Google's Matt Cutts has posted a request on his blog asking for web users to submit link spam reports on websites that appear to be using 'spammy links'. The option to submit information about spam sites has been available for some years, but it appears that Google is now making a special effort to catch up, or get ahead, of the type of link spam techniques being used (such as paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers), and so they want to combine manual reports with the new algorithms he says they are developing.

This request is likely to generate lots of submissions from website marketers that want to try to penalise websites that might be ranking ahead of them, although hopefully Google will mostly receive genuine submissions from users who know what they are looking for and will contribute to a 'clean up' of the search results!

Labels: google, links

News sites, such as the BBC, are reporting on the legal case in Italy which has widespread implications for video posting sites on the Internet. An Italian court has convicted 3 Google executives of breaking Italian law by allowing the video to be posted online showing an autistic teenager being bullied.

The convictions (suspended 6 month sentences) were due to privacy violations, but the ruling has come under widespread criticism and Google has also posted a blog article regarding the decision and the implications for Internet freedom and responsibility. If firms can be held liable for every piece of content on their site they would face an impossible job of policing and vetting everything before publication, particularly where there a large sites that encourage social interaction, such as YouTube and Facebook.

Google says it will vigorously appeal the case. The BBC report says that there is no indication that a similar case could or would be brought in any other European country at the moment. However Italy does seem determined to pursue such cases and similar ones are ongoing against other firms, such as eBay, Yahoo and Facebook.

Richard Thomas, the UK's former information commissioner and consultant to privacy law firm Hunton & Williams, said the case was "ridiculous". He is quoted as saying that "It is like prosecuting the post office for hate mail that is sent in the post. I can't imagine anything similar happening in (the UK). The case wasn't brought by the Italian equivalent of the information commissioner but by criminal prosecutors and we don't know their motives".

However, the verdict is likely to have ramifications for content providers around the world. Google said at the trial that pre-screening all YouTube content was impossible and the video at the centre of the case was posted on Google Video in 2006 shortly before the firm acquired YouTube. Italian prosecutors argued that Google broke Italian privacy law by not seeking the consent of all the parties involved before allowing it to go online, yet Google's lawyers said that the video was removed as soon as it was brought to its attention and that the firm also provided information on who posted it. As a result four students were expelled from their school in Turin, northern Italy.

Labels: google, legal issues, privacy

The Google blog has announced their acquisition of Aardvark, a 'social search engine' whereby users can login to ask questions and get responses from other users. Set up by ex-Google employees, Aardvark analyzes questions to determine what they're about and then matches each question to people with relevant knowledge and interests to give users an answer quickly (stated to be within 5 minutes), either by email or through instant messaging.

As with all Google's acquisitions, they tend to spot a good opportunity and a new service that could become more mainstream in the future. You can visit the Aardvark site here: http://vark.com/ask

Labels: google, social networks

There is widespread press coverage concerning Google's latest quarterly financial statement, such as this article from eWeek. The figures for the last quarter of 2009 were above most analysts' expectations, with net profits of US$1.97 billion on sales of just under US$5bn. This profit figure is nearly 5 times higher than the same period a year ago, when Google made US$382 million. profit for the year rose by 54% to US$6.52 billion.

Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt said that the digital economy remains very strong and the company would be continuing to develop new commerce and social initiatives in 2010. There would also be a plan for more acquisitions in different areas, following the acquisition of On2 Technologies, Recaptcha, AdMob, Gizmo5, Teracent and AppJet in 2009.

In the latest financial statement, Google also reported that its traffic acquisition costs - the portion of revenues that Google shares with its ad partners - accounted for 27% of the revenues in Q4, totaling $1.72 billion. Paid clicks for ads served on Google sites and those of its AdSense partners increased 13% from Q4 2008 and 9%% over Q3 2009.

Labels: google

The recent news that Google is considering ending its operation in China following a cyber-attack in December has led to protests from the US Government and further concerns and issues being raised about attacks on various government websites worldwide.

In Germany the government has now issued a statement warning web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect their security. As reported by the BBC, this comes after Microsoft admitted IE was the weak link in recent attacks on Google's systems. However, Microsoft rejected the warning, saying that the risk to users was low and that the browsers' increased security setting (which is not the default level used by most users) would prevent any serious risk.

However, this warning has now been repeated by France, which - if heeded - will cause significant damage to the reputation and market share of Microsoft's browser. In reply, Microsoft have tried to downplay the concerns but clearly wants to get more users upgraded to the newer, more secure version of Internet Explorer. However, according to Australian security experts quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald, the European concerns are 'overblown'.

Regardless of all this - and despite their issues with China - Google must be taking a secret delight at the problems Microsoft are now having to fend off which were, presumably unwittingly, caused by the original China story. If many people do move away from using Microsoft's browser, the main alternatives are Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome product.

Labels: google, internet browsers, microsoft

The BBC website reports that Google is considering ending its operation in China following a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack which appears to have originated from the country. Although Google hasn't directly accused the Chinese government of being involved in the attack, the implication is there since Google is now saying they are no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine (www.google.cn) which was launched in 2006 under an agreement to censor some of the search results, as required by the Chinese government.

The main issue now, according to Google, is that the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists have been targeted by the hacking during December. The BBC report says that Google will now hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering had yet been made. The company will also be considering its future position in China.

This is likely to become a big issue for Google, as the massive Chinese market has long been a target to grow their online business - nearly 340 million Chinese people are now online, compared with 10 million only a decade ago. However, local-based rival Baidu holds 60% share of the market, compared to Google's 30%, and this remains a core challenge for Google to gain more share, although this latest attack on their service will be a significant concern.

However, Baidu has called Google's move "hypocritical" and claims it is financially driven. The chief architect of Baidu has claimed in a blog that Google's plans to quit are for financial reasons, rather than a human rights issue, as Google had failed to dominate the Chinese search market. The BBC also reports that Chinese authorities will be infuriated that Google has gone public with their decision whether to pull out of the country, before negotiations with officials get under way.

Labels: google

Extensive news coverage has been given to the launch of the new Google Nexus One phone (such as this BBC report). This is the company's first own-brand smartphone, although it has been providing the Google Android operating system through other phones to date. The new Nexus One phone is designed to compete with the Apple iPhone and has been developed with Taiwanese manufacturer HTC using the Android operating system.

The phone is initially available in the US and is being sold directly from Google's website. It can be purchased 'unlocked' so that any chosen mobile carrier can be used, but clearly Google wants to gain a bigger share of the mobile phone market to capture more mobile search activity and to provide another advertising platform as a revenue stream in this growing market. An article by ComputerWorld takes a make detailed look at Google's likely strategy to develop a greater foothold in this market.

The latest market share figures reported from Gartner indicate that the Android operating system has about a 3.5% share of the global smartphone market, in comparison to Nokia, which has a 39% share and Apple with 17%.

Labels: google, mobile advertising

The Sydney Morning Herald has published an article about Google action in suing Pacific WebWorks, a US company that is alleged to have created a scam advertising campaign that promised "up to $978 a day working from home". However, all that job seekers got in return for their application was a recurring bill on their credit cards and it's claimed that thousands of people have been duped into thinking they were applying for work with the search company.

