Error Forum Blog

Google’s dominance in the search engine arena and the world of related advertising pushed the price of Google’s shares to over $600 on Monday, October 8th. Aside from the fact that early buyers of the stock (shares were $85 when Google went public in 2004) are probably dancing for joy, Google’s success is a strong sign that we’re in the midst of a new Internet boom with none of the bubblish warning signs that were apparent in the first Internet boom. More details on Google’s share price milestone can be found in the news story “Google Hits New High, Valued At More Than Time Warner, Disney, News Corp. Combined” at MediaDailyNews.

Check this out…

“ This report fetches the headlines from Google news on a schedule. Only headlines on the home page are fetched.

These results are then ranked by score. The score is determined by a combination of factors: appearance day and time, prominence on the google news page, number of appearances, and others, all weighted using a custom algorithm. The algorithm is designed to estimate referer traffic to the source.

Listed are the top scoring stories in recent time periods, followed by a ranking of sources. You can bring up more detailed reports by clicking on the links at the bottom of each table “

Danny has written a great overview of PageRank.

Too much reading?

Here’s a nice summary in terms of SEO link building strategy:

“If you really want to know what are the most important, relevant pages to get links from, forget PageRank. Think search rank. Search for the words you’d like to rank for. See what pages come up tops in Google. Those are the most important and relevant pages you want to seek links from. That’s because Google is explicitly telling you that on the topic you searched for, these are the best“

Google updated their search engine today.

They key points:

• Google introduce Universal Search, integrating news, images, videos, books and local results into the main  results: “Google’s vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking forâ€?.
• Google introduce a context-sensitive navigation menu - dynamically generated navigation links have been added above the search results to suggest additional information that is relevant to a user’s query.
• Google launch Google Experimental,which allows users to try out new search features.

Further select reading and reviews:

• Google’s Official Press Release
• Danny Sullivan’s excellent write-up, including the consequences for SEMs
• Techcrunch
  
• Videocast (â€?featuringâ€? some very tedious user stories spouting undying Google love - I switched off. Also note the Microsoft-y colors used beneath the Searchology logo….)

Nick Carr makes some good points about Google’s strengths, and their weaknesses.

“To competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo, Google must seem like a greased pig. You can see the damned thing running amok in your garden, but you can’t figure out a good way to get hold of it“

The beauty of Adwords, in terms of defensibility, is that Adwords uses an auction model. It can’t be underpriced.

“Schmidt: Another example of Sergey [Brin]’s observations is that our advertising network is very powerful because it’s quite resistant to certain competitive attacks.

Vogelstein: Such as?

Schmidt: Because it’s an auction market you cannot under-price it. This point is lost on many, many people.“

However, Carr identifies an area where Google might be vulnerable: Adsense payouts.

�Introduce a free version of AdSense. By free, I mean that you tell publishers that if they run your ads on their sites, they get to keep all the advertising revenues. 100 percent. You won’t take any cut. Immediately, you put a lot of pricing pressure on an important source of revenues and profits for Google.“

This is certainly an initiative many publishers could get on board with. Google would be forced to compete on payouts.

However, Yahoo and MSN would also need the volume of advertisers. And they’d need to get off their behinds and actually provide an international distributed ad network . Adsense was rolled out internationally - when? 2003?

It’s now 2007.

Where is MSN? Where are Yahoo (internationally)?

Seems some adwords advertisers wanted a bit more out of visitors than visitors may have wanted to give:

�Google has removed paid links that advertised seemingly legitimate Web sites but actually tried to install nefarious programs on PCs. The links were displayed as “sponsored links� after visitors entered specific queries into Google’s search service. Clicking the links would ultimately go to a legitimate site, but by way of another site that attempted a “drive-by installation� of password-stealing software. Miscreants placed the links using Google’s AdWords service for advertisers. “Google identified and canceled AdWords accounts displaying ads that re-directed users to malicious sites,� a company representative wrote on a corporate blog“.

A MSN/Yahoo deal doesn’t make much sense. Google and Yahoo makes more sense, although that wouldn’t be ideal for search marketers, as that would not leave us with much leverage.

