Google going into Billboard advertising

Not seen a great deal on this one but the New Scientist dug into a recent Google patent application and found a very interesting tidbit. 

The patent, filed December 21, 2006 with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office), covers systems and methods for allocating advertising space in a “network of electronic display devices.” 

“Advertisers may upload advertisement messages to a server specifying information such as budget, price per impression, preferred billboards and/or other constraints. One or more keywords or other descriptors are specified for each advertisement message,”

You can see the full filing here.

Beginners guide to the Google Content network

A good, basic guide for those entering the world of Google Adwords.  Thus far, our experience of current CPC campaigns shows we earn £2 for every £1 spent.  That said, the nature of our highly targetted B2B products means the impression counts are always low (long tail stuff) and clicks counted in the dozens a months.

However, it is a major focus of 2007 for us and will be a core component of our attempts to fix the struggling site.

Inside AdWords: New multimedia guide about the Google content network

Happy New Year

A very happy New Year to you all. 

Darn, was it hard to get up this morning – from a nice leisurely 9:00am wake up over Xmas to 6:45am – a shock to the aged system.  But, oddly, the promise of 2007 challenges was actually more of an incentive than you might imagine.  As a small company dominating 2 of the 4 publishing sectors we live in, the coming year will definitely not be boring.  My 2007 resolutions?  To fix the one site that has consistently failed to live up to it’s huge potential.  This is not to say we have not already tried numerous “fixes” – it is just they have only re-shaped the edges of the bubble and not fundamentally solved the underlying problem – focus. 

One of the key problems any site faces is that of audience focus.  If you cannot clearly define your prospective visitors by some demographic marker then all your marketing and SEO activities will be ineffective.  Not rocket science I hear you cry .. and indeed it is not.  But how many of us truly understand who the ideal visitor is?  And I do not mean who we perceive of as the ideal visitor but exactly what are the properties of those 20% that actually deliver on the goals we define as success indicators. 

Here is the nub of my key 2007 resolution – understand who actually contributes to the success of the one problem child site and then extend time and effort on those.  Google Analytics here I come ……………..

Quick status of your pages in Google

Small, perfectly formed and even useful : Google Webmaster Tools – Site Status

That said, Google Webmaster tools are more useful but can be dreadfully slow.

1157 US patents containing “Search engine”

The newly released Google patent search tool provides an endless opportunity for digging up the bizarre and downright unbelievable.  However, it is also useful to glimpse what some of the larger internet monoliths are pondering.  Try using the tool to find all terms containing the words “search engine” ; all the usual culprits pop up – Overture, Napster, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Google.  It is also fascinating to see the the age of many filings – their subject matter is as relevant now as they obviously predicted it would be. 

I can smell the scent of lawyers from here.

Very funny ….

A bit late but this is most amusing.  A commercial site asking a blogger to remove their content from Google as it ranks higher!

Cloaking good or evil?

Cloaking good or evil?  Does it depend on your site’s reputation as far as Google is concerned? Does Google Allow Cloaking When They Like the Site?

Now this is not just an esoteric question for us.  The majority of our material is locked behind at least a free registration screen – and the very best behind a paid membership program.  Now if Google are serious about indexing the deep web then our situation must be taken account of and some solution provided to at least expose the value of the non-paid for material.  Sure, we can cloak for now (and probably get away with it) but this only a band-aid, and a germ ridden one at that.

I know Google have a premium content programme but it seems to have gone very quiet.  Please Google, speak to us content owners that need to make a living from our material rather than rely on ads.

Clickfraud less than 2%?

Been following this for a bit but this is a great post by Shuman Ghosemajumder on his quote to the effect clock fraud in Google was less than 2%.  In fact, while quoted this by Andy Beal, what he said was that the quantity of invalid clicks which were detect as a result of reactive investigations was a “negligible proportion” – and then clarified negligible as under 2%. 

A subtle difference but important .. Google, Click Fraud, and Invalid Clicks | shumans.com

New google finance tools

Like it .. Google Finance

Enough to knock Yahoo! finance off it’s perch.  Nope, but getting there.

Clash of cultures?

According to complete.com, Yahoo!’s peanut butter episode has done little to stem the decline in it’s share of the search audience.  Indeed, the Sunnyvale lads and ladies are suffering one of the worst declines in the last year. 

And these figures are certainly reflected in our own visitors stats.  Google has been on a consistent rise for 9 months – with a huge jump around August for some unexplained reason.  Oddly, I still feel Yahoo!’s search results are often far less spammy than Google – but is the brand any longer as strong.  The complete.com evidence would suggest they are being out-marketed by the whole search industry including Ask.  And most had written them off as a major player earlier this year.

Google customers better spenders than Yahoo or MSN

More gems from Google Analytics : Google search customers convert better than Yahoo … close to double the spend per visitor.  This runs counter to a study by WebSideStory claiming customers found AOL and MSN converted best followed by Yahoo then Google last of all. 

Ok, so we are firmly in vertical B2B space but this was historically the domain of Yahoo – have Google really become the defacto standard for consumers and business alike?  I remember an SE conference in 2003 where many speakers were adamant in the dominance of Yahoo for non-geek searching.  How times have changed. 

Odd Google URL requests

Hmm .. odd one this morning.  Checking Google webmaster tools for the sites this morning and noticed 431 pages not found by the crawler.  Ok, some are historical .asp files that we never bothered to move over the .aspx but others are a bit more worrying.  There has been a sudden rash of requests where the “?” and “=” parameter characters have been grunged : article.aspx%3FID%3D89362&lk%3Dnp.  Now this is a straight forward Next and Previous article link so why it got munged ….. a puzzle.  Given over 400 in a few days, I am leaning towards it being a rogue bot scraper copying the content somewhere.  Time to go trawling in the log files.