May 2007 Archives

A number of members on WebmasterWorld are frustrated with the Google AdSense Preview Tool (which is available for IE versions 6.x and 7.x and allows you to preview ads that may appear on your website and filter out ads that will not do much for advertisers). A number of complaints have been addressed about the tool, particularly with regards to its ineffectiveness and lack of functionality. Additionally, there are just too many "spammy ads" that are hitting advertisers' sites and causing anger amongst AdSense publishers.

Each and every time I click to open the preview tool my web page "jumps down" so I can only see the bottom of the page.

I was wondering what she meant, so I installed the AdSense Preview Tool and tested it out on Barry's blog. It seems that opening the tool causes the ad to disappear out of view. Very strange. See the animated GIF for what I mean:

Want to see it again? Here's the Google AdSense Preview Tool bug.

Other users suggest other ways to improve the tool:

- show ads that will show instead of ads that may show - show ads restricted on ad format (e.g. only 468x60) - show non text ads as well (e.g. image, video, flash) - notify Adsense on an ad, directly from the tool

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A Google user posts on the Google Groups asking whether signing up to a Google AdWords campaign will expedite her site listing in the organic SERPs.

However, AdWordsPro of Google writes to say that there is no correlation between PPC and organic listings:

It is very important to note that there is absolutely no connection between being an AdWords advertiser, and having your site appear in the unpaid search results. One does not effect the other in any way. To put it another way, being an AdWords advertisers will neither help nor harm your chances of appearing on the 'organic' search engine.

AdWordsPro adds that this information has been gathered after careful observation after "quite a few years at Google."

Still, this has been a "conspiracy theory," to quote Barry, since the inception of AdWords. From a Search Engine Watch Forums thread, a member noticed that his paused AdWords campaign yielded a drop in organic referrals as well. Member scrubs adds that "Over the last year I would say the AdWords algo is as complex and as clever as the natural algo. Both are looking at different aspects on page to warrent your position in the listings."

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups and Search Engine Watch.

A WebmasterWorld thread points to an official announcement on the eBay website about its recent acquisition: social search engine StumbleUpon.

From Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America:

Our intent is to support the growth and evolution of this community-based business, and StumbleUpon will run as a separate business unit within eBay Inc. Although there are no definite plans to share at this time, as the site evolves, we'll be exploring the possibilities for synergies between StumbleUpon and eBay marketplaces, Skype, and PayPal.

But this doesn't necessarily sit well with forum members who see this possible merge as a way of serving additional ads.

exploring == exploiting == ads, ads, ads, more ads, and ads

I guess this really is web 2.0 where the big get bigger.

Personally, I don't think so.

TechCrunch has more on the acquisition, saying that the product is not changing and the company itself is just adding an additional team member from eBay.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

As Danny reported yesterday, Jason Calacanis is backing a new search engine named Mahalo.

Mahalo is a human edited search engine, meaning - humans are aggressively cleaning up the search results by hand - something Google says they never do.

Here are sample searches you can look at:
- ipod, showing you the top sites, quick facts, the ipod family, and a ton of information. To me this page looks like a static article on ipods.
- barry schwartz, is an example of a search that was not hand written. They show a message that reads, "Oops! We haven't hand-written a result page for "barry schwartz" yet." And then they show related results for other people like Barry Bonds, and so on. Followed by that, they use Google search results.
- google returns a page like ipod, but more focused around company information - like a financial page.

Mahalo would like to "hand-write result pages for the top 10,000 search terms." They are hiring and you can also recommend sites and links.

Current forum buzz and discussion is mixed. Danny concludes; "overall, the best solution probably isn't all human or all machine but some combination of the two."

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

The Google Checkout blog announced that they are now supporting Google Checkout for mobile devices. So if you are on the road, see something on your favorite site, that you must have, you can buy it using Google Checkout on your mobile device.

So if you are a merchant, you will need to enable your site to be WAP enabled and then integrated Google Checkout mobile.

GoogleCheckoutPro at Google Groups said:

US and UK Checkout merchants who have mobile-friendly sites can now offer their customers a fast and secure way to shop online while on the go. Existing Google Checkout buyers are now able to make fast, secure purchases on their mobile phones from any WAP-enabled Checkout merchant. The user experience has been adapted for mobile - for example, buyers can verify their identity using a PIN rather than a full password. Checkout for Mobile is currently limited to the sale of physical goods.

