Google Advertising How Google determines ranks and rates of its sponsored links

Plain English article detailing main features of Google Advertising..

Behind the Curtain / How Google determines ranks and rates of its sponsored links: "Scott Kessler, a Standard & Poor's analyst, worries about what he calls Google's ABCs of risk: the absence of other means for making money; building competition; and click fraud, a practice in which competitors or scammers click on ads repeatedly, potentially costing Google and its advertisers thousands of dollars.
'It's one of the great questions people have to ponder with Google,' Kessler said about click fraud.
But before laying odds on Google's future, it helps to have a better understanding of the firm's deceptively simple business model. So, how does Google make all that money?

Google's advertising business appears simple. It takes just a few minutes and $5 to start posting sponsored links.

The tricky part comes as businesses battle for the top position on the first page of Google's results. Naturally, that's the sweet spot: An ad at the top of the page receives roughly double the clicks of others, said Michael Schwarz, a researcher at UC Berkeley.

But there is no way to guarantee that crucial spot. Where an advertisement appears depends on a combination of how much a business is willing to pay, and how much the ad has to do with the search.

That means that no matter how much an advertiser is willing to pay, the ad will not get top billing if the user is looking for something completely different...

In January, U.S. consumers used Google for 2.8 billion searches, or nearly 50 percent all of online queries, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That helped produce 41.1 billion sponsored links in January on Google and its partner sites. And the experience with click fraud hasn't stopped E-magine Networks and other businesses from continuing to use Google.

"I'm not trying to be angry with Google. I want to work with Google," said Dupell of E-magine Networks.

"It is not an evil corporation," he continued. "It may be a place where fraud does occur, but Google does refund the money back if it can be proven. ... They have made us a fortune and they've made our clients a fortune and they continue to every day."


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How to do it
Placing an advertisement on Google can cost as little as $5 and take just a few minutes.

1. Draw up a three-line advertisement, no more than 100 characters total.

2. Enter the keywords that will activate your sponsored link, such as "cheap airfare" for an ad about discount travel.

3. Bid in an auction for those keywords, determining how much you're willing to pay. The minimum bid is 1 cent per click. The maximum is $100 per click. You can't spend more than $250,000 a day.

4. Give Google your billing information and wait for your ad to appear."

Google Execs Paint Bright Picture - Forbes.com

Update 5: Google Execs Paint Bright Picture - Forbes.com: "Google Inc. provided stock market analysts with more color about its secretive operations Thursday, painting a bright picture that appeared aimed at defusing growth concerns raised by the search engine leader's chief financial officer earlier this week....

In his opening remarks, Google CEO Eric Schmidt assured the roomful of analysts that he sees "tremendous headroom" to develop an even more effective advertising approach.

Schmidt underscored his optimism at one point by saying Google someday might generate $100 billion in annual revenue as it expands into a variety of new advertising channels, including television, radio and publishing. The 7-year-old company's revenue totaled $6.1 billion last year.

"Our assessment is we are in the strongest position that we have ever been," Schmidt said later in the day...The upbeat remarks contrasted with Reyes' cautious commentary during a question-and-answer session at a Tuesday investor conference in New York. At that time, Reyes cited the difficulty that Google would have improving its advertising formula and advised the company's growth rate was bound to slow down - a prospect that set off alarms among investors and caused Google's stock price to drop precipitously

Reyes told analysts that Google's capital spending this year will be substantially higher than last year's $838 million investment. He indicated most of the money will be spent increasing Google's already formidable computing power so it can deliver more products and servers to Web surfers.

Google also plans to continue a hiring spree that expanded the company's payroll by an average of 7 new employees per day last year. Reyes said much of the hiring will be concentrated outside the United States as Google continues to expand internationally.

In another development, Schmidt identified Microsoft Corp. as the rival that most worries Google because of the way the world's largest software maker has aggressively attacked other technology upstarts in the past.

Microsoft currently runs the Internet's third most popular search engine, ranking behind both Google and Yahoo Inc., but it has vowed to close the gap by improving its technology and luring new users by giving away free merchandise and services.
"

Pagerank update update

Great result for a little bit of effort on the linking aspect, my humble litttle gambling blog now has a pagerank of 4! Better work on some links for the main site which now shows PR2, not bad though....Gambling Housewife Free Horse Racing Tips may be not as impressive as my January tipping

SiteProNews: Google.cn: The Internet As Beijing Sees It

SiteProNews: Google.cn: The Internet As Beijing Sees It: "the last two or three years have shown us the inherent strength of the search engine - and none more than
Google. And I believe that an unintended consequence of Google's controversial stance in China has an awareness increase of just how influential search results can be. Comparisons of 'Tiananm en' searches are illustrating this. Several blogs are showing split screen stills of keyword results using 'Tiananmen'on Google Images. Google.cn shows picture after picture of a lovely park, while Google.com shows a screen full of those infamous images of a lone protestor in front of menacing tanks.

Just one example of real time censorship is being beamed live over the internet, brought to you by Google. It makes for
unintentional and terrible publicity for Google. Oddly timed,too, considering Google's righteous defense here in the United States against government intrusion into their own affairs.

From a business perspective Google's position is sound and totally understandable....

Could anyone actually believe that Google will protect Chinese Internet users if the powers in Beijing started making demands for private search information on Chinese searches? Google has entered China on Beijing's terms, compromised. When issues of ethics arise Google won't have much to say because they are clearly in China for the dough. The power of search, that we see in China, can - and let's be frank, will be used against the people someday. This would make Google, of "Do No Evil" fame - somewhat complicit.

Until some big changes occur in Beijing I foresee much awkwardness for the "Do No Evil" bunch's operation in China.
Simply put, the Party Leaders in Beijing have Google over a barrel - I suppose that means selling out. If they cared only
about profits, this article might not have even been written. But this is Google. And their product is a powerful tool and they've already yielded it to some very powerful folks in Beijing. This time it was to prevent the Chinese people from accessing certain information. As this tool of search continues to refine and become powerful, it's tough to say what Google will be asked for. Perhaps Google will be coerced into giving up the identities of their own users in China. It is anything but a farfetched scenario.

Is hypocrisy in big business expected? Sure, to some degree. But this is dangerous hypocrisy."

Google Takes the Road More Traveled

Google Takes the Road More Traveled: "Search Engine News > Google Takes the Road More Traveled...

A little more than a year after their attempt to shake up the IPO world by selling shares through a Dutch auction designed to give the "little guy" just as much chance at buying in as the big investors have, Google seems to be giving in to traditional Wall Street tactics and shifting their attention toward the big money buyers."

The Search Experience has a De Facto Standard -Google (for Now)

The Search Experience has a De Facto Standard (for Now): "Google: The User's Definition of Search

Google's interface has become the de facto standard for search. Even now, all three of the major properties have very similar search results layouts, with only slight variations to distinguish them. It's in those variations, the nuances of design and layout, where the differences in the user experience can be found. Everything is measured against Google, and at this point, Google's interface defines the ideal search experience...

Google has done a lot right (and a few things wrong) but perhaps the smartest move they've ever made is to pay meticulous attention to the search user experience. Whether they designed an ideal interface by intention, or whether we've just been conditioned to accept it as the ideal interface, it works for us"

Q&A With Google Time Magazine

A Little Q&A With Google: "Brin, Page and Schmidt, the trio that runs Google, are the cover boys of this week's Time Magazine. Asking questions like 'Can we Trust Google With our Secrets' and publishing a general Q&A with the threesome turns up some interesting tidbits of information, including a claim by the founders that porn makes up a tiny percentage of their overall search numbers... The article includes some interesting insight. For example, the decision not to run ads on Google's image search results because the estimated $80 million that it would produce in revenue each year isn't "worth it."

From the article:

Google's decision to launch a censored website in China was so jarring. (See "Google Under the Gun," TIME, Feb. 13, 2006.) Doing a totalitarian government's bidding in blocking the truth in order to make a few extra bucks is practically the definition of evil. Google acknowledges that it's in a tough situation but says it ultimately has to obey local laws. "There's a subtext to 'Don't be evil,' and that is 'Don't be illegal,'" says Vint Cerf, an Internet founding father who now serves as "chief Internet evangelist" at Google. "Overall, having Google there is better than not having Google there." But at what cost? Can Brin and Page live with the idea that Chinese Netizens can't access anything other than the official line on, say, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and that Google is part of the cover-up?

There's another big question that makes Brin and Page squirm: Does Google have a master plan? To outsiders, it sometimes seems as if the company is investing everywhere, trying to be everything, often giving its products away. A few of the newer pursuits: a proposal to provide free wireless Internet service for San Francisco; an online video store selling TV shows and NBA games; a classified-advertising site; a project to scan every book ever published and make the texts searchable; a free desktop package loaded with software; free instant messaging and online voice communication; a $1 billion investment in America Online. (AOL, like this magazine, is owned by Time Warner.) In the past year or so, Google Inc. has doubled in size to about 6,000 employees to handle all the new work. Even the bullish Rashtchy acknowledges that "Google is a black box for most people."