In reality, the scam is simply selling a kit that claims to show recipients how to make money from home with Google. Buyers' credit cards are then charged with ongoing fees, while the job seeker receives nothing. Because the logo is displayed prominently on the ads, Google claims the unaffiliated websites are misusing its trademark to deceive unsuspecting consumers, many of whom have turned to Google to lodge complaints and ask for refunds.

A Google spokesperson said: "Misleading ads try to take advantage of consumers in the midst of a difficult economy, and as the economic situation has worsened, the problem has only grown. As far as we can tell, thousands of people have been tricked into sending payment information and being charged hidden fees by questionable operations".

Labels: google, search business

As widely reported by the global media, including the BBC, Google has launched a real-time search service as part of its main search results, giving users access to information that has just been published from various sources, such as news, social networks and Twitter (as they announced recently).

Google says that this information will be taken from over a billion pages on the web and reflects the changing nature of content and search on the web. The announcement was made at a special event staged at the Computer History Museum in California, where Google said this was the first time that any search engine has integrated the real-time web into its results page. The new real-time search will also be available on phones and is being rolled out now.

Google's vice-president of search Marissa Mayer was quoted as saying: "This is a technical marvel, getting all these updates in seconds, making them searchable right after they are posted and making them available so that anyone in the world can find them. The updates (on Twitter) are so truthful and so in the moment. That is a really, really powerful part of this. Are you at this event right now? Are you on this ski slope right now? And because of that 'right now' element of it , this is hugely valuable data".

Labels: google, search engines, twitter

Google remains very active in developing and introducing new products and features for various parts of its product range. On the main search side the Google Webmaster Blog has announced that in cases where webmasters indicate a country specification for a domain, this will be indicated in some search results within the green information line. These 'region tags' will be displayed against results where the location or relevancy of the listings may be unclear.

At the same time, Google's main blog has announced a new way of displaying image results. The new format for images to be displayed within the main Google search results will include one larger image and additional smaller images alongside, so that searchers can see more pictures than before.

Finally, another new feature that has been announced relates to Google Analytics, which now provides 'asynchronous tracking'. This is one of many enhancements being added to this service at the moment and the new code snippet can help to reduce webpage load time and also enables enhanced data collection and accuracy through the elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn't fully loaded. The asynchronous tracking code is now in Beta and available to all Google Analytics users.

Labels: google, google analytics

Google has announced the acquisition of Teracent, a US-based technology company that can generate and customize the different creative elements of online adverts, automatically choosing new elements in real-time, by machine-learning algorithms.

This new technology is designed to improve conversions by picking and choosing from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — thereby tweaking images, products, messages or colors in response to activity data. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

As the importance of conversion rate and ROI increases in a crowded webspace, the new technology from Teracent can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns which will also enable publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.

As is usual with Google's acquisitions, the company has identified a technology developer with a huge potential in the future and one that will complement Google's services, as well as benefit fro the additional investment and programming input. Google intends to make the technology available as soon as possible to display advertising clients, such as those using the Google Content Network and through the DoubleClick network.

Labels: google, internet advertising

Google has made public its much-anticipated operating system, known as Chrome OS. Designed to power computers in the future, this new OS will eventually be taking on Microsoft's core product head-on, such as the recently launched Windows 7 system. Google's blog made a brief announcement about the new operating system and the launch in the US has been widely covered by the global media, including the BBC website.

The Google operating system will be a free and open source system, initially aimed at low-cost netbooks. Being open source, it allows contributors to help develop the product and it intends to remove many of the features of a traditional program. Most notably, all applications are designed to run in a web browser and all the user's data is stored on Google's servers, so that effectively most PC or laptop users will be working 'in the cloud' with limited software or content held on their own hardware.

Google has said that the first computers running the system would be available before the end of 2010 and had first announced its intention to build an operating system in July this year. The new system has been designed around the Google Chrome browser which was released in 2008 and now is reported to have 40m regular users. All programs or applications - such as word processing and e-mail - will run in different tabs in the browser and the aim is to improve the speed of work, although much of this will also be dependent on access to the Internet.

Any documents and files created on a computer would be automatically synced and saved on Google's servers. As a result, anybody who lost their computer would be able to buy a new machine and easily recover all their data. However, although Google expects most tasks to be done online, it will also offer the capability for users to access some programs when there is no connection.

Labels: google

As reported widely in the press, Google has acquired a US mobile display advertising company, AdMob, for US$750m. According to Search Engine Land, the acquisition gives Google access to AdMob's 15,000-plus mobile websites and applications which will complement Google's own platform for AdSense on Mobile devices.

This acquisition also puts Google in a stronger position within the mobile display advertising market, which is one that is clearly seen to have big growth potential over the coming years. It also gives Google access to a great deal of experience and sophistication in the sector that it didn't previously have.

Labels: google, mobile advertising

The Google blog has announced a new Social Search service, which will be available to Google account users who are logged in when they search Google. With this search option, Google finds relevant public content from a user's friends and contacts and highlights this at the bottom of the search results. Users can also filter their results to see only content from their social circle by clicking "Show options" on the results page and clicking "Social."

Google is collecting these search results from publicly available information on the web and by linking a user's Google profile to their wider social circle of friends and contacts using such sites as Twitter or FriendFeed. The results are then specific to each user and, if Gmail is also used, will display relevant content from 'chat buddies' and other contacts.

Labels: google, social networks

The big news for Twitter this week has been the new deals announced with Bing and Google, as the two search engines start competing to add new functionality and issue press releases. This latest news has been covered widely, such as on the BBC website, and the deals will see messages from the 'micro-blogging' service - or tweets - show up in Bing and Google search results almost as soon as they are posted on Twitter.

Microsoft's Bing search engine has moved first to set up a stand-alone Twitter search page accessible from the main site, whereas Google countered the announcement and said its Twitter search service would debut within the next few months. Although some parts of Twitter already show up in some search results they tend to be for individual accounts or messages that have been archived. Both deals will now take a feed of all public Twitter streams to make them searchable almost as soon as they are sent.

The Bing Twitter search page shows the most popular topics mentioned in the 140 character tweets. Visitors to Bing can also search for specific terms and see relevant messages ranked chronologically, as well as the most popular website links referred to from the relevant posts.

Labels: bing, google, twitter

As reported widely in the press, including by the BBC and The New York Times, Google has reported its highest quarterly profit for July-September, at US$1.64bn, which is up by 27% on the same period last year. At the announcement, Google's management claimed that the Internet advertising market is now coming out of the recessionary period, although it has always performed better than other advertising sectors in terms of annual growth rates.

Google's revenue for the three-month period was $4.38bn, which was well ahead of analysts' expectations of $4.24bn. The company also announced some new initiatives, including sales of electronic books through a new electronic editions service, which would compete with the likes of Amazon and their new Kindle product.

