Q&A With Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Evangelist & Customer Insight Guru

Nov 20, 2009 at 5:56pm ET by Daniel Waisberg   

Avinash Kaushik is Google’s well-known and widely respected analytics guru. In this wide-ranging interview, he talks about his passion for metrics, why they’re critical for success, and how search marketers can use analytics to take their campaigns to the next level.

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Google’s News Experiments & The Quest To Solve The “Read State” Issue

Nov 20, 2009 at 8:00am ET by Danny Sullivan   

Hey news publishers. Stop acting as if your content only appears printed on dead trees and tap into the dynamics that the web offers. That’s a blunt summary of advice from Josh Cohen of Google News, from a wide-ranging interview with him on Google’s experiments with new ways of delivering news. Cohen, business [...]

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Google Builds Out A National Real Estate Search Engine

Nov 20, 2009 at 12:02am ET by Matt McGee   

While the National Association of REALTORS® is planning to launch its own national property database sometime next year, Google seems to have just stolen the NAR’s thunder. How? By rolling out individual “place pages” for every property that’s listed in Google Maps. Like this one for a home in Seattle:

The real estate listing place pages [...]

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Google Tackles Its “UI Jazz” Problem, Tests Streamlining Search Options Feature

Nov 19, 2009 at 2:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Sometime later today, a small number of Google users will see a new look to Google’s Search Options feature. If all goes well, the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year. And it’s all because Google’s vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer doesn’t like [...]

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Google Removes Offensive Obama Image; Was It Justified?

Nov 19, 2009 at 1:19pm ET by Matt McGee   

Saying the host site was serving malware to users, Google has removed a controversial photo of First Lady Michelle Obama from Google Image Search. The site itself, however, remains listed in Google web search results without any visible malware warning. Welcome to the murky world of free speech, politics, and Google. It began last week, when Search [...]

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Liveblogging The Google Chrome OS Press Conference

Nov 19, 2009 at 12:52pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Something’s up with Google’s Chrome operating system. Don’t know what, but we’ll all know soon as a press conference begins at 10AM Pacific. I’m coming at your live from the Googleplex. Buckle up, and we’ll see what’s happening. You can also watch from home. Webcast info is here. There will also be related coverage developing at [...]

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Google AdSense Adds Gold Stars To Ads

Nov 18, 2009 at 6:07pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

This morning, I reported on and noticed yellow stars on Google AdSense ads — these ads were named “featured ads.” I honestly didn’t believe it. I thought maybe this was some type of AdSense hack that placed gold stars on the ads. I just received confirmation from a Google representative that these ads [...]

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10 Years Ago: The First Search Marketing Conference, A Retrospective

Nov 18, 2009 at 8:30am ET by Danny Sullivan   

Ten years ago today, I had the privilege of organizing the first ever search marketing conference. On this anniversary, a look back at how things were then and have they’ve changed in a decade. In 1999, search marketing itself was about five years old. People had been doing search engine optimization to [...]

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Google Image Swirl: A New Way To Browse For Similar Images

Nov 17, 2009 at 2:00pm ET by Chris Sherman   

The newest addition to Google Labs is a mashup of Google Images, Google Similar Images and the visual query refinement tool, the Google Wonder Wheel. Called Google Image Swirl, the new tool clusters similar images based on characteristics found in both the text surrounding images, as well as using some of the visual analysis techniques [...]

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Google AdWords To Step Up Account Disabling & Improve Communication Process

Nov 16, 2009 at 7:36pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

Back in October I reported on Google mass banning AdWords advertisers, unfortunately then, the feedback from Google on the reason was very limited. Today, I spoke with Nick Fox, Google’s Business Product Management Director for AdWords, about new changes taking place today and tomorrow related to advertiser bans. Starting tonight, Google will begin permanently banning [...]

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Google Experiments With Paid Inclusion & Does “Promoted” Meet FTC Guidelines?