Old merchants need to upgrade - free of course. New merchants will automatically be supported.

Are you a mobile buyer and have questions, check out Google Checkout for Mobile help.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Yesterday, at Search Engine Land I wrote the story on Google Gears just from the press release, so I didn't have time to play with it before hand. The Google blog mentioned it, and they told us about the new Google Gears Blog. But I wanted to show you how it works, and since Google Reader is one of the first web applications that utilize Google Gears, I will show you Google Gears with Google Reader in action.

Step 1: Download the Google Gears extension to your browser.
Step 2: Enable it, when it asks you to.
Step 3: Google to Google Reader and click the offline icon and agree.

Notice I have 6 items unread in the general news folder.

Step 4: Clicking on the green icon with download all your unread feeds into the Google Gears format. Google Gears will then download them, showing you this status display.

Step 5: When it is done downloading, you will see that green icon turned grey.

Step 6: Go offline by unplugging your internet or using this little trick.

Step 7: Browse your unread feeds offline.

Notice how I now have 3 unread items in the general news folder, so I read three items offline.

Step 8: Go back online.

Step 9: Sync back up with Google Reader by clicking the green icon.

A status display will come up quickly, like in step 4.

Step 10: Google Reader will load up again.

Step 11: Continue browsing online...

Notice it removed those 3 feeds I read in online mode.

With Google Gears, Google is trying to create a standard for working with online web applications in an offline mode. This can be applied to anything. Just see the Google Gears API Developer's Guide.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Google Gears Forum.

It's been a pretty cool last two weeks. A lot of Google innovations have been made public, and I for sure am impressed, albeit frightened when Google comes with a truck photographing my backyard.

Yes, you heard that right. Google has launched a pretty nifty street maps photography feature. Barry captured a video of how far this photography feature goes in New York: just blocks shy of our office. We also covered the street maps feature this morning.

Another nifty addition to Google is the ability to restrict image results to faces . That means Rebecca's complaint about the ineffectiveness of Google Image Search might no longer hold true. Well, with most of these other results, maybe not. Guess she's right about MSN Search, but it's a good start. (The results for Jordin Sparks was actually better without the special "face" restriction in the URL. But, moving on...)

As we covered, Google launched a new universal search platform . The response was overwhelming, and Diggers ate up that story: it hit the top 10 news stories on Digg for a few hours when it first came out. I feel special.

Other neat developments include Google's addendum of hot trends. On a very similar note, Barry decided to post his search trends. This helps Google collect its data.

Innovation doesn't only sit online. Google needs to hire its engineers and staff through innovative methods. They've been holding contests, games, Sudoku challenges, and the like to look for the best talent. I want to play all day. I guess I'm lucky we have this instead.

Danny shared a pretty cool link via Google Experimental . Some features include timeline views, keyword shortcuts, left-hand search navigation, and right-hand contextual search navigation.

Oh, but Google is not a flawless beast. Numerous Google properties have been hacked in the past. Cool. In #5 of these security breaches, we see that "Googlified discovered a fault in Gmail that allowed a user's contact list to be stolen via JavaScript." This week, there was a JavaScript finding via Ionut Alex Chitu and Danny Sullivan. If you have JavaScript turned off, Google is not navigable. Um, oops?

In the social search sphere, outside of Digg, we have Technorati, one of the foremost blog search engines, which came out with a redesign that broadens search capabilities . From the blog, "Overall the changes make Technorati somewhat easier to grok and move the site away from just blog searches to a wider view of what might be best termed time sensitive searches." Good stuff all around.

Let me see some more Digg love from you guys!

Over the weekend, an article found via DigitalPoint Forums was published in a New Zealand news site about financial authors and property investors whose names are being linked to an unaffiliated company through Google AdWords. They are disgruntled, to say the least, and they question the ethics of the practice.

One of the individuals explains his disgust pretty eloquently:

Property investor Kieran Trass, of the Hybrid Group said: "It's underhanded. I have nothing to do with that company, and I don't want to. They are leveraging off other people's efforts to gain a financial reward with no recompense to the people they are linking to.