Labels: google, search business

The Google blog has announced the launch of another notable new product, Google Sidewiki. This new feature allows searchers to contribute helpful information next to any webpage and can display a browser sidebar next to the web page, where users can read and write entries along the side of the page.

This is an extension of Google's personalised search and 'search wiki' option launched at the end of 2007, which allows users to adjust their own search results and add comments against ranked websites. The new Sidewiki tool now takes this a step further by giving users the chance to share knowledge, experience or advice against web content.

In developing Sidewiki, Google says that a priority was for users to see the most relevant entries first, so they have developed a system to rank the comments that are added in the 'best' order. So, instead of displaying the most recent entries first, the Sidewiki ranks entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from users, previous entries made by the same author, and many other signals they have developed and tracked.

This should help to address the obvious concerns of website owners that competitors will post negative comments and reviews against their web content, in much the same way that review based websites have been trying to deal with competitive 'spam'. There is also the ultimate question of how the tone of comments will be used by Google in the long term to have another impact on the relevancy of search ranking results.

Another feature of the Sidewiki is that the technology will match comments about a web page with other websites where the same content is displayed. This will help to broaden the value of the system and to reduce the need for duplicated comments or posts. Google is also going to use relevant posts from blogs and other sources that talk about the specific page of content so that users can discover their insights more easily, right next to the page they refer to.

Google Sidewiki is being made available as a new feature of the Google Toolbar so you need to download the latest version to access this sidebar and add or view comments. It's still going through a beta stage of development and Google will be improving and enhancing this feature in the coming months. You can also view more information about this tool here: http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/learnmore.html

Labels: google, search engines

The Google Webmaster blog has announced a 'secret project' that the company has been working on - the next-generation architecture for Google's web search engine. And now they are opening the test siteup to users, requesting feedback on the performance of the new technology.

Google says their aim is to improve the size, indexing speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of their search experience, but there's little coincidence that this announcement comes soon as the launch of Microsoft's new Bing search engine and the attention that has generated. Of course, this Google announcement has generated lots of press and online activity and comment, such as this favourable review from Information Week.

Dubbed 'Google Caffeine' the new search engine infrastructure can be viewed and tested at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/.

The new search engine seems to be faster, which probably reflects lower usage and less integration of 'universal' search results at this stage. Some searches show little difference in results to the existing search engine, whereas others do show a notable change in ranking positions, so there could be implications for some companies relying on search engine optimisation performance for their site visits. This new version will continue to be reviewed and assessed over the next few months to see what wider impact it may have on the search and online business market.

Labels: google, search indexing

The Official Google Blog has revealed the huge volumes of search traffic generated through the search engine worldwide as the rumours of Michael Jackson's death circulated on Thursday afternoon, US time. There was a high initial peak as news started to break, followed by a steady volume of traffic over the following hours, with mobile phone searches also showing a high level of activity.

Google News initially thought they were suffering an automated spam attack due to the sudden increase in search activity, which resulted in the service being taken offline for about 25 minutes.

Labels: google

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a story about the apparently low revenues reported from Google's Australia business, despite the high estimated revenues being received from search advertising.

The article says that Google Australia booked just under $90 million for the year ending December 31 2008, according to documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. However, Google is estimated to have received $800 million in revenue from AdWords advertisers across the country, based on IAB figures.

Not surprisingly, Google has refused to comment about the article and continues to keep the details of its revenue sources secret.However, as most AdWords advertisers in Australia know, the billings for their campaigns are channelled through the Google office in Eire, where the revenues are going to be lost amongst the wider European income streams and, as far as Google is concerned, protected from the prying eyes of journalists and, more importantly, competitors.

Labels: australia, google, google adwords

Google has announced a number of new search features in its Official Blog. The most notable is Search Options, which is a new panel that can be accessed from a link at the top of the search results and provides a collection of tools that let searchers 'slice and dice' their results to generate different views of the search listings. We will cover this in more detail in our June 2009 newsletter.

The second new development is "rich snippets" which are additional pieces of information that appear within a search result listing for a website to try to provide more details to aid the searcher in selecting the content they want. For example, for a restaurant search, these new "rich snippets" extract and show more useful information from web listings than the usual preview text and could include items like the number of reviews or the restaurant's price range.

However, these snippets can only be displayed if website publishers adopt microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML to allow this structured data to be used. This can help people better understand the information contained within the web pages and will help improve clickthrough rates from Google's results. More information about using rich snippets can be found here.

The final new development is a tool called Google Squared, which is currently in beta. Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about a subject but automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet - which would appear to be competing with the new Wolfram Alpha search tool which is due to launch shortly. Access to this new Google tool will be made available for review through Google Labs soon.

Labels: google

Both Google and Yahoo! have recently published their quarterly financial results, with some contrasting fortunes as the economy starts to have an impact on the search business.

Google released their results last week which were widely reported in the media - including by Information Week - and they were slightly better than analysts expected. Revenue for the first-quarter of 2009 was US$5.51 billion, up 6% year-on-year but 3% down on the last quarter of 2008. Their earnings-per-share figure was also better than anticipated ($4.93) which indicated that cost controls are working and the company is coping with the downturn so far.

Yahoo!'s quarterly results met the expectations of the market and the company said that economic conditions remained challenging, as revenue from advertising on Yahoo! websites and its partner websites declined during the first quarter of 2009. In the first quarter of 2009, Yahoo! generated revenue of US$1.58 billion, down 13% from the same period in 2008, with a net profit of US$118 million, down from US$537 million a year earlier. As reported by Reuters, Yahoo! also said it would cut 5% of its global workforce, following the earlier cuts announced in 2008.

Labels: google, search business, yahoo

Google Labs is a fascinating part of Google's website, showcasing projects that are under development to improve the search experience as well as many of the other services now offered by Google. The BBC reports on several new services that are being tested - Similar Images and Timeline Search, plus Google has also announced the new Profiles service.

Similar Images allows users to sort through the results of an image search more easily by clicking on a link so that in cases where a variety of images may initially be displayed for a search, the query is expressed visually as an image and not text to focus the results. Google has been spending a lot of development time on improving the image search engine and recently introduced a colour-match function within the Image Search tool to enable users to find similar colour-themed results.

The Google News Timeline tool allows searchers to view a history of articles, photographs and videos for their chosen search, arranged by date, week, month or year. Users can also refine the search to specific magazines, newspapers or blogs as well as results from Wikipedia, movies, music or even video games.

Finally, the Google Profile is a new option of Google account holders to control how they present their details on Google products to other Google users. Users control how their details appear and they can add more information about themselves, along the lines of a very basic social networking site. In this way, users with a Google profile can share web content in one central location, such as links to a blog, online photos, and other profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Labels: google

Google has made a number of notable changes to their search results. The first, as described by Search Engine Land, has increased the frequency of local business listings being displayed within the first page of results. Whereas previously the small map and 10 business listings only appeared for popular search terms combined with a location in the search query, Google has now started to include these results for these common terms even if the user has not included a location in the query.

This is being done when Google recognises a term that has local search intent and combines this with the identification of a user's location by their IP address. The mapped results are not shown at the top of the search listings - which happens if a search is made with a locational term - but the inclusion within the results aims to improve the local search focus for users.

