Home Page Title Tag – Hot or Not?

Moderators: David Dalka and either Mike Grehan, Greg Jarboe or Stewart Quealy

The first thing one learns about search engine optimization is about the importance of title tags, especially the home page title tag. Yet when an experienced SEO surfs the web they often must stop and scratch their head at certain home page title tags! It certainly indicates a lack of understanding by senior management teams out there.

In this session everyone is the expert! We will share 30 title tags and URLs in 30 minutes. Everyone gets to tweet their impressions of the title tag for with the Twitter hashtag #sestitle!!! Then we’ll do Q&A and figure out what it all means. The benefits of this session are certain to include venting of pent up frustration, bonding with your fellow search marketers, extreme laughter and far reaching communication of the session to people far and wide not even at the Search Engine Strategies conference! Spread the gospel. Change the world. See you there.

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From: GOOGLE PROMO <winners@googlelotto.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 7:56 PM
Subject: You won £850,000.00 GBP in Google new year promotion
To:

You won £850,000.00 GBP in Google new year promotion. Ticket
number:00869575733664,CGPN:7-

22-71-00-66-
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more info,contact,grahams.benfield11@8u8.com

Comments closed 2/25/2010

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Boscos Local Business Results November 2009 Smudge

Yes, the email is for November, 2009′s local business results for some business named Boscos. A query of Boscos indicates a number of businesses with that name. Due to the size of the views, it appears to be Boscos , the Restaurant for Beer Lovers with locations in Little Rock, Nashville, Memphis and Johnson City, TN.

The following are the Google Local Business Center data elements the email contained (in case the above photo doesn’t render):
Appeared in Google local search results
Users clicked on this listing
Clicks for more info
Clicks for driving directions
Clicks to your website

My first thought was this was potentially some kind of joke by someone at Google due to the subject matter resolving to  beer, which has a long history of pranks in SEO circles. However, a Twitter user, @phillydesign sent a tweet with the following tweet with a link to Tweetpic:

Truly having trouble deciding why I rec’d this Google Local email. Is it spam? Have the googlebots lost it? http://twitpic.com/x0gp2

Thank you Danya! You allowed me to see I wasn’t the only one that received this.  That was a big help. We obviously don’t know the scope of this story yet, but I can say it wasn’t just one random email to me due to this tweet. I contemplated the meaning and potential impact of the event.  Immediately, my mind raced to the Google CEO Eric Schmidt press conference which I attended with Quentin Hardy back at Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006, The full transcript of that press conference is located here

Several things stand out to me about that event, most importantly that Eric didn’t seem like he had fully considered the magnitude of the AOL data breach situation and how to answer it. These are the interactions with reporters that led to Eric’s retraction of his earlier statements:

Q:       People read the article today about AOL [inadvertently revealing search query data for its users] and say, “Oh my God, Google or whatever is going to give my searches away and everything about me is going to be known.” Can what happened at AOL happen at Google, and what do you say to the searchers out there?

Eric:    Well, our number one priority is the trust that our users have and that would be a violation of trust, so the answer is, it won’t happen.

Q:       Hi. I just want to follow-up on the AOL [privacy breach. Did you speak to AOL about this?]

Eric:     I did not contact them on this because I was busy doing these other things. I’ve been deal mode, unfortunately. So the answer is I did not.

Q:       [Follow up question asking his opinion of the eventual outcome of this AOL breach]

Eric:     In many ways, it may be positive because we want people to know things. We don’t want people to wandering around saying everything is secure, everything is protected. So I think that the awareness is positive. The specific is obviously bad. So please don’t get my message wrong here. It’s clearly a bad thing. No one disagrees with that, but I think more awareness is good. From a Google perspective, again, this would not happen. I don’t want to criticize AOL, they’re a good partner of ours, and they should answer the specifics. I don’t know enough of the details.

It is awareness, awareness that people know what goes on online, that is a good thing. The fact that people now understand that credit card fraud – again, please don’t take this out of context. This is important. I don’t want to be quoted as saying “this is a good thing.” It’s not a good thing. Awareness of what can happen, that bad things can happen, is a good thing. I hope that’s clear.

Q:       [Question regarding press criticism or negative reviews of products]

Eric:     Well, again, we get our feedback from our end-users on every search, on every use. So with all due respect to all of us, my opinions, and what you all think – we collectively are not the judge – the user is the judge. So when we bring out a product, or a new service, we look at how end-users respond to it. So the question about AOL, the real answer is, it’s an end-user trust argument. So we will do things that are specific to maintaining or improving end-user trust. And that’s how we’re going to sort all this out. There will always be people who criticize Google and that’s fine. We think the criticism is healthy, we learn from the criticism. It’s all perfectly fine.

Q:       [Regarding the AOL privacy breach …] On one side you said it’s a good thing that people understand that’s potential fraud out there. On the other side, it won’t happen here. Now why won’t it happen at Google?

Eric:     Hang on. Since we’re all on tape, I retract my previous statement because it was obviously confusing and I apologize. “[Privacy breach is] a bad thing. It’s a bad thing.” How am I doing? “It’s a bad thing.”

What  I’ll never forget is his tone when he said that…

This is the latest in a series of controversies regarding Google Local Business Results. If the Google Local Business Results were sent to many people, this could likely be as serious as the AOL data breach.

This all raises alot of fascinating questions with immense magnitude regarding Google’s trust.

1) Why are November, 2009 results being mailed on January 6th, 2010 in the first place? Seems kinda late.

2) Why did I randomly receive Boscos Local Business Listing view report? Why are others apparently receiving random Local Business Center reports that aren’t theirs?

3) What privacy issues does this incident raise?

4) Will Google discontinue the Local Business Results box altogether due to the issues with quality of this data?

5) Has Eric Schmidt broken his commitment which he made on August 6th, 2006 during the above mentioned  press conference when he said “Well, our number one priority is the trust that our users have and that would be a violation of trust, so the answer is, it won’t happen.”?

6) What does the apparent lack of controls that may have caused this incident imply about the integrity of the Adwords platform and Google’s relationship with businesses?

7) Did any companies receive a competitor’s apparent local business center results? If so what are the implications?

8.) What effect, if any, will this have on consumer adoption of the new Google phone Nexus One?

9) This event appears to imply a violation of Google’s code of conduct section I, part C (Privacy and Freedom of Expression). What actions might Google’s board of directors take with management team for allowing this to occur?