Shoemoney writes in to say that this is trademark bidding and that people should take appropriate legal action.

This is called trademark bidding and it goes on all the time. There is legal recourse for trademark bidding I am surprised these people have putting up with it for so long.

Actually, unless the people have trademarks on their names, I'm not sure if it can be considered trademark bidding.

If the names are trademarked, however, legal action can be taken and you can file a complaint via Google for trademark violations. Since this particular violation is occurring outside the United States and Canada, Google also provides a means to report these concerns as well.

If names aren't trademarked, it's still nice to ask the people if you can bid on their name.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

An interesting poll is in its infancy at DigitalPoint Forums but a trend is already emerging. The poll asks: what are the most important elements of your AdWords campaign? So far, Keyword Research and Landing Pages.

The discussion brings forth some good points:

You can have the best quality score in the world, a million targeted keywords and the best product on the market but if your landing page does not convey trust, authority and relevance, your visitors leave.

My vote is for Landing Page.

GuyFromChicago follows this thread in his personal blog and agrees.

Someone disagrees with that, however:

On the other hand, get your title wrong, or your advert text, and you can immediately halve your clickthrough rate and Quality Score - this leads to your sweet spot being much lower, and can halve (at least) the amount of traffic that you get. So your conversion rate needs to be a lot higher to offset that.

Organization of a campaign is also a focus of some campaigns:

I don't know whether it's the most important, but I think the most under-rated element is the campaign architecture (a fancy way of saying the way your ads/keywords/groups are organised).

Well organised = easy to track & measure, allows you to relate ads more closely to their keywords, allows you to separate content vs search clicks quickly
Badly organised = shoot & hope!

If you have the time, vote in the poll; it would be nice to see what factors are most important to you.

Forum discussion and poll at DigitalPoint Forums.

When a person passes away, sensitive information might reside on a Gmail account. How can a family get access to this information if necessary? This question is raised in a Google Groups thread.

According to Gmail Guide, the following steps need to be provided to Google in order to obtain access to the Gmail account:

1. Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.
2. The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.
3a. The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click 'More options,' then click 'Show original.' Copy everything from 'Delivered- To:' through the 'References:' line. To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)
3b. The entire contents of the message.
4. A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.

Gmail Guide requests that you send this information via Fax or Postal Mail:

Google Inc.
Attention: Gmail User Support
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

650-644-0358

It takes approximately 30 days for the information to be processed, but if the access is needed sooner, "it is Google's policy to only provide information pursuant to a valid third party court order or other appropriate legal process."

Discussion continues at Google Groups.

This is kind of a crazy question but I found it so crazy that I had to write about it. A DigitalPoint Forums thread has someone asking if he can put on his resume that he was or is employed by Google, since he is an AdSense publisher.

Today I applied at Best-Buy and one of the fields in the application said: What technology related positions have you worked in recently?

I put Web-designer and electronic delivery guy but I was thinking about putting Google Publisher. Bet you anything related to "Google" would look nice.

Now we pay taxes, they have our name, our tax ID, and everything else. Are we employed by Google?

No! AdSense publishers are not employed by Google. They are independent contractors, and you have no right to claim you worked for Google as an employee on your resume or on a job application.

The last line of the Google AdSense terms and conditions reads:

The relationship between Google and You is not one of a legal partnership relationship, but is one of independent contractors.

Too funny.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A ton of mapping news came out yesterday. Search Engine Land has a great overview of ma lot of the ones that apply to the search engines.

- Google Launches "Street View" Photography
- Microsoft Virtual Earth Expands 3-D Coverage To Include New York
- MapQuest Introduces New ActionScript API For Richer Maps

Google Street Views:
The Google Lat Long Blog posteda on it linking a video demonstration of it in action. I made my own yesterday at personal blog and here it is showing off my office neighborhood.

Check it out yourself, this is a street level view of around times square

Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D New York:
To see this in action, check out this video and the press release.

I did not demo this because it doesn't run (or run well) on a Mac.

MapQuest API:
Well, Garmin took advantage of it already. Check out MapQuests API for Adobe ActionScript for more information.

Google Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums. Microsoft Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night, the Yahoo Publisher Network has announced that they are now offering payment to publishers via PayPal.