It's by no means a perfect solution for searchers and much will depend on the IP address of a user's ISP (Internet Service Provider), but this change will have a big impact for local businesses who will now get a further opportunity to appear within the search results list for a potential customer and highlights the importance of getting an optimised local business listing set up with Google.

The second recent change to the ranking results has been reported by the Google Webmaster Blog and concerns the 'sitelinks' that are often displayed under a large or popular website's listing so that users have more opportunities to click directly into a prominent section of the website. Until now, sitelinks have only ever appeared on the first search result, and so at most one site could have sitelinks per query.

Google has now introduced an expansion of these sitelinks into a single row of links which will be displayed for results that didn't show sitelinks before, even for results that aren't in the first position. This means multiple results on one query can now have sitelinks and up to 4 sitelinks can show up right above the page URL, instead of the usual two columns below the URL of the first result.

This will help to show users some relevant sub-pages in the site and give an idea of what the site is about. Comparing the sitelinks that appear for each result can even illustrate the difference between the sites. Google says that, just like regular sitelinks, the new one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users.

For webmasters, this new feature means it's possible that their site will start showing sitelinks for a number of queries where it previously didn't and although site owners can't tell Google which links to include, the can block links they may not want to show, through access to the Google Webmasters Console. However, in most cases this change will probably increase the visibility of, and traffic to, a website, whilst also improving the experience of users, so it's another change that can support the search marketing for websites.

Labels: google, local search, webmaster tools

The Sydney Morning Herald covers the launch of a new enhancement to Google's search results pages which have been based on a technology developed by an Australian. The new feature adds other suggested search phrases at the bottom of the results for a particular term and developed from work completed by Ori Allon, a PhD student at the University of New South Wales who is now employed by Google and working in the US.

Google’s new search results claim to “better understand associations and concepts related to your search”, and therefore to deliver a more meaningful search experience. This is achieved by integrating a new technology into the Google search infrastructure which displays related terms based on these concepts and associations related to the original search query.

Whether many people notice these changes and start to use the suggested links will be interesting to see, but Google hopes it will further increase the usage and loyalty of users by creating the best possible search experience.

Labels: google, semantic search

Advertising Age covers the story of a recent report published by Forrester Research that promotes the use of paid blogs, but has attracted the anger of Google who strongly discount this activity in terms of link benefit. According to Google's webmaster guidelines, paid blogs are akin to paid links and are not encouraged - in fact, Google wants such blogs to be disclosed as such and any outbound links should also carry the "no follow" tags that are now widely used by many Web 2.0 sites to discourage 'link spam'.

Following the release of the Forrester report, Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web-spam team, reiterated on his blog in no uncertain terms that those who fail to comply with Google's rules will face punishment, though he didn't state how the offenders would be punished. From Forrester's perspective, the author of the report said he would follow up with a blog post that deals with Google's demands, including spelling out the need to include "no follow" tags in paid blog entries.

There is of course some debate about how big companies are now using blogs and paying writers to post positive articles about their products or brands. The concern for Google is that this is another way to develop website links and also that the use of paid blog entries should be revealed. The argument is likley to continue for some time.

Labels: blog marketing, google, links

The New York Times reports on a move by the 3 main search engines - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft - to clean up the amount of 'clutter' on the web by creating a new web standard that will allow website publishers to remove duplicate pages from their sites. This should allow the search engines to remove lots of duplicated or 'dead' pages from their indexes to make them more efficient and potentially more comprehensive.

This cooperation between the search engines follows the previous standards developed for the sitemap protocol and this time targets those large dynamic websites (such as e-commerce stores) that generate multiple URLs that all point to the same page. This effect can confuse the search engine 'spiders' that are trawling the web and lead to the indexing of the same pages multiple times. Some estimates claim that as much as 20% of URLs on the web may be duplicates, although this is possibly on the high side.

Google has lead the way with this move, providing website owners the chance to indicate when a URL is a duplicate, and if so, which is the principal, or “canonical,” URL that search engines should be indexing. Yahoo and Microsoft have agreed to support the same standard. This new Canonical Link Tag, as the standard is known, should make it easier for both publishers and search engines to address the problem, but of course the most important thing is to make web publishers aware of this and to give them the incentive to add the tag to their pages.

Labels: google, microsoft, webmaster tools, yahoo

The Google Blog has announced the launch of a new service called Latitude. Promoted as a tool to find out 'where your friends are', Latitude offers a similar tool to that found on the iPhone, whereby you can use GPS positioning to find the location of others using the same service. Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on a mobile device and also a gadget for iGoogle users on a computer.

Currently available in over 25 countries. Latitude users can see the approximate location of friends or business colleagues who have decided to share their location. So, in real time, users can find where another individual is, based on their mobile or laptop, through an icon on a map. It also allows communication via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating a status message. According to Google, 'it's a fun way to feel close to the people you care about'.

Of course, as this new technology is developed for a variety of purposes, privacy remains a key concern and Google says they have built 'fine-grained privacy controls right into the application' and ultimately everything is opt-in, so all users control access to their positioning, including the ability to actually set their location to somewhere other than they actually are, on a friend-by-friend basis!

Labels: google, google maps

Reuters reports on the growth of Gmail as one of the leading online email systems, through gradual and low key enhancements over the years. When first launched, Gmail had to start taking market share from the established Hotmail and YahooMail services, and has done so through the introduction of new features and services developed in the Gmail 'Labs'.

Google makes money from Gmail through the ads listed to the right of all mail 'conversations'. These ads are part of the Google AdWords content network and generate revenue every time the email user clicks on an advert and therefore Gmail has become one of Google's main areas of development to grow Internet usage share, alongside the original search tool and YouTube.

According to comScore, unique visitors to Google's sites increased 32 percent worldwide to more than 775 million in 2008. In contrast, Yahoo had a 16 percent gain to 562.6 million visitors and Microsoft had a 20 percent increase to about 647 million visitors.

As an example of the new features added to Gmail, the article highlights 'Mail Googles' which aims to prevent the user sending a regrettable message if they are drunk - of course, as long as they remember to use this feature! This month Google introduced a feature that automatically downloads mail to a web browser so that messages can be read offline. Other recent features include an alert for users who forget to upload promised attachments and one that lets users send free SMS messages to friends via Gchat (currently only available in the US).

Labels: gmail, google

The Official Google Blog has posted a response to an article in The Wall Street Journal that claimed Google was trying to 'fast track' their access to the web, in contravention of the concept of 'net neutrality', whereby all providers have equal access to the web.

Google stresses that their support of net neutrality remains as strong as ever and the explanation of the moves reported by the WSJ were based on the reporter's apparent 'misunderstanding of the way in which the open Internet works'. The issue revolves around so-called 'edge caching' - which is designed to improve web performance through the temporary storage of data that is frequently accessed on servers that are located close to end users - and whether this violates the concept of network neutrality.

