Google Adsense for Mobile Launches

Google Adsense™ for Mobile launched yesterday.

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.

Youtube Already Accepting Questions for the November 28, 2007 Republican Debate

Wow, I’m amazed that Youtube has a page up to collect this material over 10 weeks in advance! That will obviously generate many, many questions from the supporters of the candidates in the race as well as issue voters:

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.

Shuman Ghosemajumder Interview In Forbes

Shuman Ghosemajumder (see pronunciation in this previous post) was interviewed in the most recent issue of Forbes. First time full length interview I’ve seen in quite some time on his areas of expertise.

Rick Klau from Chicago to Honorary Engineer at the Google Dance

Rick Klau was an honorary engineer for one night at the Google Dance 2007. You’ll recall that Rick, formerly “Mr. Naperville”, moved west to work at Google’s headquarters shortly after Feedburner’s acquisition. Rick reports that his commute consists of a short 10 minute drive followed by a one hour bus ride that is fully productive with Internet access. It was nice to see you Rick, hope to see you again soon!

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.

New York Times Should Link to Original Stories From the Source

Google announced this major event quietly on a Friday before a major holiday. That in itself is highly interesting, but will not be the focus of this discussion. At 10:48AM (not sure what time zone) on Friday, August 31st, 2007 Google News Business Project Manager Josh Cohen wrote a post ironically entitled “Original Stories from the Source” which announced a significant change of aggregating AP and other news stories into one entry that will be more prominently featured.

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.

George Reyes To Retire As Google CFO

Google just sent out the following announcement. One wonders if this is the first of many senior executive exits as certain post-IPO events and timelines are reached. Time will tell. It will be extremely interesting to see if they promote from within or go outside the firm. The following is form the Google press release:

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.”

Google to Present at the Citigroup Technology Conference

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - August 27, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
announced today that Sundar Pichai, Director of Product Management,
and Nicholas Fox, Group Business Product Manager, will participate in
a question-and-answer session at the Citigroup Technology Conference
in New York. The session is scheduled for 4:10 p.m. Eastern Time /
1:10 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, September 6, 2007.

To access the live audio webcasts of the presentations, please visit:
http://investor.google.com/webcast.html

SES San Jose Technology Disconnections

I’m struck by two interesting incidents I had with some Googlers this week in regards to communication.

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?

SES San Jose 2007 Day 2 - Images & Search Engines

I was going to attend this session but I arrived late because I was having a great conversation about his new project.

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.

SES San 2007 Jose Day 1 - Universal & Blended Vertical Search

Moderator:

Speakers:

Q&A Speakers:

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

 

 

SES SAn Jose 2007 Day 1 - Earning Money From Contextual Ads

Speakers:

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

 

Seattle - New Search Marketing Executive Mecca?

The land grab described in the Seattle Times seems to indicate this might be the truth. Seattle and the surrounding region is a wonderful place, I’d love to live there one day either in downtown Seattle or Bellevue. It’s interesting that they are moving locations to where the available talent is. They should explore Chicago once they’ve exploited Seattle’s talent markets fully.

Death of Blog Search Part 2 - Sifry Leaves Technorati

Techcrunch, Alarm clock and even Jason Calacanis weighed in on David Sifry’s departure. Jason extrapolated into some things that I don’t agree with completely, except with his suggestion that Web 2.0 companies try to make a profit, but I’ll leave that alone for now.

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.

Is Google Starting to Change Recruiting Methods?

Those of you who have read this blog for a long time know that I’ve been critical of Google VP of People, Laszlo Bock, due to lack of execution in the past. Things like placing an ad in a magazine and forgetting to launch the microsite or worse ignoring employee referrals that were highly relevant frustrating employees and creating brand damage externally.

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.

University of Michigan Consumer Satisfaction Index Report 2007

The report is out. Greg Sterling has a great write up at Search Engine Land. Congrats to Yahoo! and Ask on their improvements!

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?

Search Engine Strategies San Jose - Silicon Valley August 19-23

I look forward to seeing all of my wonderful search engine, mobile search and mobile advertising friends next week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose!  While I’ll definitely be in Mountain View for the Google Dance (hopefully they won’t run out of XL t-shirts in 2 minutes like last year), I’m unsure whether I’ll make it to Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Oakland, Monterey or Santa Cruz to visit and see some other awesome things. I do hope to make it to Barcamp Block.

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.

adtech Chicago: Redefining Search to Realize Its Full Potential

August 1, 2007

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…

adtech Chicago: Search + Video + Contextual Targeting: Is the Holy Grail Upon Us?

July 31, 2007

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.

Love Danny Sullivan’s Comment on This Article!

Danny’s comment on Kara Swisher’s article is sooooo on the mark!!!

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

Google News Hypocrisy: Walled Off Content

Techcrunch has a post that outlines a well thought out viewpoint on an issue regarding Google News.

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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