If you received one of these emails with apparent data, please leave a comment below with the details. As I learn more, I will update this post…I look forward to hearing people’s reactions to this incident.

Update #1 – Mike Blumenthal has a post on this.

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“It’s clear that latency really does matter to users,” said Mayer, the VP of Search and User Experience at Google and today’s keynote speaker at the O’Reilly Velocity Conference.

Do ya really think so Marissa? Having unnecessary captchas, massive memory leaks in gmail, outbound gmail that gets improperly classified as spam, adding SMS features to Google Voice with no instructions on how to turn them off in the email – that does matter. You’re absolutely right, Marissa! But my question is what are you doing about it?

This message appears on my screen several times a week, nobody at Google (and I’ve let several people know, can get to the root cause to fix it), financial analysts should be modeling the revenue loss. I’m tired of sorry, I’d like to see a permanent fix:

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

If you’re continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser’s online support center.

If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

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Highlights:
Google’s data can now predict home sales and home sales numbers with search numbers.

The data can be correlated with stock prices at this time.

B2B search terms are growing. Conversions are bouncing back in Q2 2009!

Research, online and offline, big company c-suite, SMB and government sectors.

Commentary: First a note about the c-suite portion of the survey, I have concerns about an offline study asking senior executives about actions used for decisions being accurate. Or worse assuming the numbers were generated from search itself when it wasn’t. Executives might answer what they think is the best practice, even if they don’t do it to appear competent. I know of Fortune 500 CEO’s who still have their emails printed, so I have doubts about the number actually being this high. I’d love for this data to be 100% correct more than anyone, I really would, but I have concerns.

First findings form the C-Suite:

- 73% of the C-suite is using the Internet for information verification and vendor selection.

- 92% Internet exceeding, 87% at-work contacts for referrals.

- 64% of C-level executives conduct 6 or more searches per day to locate business information.

Video and podcast content usage is growing in importance.

Small and medium size businesses:

77% of business owners use search to find suppliers.

Half are using blogs and social media sites in some form in their business.

Government:

Searches are way up on stimulus, energy, health care and related issues.

Huge impact of search results, with just an Adwords ad:

28% Brand Association

36% Message Recall

Commentary:  I’d live to see an example with a smaller, lesser known B2B example.

With both a top organic and Adwords listing, incremental increases are significant

53% Engagement

43% Message Recall

63% Brand Association

Commentary: Sam Did not provide data on organic listings alone. I’d love to see if this was higher of lower than the Adwords ad alone.

“Mobile Search Growing Rapidly” Start testing…(audience did not react much)

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Speakers:
Dr. Larry Cornett, VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Chris Blakely, Director, Client Services, comScore, Inc.
Todd Schwartz, Group Product Manager, Live Search, Microsoft Corporation
Jack Menzel, Senior Product Manager, Google

This is a live session blog from Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2008, please excuse any typos and/or fragments. Thank you!

Mike Grehan:

You need to think differently.

Vertical creep is pushing organic results down the page.

Eye Tracking shows that people are not scrolling the way that they used to.

This creates a problem, you need to be at the top of the listings.

Local business center creates opportunities for local businesses.

New paid search results like paid results.

Chris Blakely – comScore:

Leverage comScore search data shows traction of universal search efforts.

Feature sets of search expanding. 48% of searchers are seeing different types of blended search results from their queries.

Lower clicks on sponsored links with the exception of ecommerce and travel.

Organic search strategies need to evolve from that standpoint.

Jack Menzel – Google Product Manager Universal Search:

Universal search has the following elements:
Comprehensiveness – Images, Maps, News, Products, Video, Books and more
Relevance – Run every query against every index, decide what to show only after we collect all of the data
Presentation – Summarize the content in the most efficient way possible.

Recently, there have been made into search results pages.

Better Ranking – Universal search is just a subset of ranking.

What’s next?
Keep improving relevance
Help users explore
Improved results summary

What does this mean for web masters?
- Publish the best and high quality content that you have.
- Take advantage of prominent new verticals

Todd Schwartz – Group Product Manager – Microsoft Live Search:

Evolution of Search:
Search – Directories, Keyword Trends, Rich Semantics, User Experience
Market – Immature, Closed Trends, Open Item????
Consumer – Search, Keyword Trends, Actions

Deliver, Simplify, Implement

Showed Samsung lcd tv model – showed elements of a shopping review, rating and engine – an interesting change

Showed weather and Barack Obama examples

More engagement
Better reach
Higher ROI
Update Product and Business Info
webmaster.live.com

Larry Cornett – Yahoo! Search:

Transformed from a static experience to a complete information in one search

Showed several Blended examples using Yahoo! Search:
Kyle Orton – Chicago Bears fantasy sports
Movies – including times and local listings
Beyonce – music videos on the search page
Sushi in San Jose
Barack Obama
Puppy

Richer, more relevant links…

Searchmonkey – publishers collaborate, meaning behind the link, richer experience, relevant and personal, etc.

Yelp is a Searchmonkey partner. (How does this affect Yahoo! Local?)

The infobar – Steve Jobs example

Share structured data: Publishers > Searchmonkey > Tell your users

Why is blended search important?
Unmatched opportunities and control for publishers
Key step for building a smarter search engine with structured data
gallery.search.yahoo.com

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So this could mean one of a few things are the culprit here…

1. Barack Obama Google Link Bomb – While it doesn’t rank #1, the fact that there is an indent entry after the Barack Obama entry is an indication that Google is seeing that page as important or having a link spike. Recently, Barack Obama had also recently been ranking highly for the term “Linkedin” so it appears that the Obama campaign is trying to utilize search engine optimization techniques on social media sites to compete with John McCain and Sarah Palin.

2. The www.new.facebook.com pages when mixed with old Facebook pages is confusing the Googlebot? - It wouldn’t be out of the question. It could be that it looks like a regular domain and a subdomain.

3. Other parts of Facebook are being opened up to search and these pages are causing issues somehow – several sites reported this. Facebook’s continuing inconsistently about what is public and not public to search is frustrating and is inviting an unnecessary future firestorm. They should really be more clear and communicative, have they forgot the previous lessons of the past?

4. None of the above – What is your theory?

While I’m at it – Dear Facebook – you have not solved the problem I submitted in August to your help desk. After waiting a week you sent me a message which did not even address the issue or indicate that a human has read it. I’d appreciate professional resolution of this request.

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Jon Kaplan’s talk starts here: Youtube was founded at a dinner party in 2005. There was no easy way to share video files.

