owner's Manual" to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.
Google has had adequate cash to fund our business and has generated additional cash through operations. This gives us the flexibility to weather costs, benefit from opportunities and optimize our long term earnings. For example, in our ads system we make many improvements that affect revenue in both directions. These are in areas like end user relevance and satisfaction, advertiser satisfaction, partner needs and targeting technology. We release improvements immediately rather than delaying them, even though delay might give "smoother" financial results. You have our commitment to execute quickly to achieve long term value rather than making the quarters more predictable.
We will make decisions on the business fundamentals, not accounting considerations, and always with the long term welfare of our company and shareholders in mind.
Although we may discuss long term trends in our business, we do not plan to give earnings guidance in the traditional sense. We are not able to predict our business within a narrow range for each quarter. We recognize that our duty is to advance our shareholders' interests, and we believe that artificially creating short term target numbers serves our shareholders poorly. We would prefer not to be asked to make such predictions, and if asked we will respectfully decline. A management team distracted by a series of short term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour.
RISK VS REWARD IN THE LONG RUN
Our business environment changes rapidly and needs long term investment. We will not hesitate to place major bets on promising new opportunities.
We will not shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects because of short term earnings pressure. Some of our past bets have gone extraordinarily well, and others have not. Because we recognize the pursuit of such projects as the key to our long term success, we will continue to seek them out. For example, we would fund projects that have a 10% chance of earning a billion dollars over the long term. Do not be surprised if we place smaller bets in areas that seem very speculative or even strange. As the ratio of reward to risk increases, we will accept projects further outside our normal areas, especially when the initial investment is small.
We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in "20% time." Most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses.
We may have quarter-to-quarter volatility as we realize losses on some new projects and gains on others. If we accept this, we can all maximize value in the long term. Even though we are excited about risky projects, we expect to devote the vast majority of our resources to our main businesses, especially since most people naturally gravitate toward incremental improvements.
EXECUTIVE ROLES
We run Google as a triumvirate. Sergey and I have worked closely together for the last eight years, five at Google. Eric, our CEO, joined Google three years ago. The three of us run the company collaboratively with Sergey and me as Presidents. The structure is unconventional, but we have worked successfully in this way.
To facilitate timely decisions, Eric, Sergey and I meet daily to update each other on the business and to focus our collaborative thinking on the most important and immediate issues. Decisions are often made by one of us, with the others being briefed later. This works because we have tremendous trust and respect for each other and we generally think alike. Because of our intense long term working relationship, we can often predict differences of opinion among the three of us. We know that when we disagree, the correct decision is far from obvious. For important decisions, we discuss the issue with the larger team. Eric, Sergey and I run the company without any significant internal conflict, but with healthy debate. As different topics come up, we often delegate decision-making responsibility to one of us.
We hired Eric as a more experienced complement to Sergey and me to help us run the business. Eric was CTO of Sun Microsystems. He was also CEO of Novell and has a Ph.D. in computer science, a very unusual and important combination for Google given our scientific and technical culture. This partnership among the three of us has worked very well and we expect it to continue. The shared judgments and extra energy available from all three of us has significantly benefited Google.
Eric has the legal responsibilities of the CEO and focuses on management of our vice presidents and the sales organization. Sergey focuses on engineering and business deals. I focus on engineering and product management. All three of us devote considerable time to overall management of the company and other fluctuating needs. We are extremely fortunate to have talented management that has grown the company to where it is today--they operate the company and deserve the credit.
CORPORATE STRUCTURE
We are creating a corporate structure that is designed for stability over long time horizons. By investing in Google, you are placing an unusual long-term bet on the team, especially Sergey and me, and on our innovative approach.
We want Google to become an important and significant institution. That takes time, stability and independence. We bridge the media and technology industries, both of which have experienced considerable consolidation and attempted hostile takeovers.
In the transition to public ownership, we have set up a corporate structure that will make it harder for outside parties to take over or influence Google. This structure will also make it easier for our management team to follow the long term, innovative approach emphasized earlier. This structure, called a dual class voting structure, is described elsewhere in this prospectus.
The main effect of this structure is likely to leave our team, especially Sergey and me, with significant control over the company's decisions and fate, as Google shares change hands. New investors will fully share in Google's long term growth but will have less influence over its strategic decisions than they would at most public companies.
While this structure is unusual for technology companies, it is common in the media business and has had a profound importance there. The New York Times Company, the Washington Post Company and Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, all have similar dual class ownership structures. Media observers frequently point out that dual class ownership has allowed these companies to concentrate on their core, long-term interest in serious news coverage, despite fluctuations in quarterly results. The Berkshire Hathaway company has applied the same structure, with similar beneficial effects. From the point of view of long-term success in advancing a company's core values, the structure has clearly been an advantage.