Google claims not and insist that their reasons for using this method are particularly for sites like YouTube that have high usage and bandwidth demands placed on popular videos that are regularly viewed. Google has offered to "colocate" caching servers within a number of broadband providers' own facilities to reduce the provider's bandwidth costs when the same video is transmitted multiple times. As part of the concept of net neutrality, Google says that broadband providers can engage in this type of activity so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.

The original newspaper article has clearly raised the level of debate about these techniques which Google has quickly moved to explain and defend their position. The discussion is likely to now continue for some time.

Labels: google

Following the announcement back in June that Google was to provide search advertising through Yahoo!'s content network, the deal has been facing government review for anti-competitive concerns. After some delay and increasingly negative feedback from the regulators, as well as from some advertisers, Google has finally decided to step back from the deal and has announced an end to the agreement.

The origins of this arrangement followed Yahoo!'s aborted takeover by Microsoft and came at a time when Yahoo! was looking for support against this move. Now, however, Yahoo! is looking increasingly isolated as Microsoft are saying they are no longer interested in a deal except possibly a more limited search partnership Yahoo!'s stock has also fallen lower than when the takeover was in discussion and they look to be in an increasingly fragile position.

Labels: google, search business, yahoo

Yahoo! is still struggling in the search market and within the weakening US economy as net profits in the third quarter of 2008 are reported to be at US$54m, down from US$151 a year before. This was from a total revenue of $1.78bn, which was just 1% up on the corresponding period in 2007.

As a result, about 10% of Yahoo!'s global workforce (about 1,400 people) will be laid off. This news has, not surprisingly, received wide media coverage - including by the Sydney Morning Herald - and comes after the announcement earlier in the year by Yahoo! that an initial 1,000 jobs was also to be cut.

The deepening troubles at Yahoo! also come just over a week after Google reported their third-quarter results which exceeded analyst expectations - revenues were $5.54 billion, up 31% compared to the third quarter of 2007 and an increase of 3% compared to the second quarter of 2008. Profits jumped 26% to US$1.35bn, up from US$1.07bn in the 2007 quarter, which indicates that the company is continuing to grow despite the wider economic problems in the US and worldwide.

Labels: google, search business

The Google Webmaster blog has announced a new service being offered to users of its Webmaster Tools service - an alert to webmasters if Google identifies possible issues with a CMS website or online publishing system (like Wordpress) that could create an exposure to hackers.

This is currently undergoing a trial phase, but Google says that they are seeing more websites getting hacked because of various security holes, so this new service should help to provide valuable information to website owners if there is a potential vulnerability. A message will then be posted in the Webmaster Tools account (and even if a website hasn't yet signed up for this tool, the message will be available once the account is opened).

If this service proves effective and is extended across the system then it adds another valuable element to the Webmaster Tools console. Of course Google isn't going to pick up every potential hacker issue, but sites that use common software systems where there are issues should be notified and this will give website owners an advance warning to fix the problem.

Labels: google, webmaster tools

This week has been 'links week' on the Google Webmaster Blog, with a series of posts about Google's view of web links and which work best to support the indexing and ranking of websites. Each post gives a very basic overview of the advantages of links, with some links to additional resources or posts.

After the initial introduction post on Monday, Day 2 considered the importance of link architecture within a website and how this can help the usability of the site (allowing users to find their way around and know where they are on the site at any time) as well as the 'crawlability' of the site, which enables search engines to find all pages easily. it also covers the advantages of using descriptive anchor text for the links.

The third article covers the importance of outbound links on a website and how these can - or can't - help a website's credibility in Google's view. As with the previous day, the blog post includes a number of 'typical' questions about the subject at the end.

The final post for the week looks at perhaps the most important issue, at least from a search ranking perspective, of inbound links into a website. It explains what these links tell Google about a website and suggests a number of ways that websites can increase the number of these links, such as through blogs, articles and helpful content.

It's certainly not been the definitive guide to linking, but Google's view of these things is always worth paying attention to!

Labels: google, links

The New York Times reports on the launch of the new 'Google phone' which is intended to challenge the Apple iPhone as a way to extend the Internet to the mobile market. Developed in conjunction with T-Mobile, the new G1 phone will be launched in the US at the end of October and offers a slick design that combines a touch-screen and keyboard.

The new phone is the first to be powered by Google’s Android operating system, which was introduced to allow mobile phone companies to provide more flexibility in the way that the Internet can be used in this sector. The article reports comments by analysts who have said that the G1 did not represent the kind of revolutionary change in design and function that the iPhone has shown, but this new launch is likely to further accelerate the two trends that will have a lasting impact on the wireless industry - namely, the growing use of the mobile Internet, and the ability of consumers to customize their phones with their favorite functions.

At the G1 launch in New York, it was announced that the new phone will have a selling price just below the iPhone. In addition, it will include applications such as Google’s search, maps, Gmail and YouTube, although the Android concept is to also encourage third-party developers to create programs to run on it. Google will include an applications store, called the Android Marketplace, where the owners of the G1 and future Android-powered phones will be able to download those programs, so that consumers will be able to decide what they want to run on their phones.

Labels: android, google, mobile search

Google AdWords have announced that the conversion tracking code supplied to advertisers now has an option not to be displayed on a website. Unlike Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, Google's PPC tracking code has always displayed a small line of text on the page that's displayed once an action has been submitted. This has always been there to 'comply with privacy requirements' but also helps to promote Google's involvement on an advertiser's website.

So advertisers who use this code now have the option to hide the 'Google Site Stats' line of text and link to Google's privacy page. Existing advertisers will need to revise their existing code to remove this line, if required. New advertisers, or users of the conversion tracking code, are warned by Google if they choose to hide the link, that they should inform their website users about the tracking methods being used on the site through the site's privacy policy.

Labels: google, google adwords, privacy

Adding another post in their series about the 'inner workings' of Google, the Official Google Blog published an article earlier this week about the process of search evaluation - how they measure the quality of search results being produced and how they meet users' expectations.

As the post illustrates, there are many different factors that need to be taken into account and different approaches considered, but ultimately Google (and any other serious search engine) need to constantly review and revise the ways that search results are generated automatically and can meet the needs of the user as closely as possible, since that is the way that users will be retained as regular users.

There are 4 main stages of evaluating search results - understanding what a user's intent is when they search, comparing the quality of search results from different sources, assessing what is 'good' or most relevant, and finally considering different geographic locals and search options (particularly now that Google's universal search results combine answers from other sources, such as news, local search or video).

Google uses a team of human evaluators around the world to conduct search tests, as well as live traffic experiments to assess and review search quality. This can include statistical evaluation and a review of user actions, or a manual rating of the appropriateness, usefulness, and relevance of each individual related search suggestion. Clearly this can be a never-ending process that will never be perfect but at least tries to continually enhance the search experience for users as the knowledge and technology of search develops.

Labels: google, search indexing

Google's Webmaster Blog has posted a 'definitive' answer to the question of duplicate web page content and whether a penalty is applied to these pages or sites. It provides a summary of previous posts and articles related to the duplicate content issue, as well as a reminder of Google's guidelines on the matter.