Google partners with BearingPoint | CNET News.com

Google partners with BearingPoint | CNET News.com: "A partnership that's expected to be announced Tuesday between Google and professional services provider BearingPoint, formerly KPMG, aims to make searching across corporate and internal desktops and databases as easy as using Google's Web search page.

BearingPoint has thousands of consultants trained to help companies--including many Global 2000 businesses--install, integrate and customize the Google Search Appliance and the Google Desktop for Enterprise software, Chris Weitz, managing director for BearingPoint, said on Monday.

The Google search appliance is used to let employees at corporations, federal agencies and other organizations search for documents in internal databases and other sources that may be spread across different locations and that tend to be unstructured data hidden from Internet search engines. The Desktop for Enterprise software lets people search for data on their desktops. "

GBUY hits the mainstream newsPayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google

WSJ.com - PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google: "PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google...

When Jeff Jordan learned last May that Web-search leader Google Inc. was building its own Internet-payment service, he reacted swiftly.

Mr. Jordan, who is president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal online-payments unit, immediately asked employees to unearth information about the Google service. Soon, PayPal employees were monitoring blogs, news reports and other data for information about Google's progress in payments. PayPal staffers even gleaned details about Google's plans during regular calls to customers who were eager to dish about how Google had reached out to them.

"It's a very legitimate competitive threat," says Mr. Jordan, 47 years old. "It's hard not to pay attention to what Google is doing."

PayPal must now contend with Google. The Mountain View, Calif., Web-search giant, which has terrified Silicon Valley with its ability to quickly create new consumer products and services, is developing a rival service called GBuy. For the last nine months, Google has recruited online retailers to test GBuy, according to one person briefed on the service. GBuy will feature an icon posted alongside the paid-search ads of merchants, which Google hopes will tempt consumers to click on the ads, says this person. GBuy will also let consumers store their credit-card information on Google."

Matt Cutts: robots.txt, Google, and SEO � New robots.txt tool

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � New robots.txt tool: "Sitemaps team just introduced a new robots.txt tool into Sitemaps. The robots.txt file is one of the easiest things for a webmaster to make a mistake on. Brett Tabke�s Search Engine World has a great robots.txt tutorial and even a robots.txt validator...

Part of the problem is that mucking around with robots.txt files is pretty rare; once you get it right once, you usually never have to think about the file again. Another issue is that if you get the file wrong, it can have a large impact on your site, so most people don’t mess with their robots.txt file very often. Finally, each search engine has slightly different extra options that they support. For example, Google permits wildcards (*) and the “Allow:” directive...

the robots.txt checker from the Sitemaps team is that it lets you take a robots.txt file out for a test drive and see how the real Googlebot would handle a file. Want to play with wildcards to allow all files except for ‘*.gif’? Go for it. Want to experiment with upper vs. lower case? Answer: upper vs. lower case doesn’t matter. Want to check whether hyphens matter for Google? Go wild. Answer: we’ll accept “UserAgent” or “User-Agent”, but we’ll remind you that the hyphenated version is the correct version.

The best part is that you can test a robots.txt file without risking anything by doing it on your live site..."

Matt Cutts: Bigdaddy update, Google, and SEO � Bigdaddy progress update

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Bigdaddy progress update: " Bigdaddy continues to roll out and is now available at three data centers. In addition to 66.249.93.104 and 64.233.179.104, Bigdaddy is now up at 216.239.51.104. We’ve been going through the spam feedback and acting on it, and reading through the general search feedback as well.
...

Bigdaddy involves new infrastructure and is not just a data push or algorithm update. Don�t take it as a promise, but I�d expect a new data center to be converted to Bigdaddy roughly every 10 days or so. "

Matt Cutts: on Big Daddy & possible sandbox behavior

Matt Cutts: on the SEO Rockstars show on webmasterradio.fm Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � I�m on webmasterradio.fm!: "show is live at http://www.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/index.php?showId=16 so go download the mp3. It�s a mere 70-ish megabytes. Highlights included an update on BigDaddy, some questions about possible sandbox behavior, my take on the new show Lestat before it heads to Broadway, SEO contests, and my current pet peeve (subdomain spam, which BigDaddy does better on). "

Matt Cutts: BMW reincluded Google, and SEO � Recent reinclusions

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Recent reinclusions: Cutts writes "I appreciate BMW�s quick response on removing JavaScript-redirecting pages from BMW properties. The webspam team at Google has been in contact with BMW, and Google has reincluded bmw.de in our index. Likewise, ricoh.de has also removed similar doorway pages and has been reincluded in Google's index."

The phrase that jumps out at me is "The webspam team at Google has been in contact with BMW"...did BMW not have to submit "a reinclusion request with details on who created the doorway pages. We’ll probably also need some assurances that such pages won’t reappear on the sites before the domains can be reincluded." as posted earlier? It doesnt sound like it..

In comments it appears they did but there are still many questions:

" Can small sites without BMW’s financial clout expect comparable treatment from Google or can we consider this as just another newsworthy case study?"

"How convenient for BMW to be in touch with google. How exactly does the average webmaster get in touch with google? How often is the regular webmaster told why their site has been taken out of the google index? How quickly (or delayed) is the re-inclusion of banned sites?"

Cutts replies: "Our main goal has to be to give the most relevant results to our users; there is currently a trade-off between taking action to remove spam from our index vs. removing sites that lots of users look for with navigational queries. In my mind, the most scalable, robust direction to move in is to provide tools like Sitemaps and the webmaster console that allow everyone to diagnose and debug as much information as possible with their site. As we introduce features like the robots.txt checker, that helps every website owner equally, whether it be a mom and pop website or Nissan, Metallica, or the California DMV (all of which have had robots.txt issues in the past)....

we’ve been working on programs like emailing webmasters when we find quality violations on their sites...

it’s a pretty common idiom to have a Flash site and then provide a text version of a site; I wouldn’t worry about anything like that "

an entirely new way to optimize web sites... Visitor Enhanced Optimization - VEO for short

Internet Marketing Secrets and Strategies. Issue #85 February 02 2006: "Does Google trust you? Are you on the list of trusted sites? Do you ever wonder why some sites get the green light and rise to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) and why others never seem to get anywhere? It's all about trust....

In VEO you don't play against the search engine algorithm, you ignore it completely. You don't focus on keyword densities, you aim for a happy visitor. You don't sell sell sell products like an affiliate, you brand the site and soft sell the products through articles...

suggests that you have a passion for your topic matter. That you become an expert in your field. Learn it inside out and write about it, putting that content on your site. Advertise the site and build it into a strong brand while soft selling products in the background.

If all this sounds backwards and crazy, remember that Colin's inspiration and motivation, came from that long conversation with Google. It's as close as you'll ever get to them giving an endorsement.

VEO Report: "how to establish trust with Google' - It is not enough to pursue inbound links and tweak your content to match a keyword density formula. In fact these activities will likely erode trust with Google""

Google to Unveil New Chat Feature

Google to Unveil New Chat Feature - Forbes.com: "Online search engine leader Google Inc. is wedding its instant messaging and e-mail services in the same Web browser, hoping the convenience will lure users from the larger communications networks operated by its chief rivals.

The new chat feature to be unveiled Tuesday will provide users of Google's Gmail service with a list of contacts drawn from past e-mail exchanges and then signal who's available for online conversations...

Google hopes to make it even simpler to connect with an online contact by allowing users to initiate an electronic conversation within the same Web browser showing an e-mailbox, bypassing the need to switch to a separate instant messaging application."

Matt Cutts: on 410's 404's Google, and SEO

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO: "a good interview with the Sitemaps team. The most useful tidbit (which I didn�t know until now) is that Google treats a 404 HTTP status code (page not found, but it may reappear) and a 410 HTTP status code (page not found, and it�s gone forever) in the same way. I believe that we treat 404s as if they were 410s; once Googlebot has seen a 404 at that location, I think we assume that the document is gone forever. Given how many people use 404 instead of 410, that�s probably a good call for the time being."

Google blacklists BMW for page rank cheats - vnunet.com

BMW.de is in trouble for using 'doorway' pages which violate Google webmaster guidelines Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO blogs that the Google: "webspam team continued ramping up our anti-spam efforts by removing bmw.de from our index, and ricoh.de will be removed soon for similar reasons....

BMW used JavaScript-redirecting pages which fell foul specifically of "the principle of “Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.”

It appears that at least some of the JavaScript-redirecting pages have already been removed from bmw.de, which is very encouraging, but given the number of pages that were doing JavaScript redirects, I expect that Google’s webspam team will need a reinclusion request with details on who created the doorway pages. We’ll probably also need some assurances that such pages won’t reappear on the sites before the domains can be reincluded""

Wi-Fi sharing company wins Skype, Google backing | CNET News.com

Wi-Fi sharing company wins Skype, Google backing | CNET News.com: "A wireless communications start-up in Spain that is partly a grass-roots social movement seeking to encourage users to share Internet access with their neighbors is set to announce on Monday $21.7 million in funding from big name backers, such as Skype Technologies and Google.