I logged into my account to see how the set up works. You simple go to your account settings, click on payment options and there is a fourth checkbox now, this one is for PayPal.

PayPal even set up a special URL to show YPNers the benefits of PayPal at https://www.paypal.com/ypnwhypaypal. If you have billing questions, you can find more information at the FAQs.

The ain advantage is you will get your money sooner, if you are a publisher who earns less than $100 per month.

If you use direct deposit, the minimum available balance required to receive payments is $100. With PayPal, it's only $50. You can also earn a return on the deposits in your PayPal account by using PayPal's Money Market Reserve Fund. Please visit the PayPal Web site to learn more about this service.

This is an apparent extension of Yahoo's PayPal partnership on the Search Marketing side. This is also a much requested feature by publishers on both the Yahoo and Google side.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Late last night, Yahoo's Panama release launched in Europe. We reported this was coming the other day, but now it is official.

Gabs documented the email notification to UK advertisers:

Yahoo! Europe today announces that its new sponsored search advertising platform has launched and that it has started upgrading European advertisers to the new campaign management console.

Nw, if advertisers go to the login page they will be presented with an early upgrade login area at https://login.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/en_GB. In addition, Yahoo Europe has a tailored Upgrade Centre for European advertisers.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

The 32nd edition of the Search Pulse is now available for download. Chris and I discussed the Memorial Day weekend news and logos or lack there of. We also review the latest Yahoo! Search index update. We discussed the recent search market share figures released last week. Google banned essay writing ads, go figure. Elisabeth is leaving Search Engine Watch for Zonder. People are now critisizing Ask.com's unabommer ads, but is this what Ask.com wanted? We discussed several SEO topics and much more. The topics we covered are listed below, in order of priority (based on search community buzz). You can download the MP3 file and listen at your convenience.

Please vote if you want us to continue doing this podcast, here is the poll:

You can listen to the MP3 file with our new player directly below:

Topics We Covered:

1. Memorial Day Commemorated: Ask.com & Search Engine Roundtable
   
2. Yahoo Search Update Last Night
   
3. Search Market Share Update: Google Rises, MSN Falls, Yahoo Hovers
   
4. Google to Ban Ads for Essay Writing
   
5. Elisabeth Leaves Search Engine Watch For Vacation Rentals
   
6. SEOs Critique Ask.com's New "Algorithm Ads"
   
7. Ask.com "The Algorithm" Promotions: Controversy to Publicity?
   
8. Creating a Search Engine Friendly Glossary or Definitions List
   
9. Can Clicking on Google Organic Results Influence Rank?
   
10. Does Google Reinclude Banned Sites into Google.com Without Request?
    

Lightening Round:

Continue reading "Search Pulse 32: Memorial Day, Yahoo! Search Update, Search Share, AdWords, Elis SEW, Ask.com Ads, SEO & More"

A New York Times article says that Google will be investigated for its $3.1 billion dollar acquisition of DoubleClick to see if the company has violated any antitrust laws.

Last month, Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion and was challenged by rivals, particularly Microsoft. However, a month later, Microsoft acquired aQuantive for a value of $6 billion.

According to the New York Times article, "Google said it was confident that the deal would withstand scrutiny." I think given recent events and in response to the latest acquisition by Microsoft, this will indeed be the case.

Techmeme has more coverage, as does Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Can I start clicking like crazy on a link in the search results and rank it higher than it is currently? A Search Engine Watch Forums thread addresses this question.

If a large number of people did a search for a specific key phrase and kept clicking on a result that appeared in page 4, for a certain period of time, could it cause the site to move up in the Google results? maybe increase PR?

Forum members suspect that it could have an impact but it probably won't be used heavily because of the possible manipulation.

Some people believe usage data will eventually become as important as link authority..or at least be a strong 2nd factor. What's gonna happen nobody knows for sure, but I've also read opinions, that it won't become the most important factor, as it's just too easy to manipulate (the way you suggested for example :-)). I think letting the users judge through their actions could be a great way to improve an engine's algorithm, but if it should really be too prone to manipulation, they probably can't depend on it too much.

