Internet Marketing & SEO

Google Webmaster Tools has Message Center

Thursday, July 19th, 2007 | Google, SEO, Search Industry | No Comments

Message Center: Let us communicate with you about your site
Today we’re launching our Message Center, a new way for webmasters to receive personalized information from Google in our webmaster console. Should we need to contact you, you’ll see a notification in your Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Initially the messages will refer to search quality issues, but over time we’ll use the Message Center as a communication channel for more types of information. Here’s an example: informing the site owner about hidden text, a violation in our webmaster guidelines.

For our webmasters outside the U.S., we’re also pleased to tell you that Message Center is capable of providing information in all supported Webmaster Tools languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Chinese-Simplified, Chinese-Traditional, Korean, Japanese, etc.), across all countries.

Right now the number of sites we’re contacting is small, but we hope to expand this program over time. We’re also really happy that the Message Center lets us communicate with webmasters in an authenticated way. As time goes on, we’ll keep looking for even more ways to improve communication with site owners, but right now, why not claim your site in our webmaster tools so that we can give you a heads-up of any issues that we see?

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/message-center-let-us-communicate-with.html

Yahoo Buys Stake inTyroo an Indian Online ad Company

Thursday, July 19th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Internet Marketing, Internet News, Yahoo | No Comments

Yahoo has acquired a stake in Indian Internet advertising company Tyroo Media to help it capture more of the country’s fast-growing online ad market.

Yahoo acquired between 35 percent and 50 percent of Tyroo for an undisclosed amount of money, said George Zacharias, managing director of Yahoo India, in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Yahoo hopes Tyroo Media will help it capture more of India’s fast-growing online ad market

Yahoo acquired between 35 percent and 50 percent of Tyroo for an undisclosed amount of money, said George Zacharias, managing director of Yahoo India, in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Tyroo, based in Gurgaon, places advertisements on a network of about 1,200 Web sites. Its service is suitable for smaller businesses, allowing them to design graphic or text-based ads and choose Web sites that will bring them a targeted audience, said Harish Bahl, CEO of Smile Interactive Technologies Group, of which Tyroo is a part.

The advertisers do not need to have their own Web sites — which small Indian businesses often do not have — since buyers can contact them via e-mail or SMS (short messaging service), he said.

Yahoo started its search-based advertising business in India about eight months ago and so far has a few thousand small advertisers, Zacharias said. There are millions of potential advertisers in India, which all the search companies and advertising networks are chasing, he added.

The deal with Tyroo will allow Yahoo to grow its business with third-party publishers in India while it prepares to bring its revamped advertising system, code-named Panama, into the country, along with technology it acquired from Right Media, Zacharias said.

Yahoo announced in April that it would buy the remainder of Right Media, an online exchange where advertisers and publishers can buy and sell display advertising on Web sites. The relationship with Tyroo will continue after the Panama and Right Media technologies are introduced to India, Zacharias said.

The companies will also integrate their back-end systems so that advertisers on Yahoo and Tyroo can access to each other’s networks, Bahl said. The companies will remain independent, however, he added.

The news comes a day after Yahoo reported disappointing financial results for its second quarter. Net income declined to $161 million, or $0.11 per share, down slightly from $164 million, or $0.11 per share, for the same period in 2006.

Yahoo net income fell year-over-year in a quarter that saw Yahoo leadership change hands amid criticism that the company failed to capitalize on the explosive growth of the search-engine advertising market. Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs was $1.2 billion. The company lowered its earnings guidance for the current quarter.

Google Expands Print Ads Program

Thursday, July 19th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

Google Inc. is expanding a test program that lets online advertisers buy ad space in newspapers, as the publishing industry struggles to offset business that has moved to the Internet.

Google Expands Print Ads Program

Yahoo ‘07 2nd Quarter Revenues Rise 8%

Thursday, July 19th, 2007 | Internet Marketing, Internet News, Yahoo | No Comments

Yahoo said today that its net income for the second quarter was $161 million… almost unchanged from the same period a year ago, as revenues rose 8 percent to $1.7 billion.

…The quarterly results reflect gains from Yahoo’s new advertising system, known internally as Project Panama, which is helping the company increase the ad revenue it earns for every search query. But Yahoo’s gains from Panama were largely erased by weakness in display advertising…

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/technology/17cnd-yahoo.html?pagewanted=print

AdSense Referrals 2.0 replace AdSense Referrals Beta

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | 1 Comment

Finally, Google released the AdSense Referral 2.0 after finishing their experiments and researches about AdSense Referrals Beta in the past 3 months. That means, as an AdSense publisher you will have more chance for additional income and revenue from Google AdSense with placing their CPA (Cost Per Action) based ads inside your website.