Fon Technology SL said it has secured 18 million euros in initial financing from Skype, the popular Web-based calling company now owned by eBay, Google, and venture capital firms Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital. "

Adsense Rich Media Beta

Adsense Rich Media Beta: "I just received an invitation to be part of the big G's Rich Media AdSense program. Has anybody heard of this yet? They ask for a variety of CPM rates. I've never done CPM just done adsense. I'm hoping people might be able to give a range for the following:
Expanding ads CPM:
Floating ads CPM:
Audio/Video ads CPM:
Prestitial ads CPM:
Intersitial ads CPM:
Dedicated home page placement (no out of the box) CPM:...

After doing some research here is what I've found:
Expanding ads CPM: $8 - $20
Floating ads CPM: $8 - $20
Audio/Video ads CPM: $35 - $70
Prestitial ads CPM: $35 - $60
Intersitial ads CPM: $30 - $50
Dedicated home page placement (no out of the box) CPM: $10 - $30 "

Google Tests VoIP Ads

Google Testing VoIP Ads: "Google confirmed on Tuesday that they are working with Florida based VoIP Inc. to introduce a new system of click-to-call advertising to Adwords, their popular paid search advertisement system. Google has been testing the service since last fall with select advertisers...

The Click-to-Call program brings together two of Google's interests -- Internet phone calls and advertising, said industry analyst David Lemelin of In-Stat...

With Google already exploring print advertising and last month's purchase of radio advertising company dMarc Broadcasting, it's becoming more and more clear that Google's long-term plans are to act as an advertising brokerage for all types of media, not just search and contextual media."

Judge postpones Google subpoena hearing | CNET News.com

Judge postpones Google subpoena hearing | CNET News.com: "Google's attempt to fend off the government's request for millions of search terms will move to a federal court in San Jose, Calif., on March 13...

The outcome will determine whether the U.S. Justice Department will prevail in its fight to force Google to help it defend an anti-pornography law in a trial in Philadelphia this fall...

..the Justice Department also demanded that Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online to hand over similar records, Google was the only recipient that chose to fight the subpoena in court.

Court documents reveal that the Justice Department has been pressuring Google for excerpts from its search logs for half a year. Prosecutors hope to use the excerpts to show that filtering software can't protect children online...

Prosecutors are requesting a "random sampling" of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through Google's popular search engine, and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted to Google over a one-week period...

The request is part of the Justice Department's attempt to defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act. The law orders commercial Web sites to shield minors from materials that may be "harmful" to them--or face prison time--a requirement that the American Civil Liberties Union claims it violates free expression rights"

Unified Theory of Google

Unified Theory of Google: "Google has been undergoing a remarkable series of changes over the past six months as it adds new features, acquires new technologies and expands its operations. It is no longer a pure search engine company though its search engine is the most popular around the world. Google acknowledged the shift early last summer when CEO Eric Schmidt famously defined Google as a media company.
That is an important distinction moving forward towards global domination. Google is a very big business, one that is growing faster and far more powerful than any other business before it. In seven short years, Google has grown from a university dorm room to universal dominance...

Quick tour of Google lesser projects...

...No honest SEO is 100% certain about anything in regards to Google, however, following the Jagger algorithm update, we are confidently certain Google has incorporated several of the concepts covered in their March 2005 patent application, “Information retrieval based on historical data”. (click here to read our examination of the patent)..

The Unified Theory of Google, (and it is only a theory), suggests to us that as Google grows into itself, it will subtly favour information found within its own databases. We believe this provides a series of indispensable tools along with a basic outline for client campaigns that uses the strengths of Google to propel client sites to the top of the general SERPs."

Google offers fee-based online ad analytics | CNET News.com

Google offers fee-based online ad analytics | CNET News.com: "Google is partnering with Seattle-based Zaaz to offer a fee-based service for advertisers who need more support, consulting and training than they can get from the search giant's free analytics service.

Zaaz will offer high-end data analysis and marketing services including accuracy audits and data collection best practices, forecasting models, competitive analysis and site optimization...

Google said anyone seeking a new Google Analytics account will need to request an invitation.

"Today, we sent out another batch of invitations to many of you who expressed interest in a Google Analytics account," the company said in a posting on its Web site Thursday. "If you have not received an invitation, please continue to be patient. Although we are adding system capacity every day, the demand for Google Analytics accounts still outpaces our ability to add resources,"

Microsoft also offers a service that lets customers monitor how their online ad campaigns are faring. Last month, Yahoo launched a service that lets customers compare the effectiveness of online ads side-by-side with advertisements on radio, television and in print"

Reactions to Googles censored search results in China

� Reactions to Google�s censored search results in China: "When you do a search in the new, censored version of Google in China, you find a message at the bottom of the results page that translates like this:
�In accordance with local law, regulations, and government policies, a portion of search results are not shown.
Google.cn has been called the Eunuch Version. Google Blogscoped shows just how castrated the Chinese version of Googles search engine is.
Read on for reactions and analyses from blogs and web sites all over the world."

Grading Google

Is Google's dependence on one main revenue stream search ads (Adwords) its achilles heel? Twelve page article runs through all of Google's current products and finds most of them weak and lacking marketing ...

on Grading Google - Forbes.com: "Can Google ever go wrong? With a stock price hovering around $435, Google ranks as one of the world's most valuable companies, and competitors quake at its name...

Google’s one and only successful marketplace is a system for the buying and selling of ads, but Card thinks a Google Money product is possible."

Google Computer Talk Mounts

Rumors persist that Google will announce it is manufacturing a $200 networkable personal computer that has no hard drive and is based around an open-source operating system, when company founder Larry Page takes the podium at the Consumer Electronics Show. Google did not deny the story, but did not confirm it either, but last month a company called Wyse Technology told Red Herring magazine that Google had contracted it to build Google-branded PCs.

RED HERRING | Google Computer Talk Mounts: "Google Computer Talk Mounts Analysts say search giant plans Internet devices for the home...

Speculation mounted this week that Google and its partners will introduce plans for cheap, Internet-linked computers with the goal of changing the way consumers use computers and access the web.


Wyse Technology told RedHerring.com last month it has been in talks with the Internet search behemoth to make inexpensive Google-branded PCs (see Wyse to Make $150 Computers). Wyse’s hard-drive-less computers, called thin clients, are often used in clusters in business or organizational settings."

AOL Deal Could Speed Google's Undoing

AOL Deal Could Speed Google's Undoing: "AOL Deal Could Speed Google's Undoing... What a difference 10 days can make. Earlier this month, it appeared as though Microsoft and AOL were going to pair off, the Time Warner business unit shedding its old ties with Google for new ones with MSN Search. At the time, rumor had it that no large sums would change hands.

Well, a large sum?$1 billion large?is leaving Google for Time Warner. In return, Google gets 5 percent of AOL, expands the advertising sales relationship between the two services, and the right to make a rude gesture in Steve Ballmer's direction.

With this deal, Google gets to save face, but it may also plant another seed of its ultimate undoing...

Google initially attracted users with a sparse interface that gave search results center stage and treated paid results?advertising?essentially as a necessary evil.

More and more advertising has been creeping into Google's results pages, sometimes there seems to be more paid results than free ones.

This depends, of course, on what you're searching for, but the change is quite noticeable. And is about to become much more so.

If the news stories are to be believed, coming soon to a Web browser near you: Google ads with images, sold by AOL.

According to a story in the San Jose Mercury News: "The partnership could also herald a new experience for people who use Google's search engine, because it allows AOL to place advertising with images on Google's search results pages. Until now, Google's search engine has been devoid of any image ads."

Is this, taken alone, a big deal? Not really, but it places Google one more step away from what attracted so many of us to the service in the first place.

It also creates an opportunity, perhaps, for a company with very deep pockets, to try to become a better Google than Google. I wonder who might do that? "

Google refines content bidding for AdWords advertisers

Seperate bids for adwords on search sites v content sites.
Netimperative - Google refines content bidding for AdWords advertisers: "Google has launched a separate content bidding for AdWords, as the search giant aims to expand its paid-for search services.

The move lets advertisers place one bid for ads that run on content sites and a separate bid for ads that run on search sites within the Google Network. The move could give advertisers greater control in maximising return on investment from search campaigns. Previously, the single keyword bid placed by advertisers was applied to their ads on both search and content pages. In addition, the minimum bid for content is now a static $.01 in the U.S"

Googling For Gold How Google changes the world

Googling For Gold: "With a market cap in orbit and more cash than a small nation, Google's heft is altering the tech industry's behavior....

The Google effect is already changing the delicate balance in Silicon Valley between venture capitalists and startup companies. Instead of nurturing the most promising startups with an eye toward taking the fledgling businesses public, a growing number of VCs now scour the landscape for anyone with a technology or service that might fill a gap in Google's portfolio. Google itself and not the larger market has become the exit strategy as VCs plan for the day they can take their money out of their startups. Business founders have felt the tug as well. "You're hearing about a lot of entrepreneurs pitching VCs with their end goal to be acquired by Google" ...