It is also something that one of our editors, evilgreenmonkey, plans to do a study on, because, after all, he says: "Google's click tracking on natural search results is there for a reason, and it would a sensible assumption that CTR can alter your ranking."

I had Personalized Search enabled for a short time this weekend, and as I clicked on the results for a specific search term, it started counting the number of visits I had made and moved the specific result from the #2 spot to the #1 spot under the personalized engine. So there was a definite emphasis on clickthroughs as a ranking mechanism under Personalized Search.

That's exactly what Barry says in a post published two months ago about whether Google uses click data to rank sites. It seems pretty possible that Google is still tracking clicks to some extent.

The question is, does Google use click data for the search results for searches performed when a user is not logged in?

On a similar note, back when the Direct Hit search engine existed, it utilized click data to rank sites. However, due to the manipulation, it was made extinct. Recently, it was mentioned that the Ask.com algorithm known as Edison will be bringing part of this feature back to some extent: "In a sense, it uses the 'wisdom of the crowds' to determine relevancy and show the best results they can."

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Last Friday, both the AdSense Blog and the AdWords Blog announced they have launched new video ad formats for AdWords advertisers to use and publishers to place on their sites.

The new ad formats are 728x90 Leaderboard, the 120x600 Skyscraper, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper. The old formats include the 300x250 Medium Rectangle, the 336x280 Large Rectangle, the 200x200 Small Square, and the 250x250 Square.

For more information on the publisher side, see the AdSense Video ads help documentation. For more information on the advertiser side, see the Guide to Google Video Ads and Video ad demo page.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread has one post from one individual who said his banned site was automatically reincluded in Google's index. In short, he did not go to Google and ask for his site to be reincluded, it was done by itself.

Normally, if your site is delisted from Google you would ask for a reinclusion request. Then Google would review your site and accept your site back in or not.

In this case, Google seems to have reincluded the site automatically, after a one-year ban.

I am waiting on more reports in this thread to see if this happens often. I would suspect Google sets a date for automated review of a site that was banned, so reinclusion can be automated. But I have never seen it reported in a support forum.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

First signs on "The Algorithm" came when Edison was leaked at SES NY from Apostolos Gerasoulis, the co-founder of Ask.com's technologies. Edison is the code name of the new algorithm, more on how that works here.

Since then, Ask.com has launched many local campaigns to generate buzz about "the algorithm." Some of those campaigns are a bit controversial. The goal, in my opinion, is to generate buzz around the phrase "the algorithm." Ask.com's CEO, Jim Lanzone, has gone on the record saying that they want the word "algorithm" to be a cool word.

A forum thread at Cre8asite Forum is still chugging away, I added that there has been a lot more discussion on Ask.com since they launched these controversial billboards and posters.

You know, the "no publicity is bad publicity" concept.

Now that Ask.com is backing these billboards on the algorithm with these new TV spots, that are both tasteful and cool, I think it may just help a bit. At least I hope so. Hey, I still am for the underdog and have been for a while. Check out my Ask Jeeves: The Little Engine That Could from 2004.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Today is Memorial Day, and as a result, the Ask.com search engine has recognized the holiday. There's no indication that Google and Yahoo have done anything in their logos to commemorate the day, which we've covered in the past. It appears that they will not be showing any commemorative logos, similar to last year and the year before.

The Ask.com site has a mention of Memorial Day as a day of remembrance. In 2005, they featured a silhouette of a butler blowing a trumpet.

We also are celebrating in weather-appropriate skies (until it rains, at least) with red, white, and blue.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Roundtable forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread calls attention to an article about the length of time that Google is retaining data for user searches.

European data protection officials have raised concerns that Google could be contravening European privacy laws by keeping data on internet searches for too long.

The Article 29 working party, a group of national officials that advises the European Union on privacy policy, sent a letter to Google last week asking the company to justify its policy of keeping information on individuals’ internet searches for up to two years.

A number of questions have been raised about how Google should proceed with the data -- or if it's even their responsibility. Members cite the absence of clear laws to define what can be done properly and in what country.

Laws have to be wrote before google can react. Right now there is not much law governing that type of information.