Google's view on duplicate content is one that aims to reduce the use of 'cookie-cutter' pages to create multiple pages with very similar content, or 'screen scraping' where websites will directly copy information from other sites, which can be common for affiliate marketers. The bottom line is that Google wants to index original content, although recognises that this is not always possible for some websites, particularly those generating content dynamically.

Google's webmaster guidelines state that 'duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results'. There is further information here about this issue and ways to avoid it.

Like most search engines, Google aims to present a degree of variety within the search results and they will therefore filter out duplicate documents so that users experience less redundancy. This is done in a number of ways, such as grouping duplicate URLs into one cluster, or selecting what is seen to be the "best" URL to represent the duplicated cluster in search results and then by consolidating the properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

In summary, this post says that Google is unlikely to implement any form of penalty unless it is decided that a website is duplicating deliberately - rather one version of the duplicated content is seen to be the 'best' option to be displayed within the ranking results.

Labels: google, webmaster tools

Google has announced the launch of a new Internet browser that will challenge Internet Explorer and the growing popularity of Mozilla's Firefox. Called Google Chrome, the new browser is an open source browser that has been made available today across more than 100 countries.

A Google browser has been expected for some time and the company says that they are introducing this new browser to 'add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web'. The blog says that the web browser needed a rethink as the web has developed to one of rich, interactive applications and the browser aims to cater for this market.

The new Google Chrome browser window is 'streamlined and simple' so that it takes a back seat position to provide web users with the tools to get the most from their online activites. Each browser tab is kept in an isolated "sandbox" to prevent one tab from crashing another and to provide improved protection from rogue sites. Google claims that the browser offers improved speed and responsiveness and includes a powerful JavaScript engine to manage the next generation of web applications.

The beta launch is designed to generate feedback and further development as the initial Windows browser is also adapted for Mac and Linux. As an open source project the new browser uses components taken from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox plus all the code is provided as an open source tool to encourage online collaboration to develop the product in the future.

Labels: google, internet browsers

One of the most heated debates in the SEO sector can be generated by Google's PageRank and specifically the green PageRank indicator on the Google Toolbar - is this really a useful indicator of how Google's views each web page, or should it be completely ignored as a distraction? The question is also raised as to what purpose this indicator serves for most web users and why Google even bothers to display this.

Google's trademarked 'PageRank' algorithm and underlying technology is one of the main foundations of the search engine developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and was also a core factor that enabled Google's search results quality to stand out from existing search engines when it first launched in the late 1990's. Google's own corporate pages describe PageRank as follows:

PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

The underlying PageRank algorithm is a complex mathematical formula, which is then simplified by the short indicator bar on the Google Toolbar, where the green colour filling the bar indicates the PageRank 'score' between 0/10 and 10/10. New sites will start with a completely grey bar with no score and then develop a higher PageRank as the site gets indexed and starts attracting links from other domains.

The PageRank score on the Toolbar is a snapshot and an occasionally updated figure - Google's Matt Cutts recently alerted people in his blog that a new update was being posted and back in 2006 had provided more information about the Toolbar indicator with answers to some readers' questions. It's clear that it would be wrong to place too much emphasis on this Toolbar figure for each website and web page, but it's also short-sighted to dismiss it completely when it does provide some degree of information from Google's perspective.

So the Google Toolbar shouldn't be a figure of primary concern but a useful indicator of relative performance and potential development. It does give website marketers a view of their own and competitors web pages and how pages within a site hold different PageRank scores. It shouldn't be a core driver of an SEO strategy but perhaps confirmation of how the search marketing support for a site is developing its potential performance on Google.

There's an excellent article on Google PageRank provided by Search Engine Land.

Labels: google, search engines

The Google Webmaster blog has been running a series of posts over the past 2 weeks outlining the use of the 404 'response code' which is generated when a server cannot find a requested page, either due to a bad link or a mistyped URL / page name. In these cases websites should display an error page that informs the user of the problem and helps to direct them to the Home Page or other part of the website.

One blog posting describes the differences between a 'soft 404' and 'hard 404' response, recommending that the former shouldn't be used. Then there are a series of FAQs about how the 404 should be used, leading up to the latest blog posting which is promoting the use of a new 'widget' being provided by Google.

This allows webmasters to add some JavaScript to their customised 404 pages which will suggest to a user the closest match to a truncated URL or missing page. In addition, this 404 widget - which is still in test phase - will suggest a link to the parent subdirectory, a sitemap webpage or a site search query suggestions and search box, if these are available on the site.

Labels: google, webmaster tools

Over the past few months the 'Official Google Blog' has been posting an occasional series of articles about search quality, explaining what the team at Google do and how they develop and maintain the quality of their search rankings. Of course they aren't revealing the inner secrets of Google's algorithm, but there is some more openness being shown to explain to users what some of the main issues are that Google considers important.

The first post back in May provided a background to the search quality team at Google and explained what they do. It introduces the blog posts that will explain more about the process and outlines the factors behind the ways of determining ranking position and trying to relate a user's search query with the correct set of results. It explains how different parts of the search team work on developing and evaluating the ranking process, adding new features and fighting 'webspam'.

The second post appeared over a month later at the start of July and explained more about the process of Google's ranking system. This is based on 3 basic principles that are outlined in some more detail - namely that the best locally relevant results are served globally, the ranking system is kept as simple as possible, and that there should be no manual intervention.

The next blog post was a more technical look at the issue of Information Retrieval and how this technology is used to determine results based on understanding pages, search queries and user intent. The most recent post earlier this month describes the developments in the search experience and how Google has tried to enhance the ways that results are presented to users, including spelling corrections, the presentation of results and text 'snippets' to enable users to assess the listings, and also query refinements or suggestions.

Google will be continuing this series in the future and although this is very much a PR exercise, there are some useful insights in these articles to explain how the search engine works.

Labels: google, search engines

Google have introduced a new tool that helps to extend the data available from Google Trends, whereby users can track and compare the search activity for a number of search terms over time. The new tool, called Insights for Search, is designed primarily for advertisers and provides more information for marketers to understand search behaviour, as well as including some new features like a world 'heat map' to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

Like Google Trends, the new tool enables users to enter a search term and view the search volume patterns over time, back as far as 2004. It also shows top related and rising searches and there's the option to compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, different categories, geographic regions, or specific time ranges. A Google account is required to log in and view the numbers from the graph and to download the data into a spreadsheet.

Labels: google, research

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a new deal for Google to provide a free email service to schools across NSW. Said to be the biggest single client in the world for Google, they have managed to secure the contract away from the incumbent Microsoft system and will service up to 1.3 million new users for the Gmail service.

The NSW Department of Education has said that the new email system would be in place for the start of the 2009 school year and is a $9.5 million contract over 3 years. These costs cover the development of tight security options for the Gmail users and integrating the system for teachers and students within the existing education portal within the State. The attraction to Google is that students will become familiar with Gmail through the use at school and then continue to be users through their own accounts in later years.