There's one snag in this planetary realignment: Google has shown little interest so far in doing big deals with anyone. Although it briefly sniffed around Web-phone giant Skype Technologies, Google blanched at the eventual price of $2.6 billion ponied up by eBay Inc. (EBAY ) in September. In fact, Google's biggest deal to date is the $102 million it paid for online ad upstart Applied Semantics Inc. in 2003. For now, at least, Google is passing on big, bold deals...

But if dot-com history is any indication, the risks of doing nothing could be substantial. Google could be sitting on an ephemeral asset. In 1999, Yahoo Inc. (YHOO ), Google's closest publicly traded equivalent, had a $115 billion market cap but passed up the chance to buy eBay. Today, eBay is worth more than Yahoo, whose value has since nearly halved. At its 1999 height, Doubleclick, the big online ad player of yesteryear, had $14 billion in market cap. It didn't put it to work, though, and in April this year was bought by a private equity firm for just over $1 billion.

in Google's prospectus when it first sold shares to the public 15 months ago. "We would fund projects that have a 10% chance of earning a billion dollars over the long term," wrote founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. And then they added: "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." ..

In the Silicon Valley food chain, the first to lay bets on which way things will shake out are the venture capitalists whose fate is now firmly entwined with that of Google. It's not a very comfortable position for VCs, who view Google with a mixture of disdain and envy...

luxuries aren't the real problem. It's what the VCs perceive as arrogance and a lack of respect for the role they play. VCs, after all, have at some point identified, believed in, nurtured, and funded -- not to mention made huge profits from -- the biggest names in techdom, from eBay to Cisco Systems and Google itself. Yet many feel that Google accords them roughly the same respect as it does vendors bidding on the groundskeeping contract.

Startup Day
Many VCs, for example are still fuming over the "Google Startup Day." VCs, who are used to making elaborate and proprietary pitches to potential investors, were instead summoned as a group to take turns making their spiels to Google's 10-person corporate development group. "Check out the gall," says one, sharing an Aug. 3 e-mail from Google's in-house M&A team. "Hi Very Senior Partner," the mass memo says by way of salutation. After explaining the hoops through which the VCs would have to jump to go to Startup Day, it asks those interested to "please fill in the attached spreadsheet with a brief description of each company and its business/technology, an overview of the team, any data points you would like to share, and a perspective of why the company might work with Google." Says the aggrieved VC: "Did it ever occur to them that this was like asking us to do their homework for them? It's the height of arrogance." Not so, responds Google's Drummond: "This was an attempt at outreach," he says. "Most VCs do like to talk to us. Google is very much involved in the venture community -- a lot more than people understand."

VCs have another more concrete reason to resent Google: With its deep pockets and its unwillingness to give quarter to outside professionals, it's now a growing competitor to Valley VCs. Google can easily afford to swoop in and outbid any VC for a startup..

Google strongly prefers to gobble up startups before they have embarked on a sales and marketing strategy, viewing companies that are completely tech-focused as a better cultural fit. It prefers to acquire small, local technology teams that it can simply plug into its headquarters. "Two guys in a garage with nose rings and a dog trying to catch lightning in a bottle" is how banker Smith characterizes the bias. Case in point: Last year Google snapped up Keyhole, a digital mapping company based next door in Mountain View, for an undisclosed sum. Its team moved down the road and within six months, Keyhole was providing the satellite technology behind Google's celebrated mapping tool. Conversely, Google has passed on larger, out-of-town deals, in large part because of integration worries.


Google is creating a whole new ecosystem for entrepreneurs, says Baris Karadogan of U.S. Venture Partners, a high-tech VC firm in Silicon Valley. Karadogan says he's closely watching a group of entrepreneurs who are designing a highly specialized online advertising tool, hoping to sell it to Google for $50 million. "Before," he laments, "you needed a VC. Now you can build a Linux-based data system for $100,000 and survive long enough to sell without ever raising a venture round."

The suits inside Google don't fare much better than the outside pros. Several current and former insiders say there's a caste system, in which business types are second-class citizens to Google's valued code jockeys. They argue that it could prove to be a big challenge in the future as Google seeks to maintain its growth. They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers.

A banker who interviewed for a Google corporate development job came to a similar conclusion. "They just aren't very focused," says the prospective hire, who didn't get the job. "They're biased against businesspeople, and their deal strategy is pretty much, 'O.K., if we see something, then we'll look at it."' The candidate, a Wall Street tech M&A specialist who was looking for a change of scenery and a more relaxed lifestyle, calls the experience "chaotic, bureaucratic, and very rigid."

Surprisingly for a company of Google's size, clout, and business needs, it doesn't yet have a thriving in-house VC arm. And that's despite some glaring holes in its product lineup. "We're clearly not going to do everything right," concedes Drummond. "There are areas we miss that others will fill out." For starters, Google has a long way to go to match the breadth, depth, and richness of Yahoo's portal. Ditto a peer-to-peer marketplace along the lines of an eBay, as well as Microsoft-like software applications.

Despite the hurdles they face, don't expect any of the legions of investment bankers, VCs, or entrepreneurs to fold their tents and go home. The stakes are too big, and everyone wants in. To steal a note from the Google home page: Feeling lucky?"

The only sales guy on the planet who's taken a company from zero to $3 billion in revenue : Omid Kordestani

John Battelle's Searchblog: Titans Column: Omid Kordestani: "Google's Omid Kordestani conjured a formula that took its sales to $3 billion. Now he's rethinking the world of advertising again. By John Battelle...

What do you see as the future of advertising?

The measurability of online advertising will extend broadly to all areas of media. You have companies spending billions of dollars on television. As more and more consumers adopt technologies like TiVo, I think you'll be able to have much more useful forms of advertising -- more targeted, more measurable, and with new pricing models. Just imagine if we made it possible for our advertisers to quickly publish relevant ads that could range from the local plumber on one end to Super Bowl commercials on the other."

Google base - new way to submit content

Google Tests Potential Classifieds-Killer: "Google has confirmed it's testing a method of structured content submission called Google Base. The new service, unearthed by bloggers who took screenshots before the pages disappeared, could put Google into competition with classifieds providers as well as e-tailing giant eBay.

'We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which will complement existing methods such as Web crawl and the Google Sitemaps program,' Eileen Rodriguez, a Google spokesperson, wrote in an e-mail exchange....

The potential service has implications for every player that publishes structured data, such as classifieds, product listings, or travel information. Traditionally, specialized search engines like Oodle, Indeed.com, SimplyHired and SideStep have indexed such data. But all of these players have long expected, and perhaps feared, Google would enter the market.

For the original data publishers, such as online merchants, recruiters with job listings, or individuals trying to sell a used car, Google's effort could make it possible for them to sidestep paying to have their ad posted on a job board or on eBay. By asking users to submitting data in a specified format, Google could likely do a better job at returning appropriate results."

New AdWords Tool Suggests Keywords -

MediaPost Publications - New AdWords Tool Suggests Keywords - 10/24/2005: "GOOGLE HAS INTRODUCED A NEW tool that offers advertisers suggested keywords. Dubbed 'Keyword Tool,' it suggests terms related to those that have been supplied by the advertiser. Google also takes into account past performance in the AdWords system, price, and popularity. The product can also suggest keywords based on terms that appear on a page's URL. Another feature of Keyword Tool is that it estimates the position of an ad, average cost-per-click, and search volume on given keywords. "

Google discloses details on how it collects and uses data

Update 1: Google Offers Glimpse at Data Collection - Forbes.com: "Google Inc. is now disclosing more details on how it collects and uses data obtained from users, but it is remaining silent on several key questions that concern privacy advocates...Danny Sullivan, editor of the industry newsletter Search Engine Watch, said that although Google can do more on disclosing how long it retains data, its rivals are also guilty of saying too little. "

Google.org - Google Philanthropic Foundation endowed with $90 millionby Google Inc

Google Commits Funds to Philanthropic Arm - Forbes.com: "Google Inc. is financing its promise to make the world a better place with an initial commitment of nearly $1 billion to a philanthropic arm devoted to causes that mesh with the online search engine leader's crusade...

Brin and Page have since decided their company's ambition extended beyond the limitations of a traditional foundation, prompting them to pool all the company's philanthropy under Google.org.

"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," Brin wrote...

the company is endowing the Google Foundation with $90 million and budgeting another $175 million to invest outside the foundation, said Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice president of global online sales and operations. Google is investing outside the foundation because it plans to put some money into "socially progressive" companies striving to turn a profit...

Google is pegging its total philanthropic commitment to the value of 3 million company shares - slightly more than 1 percent of the stock outstanding at the time of its IPO 14 months ago...

The Google Foundation already has started to give away some of its money. Several million dollars will be donated to the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture that also has received money from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Cisco Systems Foundation. The Google Foundation also is backing separate projects working to protect the water supply in rural Africa and to promote business startups in Ghana"

Google Feed Reader

Google Reader: "Reader makes it easier to keep up with your ever-expanding reading list of content from across the web."