Another article mentions that Google does protect its user privacy, and in fact plans to anonymize data after 18-24 months. That is exactly what is said by Peter Fleischer, Google's global policy counsel:

Fleischer said Google needs to log details of user searches for security purposes - to protect its search engine from hackers. But he said the company has taken recent measures to improve user privacy. Server logs, for example, are "anonymized" after 18 to 24 months.

Peter Fleischer even mentions in the Google blog that there are ways to opt-out of web history and to maintain your privacy when using Google.

Our policy puts the user in charge. It is not something Google seeks to control. At any time they can turn off personal search, pause it, remove specific web history items or remove the whole lot.

I think that's fair, though perhaps it should be an opt-in procedure rather than an opt-out one.

Discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread asks whether users are noticing any sort of "AdSense slump" or a "a little dip in U.S traffic & revenues."

Indeed, people are, with earning drops between 20% and 95%, and it's not atypical behavior for the three-day weekend.

You won't find a lot of folks in the U.S. sitting in front of their computers during a 3-day weekend.

What else can possibly contribute to the lower earnings? There's better weather, college graduation (and thus slower Internet connections), the Memorial Day holiday, and summer vacation.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Last week, we reported that Google To Shut Down AdSense Arbitrageurs. The WebmasterWorld thread has been hoping on that topic since. In fact, they just split the thread into a new thread over here.

Finally, in post number 639 in that thread, Google's AdSenseAdvisor has chimed in.

Hi all,

Very interesting conversation.

I just wanted to say that while I can't provide any new information right now about the decision to close certain AdSense accounts, I am following this thread closely, along with many other people from all parts of the AdSense team. This decision was a long time in the making, and your thoughts and feedback are quite valuable to us.

-ASA

Although AdSenseAdvisor did not say much, saying that he or she "can't provide any new information right now about the decision to close certain AdSense accounts" says that something is going on, if the thread didn't convince you otherwise.

I just guess we will learn more early next month.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

A Search Engine Roundtable Forums thread reports that Yahoo! is testing our their Panama Search Marketing engine out in the United Kingdom.

I was at the launch of Panama in the US on October 17, 2006. Yahoo! planned to roll it out worldwide later, and the UK is coming soon.

Our moderator, gabs, was at a Yahoo! demonstration of Panama last week. He said;

I've just been @ yahoo ... For a demo of yahoo panama..

I will be launching very soon so we should see new algo's bouncing ads around a bit imho...

No date as yet

I suspect a launch in the UK by probably end of this quarter or early next quarter. These are guesses but if they are demonstrating it now, I suspect it is coming really soon.

Yahoo! has been emailing their UK advertisers warning them of this upgrade. The full text email can be seen at PPC blog, but here are two snippets of interest.

We launch our new ranking model successfully we have started running a limited test across our UK advertiser listings in which the display order of Sponsored Search listings in some keyword markets is based on factors other than bid.

Our new Sponsored Search system will be rolled out in the UK soon, beginning with advertiser migration later this quarter. We will be contacting you with more specific information as the rollout date approaches.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports a few webmasters received phone calls from Microsoft adCenter representatives.

Both webmasters seemed to have set up accounts in the past, but never fully activated those accounts.

One said,

I signed up several months back never did get around to doing anything with it. At the time they were giving away $20 of free clicks.

Another said,

I got a call a few weeks back - The call dropped & I gave the rep a call back, left a message for him to call me back to continue the conversation, but he never called back.

Does not surprise me that Microsoft is reaching out to these advertisers. They took the time to set up an account. A little push, maybe they will start spending some money with Microsoft.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks if Google will allow you to track your adult site using Google Analytics, Google's web analytics software.

Everyone says, they believe so. While the Google Analytics terms of service does not specifically reject sites by theme, including not rejecting adult sites - they do say that the service is free for those with AdWords accounts.

In section two;

The Service is provided without charge to You for up to 5 million pageviews per month per account, and if You have an active Adwords campaign in good standing, the Service is provided without charge to You without a pageview limitation.

So if your adult theme site gets over 5 million pageviews, then technically, you would need an AdWords account in good standing. Since Google AdWords has a content policy that disallows "Sexual Content (Adult)" then those adult sites would technically not be accepted to use Google Analytics for free.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

An excellent Memorial Day weekend Cre8asite Forums thread was started by a novice SEO that has the requirement of showing to her company, how SEO can impact their bottom line.