Online video viewing in the mainstream

Americans stream of 10 billion online views monthly…

Explosion of Content = connection of people + democratization of the tools of production + broadband penetration + falling cost of data storage

Sharing is the new viewing – 150M unique users globally

Demographics: 2/3 of YouTube users are over 35, 37% earn above $75,000

800 content partners attended YouTube Videocracy in February

Four ways to think about marketing in 2008
- Target your audience with video profiling
- Integrate your brand into the user experience – on YouTube and Beyond!
- Leverage your offline assets and ones YouTube is creating
- Think about measurement differently

Video Profiling – Building Tools for Effective Targeting – using traditional demographics in the search by audience features…

YouTube’s Creative Standards – 20 million home page views a day

Animated flash overlay is the current YouTube ad format – NO Pre-rolls are shown
Promote Your Video: Video Search capabilities

Integrate Your Brand into the Experience – HP example

It’s all about interesting content: Turbotax

It’s about all about educational content: Vanguardinvestments brand channels

Launched test of video ads in the 1st Quarter of 2008

E*TRADE – pre-seeded SuperBowl commercials – 2,000,000+ views on Youtube.

American Express sponsored fashion week

YouTube Global Gathering

Metrics – the social side of YouTube
- Users can rate videos
- User can comment on videos
- User can add videos to their list of favorites
- User can share videos with friends
- Users can subscribe to their favorite channel

New metrics will accompany this, Google Trends data – admitted that this drives need for Adwords campaigns. Discussed other metrics in terms about how the video was measured and then closed with questions.

Audience question: Should YouTube provide statistics for videos with completed views or the average time of engagement with viewers so that more accurate measures of engagement could be provided?

Answer: That’s a good question. Said several things about exploration of new areas. Did not say yes we’ll add it or no we’ll never do that. It will be interesting to revisit this issue at some point.

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His post gives an all too rare but welcome dose of independent thought – more people need to be educated and make independent choices about Internet advertising. The world does not necessarily revolve around Adsense.

He is after all giving a glimpse the future of Internet advertising. One where the publisher is respected, given a fairer share as a true partner and rewarded with greater relevancy of ads on their site.

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Many strategy consulting organizations with outstanding reputations have alumni relations programs including: McKinsey & Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) (11/2010 link broken), A.T. Kearney, Bain & Company, Katzenbach, ZS Associates, Marakon Associates, L.E.K. Consulting, The Parthenon Group, Oliver Wyman, Kurt Salmon Associates and Monitor.

Some investment banking and institutional money managers have started to follow this trend of starting alumni relations groups that the consulting companies started such as: Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. I’d be delighted if BlackRock joined this elite financial services thought leader club creating alumni networks shortly as I’d love to reconnect with many of my former BlackRock, reconnect with them, form and fund entrepreneurial ventures with them. There is amazing value that can be created for everyone that puts a common social network experience in the center of the conversation.

In all of those companies there is a diversified portfolio of services and business development that can be created from these interactions that is good for the company. In Google’s case, I’m struggling to see what value can immediately be created beyond selling Adwords to alumni’s new companies and facilitating funding or acquiring start up companies via Google’s corporate development department.

One thing is clear, Google is planning for a future that includes more former Googlers who have moved onward!

UPDATE: One word changes ALOT of meaning. I neglected to notice the word university. Apologies.

Ironically this makes this role even more unique. As I’m unaware of any companies that partner directly with either of my university alumni programs in this manner. Makes you wonder if they have plans to offer a service offering to this sector.

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Since he asked for feedback on the article about other potential threats, I’ll say his list is a fine starting point, then I’ll add these:

The first one I’ll call 1b – A privacy breach event at Google (think search history in a court case or something similar) allows another player to gain share – Ask Eraser could easily benefit from such an event.

The other has to do with monetization. If someone were to come up with a superior monetization model that solves existing problems this could cause people to migrate both advertisers and users alike.

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This morning he pointed out that the D auction block is well it’s minimum and will likely be re-auctioned. What is significant about this is that the results of auction 73 can not be shared until all of the blocks are completed. Here is the exact text of what Robert Peck sent out this morning (emphasis added):

GOOG – 700MHz – How D Block Impacts Google…. Auction 73 completed its Round 35 bidding yesterday – results are posted on FCC website. We have previously alerted you to the fact that the PWB regional bids on all 12 regional licenses add up to $4.75B, higher than the $4.71B on the nationwide package which was entered in Round 17. Hence, the original bidder on the nationwide package is Google or another carrier, that bidder no longer has the obligation to purchase the spectrum. Industry advisers think Auction 73 could rap up as soon as the next two weeks.
However, we also want to point out that there are 5 blocks of spectrum in this auction and the 4th one (the D block) is currently set at $472M, below its $1.3B reserve. Many assume that this block will NOT meet the minimum reserve and will need to be put into Auction 76 to be re-auctioned. While this does not DIRECTLY impact Google or other block bidders (those blocks will be locked in at the end of the auction 73), it does INDIRECTLY impact Google in that no Auction 73 results can be disclosed until all 5 block are complete. This means that investors may be significantly delayed in learning who won the C block, as the only timeline deadline statute for the FCC statute in this auction is for all of the spectrum must be over and the money collected by June 30, 2008

Knowing Robert as I do, he probably wishes that they would have put this whole thing on Ebay.

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Rich Skrenta is doing some interesting blogging lately. Be sure to check out his post Pagerank Wrecked the Web.

Bill Slawski, published an extensive Google patent from 2003, entitled Google Patent on Anchor Text and Different Crawling Rates.

Michael Gray wants Matt Cutts to talk.

And finally Shoemoney wants to know why Yahoo! is asking him to check credit card numbers for validity…

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Low marginal cost public relations opportunity or serious about participating in the auction?

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My only add on is the following. Take a minute to read the full history of the holiday – it’s not about a day off and football.

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He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.

Today Adage released an interview with Mr. Diller. In it he adds some sensibility to the Facebook valuation discussions, confirms that the Google sponsored listings deal is for five years and discusses how he’d like to buy AOL. I’d love to pick his brain on the future of Ask in a more detailed interview. It’s clear that he is shaking up a lot of things and it will be interesting to watch this breakup as it progresses for clues as to how the company will be run going forward.

Ad Age: You in the past have had a pretty good grasp on speculation. What do you think of the valuations being thrown around about a site like Facebook?