Holizz versus the Web Blog Archive Google Reader lets: "you subscribe to a feed when youre already at a website and you cant be bothered to go to Reader and search for the feed?..It finds the author’s preferred feed and takes you to the preview page where you can subscribe. It only has one real bug; it takes you to a blank page with a cryptic message if there are no feeds listed on a Web page."

Google localises online maps search feature

CTV.ca | Google localizes online maps search feature: "Google Inc. is combining its popular online maps with its local search features, continuing a quest to increase its already rapidly rising advertising revenue.
...
The hybrid service blends addresses, phone numbers, maps, driving directions and other details, like user reviews and credit card information, on the same Web page. Google also offers a satellite-mapping option that provides an aerial view.

By combining maps with local search, Google is following its rival Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), which already provides a similar package, said industry analyst Greg Sterling of the Kelsey Group."

Google Local: "Example searches:
Go to a location
kansas city
10 market st, san francisco
Find a business
hotels near lax
pizza
Get directions
jfk to 350 5th ave, new york
seattle to 98109"

The Google Sun Microsystems Deal

Google and Sun are going for open source development as a means to hinder Microsoft in various ways. Together they form a strong challenge to Microsoft. Google rich in cash has no need to charge for software. Open source software is cheaper to develop anyway because of support due for such systems from the wider tech community. Expect a lot more to come from this partnership soon.

More on the Google Sun Microsystems Deal: "Google is gunning for Microsoft, using the Java Sun Microsystems as its muscle, and Google's strategy goes far beyond pushing Microsoft around.

Under the terms of the deal, the Google Toolbar will be bundled into downloads of the Java Runtime Environment. Java will be used to power new software developed and released by Google, effectively endorsing Java and nailing Microsoft's .Net as an emerging development platform. "

Google ETA? 300 years to index the world's info | CNET News.com

Google still on mission to index all the information in the world and money to be made from offering free WiFi.....has to be advertising..

Google ETA? 300 years to index the world's info | CNET News.com: "It could take 300 years to index all the world's information and make it searchable, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt predicted on Saturday at the Association of National Advertisers annual conference in Phoenix.

Schmidt admitted to the audience of advertisers that when he first arrived at Google four years ago, he viewed ads from a skeptical consumer standpoint. Shown ads on Google, he thought "You've got to be kidding! People actually click on this stuff? And they do."

He said he quickly realized, though, that "ads actually do have value if you can figure out the right ones to show."

Technology and the interactivity it enables, such as the ability to measure an Internet ad's success rate by viewing how many people click on it, is shifting power in the advertising industry from executives at corporations to consumers, he said.

"The power is moving from us to the end user; it's occurring by the power of the personal computer, by the power of the cell phone," he said. "Thirty years ago we would make the decision (about ads). Now, that person, that individual makes that decision

During the question and answer session, audience members turned to social, ethical and legal topics. One question dealt with criticism Google and Yahoo have received for cooperating with Chinese government censorship efforts. "The technology is neutral. It can be applied for good or evil," he said. "Overwhelmingly, the message of technology is a positive one."

Previous Next Asked to explain why Google has submitted a proposal to provide the city of San Francisco with free wireless Internet service, Schmidt said the plan arose out of work several engineers did on a system that would allow companies to make money offering such a service. "It's an interesting experiment," he said. "If it scales and if it is successful, we think it's going to be very good for the world.""

Google & Sunin software distribution pact to challenge Microsoft

Sun, Google in software distribution pact - Yahoo! News: Seems Google will be partnering up with Sun to help promote Sun's OpenOffice and Java software systems. The partnership will intensify the battle between Google and Microsoft as OpenOffice is potentially a serious challenger to MS Office if given the proper backing and marketing.

"Working with Google will make our technologies available more broadly, increase options for users, lower barriers, and expand participation worldwide," Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems said in a statement."

Easier AdSense payments

Google Adsense blog announces electronic funds transfer EFT is out of beta and the service will be available to all users. I like the sound of them putting in a small test deposit for you to keep!

Inside AdSense: "Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT for short) is officially out of beta. So what's changed? Our process for verifying bank account information has improved.

After you submit your bank account information, we will place a small test deposit into your bank account for you to keep. Once you see this test deposit credited to your account, just input the amount of the deposit into your AdSense account to help us verify your bank account information"

New GooglePatent Application: Variable personalization of search results in a search engine

United States Patent Application: 0050216434: "Variable personalization of search results in a search engine

Abstract
A search engine provides personalized rankings of search results. A user interest profile identifies topics of interest to a user. Each topic is associated with one or more sites, and a boost value, which can be used to augment an information retrieval score of any document from the site. Search results from any search are provided to the user, with a variable control of the ranking of the results. The results can be ranked by their unboosted information retrieval score, thus reflecting no personalization, or by their fully or partially boosted information retrieval scores. This allows the user to selectively control how their interests affect the ranking of the documents. "

Cre8: Variable personalization of search results - Google - Cre8asite forums bragadocchio writes: "This invention would enable a searcher to fill out a profile, perform a normal search, and then use a slider button to indicate how much his or her personal information from the profile should be used to modify (rerank) that search based upon the personalization information that they have entered into the profile, by sliding the button partially, or all the way to a full influence on the results. "

He highlights the following "interesting aspects of this invention is the discussion on how certain sites are determined to be related to the specific topics.

Quote:

[0045] where nih.gov, cdc.gov, and med.Stanford.edu are various sites that have been determined (either manually or automatically) to be related to the topic "Health". In other words, for each topic in the directory, there is a set of sites that have been determined to be relevant to the topic, and for each of these sites, a boost value is defined.

[0046] The boost for the sites listed in the topical directory is generally determined as follows:

[0047] a) A "site graph" is generated where nodes of the graph are sites (basically, pages on the same host) and edges between nodes are weighted based on the number of pages from one site that link to pages on another. This same type of graph can be used to compute all topic boost maps.

[0048] b) For each topic in the directory, say "Health", a number of sites are selected as "start sites" S0 whose home page is listed in the Open Directory. For example, for a university like Stanford, start sites may be selected as any site ending in .stanford.edu.

[0049] c) A computation is run in two passes:

[0050] i) first identify a set of sites S1 that are linked-to heavily by those sites in S0, with each site in S1 assigned a weight according to how heavily it's linked-to by sites in S0.

[0051] ii) then identify those sites S2 that are linked-to heavily by those sites in S1, weighted as with S1.

[0052] d) The sites in S2 are boosted with their assigned weights."

What Google Blog Search means for your website search results

Why Google Blog Search Matters to Your Business: "According to Google, Google's Blog Search is 'Google search technology focused on blogs'. It includes search engine results specific to blogs not just in the Blogger.com community, but across the blogosphere at large....

Google...was already paying particular attention to blogs in regular search results, seems to make a subtle statement with the introduction of blog-specific searches.

Blogs are important enough to warrant their own special level of search, and not just as an advanced search option, but in their own search engine.

If search engines are paying attention to blogging that closely, you should be too -- if you want better search engine results. "

Blogs are easy to get listed in the SERPS..."

Google's Blog Search Help Page states:

"If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it. Also, we will soon be providing a form that you can use to manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven't picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information on this."

So if you're already blogging - and responsibly pinging, you're probably already listed." If you are not already running a blog "get started blogging today. You'll be missing out on targeted traffic from the most dominant search engine, from the most sophisticated surfers today, and sooner than you know it, the mainstream web."

Google Releases Firefox Toolbar

The long awaited google toolbar for firefox browser users has been released....MediaPost Publications - Google Releases Firefox Toolbar - 09/26/2005: "GOOGLE'S FIREFOX TOOLBAR APPLICATION, IN beta testing since early July, was officially released last week with a set of new Firefox-only functions. Among the new features are the ability to rearrange the toolbar interface and move around the search bar, and the incorporation of Google Suggest, which suggests queries based on what the user has already typed"

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO Remove result

Search Engine Journal: "Google Testing Remove Result and Spam Report Options
Matt Cutts confirms that Google is testing a new Remove Result features that lets users of Google personalized search exclude various sites from their search results. If Google Personalized Search users are sick of spam showing up in their results or irrelevant sites being listed, they can simply remove the pages.
From Cutts : One request we sometimes hear is for the ability to modify Google results, especially to block unwanted sites. A few eagle-eyed people may have noticed a user-interface experiment on Google that adds the ability to remove results. At that point, your options would normally be to 1) ignore that result, or 2) report the url to Google via our spam report form. If youre in this experiment, youll have newfound powers. Click the Remove result link and with one click you can drop that url from your search results."

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO UI fun: Remove result: "One request we sometimes hear is for the ability to modify Google results, especially to block unwanted sites. A few eagle-eyed people may have noticed a user-interface experiment on Google that adds the ability to remove results. Heres what youd see. Imagine that you did the search [lynx paw clipart], and you notice one particular result that looks spammy:

You check the cached page, and you notice that if you turn off Cascading Style Sheets, theres a bunch of spammy text:"

Google Putting Crowd Wisdom to Work

Slashdot: "daveperry writes 'The Google Blog has a post about their use of prediction markets to forecast certain events that are relevant to their business. From the article: 'Our search engine works well because it aggregates information dispersed across the web, and our internal predictive markets are based on the same principle: Googlers from across the company contribute knowledge and opinions which are aggregated into a forecast by the market. Sometimes, just feeling lucky isn't enough, and these tools can help.' In related news, some software was recently open sourced that enables people to set up their own prediction markets.'"