Academic studies have shown that from a purely economic point of view, dual class structures have not harmed the share price of companies. The shares of each of our classes have identical economic rights and differ only as to voting rights.
Google has prospered as a private company. As a public company, we believe a dual class voting structure will enable us to retain many of the positive aspects of being private. We understand some investors do not favor dual class structures. We have considered this point of view carefully, and we have not made our decision lightly. We are convinced that everyone associated with Google--including new investors--will benefit from this structure.
To help us govern, we have recently expanded our Board of Directors to include three additional members. John Hennessy is the President of Stanford and has a Doctoral degree in computer science. Art Levinson is CEO of Genentech and has a Ph.D. in biochemistry. Paul Otellini is President and COO of Intel. We could not be more excited about the caliber and experience of these directors.
We have a world class management team impassioned by Google's mission and responsible for Google's success. We believe the stability afforded by the dual-class structure will enable us to retain our unique culture and continue to attract and retain talented people who are Google's life blood. Our colleagues will be able to trust that they themselves and their labors of hard work, love and creativity will be well cared for by a company focused on stability and the long term.
As an investor, you are placing a potentially risky long term bet on the team, especially Sergey and me. The two of us, Eric and the rest of the management team recognize that our individual and collective interests are deeply aligned with those of the new investors who choose to support Google. Sergey and I are committed to Google for the long term. The broader Google team has also demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to our long term success. With continued hard work and good fortune, this commitment will last and flourish.
When Sergey and I founded Google, we hoped, but did not expect, it would reach its current size and influence. Our intense and enduring interest was to objectively help people find information efficiently. We also believed that searching and organizing all the world's information was an unusually important task that should be carried out by a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good. We believe a well functioning society should have abundant, free and unbiased access to high quality information. Google therefore has a responsibility to the world. The dual-class structure helps ensure that this responsibility is met. We believe that fulfilling this responsibility will deliver increased value to our shareholders.
BECOMING A PUBLIC COMPANY
Google should go public soon.
We assumed when founding Google that if things went well, we would likely go public some day. But we were always open to staying private, and a number of developments reduced the pressure to change. We soon were generating cash, removing one important reason why many companies go public. Requirements for public companies became more significant in the wake of recent corporate scandals and the resulting passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We made business progress we were happy with. Our investors were patient and willing to stay with Google. We have been able to meet our business needs with our current level of cash.
A number of factors weighed on the other side of the debate. Our growth has reduced some of the advantages of private ownership. By law, certain private companies must report as if they were public companies. The deadline imposed by this requirement accelerated our decision. As a smaller private company, Google kept business information closely held, and we believe this helped us against competitors. But, as we grow larger, information becomes more widely known. As a public company, we will of course provide you with all information required by law, and we will also do our best to explain our actions. But we will not unnecessarily disclose all of our strengths, strategies and intentions. We have transferred significant ownership of Google to employees in return for their efforts in building the business. And, we benefited greatly by selling $26 million of stock to our early investors before we were profitable. Thus, employee and investor liquidity were significant factors.
We have demonstrated a proven business model and have designed a corporate structure that will make it easier to become a public company. A large, diverse, enthusiastic shareholder base will strengthen the company and benefit from our continued success. A larger cash balance will provide Google with flexibility and protection against adversity. All in all, going public now is the right decision.
IPO PRICING AND ALLOCATION
Informed investors willing to pay the IPO price should be able to buy as many shares as they want, within reason, in the IPO, as on the stock market.
It is important to us to have a fair process for our IPO that is inclusive of both small and large investors. It is also crucial that we achieve a good outcome for Google and its current shareholders. This has led us to pursue an auction-based IPO for our entire offering. Our goal is to have a share price that reflects a fair market valuation of Google and that moves rationally based on changes in our business and the stock market. (The auction process is discussed in more detail elsewhere in this prospectus.)
Many companies have suffered from unreasonable speculation, small initial share float, and boom-bust cycles that hurt them and their investors in the long run. We believe that an auction-based IPO will minimize these problems.
An auction is an unusual process for an IPO in the United States. Our experience with auction-based advertising systems has been surprisingly helpful in the auction design process for the IPO. As in the stock market, if people try to buy more stock than is available, the price will go up. And of course, the price will go down if there aren't enough buyers. This is a simplification, but it captures the basic issues. Our goal is to have an efficient market price--a rational price set by informed buyers and sellers--for our shares at the IPO and afterward. Our goal is to achieve a relatively stable price in the days following the IPO and that buyers and sellers receive a fair price at the IPO.