“We’re going to claim ownership of this idea: that the right partner for Yahoo isn’t Microsoft, but Google. A JP Morgan analyst, cited in Barron’s, estimates that Google’s more liquid exchange for text ads, if brought to bear on Yahoo’s search results, could add more than $1bn to the Sunnyvale internet company’s 2008 earnings. That would create more value than any other possible deal for Terry Semel’s lumbering internet portal.

Barron’s Eric Savitz thinks the deal could get past the anti-trust authorities, because a combination of the two biggest internet media companies would still have only 4% of the US advertising market, if one includes both online and traditional media.

Valleywag’s idea, first floated in January: just do a long-term deal to bring in Yahoo’s search engine as an affiliate of Google’s Adwords search marketing business, which would be less obviously monopolistic, as well as less convoluted; and do a deal soon, before the government wakes up to the fact that Google will soon be way more powerful than Microsoft.“

If you’re a Google Analytics user, you’ll know that the interface has been updated. It’s now more Googley.

I’m not going to go into depth reviewing it - I’m sure everyone will find out if they like it or not themselves.

My impression, after a few days using it, is - I really like what they’ve done with it.

I found the old interface was clunky and obscure, whereas Google have introduced clarity. The information most people want is now front and center, and if you want complexity, you can dig deeper. Previously, I found it difficult to get a snapshot overview.

Here’s a collection of other bloggers reviews and impressions:

• Mashable: “27 Features That Make Google Analytics Best of Breed…“
• Occam’s Razor: “Here are the five things you should do the first time you log into GA V2:….“
• AimClear Blog : “Read on for a summary of new Google Analytics features….“
• Solo Technology Blog: “Google Analytics - user Friendly…..“
• Information Management Weblog: “Google Analytics Looks Good; Google Accounts Don’t….“

Cool quote:

“Now that everyone and their grandmother’s smoking buddies are trying to spam Digg, Reddit, and Netscape into oblivion, I think the opportunity to use that as a reliable factory of linkbuilding has jumped the shark“

And another…

“Back to the masses of chainsmoking grandmothers and why you should jump off that bandwagon immediately. If you are trying to linkbait now, good freaking luck. Depending on the community, Power Accounts have either been marginalized or it’s too late to build an effective toolbox of them. It’s time to stop buying into the hype of Linkbaiting Millions and accept the fact that you “bait� an audience the same way people have been audience building for centuries“

Source: Scoreboard Media Group.

On a related note, SEOMOZ notices a big decrease in Digg traffic to their site.

“Far be it from me to post information like this without checking on stats from others. According to my unnamed, but “on-Digg-all-the-time� sources from around the SEO world, Digg has also been sending them far less traffic than previous efforts.“

Gaming any system will, eventually, either kill it or make it stronger.

The problem the social media sites have is that they are built on the idea of being an open free-for-all. However, if they limit their openness, as a defensive strategy against people gaming their systems, then they invariably change into something else.

As we saw recently with Digg, the audience can be rather fickle when it comes to constraint of freedom. The audience can  make a mess, and then move on to somewhere else. Yet, if freedom is not restricted, then the system could die under the weight of “spam�. In Digg’s case, publication of sensitive data that may lead to legal problems, and marketing-driven link bait. Not saying all link bait is bad/spam - it isn’t - however it’s fair to say that Digg probably don’t want the front page permanently occupied by SEO companies.

It’s getting harder to link bait social media. It’s getting a lot harder to run a popular social network, too.

Is the low-hanging fruit of social media just about all gone?

Google updated their search engine today.

They key points:

• Google introduce Universal Search, integrating news, images, videos, books and local results into the main  results: “Google’s vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking forâ€?.
• Google introduce a context-sensitive navigation menu - dynamically generated navigation links have been added above the search results to suggest additional information that is relevant to a user’s query.
• Google launch Google Experimental,which allows users to try out new search features.

Further select reading and reviews:

• Google’s Official Press Release
• Danny Sullivan’s excellent write-up, including the consequences for SEMs
• Techcrunch
  
• Videocast (â€?featuringâ€? some very tedious user stories spouting undying Google love - I switched off. Also note the Microsoft-y colors used beneath the Searchology logo….)