Nov 16, 2009 at 1:35pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Just when you thought paid inclusion was finally dead with holdout Yahoo getting out of the space, it’s come back from the most unlikeliest of sources: Google. Below, a look at the experiment plus reexamining the FTC’s guidelines about disclosing paid ads. Does saying “Promoted Videos” on YouTube rather than “Sponsored Videos” meet these? For those [...]

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Google Fast Flip About To Jump Into Google News?

Nov 16, 2009 at 7:42am ET by Greg Sterling   

Many publishers have complained repeatedly that Google and Google News (not the leading online news site) reduces their content to “commodity” status or otherwise adversely impacts their brands. Google’s Fast Flip is a response to this in part. It offers a more “branded” and visual way to consume news and magazine content from major publishers. We [...]

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Josh Cohen Of Google News On Paywalls, Partnerships & Working With Publishers

Nov 15, 2009 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan   

Want to do a paywall with no “first click free?” That’s fine with Google, says business product manager Josh Cohen. Want to do micropayments? Google will be “flexible” in considering support of new business models like this. But if you charge, expect less traffic, and also expect that your competitors will be [...]

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Revised Google Book Settlement Filed & Live Blogging The Press Call

Nov 14, 2009 at 12:13am ET by Danny Sullivan   

As expected, a revised Google Book Settlement has been filed today — about as late as possible. The agreement narrows the scope to the US, UK, Canada and Australia. It alters how revenue generated by “unclaimed works” will be handled. It formally grants retailers who license out-of-print books covered by the settlement — including Google [...]

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Site Speed, Google’s Next Ranking Factor

Nov 13, 2009 at 2:01pm ET by Barry Schwartz   

At PubCon, Matt Cutts from Google said there is strong lobbying in Google to introduce a new ranking factor into the algorithm. The new ranking factor has to do with how fast a site or page loads. Matt described this as one of his ‘what to expect in 2010′ bullet points in his [...]

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Now Google Really Is A Phone Company, Confirms Gizmo5 Acquisition

Nov 12, 2009 at 6:38pm ET by Greg Sterling   

You saw the rumors earlier in the week and we reached out to Google for confirmation of the reported Gizmo5 acquisition. But at the time they didn’t say anything. In fact they said, “We’re always talking to various companies about various things, but we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.” It’s no longer speculation because [...]

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Would Someone Please Explain To News Corp How Google Works?

Nov 12, 2009 at 2:36pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Yet another News Corporation executive is talking about Google, and yet again, I feel like they have no concept about how Google interacts with their web pages. Which is frightening, since they’re being very vocal about how they’re supposedly wronged by Google. Please, someone, give them a search marketing 101 course. In the latest volley, News [...]

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“TV Guide For The Internet” Clicker Comes Out Of Beta

Nov 12, 2009 at 2:24pm ET by Greg Sterling   

The label, “TV Guide for the internet,” doesn’t fully capture the intent or the extent of Clicker. We first wrote about the site when it appeared at the TechCrunch50 event. It was then in a closed beta. However today, a mere 58 days later, the site launches to the public with a number of new [...]

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Bing Launches Wolfram Alpha Collaboration & Several New Search Features

Nov 11, 2009 at 2:29pm ET by Matt McGee   

There’s a lot of news today coming out of Bing headquarters, perhaps most notably that the long-rumored partnership with Wolfram Alpha is finally coming to fruition. Bing’s announcement today explains that the collaboration will cover two specific areas: nutritional information and mathematics. Nutritional Data With help from Wolfram Alpha, Bing says it can now help users make smarter [...]

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Track Your Friends (And Yourself) With Google Latitude Location History, Alerts

Nov 11, 2009 at 10:26am ET by Greg Sterling   

Seeking to make Latitude, Google’s location-aware friend finder, more engaging and useful the company has added location history and alerts to the service. Location Alerts, which require Location History to be enabled, tell you when friends are in the area. The system is smart enough to recognize routine places like home and work so it [...]

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