We are working to create a sufficient supply of shares to meet investor demand at IPO time and after. We are encouraging current shareholders to consider selling some of their shares as part of the offering. These shares will supplement the shares the company sells to provide more supply for investors and hopefully provide a more stable fair price. Sergey and I, among others, are currently planning to sell a fraction of our shares in the IPO. The more shares current shareholders sell, the more likely it is that they believe the price is not unfairly low. The supply of shares available will likely have an effect on the clearing price of the auction. Since the number of shares being sold is likely to be larger at a high price and smaller at a lower price, investors will likely want to consider the scope of current shareholder participation in the IPO. We may communicate from time to time that we would be sellers rather than buyers.
We would like you to invest for the long term, and to do so only at or below what you determine to be a fair price. We encourage investors not to invest in Google at IPO or for some time after, if they believe the price is not sustainable over the long term.
We intend to take steps to help ensure shareholders are well informed. We encourage you to read this prospectus. We think that short term speculation without paying attention to price is likely to lose you money, especially with our auction structure.
GOOGLERS
Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything. Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working stars. We hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat them well.
We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.
The significant employee ownership of Google has made us what we are today. Because of our employee talent, Google is doing exciting work in nearly every area of computer science. We are in a very competitive industry where the quality of our product is paramount. Talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to change the world; Google has large computational resources and distribution that enables individuals to make a difference. Our main benefit is a workplace with important projects, where employees can contribute and grow. We are focused on providing an environment where talented, hard working people are rewarded for their contributions to Google and for making the world a better place.
DON'T BE EVIL
Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served--as shareholders and in all other ways--by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.
Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating. We also display advertising, which we work hard to make relevant, and we label it clearly. This is similar to a newspaper, where the advertisements are clear and the articles are not influenced by the advertisers' payments. We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.
MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE
We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. With our products, Google connects people and information all around the world for free. We are adding other powerful services such as Gmail that provides an efficient one gigabyte Gmail account for free. By releasing services for free, we hope to help bridge the digital divide. AdWords connects users and advertisers efficiently, helping both. AdSense helps fund a huge variety of online web sites and enables authors who could not otherwise publish. Last year we created Google Grants--a growing program in which hundreds of non-profits addressing issues, including the environment, poverty and human rights, receive free advertising. And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1% of Google's equity and profits in some form. We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Google is not a conventional company. Eric, Sergey and I intend to operate Google differently, applying the values it has developed as a private company to its future as a public company. Our mission and business description are available in the rest of the prospectus; we encourage you to carefully read this information. We will optimize for the long term rather than trying to produce smooth earnings for each quarter. We will support selected high-risk, high-reward projects and manage our portfolio of projects. We will run the company collaboratively with Eric, our CEO, as a team of three. We are conscious of our duty as fiduciaries for our shareholders, and we will fulfill those responsibilities. We will continue to attract creative, committed new employees, and we will welcome support from new shareholders. We will live up to our "don't be evil" principle by keeping user trust and not accepting payment for search results. We have a dual-class structure that is biased toward stability and independence and that requires investors to bet on the team, especially Sergey and me.
In this letter we have explained our thinking on why Google is better off going public. We have talked about our IPO auction method and our desire for stability and access for all investors. We have discussed our goal to have investors who determine a rational price and invest for the long term only if they can buy at that price. Finally, we have discussed our desire to create an ideal working environment that will ultimately drive the success of Google by retaining and attracting talented Googlers.
We have tried hard to anticipate your questions. It will be difficult for us to respond to them given legal constraints during our offering process. We look forward to a long and hopefully prosperous relationship with you, our new investors. We wrote this letter to help you understand our company.
We have a strong commitment to our users worldwide, their communities, the web sites in our network, our advertisers, our investors, and of course our employees. Sergey and I, and the team will do our best to make Google a long term success and the world a better place.
Larry Page
Sergey Brin
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
Friday, April 30, 2004
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Google Alert...More personalisation of search results.... Edit Search
Google Alert - Edit Search
April 28, 2004
SightPoint Personalized Search Results
SightPoint automatically learns which search results are most relevant to you. Your new search results are rated based on results you have clicked on in the past. These relevance ratings, out of five stars, become more accurate over time.
Using SightPoint
SightPoint is an opt-in feature that is switched on using the checkbox. Once switched on, SightPoint works automatically as you click on results in HTML emails, the online browser and RSS feeds.
