It is not the fisrt time that we mention this: Google is simply caching in on the brand name while in fact search engine optimization is so outspread and standard search engine technologies have improved so much as to cover the needs of the average search engine user so that Google is no more the necessity it was a few years ago. In fact the huge Google brand is holding techjnology back at the moment.
It is reassuring to see search engine evolution though. It must also be reassuring for the millions of businesses who are condemned to the impossibility of reaching an audience through the slow, expensive and unreliable processes of SEO for Google.
]]>Their argument here being that by using Dogpile you aren't missing any of these results, but of course there is a bias here both due to the fact that you compare 10 results of each of the engines with 30 results from Dogpile, and due to the fact that most of these sites these days will have the information one needs (or the products one wants).
]]>Hm... I wonder if my Lavasoft Adaware will remove the Google accelerator...
]]>Thionking about your privacy on this? In an attempt to quell potential privacy concerns related to storing Internet usage data, Google said that Web Accelerator receives much of the same kind of information people already share with their Internet service providers (ISPs) when surfing the Web.
The Google representative said that the company has gone to great lengths to ensure that the tool does not broadcast information that could lead to some form of online attack. In addition to avoiding encrypted sites, the representative said, Web Accelerator can be set not to pre-fetch data from sites, can have its history of downloaded sites cleared in moments, and is easy to disable altogether.
Do you sense that this is a Google browser precursor?
]]>Frankly, I usually go to Google news because I am actually looking for the small independent media that can say reveal and criticize more than the big ones. A new algorithm that would place the brand names on the top will really not be classified as something marvellous for me (if I wanted to see what CNN has to say about Iraq I would go to the CNN site and wouldnt go to Google news).
Finding ways in which the big guys become bigger and the small guys smaller is no real good news to me. As it is not so good news to hear of possible 'manipulations' to the search engine results pages. Whatever these may serve...
]]>MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 28, 2005--Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corporation, a San Diego, California based web analytics company.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Urchin is a web site analytics solution used by web site owners and marketers to better understand their users' experiences, optimize content and track marketing performance. Urchin tools are available as a hosted service, a software product and through large web hosting providers. These products are used by thousands of popular sites on the Internet.
Google plans to make these tools available to web site owners and marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective.
"We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the information they need to optimize their users' experience and generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management, Google. "This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products."
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Google anticipates that the acquisition will close before the end of April.
]]>Is this good news? It really depends on which side you are looking at things. Feed producers (and Google) will benefit from the clicks but will advertisers be able to make a dcecent ROI out of this service? I somehow do not feel happy about the fact that RSS feeds will be spamming me with adverts.
What's next? Adsense on the moon?
Increasing monetization through new forms of advertising
As part of our goal to improve the monetization of your sites, Google has introduced a number of new features for advertisers, which will directly impact you as an AdSense publisher.
We anticipate that these features will introduce new advertising dollars into the content network by giving advertisers additional ways to reach their objectives.
We're currently testing these new features with a select group of advertisers, and expect to make the features more widely available in the near future.
Site targeting: focusing on the audience
The keyword-targeted ads that you're used to seeing on your pages will now be joined by a new type of site-targeted advertisement. Site-targeted ads allow advertisers to select the specific sites they feel are most appropriate to their campaign, and to run their ads only on those sites.
We believe that advertisers will leverage both our traditional keyword-targeted advertising which runs across the entire AdSense network, and our new site-targeted advertising, bringing more ad dollars to publishers.
CPM bidding: a new way to generate revenue
With site-targeted advertising, advertisers set a maximum CPM bid - that is, the price they are willing to pay for every thousand impressions and pay on a per-impression basis. This means that, unlike pay-per-click ads, you'll earn revenue each time a CPM ad is displayed on your site.
For every eligible impression, both pay-per-impression ads and pay-per-click ads compete in the same auction. Our technology will automatically display the highest performing ads on your pages.
Expanded text ads: testing new formats
We are also running a test with text ads that expand to fill the entire ad unit, so that only a single ad will appear in that unit. At this time, this test will only apply to text ads in a site-targeted campaign and to ad formats banner-sized or larger. The expanded pay-per-impression text ad will have to beat out all of the competing ads before it can appear, so publishers can be assured that any expanded text ad is a highly competitive ad. These ads will be served to any text-enabled ad unit and will abide by your text ad color settings.
More image ads
Because of these new features available for advertisers, the number of image ads in the Google advertising network will grow. To take advantage of these ads, and the increased earnings potential that they offer, we encourage you to review your image ads preference in your AdSense Account Settings page.
You can also choose your image ads preference on a format-by-format basis when generating your ad code. For publishers who want to fully leverage image ads, we now provide an image ads only selection.
Your image ad inventory will also include a small number of Flash ads from a test group of advertisers. These new ads will adhere to the 50KB size limit for image ads, and will be reviewed according to our content guidelines.
Finally, we've added the wide skyscraper (160x600) format to make a total of 5 ad formats supporting image ads. If you're opted in to image ads, be sure to use one of these formats so that we can send image ads to your pages.
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But unfortunately these were the days when Google didn't seem to care about money - or at least that was not obvious to us the hoi polloi. Things have changed in Google and it is obvious - and pretty understandable - that these days they are just a business trying to make as much money as possible by caching in from the incredible brand recognition they have gained 5 years ago.
I am somehow shocked though with the fact that there are so few 'anti-Google' statements in the internet world and that so few journalists and professionals mention anything bad against Google.
Over the past few weeks I have been checking in detail the Google Search engine results pages and to say the least there are some very weird things going on. Let me give you a couple of examples:
All these basically indicate that there is something heavily wrong with Google. Google is simply not that interested in the search engine results any more but is pushing all its efforts in their tangential endeavors. This feels as if they are mostly trying to impress the media and continue on their brand name building than actual work on the core project of their success (aka the search engine).
Maybe their tactics is the right one, i am not that smart to predict the future and see what the Google empire will be like in 10-15 years. However, what annoys me is the 'media conspiracy' - in a metaphorical way - in hiding the Google problems. Even in the free and anarchic (yeah right) internet world Google is part of the status quo and not very many people are keen to go against this status.
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