Labels: email systems, google

Google first announced the development of its 'Knol' website back in December last year and they have now 'officially' launched the site, although it is still showing as a beta version. Although seen by some as a potential competitor to Wikipedia, Knol is positioned as a source of authoritative articles on specific topics, written by experts in the field. It is therefore unlikely to develop at the speed of Wikipedia and to the same scale of content, but intends to be seen as a reliable source of information.

At the moment, much of the content on Knol is of a medical or scientific nature. Google wants this site to encourage people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone, with the key principle behind Knol being 'authorship'. Every knol (or unit of knowledge) will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. There are likely to be multiple knols written on the same subject, which Google will encourage, as long as content is informed and reliable.

Knol will promote "moderated collaboration" so that authors work together to develop each article that they specialise in, so that any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content.

It sounds like a potential source of disagreement or debate on many contentious subjects from a multitude of real or 'perceived' experts, but Google is hoping that these knols will include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol.

It's unlikely that Wikipedia will be too worried about Knol, at least for now, although Google retains strong control over the visitor traffic coming into Wikipedia, where the site is often a ubiquitous part of many search engine listings. Google could easily adjust their algorithms in the future to make Wikipedia less visible and to promote the use of Knol as a primary research tool.

Labels: google

Google AdWords has pushed the Placement Targeting option to mainstream PPC advertisers by making this option a more prominent part of the AdGroup management panel. The development of placement targeting is also another way that advertisers can now gain more control of the content targeted network and target their adverts on other relevant third-party websites.

Placement targeting can either be included within existing AdGroups, or set up as a separate campaign. A new Placements tab in the AdGroup control panel provides advertisers with the option of including this feature and targeting specific domains, or even sections of large sites, through a number of selection tools.

The advertiser's advert will still appear within the content targeted network if this is selected, but with Placement Targeting there is now more control over bidding strategies on domains that are more relevant to their market. You can select sites by browsing subject categories, searching sites related to keywords, or by finding similar sites to known domains that are relevant.

The list of suggested sites that Google presents includes details on the ad formats available and the likely impressions per day. The focus of the tool does leave something to be desired in some markets, but by selecting specific websites and adjusting bid levels, advertisers can put more focus on this part of their AdWords campaign and combine targeted sites with specific keywords for greater focus.

Labels: google, ppc

Since the demise of the Overture Search Suggestion Tool into Yahoo!'s new 'Panama' PPC system, the best free keyword research tool has been Google's own tool which is provided as part of a PPC account as well as a free tool available to anyone to use. This tool is important because it reports search activity on Google over the previous month, but the main drawback has been that no volume data has been displayed - just a comparative bar chart for each term to indicate relative popularity.

However, Google's AdWords blog has announced the new change which has appeared this week, whereby Google is now displaying volume data for these terms, at least within a general range, so that more information can be gleaned on the popularity of each term and the likely search volumes that they attract. So although these are approximated figures, it helps to add an extra level of data onto this already useful tool and should benefit all online advertisers as one of the core research tools to use when looking for the best search terms to target, either through PPC or SEO.

Labels: google, keywords, ppc

The Google Webmaster blog has outlined ways that they are now developing better access to Adobe Flash files, which have traditionally been very difficult for search engine spiders to index, either for content or to follow links. Adobe has been working with Google and with Yahoo! to improve the performance of these files, which is certainly progress but still doesn't make Flash as accessible as standard HTML content.

Google reports that they are now able to better index text content within all types of SWF files now, as well as identifying URL links and following these to index additional content or page files that may be linked from the Flash file. However, images and video files cannot be indexed in this way. There are also limitations with Flash files loaded through Javascript, as these can't currently be identified and indexed, nor will content loaded from an external source within the Flash file.

Further developments are apparently still underway and this area may improve further in the future, so that Flash developers need to be aware of these requirements if the web content needs to be indexed for search.

Labels: flash, google, search indexing

The ongoing court case in the US between Google and Viacom over the use of copyright video content on YouTube has taken a notable turn this week as the judge has ruled that Google must reveal the viewing habits of every user on YouTube who has ever viewed a video. As reported by the BBC, the ruling means that Google must hand over the viewing log to Viacom, which contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

This development clearly has major implications for online privacy and Google are now arguing about the format of the data and the need to conceal individual user's details. This depth of information shouldn't be necessary for Viacom, who want to assess the total viewing patterns of their content through YouTube (which includes clips from MTV and Paramount Pictures). They have previously claimed that about 160,000 unauthorised clips of Viacom's programmes were available on YouTube prior to 2007 and that these had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom had also requested access to Google's source code for YouTube, but the court turned down this, since it recognised that it was effectively a "trade secret" and therefore shouldn't be disclosed. However, Google hope that the court will allow them to anonymise the data on individual user habits - nevertheless, this ruling means that Viacom will have access to a huge amount of activity logs in what is becoming an increasingly bitter legal case between these 2 giant US companies.

The eventual ruling in the case is likely to become a landmark case in Internet history and potentially affect the way that online video sites can operate in the future.

Labels: google, legal issues, youtube

A report by The New York Times claims that research undertaken over recent months by Piper Jaffray in the US has uncovered apparent ways that Google is now testing behavioural targeting for its PPC adverts. By using the huge amount of data that has been collected on search activity and patterns in the past, Google may be starting to display different adverts to people based on their previous search activity - so that the example given indicates that if a searcher looks for “scuba,” then something else, and then “vacations" could pull up ads for diving trips.

It's no secret that Google is using it's massive source of data to understand search activity and to target activity in different ways, such as through the personalised iGoogle tool and also the likely development with banner advertising that followed the acquisition of DoubleClick last year. Some of this data collection is using 'cookies', which are small files attached to web actions from individual users.

Google had changed its privacy policy several years ago and indicated to users that it might record personal information about them for reasons that included “the display of customized content and advertising.” In 2007 Google also started looking at the immediately previous search when considering the display of PPC ads although Google did not need to use cookies for this because web browsers report the address of the previous site visited to the current site being visited and in the case of a search, that address contains the search terms.

This type of development in search targeting or behavioural targeting is becoming one of the main areas where the search engines will be competing to gain market advantage over the next few years and to improve the targeting services being offered to advertisers. Google, Yahoo! and MSN are all looking at tackling this issue with different approaches, although all of which are likely to raise privacy concerns, including possible legal cases in the future depending on the methods being used. However, it also should mean better relevancy for both searcher and advertiser if the balance between targeting and privacy can be achieved.

Labels: google, ppc, search behaviour

A report by mocoNews indicates that Google is also starting to dominate the mobile search market. Taking figures from the latest Nielsen Mobile survey, Google is shown to have a 61% share of mobile searches in the US, followed by Yahoo! at 18% and MSN at 5%. This is probably not a surprising trend as searchers are likely to use the same search tools that they find most useful on the web, although performance and results in the mobile sector will also determine usage.

This issue was covered by an article earlier this month by USA Today, which reported on the strategies that the main search companies are taking to gain a share of the rapidly growing mobile, including Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system and Google's 'Android' project. The general feeling that the mobile web is likely to become an advertising goldmine is not being lost on these companies who are working to establish a foothold now and ensure that they don't miss these new opportunities that could determine future business success or failure.