She express that she is "missing something somewhere" because she is unable to come up with a solid number or percentage. Meaning, she wants to say, if they invest $X dollars in SEO or $X in PPC, it will return an increase sales of X percent.

While most of the replies in the forums are supportive, saying that it is almost impossible to come up with that number, without giving it a try first. Why? As one Cre8asite Moderator explains, "because the numbers are hugely variable for every site, and you really don't know the effect until after you've made the changes."

But I believe, as do others, that you can give ranges. Cre8asite moderator, Barry Welford, a statistics lover (I love stats also, but probably not as much as him) says it is possible. I agree.

Basically, look at the numbers you have now. If you have X visits per day and X of those current visits turn into sales or leads - then just multiple that number. In fact, you will probably see more targeted visitors with SEM, so if you like, you can even increase the current percentage of sales/leads driven by your current web site and use those figures. It is probably best to give a low, medium and high range. You can then use your current formula from lead to sales to dollar average, to come up with an ROI on a specific campaign.

Those will be your initial numbers. Run a test campaign. Then you may just be surprised by how your numbers align with your estimates. Your initial report is just to get you some money from the company to prove to them that it can work. Once you get that money, then it is up to you to make it happen.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

Boy, it's hot outside! It's 78F and not even noon yet, and tomorrow's high is 93. Summer doesn't start for another month. Even SMX will happen before that! I hope spring didn't fly by! I like it when there's a cool breeze outside.

Did you miss us? Barry and I were away for the holiday, and we're getting back to the swing of things (I can tell that Barry is suffering, so this is where I come in). Barry, got anything for me to do? Can I twitter for you?

Google AdSense Arbitrageurs: Your Time has Come

Google and advertisers are sick of click fraudsters. Anyone involved in the deceptive act of AdSense arbitrage will be shut down as of June 1st. Some of these people are making tens of thousands of dollars. It's time to adapt or die out. It's not fair to rob the bank off the innocents unless you have clear intention on looking into their product.

Yahoo CTR Gone Down?

To determine the success of your PPC campaign, it's important to test, retest, and continue tweaking for perfection. Like they say: Wash. Rinse. Repeat. For Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers, now is a great time for you to focus on optimizing your campaign. After all, advertisers have reported much lower click-throughs which is likely a consequence of the shorter ad descriptions. Not all advertisers feel that way, however. But now is a just as good a time as any to focus on your PPC campaigns.

Who Rules Them All?

The winner is Google for now. Ben, who took over in our absence, reported that Google's search market share has increased, while Yahoo "hovers" (with an increase of 0.1 percent). Microsoft is losing ground. Perhaps last week's aQuantive acquisition will change things. Let's give it some time.

Google Increases its Presence on the Webmaster Forums

Hello there, Bergy, Wysz, Pat, Susan Moskwa, and nathanj! These are the five newest Google Webmaster Help Forums faces, and they will be posting on the Google Webmaster Forums to increase Google's presence in the search sphere. Will we also see you at SMX? (Shouts to Susan who I'll actually recognize!)

Google Maps

Fun things can be done with Google Maps. You can search your neighborhood or you can make your commute three hours longer by avoiding highways.

Naughty, Naughty, Yahoo!

Yahoo! Autos was caught cloaking earlier this week. Later, it was confirmed that they were indeed involved in this practice. At least they changed their page.

Google Trends Gets Hot

Like the weather, Google Trends shows some pretty "volcanic" activity lately. For example, take the winner of this year's American Idol. On May 23rd, Jordin Sparks was hot. However, the momentum is dying down. She was only spicy yesterday.

Google Universal Search

Since Google Universal Search was launched, there have been a lot of questions. First of all, your custom search engine will not feature Google Universal Search results.

Now, how do you capitalize on Google Universal Search? You just need to focus on all different areas: organic search for standard content, blogs, images, video (Google Video or YouTube), news (press releases), and you should have a local presence. There are other ways to capitalize, but this should be a good start.

For those of you out of the office on Monday (that would not be me), have a great three-day weekend!

Advertisers should know the importance of maximizing their presence online with the least amount of cost, but to do that, they need to effectively measure the success of their campaign. How long does that take? A Cre8asite Forums th