Eric Goldman commented on a case between one advertiser using another advertiser's trademark in Google AdWords. The court has made a decision (PDF), ruling for the plaintiff, Storus, who sued Aroa for using their trademark in the AdWords title text. Eric Goldman said this is one of the first times we have seen the plaintiff win in a case between advertisers over trademarks in search ads. Storus has a trademark on the phrase "smart money clips." Aroa, Storus's competitor, used "Smart Money Clips" in the title of their Google AdWords ad, argued that the word "smart" was a laudatory phrase. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: Trademarks

On Friday, Google announced they launched demographic bidding to every advertiser in the AdWords program. In short, demographic bidding allows advertisers to show their ads to specific age groups and genders. They did a beta launch of this earlier this year, where they dropped using comScore data for their own. The problem is, I, as an AdWords advertiser, cannot trigger the "modify bids" for the "demographics" section under the "advanced options" of the "edit campaign" screen. Yes, I tried multiple campaigns and followed the step by step instructions exactly. I am, however, still able to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

The Google News Blog announced that they have made two changes to the commenting feature, in order to make it more visible to their users. Google added a link to the home page of Google News that says "Comments by People in the News." The link takes you to a page with articles that have comments by those mentioned in the article. It is basically a way to give more visibility to the Comments by People feature of Google News. In fact, many blogs do this already by linking or highlighting user comments, in order to promote other users to provide their feedback. The second addition is to mak [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: News

Urban blight is easy to recognize: seedy liquor stores and payday lenders on alternating corners, trash-strewn lots and front yards, graffitti-covered buildings, crumbling sidewalks, broken glass, and billboards everywhere you look. Websites afflicted with virtual blight are just as easy to spot: banners promising hot sexy singles and cheating spouses, pornography and Viagra, payday loans and OEM prices on Adobe's Creative Suite 3, all bombarding us with offers that are ethically suspect and often illegal. The devastation of urban blight is well documented. Residents flee, businesses move o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: General

Spotted over the weekend by Garrett Rogers, Google has quietly introduced a new, experimental mobile interface called "LCB" that emphasizes browsing instead of search. Something of a radical approach for Google, which is synonymous with search, the site allows users to get to results in top "local search" categories such as restaurants, travel, transportation, retail, entertainment, and sports without having to enter a query. Most results are two clicks down. Mysteriously, the Googleplex is one of the top-level categories, which suggests this was designed, at least initially, for inter [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile

I've been writing about Mapspam appearing in both Google and Yahoo search results for some time now. Mapspam is where black hat SEOs spam local search and map listings, and like all black hat techniques, it seems to get more sophisticated as the search engines find ways to combat the spammers' techniques. There's a new species of mapspam that's particularly obnoxious: affiliate mapspam, first reported at the eClick Performance Blog. With the search engines' new open policies allowing even non-owners of businesses to edit local business listings, unscrupulous affiliates take advantage of a loo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Spamming | Yahoo: Maps & Local

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Search Biz: Probing Wikipedia's Finances, Facebook Toast? & Google Denies Evading Chinese Taxes It's well known that Wikipedia is maintained by a legion of volunteers throughout the world. Structured as a non-profit, the site features no advertising, despite being the #7 most visited destination on the web, and a property that most advertisers would kill to get exposure on. Which begs the... Search In Pictures: Snoop Dogg, St. Patrick's Day & Danny Exp [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

It's well known that Wikipedia is maintained by a legion of volunteers throughout the world. Structured as a non-profit, the site features no advertising, despite being the #7 most visited destination on the web, and a property that most advertisers would kill to get exposure on. Which begs the question: how does a non-profit with that much traffic get the funding to pay for servers, bandwidth, and all of the other expenses associated with running a world-class web site? Wikipedia Questions Paths to More Money from the Sydney Morning Herald offers a fascinating inside glimpse into Wikipedi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Search Biz

In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Yahoo's office dresses up for St. Patrick's Day: Snoop Dogg at Yahoo: Jeremy Zawodny got a new and more fitting business card (don't call him): Um, Danny, what are you doing? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search In Pictures

LinkedIn, with help from BusinessWeek's CapitalIQ, has added a company directory and related factual information to its business network. It's not easy to get to the company directory, which is only accessible to LinkedIn users at the moment. One can't simply go to the LinkedIn search box and type a company name. You navigate to the company directory via individual employee profiles, as explained on the LinkedIn blog. Once there, however, you can search for companies: The company profile you see is personalized to your network and contact list to a high degree. It shows you general compan [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Social Search Engines