April 28, 2004
SightPoint Personalized Search Results
SightPoint automatically learns which search results are most relevant to you. Your new search results are rated based on results you have clicked on in the past. These relevance ratings, out of five stars, become more accurate over time.
Using SightPoint
SightPoint is an opt-in feature that is switched on using the checkbox. Once switched on, SightPoint works automatically as you click on results in HTML emails, the online browser and RSS feeds.
United States Patent: 6,725,259
United States Patent: 6,725,259: "United States Patent 6,725,259
Bharat April 20, 2004
Ranking search results by reranking the results based on local inter-connectivity
Abstract
A search engine for searching a corpus improves the relevancy of the results by refining a standard relevancy score based on the interconnectivity of the initially returned set of documents. The search engine obtains an initial set of relevant documents by matching a user's search terms to an index of a corpus. A re-ranking component in the search engine then refines the initially returned document rankings so that documents that are frequently cited in the initial set of relevant documents are preferred over documents that are less frequently cited within the initial set.
Inventors: Bharat; Krishna (Santa Clara, CA)
Assignee: Google Inc. (Mountain View, CA) "
Bharat April 20, 2004
Ranking search results by reranking the results based on local inter-connectivity
Abstract
A search engine for searching a corpus improves the relevancy of the results by refining a standard relevancy score based on the interconnectivity of the initially returned set of documents. The search engine obtains an initial set of relevant documents by matching a user's search terms to an index of a corpus. A re-ranking component in the search engine then refines the initially returned document rankings so that documents that are frequently cited in the initial set of relevant documents are preferred over documents that are less frequently cited within the initial set.
Inventors: Bharat; Krishna (Santa Clara, CA)
Assignee: Google Inc. (Mountain View, CA) "
AXA challenges Google's business model - Breaking - theage.com.au
AXA challenges Google's business model - Breaking - theage.com.au: "AXA, the world's No.3 insurer, is taking Google Inc to court next month in the latest trademark challenge to threaten the heart of Google's business model - advertising.
Google is already embroiled in litigation on both sides of the Atlantic over claims that its pay-for-placement service, Adwords, lets clients hijack their competitors' trademarks...
A source close to the insurer said the lawsuit was filed after Google sold AXA's registered trademarks as advertising search terms.
Internet users who typed "AXA" or "Direct Assurance" into the search engine got ads for rival insurers alongside ordinary search results, the source said. A Google search in Paris last Thursday of "AXA" reaped mostly AXA sites and one UK financial planning site...
The lawsuits have arisen despite Google's stated policy that it will generally remove ads triggered by registered trademarks when notified by their legitimate owners.
Google is about to relax that policy. Earlier this month, it announced plans to allow the sale of any US or Canadian trademark as a search term. Trademarks in the text of ads would remain restricted.
The shift would give Google a more aggressive stance on trademarks than its archrival Yahoo Inc, whose paid search service, Overture, pledges to vet the use of brands as search terms."
Google is already embroiled in litigation on both sides of the Atlantic over claims that its pay-for-placement service, Adwords, lets clients hijack their competitors' trademarks...
A source close to the insurer said the lawsuit was filed after Google sold AXA's registered trademarks as advertising search terms.
Internet users who typed "AXA" or "Direct Assurance" into the search engine got ads for rival insurers alongside ordinary search results, the source said. A Google search in Paris last Thursday of "AXA" reaped mostly AXA sites and one UK financial planning site...
The lawsuits have arisen despite Google's stated policy that it will generally remove ads triggered by registered trademarks when notified by their legitimate owners.
Google is about to relax that policy. Earlier this month, it announced plans to allow the sale of any US or Canadian trademark as a search term. Trademarks in the text of ads would remain restricted.
The shift would give Google a more aggressive stance on trademarks than its archrival Yahoo Inc, whose paid search service, Overture, pledges to vet the use of brands as search terms."
Monday, April 26, 2004
Gmail: the Next Gator?
Gmail: the Next Gator?: "E-mail marketers may be surprised to learn what happens when recipients see their messages in Google's soon-to-debut, ad-supported e-mail application. Messages contain ads for competitors' products, ClickZ News tests revealed...
Example: a Travelocity mailing that triggered ads from Hotwire, Cheapfares.com and TravelFleaMarket.com. All are Travelocity competitors. Similar situations occur with publishers' e-mail newsletters, which are often ad-supported; and transactional e-mail, such as online bill statements or order confirmations...
It's analogous to McDonald's paying someone to wear a McDonald's-branded sandwich board in front of a Burger King. In the interactive arena, it's akin to the kind of competitive pop-up ads that have generated controversy (and legal action) for Claria.