Mr. Diller: Those are not valuations based on anything fundamental; those are valuations based upon rather enormous hopes and dreams. Not that they won’t necessarily come true, but at this point, that’s what they are in terms of revenue and profits getting to the level that would sustain a very high asset value. … The physics would demand that this becomes more rational at some point, I think maybe sooner rather than later. But again, that’s a prediction based on nothing but hot air, to mix many different metaphors.

Ad Age: I can’t let you go without asking about Ask. Are you happy with how Ask.com is doing?

Mr. Diller: We feel great. We’ve been able to grow queries second only to Google. We’ve increased retention, frequency. All the metrics for Ask are very good. Now we have a new five-year arrangement with Google on the sponsored listings that’s going to be very, very remunerative to us. Ask is going to be able to continue to innovate.

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Since this is happening on multiple platforms now (Yahoo! Mail/Gmail), I have to ask the question, how is the email spam crisis going to resolve itself?

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The article talks about the changing face of the smart phone market and you really get a feel for the history of Mr. Rubin. While the parts about Mr. Rubin’s doorbells and girlfriend dismissal methods are certainly interesting, I found the article to be lacking in one major area – his history of successfully monetizing any of the projects he has worked on in the past.

It is great reading about him as a person though and hope to see people expand on the overlooked area as time goes by.

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1)  Responsible for overseeing all aspects of Google’s new building program in Northern California.

2) Experience in with campus development projects required.

Anyone have ideas where this might be located or have information about the plans?  Do tell.

    Director Real Estate and Workplace Services (HQ/NorCal) – Mountain View

This position is based in Mountain View, CA.

The Director of Real Estate and Workplace Services/HQ Properties, NorCal is responsible for the delivery of all aspects of real estate development, transaction management, project management and workplace services (office management) for all Google offices located in the Northern California. This position will liaise with company leadership to establish an overall strategic facilities plan and execute the plan within the framework of the global real estate plan, budget and service delivery methodology. This position reports directly to the Vice President of Real Estate and Workplace Services.

Responsibilities:

* Responsible for overseeing all aspects of Google’s new building program in Northern California.
* Responsible for all aspects of transaction management within the region; site selection and lease negotiation.
* Responsible for all design, tenant build outs, and facility management within the region.
* Responsible for the delivery of all workplace services within the region including building operations, reception and mail services and office management.
* Develop detailed operating budgets for each office within corporate performance metrics and manage each line of service within established budgets.
* Define goals and objectives for outsourced service providers and manage their performance against defined goals.
* Develop, implement and monitor regional strategic facility goals against corporate metrics established by the Vice President of Real Estate and Workplace Services.
* Educate and set reasonable expectations for company leadership, their management teams and all Googlers about the real estate process, schedule and costs.
* Develop and maintain strong alliances and effective communication channels at all levels within the region.
* Ensure continual process improvement of Real Estate and Workplace Services’ delivery model.
* Perform financial analysis of projects and prepare recommendations the management team.
* Generate real estate reports, executive presentations and business cases.
* Ensure regional service quality and client satisfaction.

Requirements:

* Bachelors’ degree from a mid to top tier school in related field (i.e. business, engineering etc.), MBA preferred.
* 10+ years corporate/commercial real estate.
* Experience in with campus development projects required.
* Experience in a high-tech, fast paced environment preferred.
* Strong interpersonal, communication and presentation skills.
* Innovated, critical thinker.
* Demonstrate the ability to think strategically.
* Demonstrate ability to prioritize multiple and changing initiatives.
* Detail oriented with strong analytical, organizational, interpersonal and negotiation skills.
* Strong customer service skills.

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I didn’t get around to posting this last week, these are some high points of Charles’ all too short talk:

Mobile data adoption is growing, but skews young. Many people still have not been exposed to mobile ads.

They don’t trust SMS ads. They also don’t want to pay for something in lieu of advertising. In the current state this creates contradictions.

The most interesting thing he said in his talk was when he showed Google mobile search and then stated, “I think Google imitated Yahoo! in this regard”.

Offline visual codes are powerful mechanisms for simplifying mobile call-to-action. (I’d expand this to state that it will become powerful for creating an effective multi-channel strategy as many people are too focused on mobile alone.)

Mobile should eventually be abbreviated, transactional, measurable and integrated with physical world.

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Marketing Speakers:
Alex Porter, Vice President, Location3 Media
Alan Beiagi, Director and GM, Mapquest
Michael T. Jones, Ciheif Technologist, Googl eEarth, Maps and Local

Alex Porter, Vice President, Location3 Media

Offshore Data Entry >>>Axciom, Infousa, Amacai >>>Search Engines Directories, IYPS, etc

How to incorporate into marketing? Directly submit to each engine for a free basic listing it results in an enhanced map listing.

ROI measurement:
Utilize call tracking
Employ trackable URL and coupons

Alan Beiagi, Director and GM, Mapquest

The next wave of Internet user growth will come from mobile and offline usage.

Creating experiences – friend is in Denver, you decide to get a ticket to tonight’s playoff tiebreaker. Only 15% of 233M cell owners use data services. 85% of the market to go!

Search for your destination, get directions, find parking, watch video of player interview, etc.

Is this reality? All of this is already possible but you have to reach 30 different web sites. Mapquest.

Michael Jones, Google

Showed maps, API and other ideas, visit Google Maps Mania – talk about an example he asked to stay in the circle.

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What and Why? Ask yourself during the conference – “Is this the right problem to solve?”

Understanding the Competition
Discreet (Privacy)
Courteous (Did you mean?)
Empathetic
Multi-lingual (Translation)
Quick Spirited (Transactional)

Concierges must know their
Hotel (Hyper Local)
City (Local)
Country (National to Global)
Colleagues (Universal Search)

In a world where the present is everything, concierges must “get a feel” for clients and their needs without fail and in a very short lapse of time.

I *REALLY* liked Michael’s concierge analogy because it showed the ideal future state with optimal characteristics.

Users might type a question…
Web page of local results

Users might ask a question
Sequence of spoken local results

Expanding definition of Local Data
Traditional –
YP business listings
Public resources
City and restaurant guides
Map-related data

Emerging Local data
User reviews
Business self listings
Neighborhood definitions
Local weather forecast
Local traffic status

Books mentioning Denver, Colorado

This 1863 GPO book sentence is a local search result

Google Geo Mission

“To geographically organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Showed some Google Earth then said – context at a planetary scale…and beyond interplanetary and galactic.

Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) Google Earth Fatal Crashes – showed maps.

Election results in France

How do you connect the last mile?
Web browser > map

Pages intersect with Map/Globe
KML Geosearch attribution - attribution is not linking!!!!

Users are the Local Experts.

SMXLOMO

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You may view the full agenda and you may still register for the event.

I arrive at Noon on Sunday (where is the Sunday pre-conference meetup – The Hyatt?) and hope to meet with as many attendees as possible before and during the event as I look forward to learning about people and seeing the demos in this soon to be revolutionary space.

See you in Denver! I’ll also have room for one or two on the way back to the airport as I’m renting a car while there.

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What wasn’t announced fully was if the program is different in any way than traditional Adsense. It would also be interesting to understand how Google is exactly defining mobile websites.

As people start to use it, I’m sure these issues will become transparent.

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Sam Brownback, U.S. Senator from Kansas
Rudy Giuliani, Former Mayor of New York City
Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas
Duncan Hunter, U.S. Representative from California
Alan Keyes, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona
Ron Paul, U.S. Representative from Texas
Mitt Romney, Former Governor of Massachusetts
Tom Tancredo, U.S. Representative from Colorado
Fred Thompson, Former U.S. Senator from Tennessee

UPDATE: Due to off topic comments not related to the Youtube process, the comments have been closed on this thread.

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There are good summaries of his speech on blogs and feeds lurking about. Important stuff! Especially now in the universal search era. Speaking of blog and feeds, I recently changed over to the Feedburner Mybrand product and my new feed is http://feeds.daviddalka.com/DavidDalka , please update your feed readers! Thanks.

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While I applaud the removal of this duplicate content highly (I hope they do this in search results as well – Matt Cutts can you tell me?), all one has to do is Google – AP sucks – to see that there are many people that would likely highly disagree with making the AP stories more prominent. Furthermore, AP stories lack transparency, ie contact information for a real reporter. I would suggest and hope that Google would create a feedback mechanism to the reporter as some sensitive topics are better handled personally rather than in topics. Remember the Duke Lacrosse incident? The AP spread inaccuracy during that incident that led to innocent people having their lives damaged by being prosecuted in the national media quoting questionable people not even closely related to the case. (Ironically none of those AP stories can be found easily on Google today when I searched.)

I’ve got a few points I’d like to make here:

1. Danny Sullivan wrote an excellent post that you should read on this that properly linked to the source Google blog (Not to Blogger team: Danny’s link isn’t showing on the blogs that linked to this feature).

2A. The New York Times inappropriately did not link to the source Google News blog when they wrote a short, non-value adding fluff piece the next day. A reader of that publication was deprived of their ability to click through to that Google News post as were other bloggers. All mainstream news sources and blogs should link to original news sources whenever possible so that people can see the original detailed source content. I’d like to call on journalism schools, universities and standards bodies to join together to make this the standard protocol a reality in the future.

2B. To show the dysfunction that occurs when news media or blogs do not link directly to a source blog I’ll point to Jeff Jarvis’ post on the subject. I appreciate Jeff as an elder statesman in the blogosphere, however when he read the New York Times fluff piece (you can read the link in Jeff’s post) he was deprived of seeing the original Google blog post. This caused two unfortunate things to occur 1) Jeff likely did not read the Google Blog post because there was not link to the source and 2) Jeff unknowingly committed an act that adversely affected Google’s search algorithm by linking to the New York Times story, I’m almost certain Jeff would linked to the Google News Blog or other in depth commentary if he were aware of it, in fact I’d encourage him to update his post to add a link to the actual source.

3. In this case the source story is a blog, which is an increasingly common occurence. As I’ve stated many times before, I think Google should revamp the increasingly outdated separation of blogs and news sites, if news starts on a blog and is linked to it should be the relevant source document in Google News…

4. The ultimate irony in all of this is the Google News original source blog entry that started all of this Original Stories from the Source – is not in Google News itself! Google, until you incorporate blogs fully into Google News and allow users the option to see all news and blog sources together, you likely will not have this original source thing nailed down quite right and I highly encourage you to do so.

I look forward to thoughtful conversation and hopefully progress towards adoption of the concepts above in the coming weeks. Thanks for joining this important conversation.

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – August 28, 2007 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)
announced today that George Reyes has informed the company of his
intention to retire as Chief Financial Officer. Reyes indicated that
he will remain to assist in the search for a new CFO and to assure an
orderly transition, which Google expects will occur by the end of the
year.

“I’ve known and admired George since our days together at Sun,” said
Google Chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt. “As Google’s CFO, George
successfully navigated our innovative IPO, the regulatory demands of
Sarbanes-Oxley, and the management challenges of scaling a global
finance organization. Though we fully appreciate his decision to step
back from active management, we’ll miss his thoughtfulness, good humor
and wisdom.”

“Working at Google these past 5 and a half years has been an
extraordinary ride,” said George Reyes. “I’m honored and flattered to
have been a part of this great management team. I know I’m leaving the
company in good hands with a remarkable team of professionals that
will continue to build on Google’s tremendous achievements.”

“George has been a full partner in Google’s global growth and
development,” added Google co-founder, Larry Page. “He has done an
excellent job in keeping us financially disciplined while protecting
the best of our entrepreneurial culture.”

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To access the live audio webcasts of the presentations, please visit:
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The first involved Google Calendar and a lunch appointment. The lunch appointment stated 2:15PM. What I didn’t know is that this was Chicago time! The lunch was for 12:15 San Jose time. Unfortunately, none of the communications from Google Calendar mentioned the time zone conversion that had occurred.

Later that same day, I was supposed to connect with another Google employee via cell phone at the Google Dance. I dialed the number provided and the person’s spouse answered. The confused spouse stated that their significant other was at the Google Dance and that they coudln’t understand how I had dialed this number. Well that made two of us! I later learned that this person was experimenting with Grand Central and that both numbers were set to ring and that their cell phone could not be heard at the dance.

The people involved and myself have already shared a good laugh about all of this so there is no need for Adam Lasnik or Matt Cutts to send any notes of apology or anything like that!

I’ve recently become fascinated by the way that technology that is meant to improve our communication often fragments communication instead! This is something to keep top of mind as we enter the mobile era and design and execute the mobile search services of the future. How do we reduce communication fragmentation by the usage of technology?

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After yesterday’s speech by Greg Jarboe during the Universal Search session I knew this session would be popular. I had no idea that I could not even get a seat in a really hot room!!! Wow!