Labels: google, mobile search

Google has recently announced some additions to their Google Trends tool which includes the option to now download the stats into a spreadsheet. Google Trends can be a useful tool to look at how different search terms or phrases may have been used over time, as well as by geographic area or language.

You need to have a Google Account to get access to the full data from this tool, but once in you can view trends by individual terms or you can compare two terms together. Data is scaled to fit the comparative charts, but it helps to provide seasonal usage of terms, or the market responses to particular news stories or other events that may drive search activity. With the new option to download the data into a spreadsheet format it provide new ways to analyse the data for your particular business needs.

The Google Webmaster blog has also just announced the addition of an extra layer to the Google Trends data which is still in development phase but enables users to view the activity on popular websites based on the way that the number of unique visitors has changed over the last 12 months, the countries where the site/s are most popular, the top related sites and search terms used. For example, a search for Amazon shows the different visitor trends between countries and the high traffic spikes each year prior to Christmas where the site has a particularly strong presence, such as the US and UK.

Labels: google, search behaviour

After much speculation, Yahoo! has now agreed a deal with Google to carry their search advertising in return for a revenue share. As reported by many news agencies, including Reuters, the deal forms a non-exclusive partnership and Yahoo! say they have made this move after failing to agree a deal with Microsoft who had revised their earlier acquisition approach to now buy just Yahoo!'s search business.

Under the new arrangement with Google (which follows an earlier trial period), Yahoo! will run Google's AdSense PPC adverts alongside its own search results and on some of its websites, but only in the United States and Canada for the time being. Yahoo! will also retain control over where the Google ads will run and which search terms will be used - there is more information published by Google on their official blog. The deal has been agreed to initially cover four years, with options to renew it up to a period of 10 years.

Yahoo! must see this as part of a rescue plan for its ailing business since it expects the deal to create an additional $250 million to $450 million operating cash flow within the first year. However, within the brief press release there is no mention of what impact this arrangement will have with Yahoo!'s own PPC service and for the advertisers currently running accounts in these regions, but it seems to indicate that Yahoo! expect to make more from this model than developing their own service. More on this should become clearer over the next few weeks or months.

Labels: google, ppc, yahoo

The Google Webmaster Blog has posted some useful information on ways to manage the issue of duplicate content, which is becoming a common issue for many sites. This may be caused due to the difficulties of managing large dynamic sites, or very often due to syndicated content being shared between sites. The other main example used by Google relates to content which may be duplicated due to 'screen scraping' by third-party websites that are creating mass content from original sources, which can occur for various reasons.

The Google article provides links to previously published advice and tips on how to handle such situations. It also provides guidelines on ways to ensure that original content can be indexed by Google, which should be the main concern for the content creator.

Labels: google, search engines

A recent posting on the Official Google Blog by a senior search engineer reveals some more information about how the Google search engine ranks sites and the ongoing work that goes into improving ranking results. As the article says, the many ranking criteria that drive the search algorithms remain a trade secret to protect themselves from competitors and abuse of the system, but more insight is provided here.

It outlines all the different factors that can make an automatic assessment of a web page a difficult task and the need to match a short search query with the most relevant results within milliseconds. This can only have become harder with the introduction of 'universal' search results over the past year. The original PageRank algorithm remains a core part of Google's ranking criteria but this is combined with other issues such as different models to cope with language, query usage, recency, personalisation and regional results.

A team of engineers works on the evaluation of search results quality and many changes or enhancements can be made during the year - for example, in 2007, over 450 new improvements were introduced, ranging from simple improvements to more complicated changes. The article reveals that significant changes were made to the PageRank algorithm in January which could have dramatically affected the rankings for some websites.

Other teams work on new features and new user interfaces, with the latter group assisted by a team of usability experts who conduct user studies and evaluate new features with Google users around the world. Then, of course, there is the team of engineers who focus on fighting webspam and other types of search engine abuse, such as hidden text to off-topic pages stuffed with irrelevant keywords and other attempts to fix ranking positions. The team may spot new spam trends (or have them reported to them) and then works to counter those trends within the ranking algorithms.

Overall it's a well-written, clearly explained introduction to what goes on 'behind the scenes' at Google and indicates a new willingness to share some of this information with the wider public. It's also a sign of better PR being undertaken with possibly an attempt to avert some of the more negative press and comment that a company of Google's size and prominence starts to attract.

Labels: algorithms, google, search engines

The New York Times reports that Google executives have expressed a desire to develop the advertising relationship with Yahoo! that was tested for several weeks recently with AdWords appearing alongside Yahoo!'s search results. This is partly a move to ward off any possible future attempts by Microsoft to make a bid for Yahoo! but could also be a lucrative development for both Google and Yahoo!

Any arrangement, should it go ahead, would face antitrust investigation in the US due to the dominance of the search advertising market by the two companies. It would also have serious implications for Yahoo!'s own PPC advertising system, which is still struggling to compete against Google, despite a facelift and relaunch in recent years. Such a move would also place even more power within Google's control and advertisers would have even fewer options to place search advertising so that bid rates would continue to rise.

Labels: google, ppc, yahoo

A recent article by The New York Times reports on a research paper presented at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing by 2 Google scientists, which described the development of 'VisualRank' by the search engine. This is the prototype algorithm that combines image-recognition software techniques with the methods for weighting and ranking images that look most similar. Described as the equivalent of Google's main PageRank system adapted for digital images, it's being seen as potentially a big step forward for the quality of image searching on the web.

Image search has long been one of the most popular 'vertical' search options on the main search engines and more recently Google, Ask and the others have been 'blending' image results into the main search results list, when relevant, thereby giving image search results far more exposure to mainstream searchers. Up until now, image results are usually generated from information in the file name and surrounding page content, but Google - and others - are working on ways to analyse image form and shape similarities.

The article says that Google has been working on a sample of around 2,000 of the most popular product queries from Google’s product search - so items such as iPod and Xbox - and then sorting the top 10 images both from its main ranking system and the standard Google image search results. Using a team of 150 Google employees, the researchers then created a scoring system for image “relevance”, which is being referred to as VisualRank. The outcome of this development, according to the researchers, was to retrieve new image results that were 83% less irrelevant.

Labels: google, image search

Google is facing another lawsuit in the US, according to a report by CNet. The claim aims to take a class action status for many affected advertisers and has been filed by the same firm that previously won significant cases against both Yahoo! and Google for click fraud issues. The new claim accuses Google of deceiving its customers into paying for ads they didn't expressly request.

This is based on the sign-up process for a new AdWords account whereby advertisers are automatically included in the 3rd-party content network of adverts (Google AdSense). There is not an obvious opt-out option for this part of the advertising network and advertisers need to enter the campaign settings after the account has been set up in order to deselect this option.

It is likely that Google will need to revise this system in the future to make it more obvious to advertisers what they are selecting and how they can easily opt-out if required. It also seems to be the nature of being a big corporation now that Google will continue to face these types of action whenever a potential failure in their system can be exploited for money.

Labels: google, legal issues, ppc