There’s some important point you should notice about this new Google AdSense CPA. The advantages and important points for using this AdSense Referrals can be seen below:

More products for referral
If you think that Google referral products are very limited, now you can choose the products that suitable and relevant with contents of your website. As we know that there are thousands of product has been offered by advertisers in AdWord.

More option for Category and Keyword Targeting
With Category and Keyword Targeting option, you may choose the products based on category and keyword as you wanted. You have full control to decide the ads, as you can choose specific advertiser, category, or product.

Optimized Ad Unit
Sometimes, it’s not easy to choose products that offered by Google AdSense Referral. Based on that case, Google AdSense provides the feature for optimizing the ads that will be displayed inside your site. It can be done with the “Pick best performing ads” option when generating the ads code. When you’re about choosing a specific ads unit to be displayed at your site, then Google AdSense system will compare your choice with the available specific ads and will display more optimized ads to be chosen.

More ads targeting for multiple themes
If your website is based on portal, communities, contains many articles, and has no specific niche, then the New Google Referrals 2.0 gives you more choice to select the ads based on specific keyword or niche. It’s totally different with Google AdSense for Content. While Google AdSense for Content is based on your contents, the AdSense Referral 2.0 is based on your chosen keyword. (Sounds similar with AuctionAds…. ech)

Higher earnings for your site
As CPA based ads, Google Referrals 2.0 offers higher earnings rather than AdSense for Content. However, the conversion rate for these ads is lower than AdSense for Content since you’ll get nothing if there’s a click but no action for some kind of transaction. The transaction is based on advertiser (merchant), whether it’s an action for sales, leads, or other transactions.

Endorse the Product!
AdSense Referral 2.0 ads is different with AdSense for Content ads, you may give the specific references to this referral ads inside your site. You may endorse, add review, and give more information for AdSense Referral 2.0.

If you want to get started with this new referral, you can simply click the AdSense Setup tab inside your Google AdSense account, and choose Referrals.

However, if you can’t see referrals 2.0 right away this time, you should check it back again in a few days or more, because this feature will be available in all Google AdSense accounts over the next few weeks ahead.
For some languages, the inventory of the ads could be limited at this time, since advertisers for this new referral are just getting started.

(source : Inside AdSense)

Google Top 100 queries by Google Hot Trends

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | Google, SEO, Search Industry | 1 Comment

Google has introduced a top 100 searches words / phrases chart called Hot Trends. More than that, what we never had from Google (except the Zeitgeist), a daily history of top 100 searches.

More info at the Google Blog.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Coupon: $100

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Yahoo, Yahoo! Publisher Network | No Comments

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v10.php?o=US1851&cmp=YahooHL&ctv=FPPanPI&s=Y&s2=FP&b=50
Sign up today for Yahoo! Search Marketing, and you get a $50 free PPC credit

Offer open to new Sponsored Search advertisers only. (A new advertiser is one who has not advertised with Yahoo! Search Marketing for the past 13 months). Each account requires a nonrefundable $5 initial deposit. Advertisers signing up for Self Serve will receive a $0 credit into the account. Advertisers signing up for the Assisted Setup service will receive $0 off the $199 service charge. In each case, initial credits are nonrefundable and will be applied to click charges. There is a minimum bid requirement of $0.10 per click-through. Limit one offer per customer, and one use per customer on a single account. Sellers of certain legally restricted products may require third party certification at extra cost. Search listings subject to editorial review. Offer may not be combined with any other offers or discounts, separated, redeemed for cash, or transferred. Other terms and conditions may apply; see Advertiser Terms and Conditions when you sign up.

Bots Artificially Inflate AdSense Impressions

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

Conventional wisdom has been that most web crawlers don’t run javascript so therefore the spiders won’t artificially inflate your AdSense ads.

That’s no longer true.

The new trend is to augment the SERPs with screen shots in places like Ask, Snap and others, and the screen shots are made with javascript enabled so that javascript page elements (menus, etc.) are visible. That means your AdSense ads are also being included in those screen shots and possibly skewing your statistics.

Both Ask and Snap make screen shots of various pages in your site so it’s not just a single home page image we’re talking about. Snap has attempted to make upwards of 40K screen shorts on my site alone before I stopped counting. Ask seems to be a little more conservative in the quantity of their screen shots, but that could be growing pains as it remains to be seen if they’ll screen shot entire sites and/or all sites they index.