Shari Thurow, who just wrote a new book on this subject, and Chris Smith from Netconcepts gave great talks before I escaped for fresh air in the exhibit hall.

Fortunately, other folks that got seats did some great write ups of the session.

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Quite likely the busiest session of the day to the fullest house. One can’t help but notice that if Greg Jarboe had gone to Google and designed Universal Search himself he likely couldn’t have designed it to play into his strength areas in news and pr related issues. The implications and transformation for universal search are still evolving, but they are clearly changing the landscape. One other thing that became clear from this event was that Ask is becoming a serious contender in this marketplace.

Greg Jarboe –

Universal search is the biggest event since “Florida” update. 70% of what I used to know is now obsolete. The patterns are not yet clear in personalization.

News results ranked #4 if you searched for the term iPhone on June 29

In the #8 position, was a Youtube video. We don’t know if it was done on purpose.

July 17, Rupert Murdoch – news with image – brings up a whole new reputation management – be prepared to optimize images.

Early chapters of Henry Potter were leaked, the blog results are on page one of results

Investor relations now is moving to the front page of Countrywide. Few companies have complete control of their brands now on Google.

Unflattering images of Hillary Clinton and that vast right wing conspiracy is building links to unflattering results.

Blogs on Hurricane Dean already on front page. Images will likely come next.

All of the rules have been rewritten – how do I research this? Focus on the upper left links. News seems to be on the top left all the time. Search remains #1 way journalist find information about a company.

Newsknife and Google News Report – be checking this. Your PR people aren’t ready for that yet. If you are not giving a jpg file in a release, start now.

Google News right now doesn’t do video news. Likely to create that.

Social mapping tools can help identify most influential bloggers. In certain categories they show up.

A couple of years ago there was vertical creep session here at SES – I now rank for that term. Not a good thing.

You can’t afford to ignore Universal Search Today

Google is making specialized or vertical content more visible through Universal Search

Sherwwod Stranieri, Catalyst Online

This throws a lot of  curves into the theme. Ask 3D and Google cut new paths.

Conventional web pages that once rank well are going to move around maybe down. Other things will move updates.

Number of videos is significant in the Youtube world. Are the search engines using comments as an indicator?

We are looking at it as search marketers. Showed client example.

How to look at it: Google PR, Y! Page links, keyword phrases in tags.

Videos ranking correspond well with views, comments, etc.

Bill Slawski

Why does news, images and video show up there.

I’m not sure I see this all as a revolutionary concept. How do we get out content into our results.

Showed examples of screen prints from each engine for the word spider.

Showed the Google patent, oddly looks quite different than Google’s universal search does now.

Google acquired several Infoseek patents.

Discussed Onebox and log file data.

Ranking in Vertical databases – how do you rank for that vertical?

User behavior – key value pairs, be certain definition and being defined. Questions and Answers work the same way. Html formatting may play a role.

Enhancing the user experiences.

David Bailey – Google
Technical lead for the vertical search.

What are our goals?

Make google.com the search box of first resort.

Display special features for special results

Keep it fast. Keep it simple. Above all, keep it relevant.

Showed example: origami crane

This will continually improve and extend to more result types.

It’s still about the web.

But: think about creating quality content in other forms. Expect similar SEO guidelines to apply.

Create quality content, describe it well and we’ll see what happens.

Tim Mayer, VP Product Management

We are transitioning to a better optimized user experience

Freshness and user intent became relevancy issues.

News, local and other verticals – the possibilities are infinite. Federation plays a role.

Some implantation examples:

Music Artist Shortcut

Movie Shortcut

Hotel Shortcut Inline

Consumer Electronics Shortcut

As we go forward, it’s going t be more about the intent of the searchers.

Eric Collier, Director of Product Management

“We are the scrappy innovator of search.”

Ask.com 3D: SERP Design

We moved the content up top and removed the top links.

Large jumps in user satisfaction seen in both the site analytics and surveys

Increase in vertical channel usage

Starting to see a reduction of multiple query sessions around the same keyword term.

Expect to see a larger percentage of SERPs with blended results

User location will play a larger roles in SERPs

Expect to see fewer web results in SERPs

Blogs, Images and Video results will take online reputation into account when ranking

Pay attention to other search drivers

Other coverage of this important session:

RB Digital Boots

Rustybrick

AIM Clear Blog

Lee Odden’s Toprankblog

Bonus coverage:

Lee Odden interviews Tim Mayer

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Jennifer Slegg –

How to influence ads that appear:
Unique title tags
Meta tags
Alt tags
Proximity
Keyword hints
Stop words – if you are having trouble with public service ads – you need to do this
Use image ads to your advantage:

Enable image ads on Adsense for an image only ad placement. Get paid CPM.

Highest CTR should be first HTML
- Highest earning
- Test with multiple channels

Borders: To be or not to be
Sometime blended are best.

YPN: The eternal beta
Split test Adsense against Yahoo Publisher Network

Labeling as ads can increase CTR
- Avoid compliancy issues
- Don’t blend
- CTR up 1.5%

Adsense for Search
- Volume = $
- Display results on own site

Switch it up
- Ad rotation
- Color variety
- Style variety
- Custom channels

Craft inbound links carefully

Smart filtering
- Use your filer list with caution
- Blocking ads= lower paying ads appearing

One ad unit versus three
One ad unit on a page can make more than three combined
Adsense on forums
Enable image ads

YPN RSS ads

Section targeting

Blog terms in images

Dynamic content problems

Non-content sites
Image & flash heavy sites

Non-associate login ID
Unsecured connection
Raw logs
Ad tracker
Policy changes

If your account is suspended:

If you are warned first:
- 3 days grace
- May block adserving on page site account but login available

Jeremy Shoemaker aka Shoemoney–

When I start using contextual Advertising
- Complete Functionality
- 1,000 Unique Visitors/Day

Innovative or ????? – keep the lines of communication open.

Ads are no longer allowed near images.

Bearshare discussion

People are getting bad.

YPN “Yahoo is a disaster right now”

- Unstable and unreliable after launch

- Horrible targeting still

- Too focused on advertisers

Tools of the trade –

Crazyegg

Google Analytics

Openads – likes the interface – if the users is coming from digg or Firefox – show different ads

Tips for success -
TEST

Don’t Sell Out

Analytics

Heat Maps

Communications

Bryan Vu, Google

Testing branding, Youtube, branding and mobile, etc…

Barry also blogged Earning Money From Contextual Ads

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David Sifry today announced that he has stepped down as CEO of Technorati. While the search for a new CEO continues, Teresa Malo (CFO), Dorion Carroll (VP-Engineering), and Derek Gordon (VP-Marketing), will manage the day-to-day operations of the company. Sifry will become “Chairman of Technorati’s board”. What does it ultimately prove? It again clearly demonstrates that Internet experience is not the primary indicator of Internet executive future success.