"Google targets ads based on the text of a message," said a Google spokesperson. "If a message contains information about a service or product, Gmail may display a competitor's ad. This is a benefit to users because it provides additional relevant information that enables them to make informed decisions."
If Gmail is released more widely in its current form, the competitive environment is certain to intensify. Google recently shifted its trademark policy to allow advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. Hypothetically, a message from Banana Republic (for example) could, simply because of its subject line, trigger ads from J. Crew, Eddie Bauer and the like."
Example: a Travelocity mailing that triggered ads from Hotwire, Cheapfares.com and TravelFleaMarket.com. All are Travelocity competitors. Similar situations occur with publishers' e-mail newsletters, which are often ad-supported; and transactional e-mail, such as online bill statements or order confirmations...
It's analogous to McDonald's paying someone to wear a McDonald's-branded sandwich board in front of a Burger King. In the interactive arena, it's akin to the kind of competitive pop-up ads that have generated controversy (and legal action) for Claria.
"Google targets ads based on the text of a message," said a Google spokesperson. "If a message contains information about a service or product, Gmail may display a competitor's ad. This is a benefit to users because it provides additional relevant information that enables them to make informed decisions."
If Gmail is released more widely in its current form, the competitive environment is certain to intensify. Google recently shifted its trademark policy to allow advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. Hypothetically, a message from Banana Republic (for example) could, simply because of its subject line, trigger ads from J. Crew, Eddie Bauer and the like."
Gmail Terms of Use
IP rights & privacy concerns: Gmail Terms of Use:
"Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Gmail account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service. "
"Advertisements. As consideration for using the Service, you agree and understand that Google will display ads and other information adjacent to and related to the content of your email. Gmail serves relevant ads using a completely automated process that enables Google to effectively target dynamically changing content, such as email. No human will read the content of your email in order to target such advertisements or other information without your consent, and no email content or other personally identifiable information will be provided to advertisers as part of the Service."
"Google welcomes feedback on this document and policy as the Gmail service is currently in an early testing stage. As Gmail evolves over the next several months, we expect to incorporate improvements in response to community feedback. Send comments to privacymatters@google.com"
"How we deliver targeted content to you.
We never share your personally identifying information with any advertiser as part of this service, unless you specifically ask us to do so. When you are logged into your Gmail account, Google will display targeted ads and other relevant information based on the content of the email displayed. In a completely automated process, computers process the text in a message and match it to ads or related information in Google's extensive database. No human reads your mail to target ads or other information without your consent.
Advertisers receive a record of the total number of impressions and clicks for each ad. They do not receive any personal information about the person who viewed the ad. If you click on an ad, Google will send a referring URL to the advertiser's site identifying that you are visiting from Gmail. Google does not send personally identifying information to advertisers with the referring URL. Once you are on the advertiser's site, however, the advertiser may collect personal information about you. Google does not control or take responsibility for the privacy policies of other sites.
Google may send you information related to your Gmail account or other Google services. Because we believe such information is important, you will not be given the opportunity to opt-out of receiving them."
"Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Gmail account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service. "
"Advertisements. As consideration for using the Service, you agree and understand that Google will display ads and other information adjacent to and related to the content of your email. Gmail serves relevant ads using a completely automated process that enables Google to effectively target dynamically changing content, such as email. No human will read the content of your email in order to target such advertisements or other information without your consent, and no email content or other personally identifiable information will be provided to advertisers as part of the Service."
"Google welcomes feedback on this document and policy as the Gmail service is currently in an early testing stage. As Gmail evolves over the next several months, we expect to incorporate improvements in response to community feedback. Send comments to privacymatters@google.com"
"How we deliver targeted content to you.
We never share your personally identifying information with any advertiser as part of this service, unless you specifically ask us to do so. When you are logged into your Gmail account, Google will display targeted ads and other relevant information based on the content of the email displayed. In a completely automated process, computers process the text in a message and match it to ads or related information in Google's extensive database. No human reads your mail to target ads or other information without your consent.
Advertisers receive a record of the total number of impressions and clicks for each ad. They do not receive any personal information about the person who viewed the ad. If you click on an ad, Google will send a referring URL to the advertiser's site identifying that you are visiting from Gmail. Google does not send personally identifying information to advertisers with the referring URL. Once you are on the advertiser's site, however, the advertiser may collect personal information about you. Google does not control or take responsibility for the privacy policies of other sites.
Google may send you information related to your Gmail account or other Google services. Because we believe such information is important, you will not be given the opportunity to opt-out of receiving them."
The Observer | Business | The Networker: What can't you find on Google? Vital statistics
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."
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."
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. ...
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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. ...
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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."
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