What’s unknown at this time is whether or not Google discounts the impressions being made by these screen shot bots at Ask or Snap, or whether those screen shots contribute to your lower CTRs and whatever penalties (smart pricing?) that may bring.

Imagine the impact it would have if a low traffic site with maybe 1,000 pages suddenly had 1,000 screen shots made all at once.

You would see a traffic surge with very low CTR, it would look abysmal.

Would the AdSense algorithms respond in this situation?

Worse yet, now that the screen shot genie is out of the bag and everyone wants them on their sites for a variety of purposes, more and more screen shot providers are now taking more and more screen shots to fill this need. Before long a percentage of your daily ad impressions will probably be nothing more than screen shots.

It would be nice if the AdSense Advisor could chime in and let us know what impact, if any, these screen shots are having on our AdSense stats.

More Talks..

MSN AdCenter Now Includes Ask.com

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, MSN adCenter, Microsoft & MSN | No Comments

You can now purchase keywords on Ask.com and their partner sites (iWon etc.) through MSN AdCenter.

The addition of Ask.com’s sites to its paid search service will expose Microsoft’s customer listings to an additional 5% of search traffic.

That takes Microsoft’s network a step closer to Yahoo, which in June captured 25.1% of all search traffic…

Microsoft Teams Up With Ask.Com To Bolster Paid Search
Small businesses that buy ads from Microsoft Office Live will see their search listings appear on Web sites operated by Ask.com and its partners, in addition to Microsoft’s Windows Live and MSN.com sites.

Microsoft said Tuesday that it will add Ask.com to its network of Web sites that display paid search listings.

Under the program, small businesses that purchase paid search ads through Microsoft’s Office Live service will see their search listings appear on Web sites operated by Ask.com and its partners, in addition to Microsoft’s Windows Live and MSN.com sites.

Ask.com’s partners include the second tier search sites Dogpile, MySearch and Excite.

Microsoft’s Office Live customers have access to adManager — a Microsoft tool that allows users to select and bid on key words to be used in paid search campaigns. Under the alliance with Ask.com, adManager will now automatically extend the campaigns beyond Microsoft sites to Ask.com sites through integration with Ask.com’s Ask Sponsored Listings service, Microsoft said.

The deal could make Microsoft a more attractive service provider for businesses contemplating a paid search campaign. The company’s Web sites captured about 13% of all search traffic in June, according to market watcher Comscore. The addition of Ask.com’s sites to its paid search service will expose Microsoft’s customer listings to an additional 5% of search traffic.

That takes Microsoft’s network a step closer to Yahoo, which in June captured 25.1% of all search traffic, and Google, which grabbed 49.5% of traffic for the month, according to Comscore.

With its software business under pressure from providers of open source and Web-based applications, Microsoft is looking for ways to boost its revenue from online advertising. In its most recent third quarter, the company said sales of online services—which includes paid search listings—increased 11% to $623 million.

Given its importance to the company’s future, analysts will be watching that number closely when Microsoft reports fourth quarter earnings on Thursday.

For Privacy, Cookies To Auto-Expire After 2 Years : Google

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | Google, Internet News | No Comments

Google has said that its cookies, tiny files stored on a computer when a user visits a website, will auto delete after two years.

They will be deleted unless the user returns to a Google site within the two-year period, prompting a re-setting of the file’s lifespan.

The company’s cookies are used to store preference data for sites, such as default language and to track searches.

All search engines and most websites store cookies on a computer.

Currently, Google’s are set to delete after 2038.

Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel, said in a statement: “After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we’ve concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies.”

He said the company had to “find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time.”

So if a user visits a Google website, a cookie will be stored on their computer and will auto-delete after two years. But if the user returns to a Google service, the cookie will re-set for a further two years.

Privacy campaigners

Privacy campaigners want to give users more control over what the search giant holds on to and for how long.

Google has pointed out that all users can delete all or some cookies from their web browser manually at any time and can control which cookies from which websites are stored on a computer.

There are also tools online which can prevent the company and other firms leaving cookies on a computer.

In recent months, it has introduced several steps to reassure its users over the use of personal information.

In March the search giant said it would anonymise personal data it receives from users’ web searches after 18 months.

The firm previously held information about searches for an indefinite period but will now anonymise it after 18 to 24 month

None of the other leading search engines have made any statements over anonymising IP addresses or shortening cookie lifespan.