Hello people. Technorati did a redesign that refocused on mainstream media as I noted in my earlier post the death of blog search. Then Technorati used tags to grow traffic from other search properties. As Arrington asked in early June “When will the Technorati traffic party end?” Apparently Google and others took notice of this and the party ended in July based on Alexa data – I’m surprised Michael did not discuss this at length today in his post actually. This dip exposed the payday to payday advertising dollar budgeting leading to the departure of Sifry and 8 others. It should be noted that this followed the dismissal of several other employees during the July 4th holiday.

Looking at a May 9th Mashable post, it seems that around $1 million was raised when it expanded a round of funding from 10.52 Million to 11.52 Million. It appears that Technorati was spending more cash than it was taking in, even before the traffic decline in July, based on the early July layoffs. The traffic decline in July only made that situation worse.

This leaves Technorati in the unenviable position of needing to generate new advertising dollars at a time when the engineering needs an overhaul it can’t afford. Repairs such as Typepad blog overcounting, flawed link metrics and many other flaws can not occur at this time.

In fact, someone suggested to me in a phone conversation today that perhaps they should shut Technorati off completely now and just sell it’s likely most valuable asset – a 301 redirect of the Technorati domain. The talk of taking Technorati public via IPO will likely be nothing more than that talk in David Sifry’s previous blog posts.

So where is a blog searcher to go now?

Ask – They have recently revamped their offering dramatically and comment search is now combined with post search. It is an offering that is available directly on their front page.

Google – They should move blog search to the front page as I suggested previously and ideally should build and option to show it mixed with news sites.

Icerocket – Plain, simple, no nonsense blog search.

Other players like Topix, if they were to index the blogosphere fully, could also emerge as an alternative that would properly mix news and blogs together demonstrating that most news is being lifted from blogs by the mainstream media.

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Google held an event with several senior executives last night in Chicago. Eric Olson told me about the event, I recently spent a fun day serving as a volunteer website judge with Eric at the annual FBLA-PBL convention – you can read those details here.

I was told by one source that they wish to personalize the recruiting process more and make it less about numbers, keywords and passive candidate recruiting and more about soft skills, knowledge and passion. Time will tell if they succeed in this attempt at change but even stating this shows that they are listening to numerous types of stakeholder feedback and innovating from that. It’s a positive sign. So I have to acknowledge these communicated goals as they suggest that change is a priority.

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However, the numbers are extremely fine and as Greg asked the authors, “Why the disconnect between the satisfaction data and market share?” The other thing that should be pointed out is that these numbers are not that granular in nature. My advice is to take these numbers with a grain of salt as they may of may not result in the market share changes they suggest over the next 12-24 months. Essentially the question is will this report cause people to talk about switching over dinner with family and friends tonight?

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Who else will be there and what spontaneous events, product launches and parties are you looking most forward to? I’m getting very close to some of my goals! I look forward to seeing you.

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MODERATOR:
Jeffrey Pruitt, President, SEMPO, and Executive VP, Search, iCrossing

PANELISTS:
Kelly Graziadei, Senior Director, Agency Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

James Colborn, Group Marketing Manager, adCenter Communications Group, Microsoft

Kevin Willer, Central Region Development Manager, Google

James Colbourn, Microsoft

Kelly Graziadei, Yahoo!

Think about the many different faces of search.

- The Researcher – look at Yahoo! Buzz to create an audience pyramid. Look at other content. Miller Beer Run. Showed a campaign with getting the beer – Yahoo! created the game and got excellent results

- The Reputation Manager – geo-targeting, ad testing, etc. Jet Blue built a campaign to respond to negative news.

- The Brand Manager – 79% introduced to new brands in search and 61% expect brand leaders to be consistently in the top of search results.

- The Great Integrator – TV, web, games, mobile all at the same time.

- The Advocate – Searchers are advocates that build brands through social media – significant in the pre and post purchase mode.

Kevin Willer, Google
- Information silos in the past. You almost needed a search engine for the search engines. Now all the silos are in one universal search.

Google Promotion – search for Bourne – showed how the site with Youtube

Search for PR. – You need to be ready to answer those searches

Search the New Performance Link – showed Motorola example and Presidential campaign data for Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney (He said the

We want to start thinking about search in different ways.

James Colbourn, Microsoft
Search Today: A Performance Tool
- To increase brand awareness
- To Sell Products
- To Generate Leads
- To Drive Traffic To Company Website

How do advertisers measure success?
- Traffic
- Conversions
- Impressions
- ROI

Brand, Awareness, Acquisition Tool and Lead Generator

Search as a research tool is a leading indicator for:
- A Business
- An Industry

Beyond Search
- Media Buying
- Budget Allocation
- PR Activity

The potential for search is higher than current usage…

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Shashi Seth, Head of Monetization, YouTube.com

Rebecca Paoletti, Director, Video Strategy, Yahoo!

Patrick Moorhead, National Manager, R&D Advanced Marketing Solutions, Avenue A | Razorfish

Chris D’Alessandro, Group Director, Customer Insight, Organic, Inc.

Moderator: Curt Hecht, Executive VP, Chief Digital Officer, GM Planworks/Starcom Mediavest Group

Rebecca: Video search is not as important to core clients as media that is relevant to the brand. The off network piece is important as well. Reaching your users wherever they are, walking down the street, whatever…

Patrick: It’s almost the Holy Grail. We need to redefine contextual to mean what the user means at that moment.

Chris: If you are looking at an awareness company, it’s not the Holy Grail.

Curt: How does this scale? How are the agencies? Pre-rolls?

Rebecca: The trend to distribute us towards pre-roll. We are far away from dynamic video smart ads. What they search for. Dynamically delivered video is hard to deliver. Dynamic video is a long ways away.

Patrick: I disagree that we are far away from dynamically generated video.

Curt: Who is digging in on this?

Chris: Emerging and bleeding technology is getting there.

Curt: Are you talking about testing and learning?

Chris: Search is always part of everyone’s repertoire.

