Beyond the iPhone one could convincingly argue that the best thing to happen to mobile advertising in the past year was Google’s announced acquisition of AdMob. It got everyone’s attention — especially the $750 million (stock) price tag. It also single-handedly boosted the profile of all of AdMob’s competitors. As an almost direct response Apple, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research It’s day two of SMX West 2010 in a rainy Santa Clara, California, and we’ll be liveblogging today’s keynote […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Short Vs. Long Tail: Which Search Queries Perform Best? The focus on the utility (or lack thereof) of long tail keywords in paid search campaigns seems to ebb and flow, but […]
Google scheduled a privacy discussion for reporters and bloggers at its San Francisco offices a couple of weeks ago. The timing turned out to be unexpectedly ironic. The idea was to “walk through a short presentation about [Google’s] guiding principles for privacy, how we use data and some of our comprehensive privacy efforts over the […]
Postscript, February 17: The CBC article cited below has reworded its article and now says the Canadian government is “reviewing” rather than “investigating” Buzz. A semantic distinction, perhaps, but there’s apparently no formal government investigation happening in Canada at the moment, so we’ve updated our headline, too. We’ve also received a statement from Google on […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Is Facebook Becoming More Important Than Google? That intentionally “inflammatory” headline is inspired by an article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, “Facebook directs more online users than Google.” […]
Google has a new program that allows local businesses to get paid listings that appear within what’s known as the 7-pack of local listings. But do those listings violate the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines about proper disclosure of paid search ads? Probably not, but they do seem confusing. The New York Times had a good […]
This article is part of a series, a review of the 2000 decade and search developments. Below, major events from the year 2002 in consumer search. For the complete series, see the introduction, The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009. Google Powers AOL Search The deal for Google to provide search results for […]
This article is part of a series, a review of the 2000 decade and search developments. Below, major events from the year 2000 in consumer search. For the complete series, see the introduction, The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009. Google Launches AdWords To me, the big story of 2000 was Google’s launch […]
VigLink is a new service with venture capital backing from Google that aims to make it easy for publishers to earn through affiliate programs. It promises to turn any outbound link on a web site into an affiliate link after the installation of a small bit of JavaScript code. VigLink is in the news today […]
The iPhone was introduced on June 29, 2007 and that was effectively the beginning of the mobile internet era. With the iPhone also came the acceleration of mobile search for Google, the default engine for the iconic Apple device. This year mobile became a cornerstone of Google’s strategy with a string of announcements, product tweaks […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Logo The Worst Identity of 2009, According To Brand New Under Consideration’s Brand New devision posted their best and worst identities of 2009. Guess who made the top of the […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Paying Luggage Fees At Two Bay Area Airports Peace on earth, good will toward holiday travelers. That seems to be Yahoo’s modus operandi today: The company is paying the baggage […]
The 30-day window for the FTC’s review of Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob is now up and the regulatory agency has decided it’s going to take a closer look at the impact of the deal (“second request”) on the nascent but rapidly evolving mobile advertising sector. This means that the FTC will be gathering […]
Google is fighting back against the get-rich-quick and work-from-home scams that use its name. The company says it’s suing to stop what it calls “a widespread Internet advertising scam” that often goes under names like “Google Cash,” “Google Money Kit,” “Google Profits,” and more. Google has made available the text of its lawsuit (PDF) against […]
Newspaper reader Eric Schmidt, who happens to be Google’s CEO, has spoken frequently about his reverence for news journalism and the important role it plays in society. He and his organization have worked with and reached out to publishers to find ways to promote and expose their content online. Yet despite these overtures many newspaper […]
The world of paid search has evolved from “all you need is five minutes and a credit card” to a complex ecosystem with lots of moving parts that and obstacles that can cause serious damage for the unwary. Here’s a look at some of the best paid search books published in the past year. A […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: A Roundup Of 2009’s Best SEO Books Time was when someone asked me to recommend a good book on search marketing, there were only a few available—Search Engine Visibility, by Shari […]
I’m at the FTC’s “Journalism & Internet Age” Workshop in Washington DC today, where we’re expecting addresses from Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington, along with Josh Cohen of Google News and a variety of panels. I’ll be on one of those panels later today. I’m going to do a big live blog of things I […]
In the battle between search engines and some mainstream news publishers, ACAP has been lurking for several years. ACAP — the Automated Content Access Protocol — has constantly been positioned by some news executives as a cornerstone to reestablishing the control they feel has been lost over their content. However, the reality is that publishers […]