Official Google Blog: Putting crowd wisdom to work: "Building on the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and the Iowa Electronic Markets, a few Googlers (Doug Banks, Patri Friedman, Ilya Kirnos, Piaw Na and me, with some help from Hal Varian), set up a predictive market system inside the company.

The markets were designed to forecast product launch dates, new office openings, and many other things of strategic importance to Google. So far, more than a thousand Googlers have bid on 146 events in 43 different subject areas (no payment is required to play)."

| Is AOL The Key to Microsoft 'Killing' Google?

Slashdot | Is AOL The Key to Microsoft 'Killing' Google?: "VK writes 'When Steve Ballmer yelled at a departing Microsoft employee that he would 'kill Google' we had no idea just how direct a method he had in mind. Buying all or part of AOL may be the first part of the master plan, as Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from Yahoo, since it now syndicates its search to Google.'"

Google dancing and it doesnt look good.

WebProWorld Forum...."There is a TON of movement taking place on these datacenters.

66.102.7.104
66.102.7.105
64.233.189.104
66.102.7.106
66.102.7.147
216.239.63.99
99 66.102.7.99
216.239.63.104

On one of my main keyphrases I have watched my site go to the #1 position in MSN (easy) and #2 and #5 in Yahoo. Today on these datacenters I was pushed from #16 to #70 give or take a few depending on the DC.

Not only was I pushed back, but about 25 scraper sites have moved into the top 40 results. These sites are nothing but reprinted articles and google adsense. Nothing unique. Nothing you cannot find on 100 other sites."

On Cutts Comments On Reinclusion Requests

Cutts Comments On Reinclusion Requests: "one drawback is probably the time factor involved in getting the relisting done. In some cases, it could take 6-8 weeks or it could take as little 2-3 weeks depending on the type of error and its severity.

Dan Thies over at SitePoint mentions in his blog, 'Unfortunately, he doesn't address the collateral damage caused by some of their more aggressive filtering practices, or the possibility that following Google's webmaster guidelines on redirects can do more harm than good.'

Thies did say his students were reporting better results for the reinclusion process as long as they followed Google's rules. This should bode well for worried businesses. As long as they play by the rules, then they are ok. "

The things Google makes you do

Net Sense Bambi Francisco writes : Google "has just begun testing advertisements on its image pages, a property that holds 1.1 billion images and drew 21 million unique visitors in July. Google images was also the place where 3% of all searches were conducted that month, according to comScore Networks.

The ads aren't turned on everywhere. But in some locations, like Manhattan, if a person types in 'Dell' under the images tab, they will see sponsored search listings at the top of the results page....

What does that add to revenue? A lot, I imagine. What does this say? Google's methodically following the script it laid out for Wall Street. That is: It aims to organize the information (text, pictures, clutter, and so on), attract traffic and sell that audience to marketers.

I can't say this logical prioritization of strategy and laserlike focus is being applied elsewhere."

Google Secure Access: Frequently Asked Questions

bloggers are a-buzzing about a possible Google WiFi launch. The buzz was started by the following FAQ that appears at the subdomain wifi.google.com an

Google Secure Access: Frequently Asked Questions:

"What is Google Secure Access?
Google Secure Access is a downloadable client application that allows users to establish a more secure WiFi connection.

Why would I want to download and install Google Secure Access?
Google Secure Access allows you to establish a more secure connection while using Google WiFi. By using Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will be encrypted, preventing others from viewing the information you transmit. "

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Filing a reinclusion request

Google opens up means of communication for webmasters.....will Yahoo follow?
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Filing a reinclusion request: "Everybody wants to hear about SEO-ish stuff instead of gadgets. I’ll still subject you to pure geekery now and then, but let’s tackle how to do a reinclusion request.

First off, what’s a reinclusion request and why would you want to do one? If you’ve been experimenting with SEO, or you employ as SEO company that might be doing things outside Google’s guidelines, and your site has taken a precipitous drop recently, you may have a spam penalty. A reinclusion request asks Google to remove any potential spam penalty.

The first step is to take a long, hard look at your website. Is there hidden text, hidden links, or cloaking on your site, especially on the front page? Are there doorway pages that do a JavaScript or some other redirect to a different page? Were you trying to use some automated program to get links or scrape Google? Whatever you find that you think may have been against Google’s guidelines, correct or remove those pages.

Now where should you send a reinclusion request? This has changed in the last few months from an email address to a web form. The best location to go is http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py . Google: Help Center You can select “I’m a webmaster inquiring about my website” and then select “Why my site disappeared from the search results or dropped in ranking.” Click Continue, and on the page that shows up, make sure to type “Reinclusion Request” in the Subject: line of the resulting form. Upper- or lower-case doesn’t matter, but make sure you use the words “reinclusion request” in the subject line so it gets routed to the right place.

Now we come to the heart of things: what goes into a reinclusion request. Fundamentally, Google wants to know two things: 1) that any spam on the site is gone or fixed, and 2) that it’s not going to happen again. I’d recommend giving a short explanation of what happened from your perspective: what actions may have led to any penalties and any corrective action that you’ve taken to prevent any spam in the future. If you employed an SEO company, it indicates good faith if you tell us specifics about the SEO firm and what they did–it assists us in evaluating reinclusion requests. Note that SEO and mostly-affiliate sites may need to provide more evidence of good faith before a site will be reincluded; such sites should be quite familiar with Google’s quality guidelines.

Okay, so you found the hidden text that your webmaster put on your front page, you removed it, and you sent your reinclusion request off to Google. How long do you have to wait now? That depends on when Google reviews the request and on the type of spam penalty you have. In the days of monthly index updates it could take 6-8 weeks for a site to be reincluded after a site was approved, and the severest spam penalties can take that long to clear out after an approval. For less severe stuff like hidden text, it may only take 2-3 weeks, depending on when someone looks at the request and if the request is approved.

There’s an interesting thread started by stuntdubl here. I’d add the following things to that thread:

Don’t bother mentioning that you spend money on AdWords or you’re an AdSense publisher. The person who will look at your reinclusion request doesn’t care if you have a business relationship with Google.

Remember, we need to know

1) that the spam has been corrected or removed
2) that it isn’t going to happen again.

I would request reinclusion for one domain at a time. It looks bad if you had 20+ sites all thrown out at once, and you send a reinclusion request for 20 domains in one email. "

America Online May Switch to MSN For Web Search, Abandoning Google

America Online May Switch to MSN For Web Search, Abandoning Google - September 16, 2005 - The New York Sun - NY Newspaper: "Microsoft is in talks with Time Warner about taking a stake in America Online, as part of a broader discussion about the two companies working together, according to people familiar with the matter.
The conversations have centered on whether AOL would switch to using Microsoft's search engine, these people say. AOL currently uses Google's search technology and was Google's single largest source of revenue last year."

Google Pilot New Webmaster Communications Initiative

Google Pilot New Webmaster Communications Initiative | Threadwatch.org: "This is real.

Google is trying out a pilot program to alert site owners when we're removing their site for violating our guidelines. JavaScript redirects are the first trial, but we've also sent a few emails about hidden text, I believe. This is not targeted to sites like buy-my-cheap-viagra-here.com, but more for sites that have good content, but may not be as savvy about what their SEO was doing or what that 'Make thousands of doorway pages for $39.95' software was doing. Personally, I think opening up a line of communication to let webmasters know when we're taking action is a really good thing--a site owner doesn't have to guess about what happened. But again, we're starting with a trial program.
I'll blog about it more soon.
Matt
By MattCutts"

Vint Cerf talks Google

Vint Cerf talks Google: A lot has been made over the past week or so about Google's hiring of Vint Cerf, the man given much of the credit for making the Internet possible. Two recent interviews with Cerf shed some light on where he sees the Web going...

"Last week Google hired a net-god, Vinton Cerf, as its “chief Internet evangelist”. Google’s hiring of Cerf has set off a wide range of speculation among Internet watchers. Vint Cerf is not what many would consider a “normal” person and is no where near a “normal” employee. Cerf has been called the Father of the Internet and the most important person alive....In hiring Vint Cert, Google has acquired one of the most nimble IT minds on the planet. Even though he invented the basic routing protocols that allowed the commercial expansion of the Internet, he is still striving to understand exactly what it is he created. An evangelical urgency around the Internet’s development has always been associated with Cert whose career accomplishments include work with MCI and NASA. What makes him, quite literally, one in a billion, is the depth of knowledge and experience underpinning an articulate and reputably highly-personable scientist. Cert is an engineer, a lobbyist, and an industry pioneer. He is as significant as Thomas Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright, Tim Berners-Lee, and Bill Gates. His hiring is bound to spur Google and its competitors on to bigger and much more interesting things."