Rebecca: Shopping and merchandising makes a lot of sense. We have huge testing and learning going on right now.

Curt: Marketers will have to deal with versioning of creative.

Chris: we’ve had to segment sites. What kind of content do we deliver?

Patrick: We have to measure this stuff from an optimization of media dollars. The same investment can service a much broader audience. Campaign management tools will catch up at some point. Look at things holistically; it’s half about people management.

Shashi: Traditional click through and engagement numbers are not sufficient. We need to come up with standard metrics across the board.

Audience question on pre-rolls and potential attrition to smaller sites.

Shashi: When we announce our ad unit, we will take all those things into account.

Rebecca: We only use it for premium inventory. We balance the pre-roll with the length of the content. We’ve done a lot of testing in this area and found it had no adverse impact.

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While Danny’s comment above is long, you can’t help but realize it’s a mere fraction of her overcomplicated ethics statement.

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Michael, as I posted the other day in my interview with Barry Schwartz on splogs, Google can wall it all it wants, the top portions are available via RSS. They should turn off the RSS feed too if they truly want to prevent all crawling.

I personally don’t enjoy some of the effects of comment fragmentation, but I don’t know if it will ever go away.

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Anybody else see the same changes and are we in the middle of a pagerank update?

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I noticed that Barry seemed passionate and/or somewhat frustrated so I offered to discuss it further via an interview, the results of which you see below.

Thanks for spending time with me today Barry, it seems that this issue of copied / script replicated generated content wrapped in Google Adsense gets you a bit worked up…

Barry: I guess I did. It is frustrating for any person who writes content to find other’s monetizing their content without permission or even credit. It doesn’t bother me like it once did, because the issue is a lot more widespread and automated than it once was. But during that conversation with Danny, I got a bit worked up on the topic.

If I understand correctly, each time you’ve interacted with Google about this, they always ask you to fill out DCMA request manually yourself?

Barry: Yes, that is correct. No matter how obvious it was, they requested I submit a DMCA request.

But you think that they could be more proactive on this issue with all of the data that they have available?

Barry: Yes, I do. Matt Cutts did comment that there is an easy way to report it. But it doesn’t seem to work. And if I tell my Google AdSense representative of an issue, the response should not be, “go file a DMCA request.”

Why not just forward your email to the Blogger Product Manager if the issue involves a Blogger blog?

Barry: Because I honestly do not have a Blogger product manager on hand!

Feedburner actually identifies what they term “uncommon uses” in their reporting but there is not yet a way to use this helpful information to unsubscribe this feed for this use or to automatically fill out DCMA with one click. Would this be a logical step? What else do you think Google should be doing to resolve this issue?

Barry: I would be very happy if AdSense had a form that you can easily get to, to report this stuff. It is actually pretty well hidden presently. A user must know that they can click on “Ads by Google” which then asks for ad relevancy feedback. At the bottom of that form it gives you a way to report “violations,” but it is not at the top of the page. Make it easier, clearer and quicker. I suggest adding this form to the Google AdSense console and make it clearer for non-AdSense publishers to report issues.

Looking at it from the searchers side, it is clear that splogs and other copied content is certainly not a good user experience…

Barry: Yes, that is clear.

What is your vision of the future solutions of these topics?

Barry: Remove splogs! I know it is hard. Make it easier to report these people and terminate their AdSense accounts and reduce the incentive to make a splog.

Maybe Google will take some action on these issues. Conversation to be continued…do you have strong thoughts on copied content? Please join the conversation!

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“These universities, through their provosts and other key leaders, have worked
together on some of higher education’s greatest challenges and opportunities.
This partnership with Google is one of the most ambitious undertakings in the
history of the CIC, and sets the stage for a remarkable transformation of library
services and information access. We’re opening up these resources as both a
common good shared among the universities, as well as a public good available
more broadly, ” said Barbara McFadden Allen, director of the CIC.”

This announcement followed 5 days after Barry Schwartz reporting about custom search engines. It appears things are heating up again in the Book Search arena.

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Is anyone using this so far? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

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I first noticed this comparison of Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in this blog post – Top Google Search Trends in Iowa.

Does anyone understand why this time gap exists in Google or plans for resolving it?

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The case, brought in federal court in Sydney, was prompted by adverts that were placed on Google by Trading Post Australia, an automotive dealer also named in the suit.

The regulatory body said that, among other things, it was seeking an order “restraining Google from publishing search results that do not expressly distinguish advertisements from organic search results”.

The issue of advertisements being unclear from organic results has been passionately debated from time to time. This is the last study I’ve seen on the issue.

Time will tell how this turns out.

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Here is the cliff notes version:

“Both of the new systems are designed to spare users the extra steps needed in the past to view different types of content related to the same search term. But Google combines these different types of content into one list. Ask puts them on one page in separate sections, which I find to be the superior approach, because each type of result is displayed more effectively; it’s easier to see at a glance what you have.”

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One thing is certain, Privacy International doesn’t think it’s important enough to put out a full reply on a weekend, that means it loses some credibility in my eyes.

The conversation runs 24/7 out there not M-F 9-5.

UPDATE: I take that back, Privacy International just published the new letter which is addressed to Eric Schmidt.

So who is this Microsoft employee? And why wasn’t this person removed from the process before the report was created?

UPDATE #2: Matt Cutts has weighed in on the issues in a thoughtful way.

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Maybe he should focus more on his operations and his employee referrals rather than trying to extort a cheaper workforce from overseas.

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Upon clicking the page, it redirected to this page: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Did I miss an announcement on this moving out of beta?

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1. Google had already acquired the color orange when they bought Blogger!

2. Feedburner’s symbol is fire, which some folks relate to hell. If you believe this, Google will actually be acquiring evil.

3. Eric Olson of Feedburner (along with Frank Gruber and others) organizes Techcocktail, a tech community quarterly networking party in Chicago. Google could come to Chicago and throw a party all by themselves!

4. Google already had all of Feedburner’s IP because Rick Klau, VP of Publisher Services uses Gmail and Google Docs & Spreadsheets for all business deals! (Second source: talk at ABA TECHshow2007)

5. Google already has had adsense for feeds for a long, long time.

6. Once Google has access to the keys of legitimate RSS sources it will be able to determine the original source blog if it is using a Feedburner feed. When combined with Google Blog Search, Google could likely better control splogs in it’s blog search index which will reduce (MFA) made for Adsense site revenue!

Hey what is done is done though, I hope that funding for many more Chicago startups is now available!

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