According to AllThingsD the MicroHoo search deal is nearing completion and “definitive agreement” status. Speculation that the deal was in trouble started happening when the two companies failed to meet their self-imposed October 27 deadline to finalize the complex agreement. However it appears the circumstances were just as reported in the parties’ 8-K filing with […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Experiments With Paid Inclusion & Does “Promoted” Meet FTC Guidelines? Just when you thought paid inclusion was finally dead with holdout Yahoo getting out of the space, it’s come back […]
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 […]
Too much time is often spent about the new features the various major search engines roll out or the latest deals they cut. Here at Search Engine Land, we can be as guilty of that as anyone. To correct it, I’ll be spending more and more time highlighting poor quality search results that I encounter, […]
Arthur Levinson, a member of Google’s board of directors since 2004, has resigned from that position effectively immediately. Google’s announcement doesn’t give a reason for Levinson’s departure, but he’s also been on Apple’s board of directors since 2000. The growing competition between Google and Apple led Google CEO Eric Schmidt to leave Apple’s board this […]
Google cofounder Sergey Brin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke today to a small gathering of reporters at Google’s New York office. Below, a live blog of the briefing. Note that I’ve tidied this up a bit since the briefing happened at 11am Eastern time. You’ll still find plenty of typos. I may try to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SMX East 2009 Day One Live Blogging Day one of the SMX East 2009 show is just about done. Here is some of the live blogging coverage from the day. If […]
Get ready marketers: a credible new report with sweeping implications from the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley is likely to be the nail in the coffin of self regulation of online advertising. Specifically I’m talking about behavioral targeting, which largely concerns online display advertising but does marginally touch search at Yahoo and Google. The […]
There is a much longer post to be written on Google’s privacy policies and its history of combatting or complying with government requests for information and those of third parties using the courts to get access to user data. But I’ll take two recent items to illustrate the complexity and potential contradictions here. Google was […]
May it please the Italian court. Google does not ban newspapers that opt-out of Google News from being in Google at all, as a new complaint from Italian publishers alleges. It’s not actually a court that’s going to ponder this allegation. It’s Italy’s AGCM, which appears to be akin the the US Federal Trade Commission, […]
Unfortunately, affiliates do not always abide by the rules and requirements of your program. For example, you may specifically prohibit keyword sponsorship of your best terms or your brand terms. You may look to keep your affiliates from co-promoting you alongside of your competitor(s) on the same landing page, you may have restrictions on paid […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Maximize The Impact Of Your Top Performing Keywords Behavior is unique for these high volume/value keywords and as a result, steps need to be taken to make these terms […]
Ars Technica posted earlier that Google is to unveil its long rumored computer operating system, and now Google confirms this is true in a blog post: Introducing the Google Chrome OS. The company says that the OS will be released later this year (likely in the fall, I’m told) to developers, designed primarily for netbooks […]
Earlier this month, I covered various ways people are spamming Twitter in my Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article. Since then, I’ve been diligently reporting some of the more annoying spam I see. Despite this, none of the reported accounts have been closed. So, it’s time for a public spam report — and some education […]
And so real-time search begets real-time spam. We knew this would happen, but it’s annoying and becoming a growing problem. Question is, will Twitter do anything about it, beginning with removing its “Trends” feature?I got an up close & personal look at how bad Twitter “trend spam” has become when this week, our SMX Advanced […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google AdWords Opens Up Trademarked Bidding To Most Countries BrandVerity tipped me off to news that Google has modified their AdWords trademark policy to allows bidding on trademarked terms in 190 […]
Last year Google was all but forced to back out of its proposed paid-search deal with Yahoo because of a reportedly impending Justice Department anti-trust action against it. Much more recently — in fact, just last week — Google’s Book Search settlement came under anti-trust scrutiny from the US Justice Department. Now the Federal Trade […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
AT&T which has publicly advocated on behalf of relatively stringent rules and opt-in requirements around behavioral targeting (BT) appears to have been working with BT firm Audience Science (formerly Revenue Science). Wendy Davis at MediaPost has written two related stories on the issue. Here’s her summary of the apparent contradiction between AT&T’s public position and […]
TechCrunch has a guest article today about internet advertising that sounded interesting until I got to the part about search ads as “misdirection.” At that point, I realized the author apparently knows little about search advertising — and since that’s the bulk of online advertising sold, it put into serious question anything he had to […]