Secondary Google offering good for investors

Secondary Google offering good for investors | CNET News.com: "Buyers of the 14.18 million shares that Google sold in its secondary stock offering made money on their investment in the first day of trade after the sale.
Google priced the shares at $295 each on Wednesday night, and the company's shares closed Thursday at $303 a share, after reaching a high of $306.75 earlier in the session. "

A-Z adsense tips for increasing revenue

Digital Inspiration: A-Z adsense tips for increasing revenue : "Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration has compiled a list of his favorite and most productive AdSense tips. A total of 26 tips are included. Besides warning that publishers should adhere strictly to AdSense policies, there are many others that you might have never considered but make a lot of sense."

New Study Shows SEO More Lucrative Than PPC

New Study Shows SEO More Lucrative Than PPC: "The study, published this morning by Search Engine Marketing Firm iProspect looks at the return on investment and tracking information provided by companies that outsource both their pay-per-click management and their organic search engine marketing.

'For those new to the search engine marketing space, it would seem logical to conclude that based upon the vast number of marketers participating in pay per click advertising that it would be a more lucrative channel than natural search engine optimization -- which is known to involve a lot more work. But, the numbers speak for themselves' said iProspect President, Robert Murray.

Findings from the study include:

35% of organizations that outsource their natural search engine optimization and also participate in pay per click advertising -- and can measure the ROI of each -- recognize a higher return from SEO

42% of search marketers who outsource BOTH the management of their SEO and the PPC campaigns, find that search engine optimization produces a higher ROI.

Unfortunately, the study also showed that 45% of marketers who participate in both natural search engine optimization and pay per click advertising cannot determine whether SEO or PPC provides a higher ROI. This tells me that while it's good news that search engine marketing is being embraced by the business world, we've still got a long ways to go when it comes to educating business owners on how to track the return on their search marketing investment. After all, how can you spend your money where it has the most impact if you don't know where it has the most impact? "

Google 'click fraud' Suit Sent Back to State Court

Update 1: Google Suit Sent Back to State Court - Forbes.com: "A federal appeals court says a class-action lawsuit alleging 'click fraud' by Google Inc. and other Internet companies should be heard in state court rather than in a federal courtroom. "

Why You Should Care About Google's Blog Search Launch

Why You Should Care About Google's Blog Search Launch: "Blogs aren't just about keeping tabs on breaking news or what your old college buddies are up to. They are fast becoming the content management system of choice for many small businesses. The ability to quickly and easily get content online in a manner that can be picked up by potential customers via aggregators isn't something to be scoffed at. Creative use of blogs has been driving traffic and sales to web sites for quite some time.

The thing that Google's new offering changes is that it will force the other major search engines to also pay attention to blog specific search. As each of the engines works to improve blog search, they'll force each other to up the ante. Existing blog search engines like Technorati and DayPop will also need to rise to the challenge. At the same time, the increased availability of quality blog search will give readers more access to new sites and feeds."

Google Blog Search Debuts in Beta: "In addition to standard search operators like 'link:' and 'site:' Google Blog Search will support new operators like 'inblogtitle:' 'blogurl:' and 'inposttitle:.' Blog search will be available in 35 different languages, though by default, the index will search all content. Safe search is also an available option.

The niftiest feature of Google's new blog search is the ability to create a custom RSS or Atom feed based on search results. Users can opt to subscribe to either the top ten or top one hundred listings for a particular search query. Google will then provide a feed that can be added to a user's favorite aggregator...

if you are already running a blog, you may be looking at some nice new traffic. After all, in the blog search engine, your posts won't have to compete with all of the other sites indexed by Google. If you're not already blogging, you need to give some consideration to whether or not you should start one up.

Now, as with search engine optimization, you shouldn't do it just to do it, you need to make sure that you have a reason to do it. Think about your target audience and ask yourself if there's anything that you can write for them that will make sense to your business. If you're a home improvement company, consider starting a blog that aims to answer common questions that your customers ask you. If you're a car dealership, consider starting a blog that features test drive information and car reviews. As with anything else online, it just takes a little bit of creativity."

Google round up

At Google, new tools and new hires | CNET News.com: "It's never a dull day at Google, as the young company furthers its ambitions in search and other endeavors. "

Google Offers Stock at $295 Per Share - Forbes.com

Update 1: Google Offers Stock at $295 Per Share - Forbes.com: "Google Inc. priced a follow-up stock offering of 14.16 million shares at $295 late Wednesday, offering investors a slight discount from the online search engine leader's recent market value...As it is, Google's market value stands at $89 billion, based on the 292.8 million shares expected to be outstanding after its latest offering. That makes it more valuable than older Internet companies such as Yahoo and eBay Inc., but still behind heavyweights such as Microsoft and Intel Corp."

Google launches blog search |

Google launches blog search | CNET News.com: "Google has launched a blog search feature, as it seeks to go head-to-head with archrival Yahoo in the booming blog market.
Google's tool is designed to find listings beyond those published through its own Blogger service by searching blogs that publish feeds via RSS or Atom. The feeds are checked frequently for new content, Google said on its Web site."

Google offers advice to sites on penalty.

Google offers advice to sites on penalty.: "I have just received an email from Google about one of my test sites telling me that it is being blacklisted for 30 days. "

Discussion to follow re authenticity of email

Is Google Going Pay-Per-Call Route?

DMNews.com | News | Article: "With the recent introduction of Google Talk - the search engine's newest voice and instant messaging product - and talk of a plan to purchase large quantities of dark fiber,
some suspect that Google may be readying itself for an all-out venture into the newest online advertising trend, pay per call, writes 10e20's Chris Winfield.

When Google Talk debuted a few weeks ago minus a search box but with added, quality voice capabilities, some advertisers no doubt experienced a tinge of disappointment at not having the ability to push their products on this new platform. But things are looking up for advertisers who subscribe to the notion that while Google Talk is a slight disappointment, it is just a stepping stone in Google’s ultimate plan of using VoIP technology to enter and dominate the pay-per-call industry."

Google updates indexing service for webmasters

Netimperative - Google updates indexing service for webmasters Netimperative - Google updates indexing service for webmasters: "Google has launched ten new interface languages for its Sitemaps service, which lets webmasters to submit their web pages, including those designed specifically for mobile devices, for inclusion in Google's index.
Launched in the US earlier this year, the beta-test program has been extended to work in French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Traditional Chinese...

Webmasters can sign up for the program at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps. They then generate and submit an XML formatted site list. This file can be created using the Sitemap Generator, a free open source tool that generates an XML sitemap for most websites.

Webmasters do not need a Google account to generate and submit sitemaps. However, if they do sign up they can log in to check the status of their sitemaps and view diagnostic information for their submissions.

Google said the program is intended to enhance, rather than replace, the crawl technology it currently uses to discover web content.

The firm added that using Google Sitemaps neither guarantees that a site will be included in the index nor will it have any effect on how sites are ranked on Google Search results pages."

Update 1: Internet Pioneer Vinton Cerf Joins Google - Forbes.com

Update 1: Internet Pioneer Vinton Cerf Joins Google - Forbes.com: "Google Inc. has hired Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf to float more ideas and develop new products, adding another weapon to the online search engine leader's rapidly growing arsenal of intellect.

Cerf's defection from MCI Inc., announced Thursday, represents the latest coup for Mountain View-based Google, which has been amassing more brainpower as its payroll nearly quadrupled to 4,200 workers during the past two years...

In an interview, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said few of the company's recent hires have been as significant as Cerf, widely regarded as one of the Internet's creators because of his seminal work developing the network's essential communications protocols, TCP/IP, at Stanford University in the 1970s.

"He is one of the most important people alive today," said Schmidt, who has been friends with Cerf for more than 20 years. "Vint has put his heart and soul into making the Internet happen. I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google."

When he starts work at Google on Oct. 3, Cerf's official title will be "chief Internet evangelist," but he is determined to be more than a figurehead or detached visionary...

Cerf expects to spend much of his time developing new applications as Google continues to supplement the search engine that is core to the 7-year-old company. In recent years, it has released free software to organize computer files, sort digital photos, generate maps and conduct Internet-based phone calls and text chats. It also launched a Web-based e-mail service called Gmail.

"What Google has really been doing is building an entirely new (computing) infrastructure and whenever you do that, it creates opportunities for new applications," Cerf said.

Cerf will be a graybeard in Google's youthful culture, which has been shaped by the company's 32-year-old founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But Cerf doesn't expect to have trouble fitting in, even though his penchant for wearing three-piece suits also figures to set him apart in Google's jeans-clad atmosphere.

"I'm 62 going on 12 anyway," Cerf said. "What's wonderful about (Google) is that as long as you bring ideas to the table, it doesn't matter what else is going on."

Although he will report to Google engineering chief Alan Eustace in Mountain View, Cerf won't be based in Silicon Valley. He will be working out of a Virginia office so he can stay close to his home."