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable about how I spotted a WebmasterWorld thread that has three members noticing Google Suggest like features on Google.com. Basically, when these users go to Google.com and begin typing in a query, Google begins to offer search suggestions. Google has implemented this feature as a default on other non-U.S. based search engine home pages but never as the default at Google.com. Both Yahoo and Ask.com offer search suggestions as you type, Yahoo's feature is known as Search Assist. It would not surprise me to hear that Google is testing this on some user [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search | Search Features: Query Refinement

The Google Analytics Benchmarking feature is now live for those users who have chosen to opt in to the program. You can access the data by visiting a site profile and clicking on "Visitors" and then on "Benchmarking (Beta)." Google said that the current list of "verticals and the quality of the data will likely grow as more and more customers enable this feature." The reports available within the benchmarking feature includes visits, pageviews, pages/visits, bounce rates, average time on site, and new visits. Here are some screen captures of benchmarking data from my personal blog: T [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics

The US 700MHz auction is now over; the winners were announced yesterday. The spectrum is becoming available as television broadcasters make the mandated switch to digital signals in early 2009. The big winners (no surprises here) were US carriers Verizon and AT&T. Verizon bid more than $9 billion and won the coveted "C block," as well as chunks of the A and B blocks. AT&T, which before the auction had spent $2.5 billion for 700MHz spectrum owned by Aloha Partners, spent $6.6 billion to buy B spectrum block. Google bid but got none of the spectrum, yet the company still got what it wanted. I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile

In this week’s column on Human Hardware, we look at the differences between the two basic models of humans: men and women. As a species, the vast majority of our history has been spent not really thinking about the differences between men and women. The distinctions seemed obvious, and while survival was the main objective, each sex just did what seemed most needed to get through the day. For women, this involved having children and making sure they grew up to have their own children, usually through picking a supportive and providing male. For men, it meant feeding the family and having [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Search & Usability

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SES NY Day Four Coverage RecapSearch Engine Strategies day four, the last day, is now officially over. The live bloggers should have put down their 'pens' by now, so I thought I share the final day's live blogger sessions. Before doing so, I wanted to personally thank all the live bloggers from aimClear Blog, Alt... Search Biz: New York Privacy Law May Set National Precedent; AOL Worth Half Of Yahoo? & Surprise, Google Still #1 A privacy law taking sha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Search Engine Strategies day four, the last day, is now officially over. The live bloggers should have put down their 'pens' by now, so I thought I share the final day's live blogger sessions. Before doing so, I wanted to personally thank all the live bloggers from aimClear Blog, Alt Search Engines, Andrew R H Girdwood, Bruce Clay Blog, Online Marketing Blog, Search Engine Journal Search Engine Roundtable, Search Marketing Gurus, and Search Marketing Standard. I cannot name each specific blogger, but the industry thanks you! Also, a huge thank you to Internet Marketers of New York for hol [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Conferences

A privacy law taking shape in the New York legislature will make it a crime for internet companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent. And because of the generally boundary-free nature of the internet, it would effectively set a national precedent for companies collecting data about internet use. The New York Times says that if the law is passed, computer users could request that companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, which routinely keep track of searches and surfing conducted on their own properties, not follow them around. "A la [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: Privacy | Search Biz

Search has historically been seen as a direct response vehicle and the notion that search is a branding medium has traditionally been met with considerable skepticism by search marketers, albeit somewhat less recently. In an effort to be provocative in moderating the "branding and search" panel at SMX West last month, I said, "Search is much more a branding medium than anything else." When I asked how many people agreed in the audience, only a few hands went up. James Lamberti of comScore then presented evidence to argue that search was in fact a powerful branding medium because of its reach, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Other Ads | Google: Universal Search | Google: YouTube & Video | Yahoo: Search Ads | Yahoo: Video

Last night I heard a commercial for Honda, where it told the audience to go to Yahoo and search for "shop honda." I, being an obedient TV viewer, did as instructed and searched for shop honda and saw this ad: The ad is labeled "Partner Results" and seems to be one of those special partner relationships Yahoo has with some companies. Remember a while back we reported about Yahoo Shortcuts For Sale? A search for 'special k' on Yahoo returned a listing that looked like this: We were a bit upset that the ad wasn't fully labeled as so. Yahoo told us it wasn't necessarily an ad, but a p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Yahoo: Search Ads

Stephen Espinosa notes that you can now add videos to your Google Local Business Center profile. Beforehand, to get a video to show up in your profile, you had to somewhat get lucky. Now, you can add them manually. This is a great way to add customer video testimonials, product demos, commercials, and more to your Google Maps listing. Here is a walk through on how to add videos to your Google Local Business profile. Step 1: Go and edit your current verified Google Local Business Center profile. Step 2: Go to the "photos" tab: Step 3: Scroll to the bottom of the form and look for the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local