October 23, 2006 Archives

Ben, Chris and I were all ready to present the Search Pulse tomorrow but we were informed that all shows with the exception of Danny's Search Cast, will be postponed until next week.

So next weeks show will have about 3 weeks worth of topics.

I am sorry for the last minute notice.

WebmasterRadio.FM will be live from Ecom Expo all day long from Tuesday through Thursday.

Danny Sullivan (founder of SearchEngineWatch) has just announced that he will continue to work with Incisive Media on the Search Engine Strategies conferences.

In August this year Danny Sullivan, who has always been independent contractor, announced his intention to step away from an active involvement in SES at the end of 2006. Since this point both parties have remained in contact and today announce that an agreement has been reached to extend this relationship through 2007.

Danny summarises on his blog:

Overall, I'm glad things worked out. Like those who attend, I myself look forward to the SES shows. This allows me to remain part of the US ones for a further year. It also allows me to keep working with the SES team.

Further Discussion on Search Engine Watch Forums.

And this weeks 'Armageddon For Paid Search' subject is... Click Fraud (according to the Washington Post).

OK, maybe not put that strongly, although the mainstream newspaper does go to quite some length to unravel the underground world of paid to click.

From her home surrounded by cornfields in Dow City, Iowa, Jackie Park spends hours each day on her computer, earning half a penny every time she clicks on an Internet advertisement.
By the end of the day, she usually tallies a few hundred clicks, yielding about $300 a year. It's not much, but it adds up for the 35-year-old mother of five who became disabled three years ago.

And what's an undercover exposé without a trip to a far-away country, let’s say - India?

In New Delhi, small companies place ads in the top English-language newspapers every week looking to hire people who will use their home computers to click on text ads on certain Web sites. One ad offers the equivalent of several hundred dollars a day for spending two hours on the Internet. A visit to the company that placed the ad, Shipranet, leads to a small windowless apartment converted to an office...

As commented on at ThreadWatch, Click Fraud scammers are quite old news and bringing this information into the mainstream will probably only serve to increase the number of people looking to recruit such companies in order to make a quick buck off AdSense. At half a penny a click going to the people performing the mouse-action, it does go to show however where the real money in click fraud is pocketed - your friendly poverty-line recruiting middleman.

Further Discussion At WebmasterWorld.

Back in April at SEW Blog, I reported Change Your Time Zone Once & Only Once At AdWords because if you make a mistake, Google said you are stuck. Well, of course there is a way out.

AdWordsAdvisor at WebmasterWorld says;

This can be adjusted once by the support team, DamonHD, so contacting AdWords support should have done the trick for you in terms of changing it around. I apologize that they have not responded. It might be worth checking your filtered email to see if a response may have been sent to a spam folder for some reason. And also worth writing in once again.

So it appears that if you made a mistake with changing your time zone, you can still call AdWords and have them update it for you (once?).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Several WebmasterWorld members report conducting a search on a keyword phrase at Google.com and being presented with results in the form of URLs only, for all 10 results. This is not just reported for one obscure query, but several other forum members have seen this happen also over the past couple days for all types of queries.

I personally have not seen this happen when I search at Google.

Senior Member jimbeetle said:

I ran into this the other day and boy, it was really freaky. A couple of searches returned all url only results. A couple of searches returned 6 or 7 regular results, then url only after that (I have my prefs set to 20 results).

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The folks at DigitalPoint Forums discuss the news that Google has opened up Orkut to anyone with a Google Account. That means you no longer need to be invited to use Orkut by someone already in the Orkut community.

I am not sure if you are all aware of the past troubles Google has with Orkut. If not, just read this check list of some of the items I posted on Orkut at SEW blog:

• Aug. 16, 2006 :: Orkut Causing Trouble In Brazil Again
• Jul. 21, 2005 :: Drug Pushers Using Orkut Arrested In Brazil
• May. 25, 2006 :: Google Works With Brazil To Shut Down Orkut Communities
• May. 18, 2006 :: Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material
• May. 3, 2006 :: Google & Brazil Fight Over Orkut User Data Rights
• Mar. 10, 2006 :: Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime
• Mar. 9, 2006 :: Al-Qaeda Likes Orkut
• Aug. 22, 2006 :: Brazil To Close Google Brazil's Offices Over Orkut Issues?
• Sep. 1, 2006 :: Google Has 15 Days To Provide Data To Brazil Or Be Fined $23,000 Per Day
• Sep. 4, 2006 :: Google Says They Will Give Brazil Orkut Data
• Sep. 28, 2006 :: Google Not To Deliver Orkut Data To Brazil Authorities
• Oct. 10, 2006 :: Court Issues Notice To Google For Allegedly Spreading Hate In India Via Orkut

More Orkut coverage at SEW Blog here for SEW members.

So, opening it up, should make things more interesting to other parts of the globe.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that Google is indexing and ranking YouTube results in Google Images. An example search that brings up results is [+"good times with weapons"]. I currently see four YouTube results displaying, there is also a screen capture at image shack that shows a slightly different result set than I see.

I am sure these images were indexed and ranked prior to Google buying YouTube.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

The Yahoo! Search moderator, martinibuster, at WebmasterWorld reports a lot of changes in the rankings at Yahoo! Search. Some say it is a reversal of the Oct. 6th Yahoo! Update, but it doesn't appear that way to me.

There is currently no Yahoo! Search Weather report, but it may come soon.

I'll keep you updated if I get more information.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This morning, I was the lucky few to be included in the first batch of accepted upgrades from the old Overture Yahoo! Search Marketing system to the new Panama 2.0 Yahoo! Search Marketing system. As I informed you in the past, last week I spent two days at Yahoo! learning about the Panama release and I even explained how you can request a Panama invite. So here is what I saw this morning when I logged into my Yahoo! Search Marketing account.

Notice on the introduction screen telling me I can upgrade, if I like.

View Large Image

Are you sure?

Great, so what to expect?

View Large Image

So in 8 hours from now, I should have been fully upgraded to the new YSM 2.0.

Update: 8 hours later when I login, I get this.

I login and I get a System Error, "We're sorry. We could not process your request at this time. Please try again later." So I login again and I see we are ok to go. So NO more errors at this time.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.