Google sees $4.1 billion net from stock offer

Google sees $4.1 billion net from stock offer | CNET News.com: "Google on Thursday said it expects $4.11 billion in net proceeds from its shelf offering of 14.16 million Class A shares.

The Internet search-engine giant said in a regulatory filing that the funds will go toward general corporate purposes, including working capital, capital expenditures, and acquisitions of complementary business, technologies or other assets. The company gave no details.

'We have no current agreements or commitments with respect to any material acquisitions,' the filing said."

Geico, Google settle lawsuit

Geico, Google settle lawsuit | CNET News.com: "Google and auto insurer GEICO have resolved a high-profile trademark infringement case filed by GEICO against Google over its online advertising practices, the auto insurer said Wednesday...

GEICO, the fourth largest U.S. auto insurer and a unit of investor Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, said its suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia "has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties."

The lawsuit, originally filed in May 2004, had sought to hold Google responsible for trademark infringement for displaying advertising paid for by rival insurers when computer users searched for the word "GEICO" on the Google system.

Terms of the settlement are confidential, Geico said. No further comment on the settlement will be provided, it said. A Google spokesman was not immediately available to comment. "

Adsense Chat - Adsense Additions Create Opportunities

Adsense Chat - Adsense Additions Create Opportunities: "One of the great things about Adsense is that it changes all the time. Google is always introducing new tools and tinkering with its policies. That’s why it doesn’t matter how well you’ve set up your traffic sources or how impressive your CTR is right now, you always have to check the Adsense site and stay up to date with what’s happening.

Fail to stay on the ball and you could find that your top technique could suddenly get you banned or that you’re missing out on an opportunity to massively boost your revenues...

In fact, at the end of August, Google announced some more changes to its policies. (I say “announced,” but if you weren’t regularly checking the Adsense policies page or following Adsense news, you wouldn’t have known a thing about it.)

The first change is that you can now put ad units on your error, login, registration, thank you and welcome pages. That’s a huge difference...

The second change is even bigger. Google have now introduced a Top Queries tool that lets you see the most popular 25 keywords that people enter into your Adsense search box."

Job Posting Foreshadows Google Wallet -

MediaPost Publications - Job Posting Foreshadows Google Wallet - 09/07/2005: "AN ONLINE JOB AD FOR a position at Google as a 'fraud operations director, merchant payment solution,' has fueled renewed speculation about whether the company intends to soon introduce a new electronic payment system, rumored to be called 'Google Wallet.' "

Google May Yell For British Company

Google May Yell For British Company: "Chapter 327 of "What's Google Going To Do With The Money" says British yellow page company The Yell Group will be the next Google acquisition. A Dow Jones report on the rumors over Google purchasing UK-Based Yell Group sees the potential bid as "plausible." The report quotes Numis Securities on that assessment: "Google is a company with a market capitalization bigger than General Motors and they may well want to use some of that firepower to diversify into new areas. A natural one would be directories."

"

Microsoft, Google Trade Salvos Over Exec

Microsoft, Google Trade Salvos Over Exec - Forbes.com: "Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to 'kill' Internet search leader Google Inc. in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive 'like wolves,' according to documents filed Friday in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals...

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Associated Press
Microsoft, Google Trade Salvos Over Exec
09.02.2005, 06:36 PM

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Internet search leader Google Inc. in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive "like wolves," according to documents filed Friday in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals.

The allegations, filed in a Washington state court, represent the latest salvos in a showdown triggered by Google's July hiring of former Microsoft executive Kai Fu-Lee to oversee a research and development center that Google plans to open in China. Lee started at Google the day after he resigned from Microsoft.

The tug-of-war over Lee - known for his work on computer recognition of language - has exposed the behind-the-scenes animosity that has been brewing between two of high-tech's best-known companies.

Ballmer's threat last November was recounted in a sworn declaration by a former Microsoft engineer, Mark Lucovsky, who said he met with Microsoft's chief executive 10 months ago to discuss his decision to leave the company after six years.

After learning Lucovsky was leaving to take a job at Google, Ballmer picked up his chair and hurled it across his office, according to the declaration.

Ballmer then pejoratively berated Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lucovsky recalled.

"I'm going to f------ bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again," the declaration quotes Ballmer. "I'm going to f------ kill Google."

Before joining Google, Schmidt was a top executive at Sun Microsystems Inc. and Novell Inc., a pair of tech companies that Microsoft has previously battled...

Before resigning from Microsoft, Lee began to help Google plot its China strategy with a series of suggestions, including recommending possible sites for the new office, according to Microsoft's brief.

Microsoft alleged Lee's insights helped him win a Google contract worth more than $10 million - a package that Google itself described as "unprecedented" for the company.

Google paid Lee a $2.5 million signing bonus and promised a $1.5 million bonus after one year, plus a $250,000 salary and options on 10,000 shares of Google stock, according to court documents. If he stays for four years, Lee also will receive another 20,000 Google shares, currently worth $5.8 million.

Lee also demanded that Google pay all his legal fees if Microsoft sued, a request that was granted."

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index

The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "Executives at Google, the rapidly growing online-search company that promises to 'organize the world's information,' announced Monday the latest step in their expansion effort: a far-reaching plan to destroy all the information it is unable to index. " (joke...)

Matt Cutts: Text links and PageRank... a warning....

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO Text links and PageRank "let me talk about why we consider it outside our guidelines to get PageRank via buying links.

Google (and pretty much every other major search engine) uses hyperlinks to help determine reputation. Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved the quality of web search. Selling links muddies the quality of link-based reputation and makes it harder for many search engines (not just Google) to return relevant results. When the Berkeley college newspaper has six online gambling links (three casinos, two for poker, and one bingo) on its front page, it’s harder for search engines to know which links can be trusted...

what is Google’s current approach to link buying? Of course our link-weighting algorithms are the first line of defense, but it’s difficult to catch every problem case in adversarial information retrieval, so we also look for problems and leaks in different semi-automatic ways. Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).

What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine."

So, not OK to sell to pass reputation, OK to sell for traffic....

Google launches cinema tool -

Google launches cinema tool - Web User News Give users what they want then monetise school of thought as opposed to all we get is bloody poor traffic searching for cinemas...

: "Google users can find UK cinema showtimes using a new feature available on the web and mobile phones.

By adding the words 'showtime' or 'films' to a search query, the new Google Films facility will display cinema times at the top of the results. Eg Madagascar showtimes SE1 9LS, displays show times at cinemas near SE1 9LS.

An SMS version is also available, which will text you the showtimes at local cinemas of a film you're interested in. Text the film title and postcode to 64664 and Google will text back the reply. Normal network text rates apply.

Google Films is the latest feature that extends the search engine to the mobile phone, with similar text query services available from Google for driving directions, product prices and more.

Searchers will also get links to film reviews and an overall star rating generated from the concensus of critics around the web. You can also search for films by actor, director and even plot, eg film: tom hanks talks to volleyball, produces results for Castaway. "

View topic - Webmasters Behaving Badly :: WebProWorld

View topic - Webmasters Behaving Badly :: WebProWorld: "From what i have seen adsense and adwords tend to bring out the worst in webmasters.

E.g. clicking on adwords ads paid for by competitors, clicking on your own adsense ads and as recently discussed, using the company names of your competitors in your adwords ads, using their good name to lure people to your site.

Why does adsense in particular have this effect on people? Is it all to do with the money? Or do people like the challenge of cheating google?
What further measures can be taken to combat webmasters behaving badly"

Search Guys Really Don't Talk to the Ad Guys, Do They?

Traffick - Internet Search Enlightenment: "Geez, the Search Guys Really Don't Talk to the Ad Guys, Do They?

Anyone in the SEO game is by now reading Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO blog, and well they should. The 'real insider Googleplex scoop' is so often what emanates from Matt - and for those of us who don't get to 'that part' of the conferences, it's really illuminating reading.

I did scratch my head at Matt's helpful post about how to write queries. 'At Google,' he writes, 'we use [ and ] to mark the beginning and end of queries.'

Those of us over here in paid search world, of course, think [ and ] refer to an exact match in the AdWords interface."

Google Techs, Entrepreneurs Match Wits

E-Commerce News: Portals & Search: "Efforts to outsmart Google gall some webmasters such as Shari Thurow, who believes the best way to increase a site's search engine ranking is to offer valuable content and products. She describes the Black Hats as 'pathetic algoholics' because they are so obsessed with trying to figure out Google's algorithms.

Google knows it can't entirely avoid Black Hats.

"There are people who make their entire living off of Google, which is fine, as long as they don't push things too far," said Peter Norvig, Google's director of search quality.

But he said webmasters searching for secrets are better off looking elsewhere.

"Everything you ever wanted to know about Google is right there on the [online] forums that the webmasters run," Norvig said. "There is a lot of truth in there, but there's also a lot of crazy stuff. We just don't tell them which is which." "

Google Loosing Ground in China

Google Loosing Ground in China - Forbes.com: "A survey by a Chinese Internet research group has found that Google is losing market share to its biggest Chinese rival, Web search engine Baidu.com. "