Michael Wong Blog

Google confirms one AdWords ad, per search query, per domain allowed

Google confirms the new affiliate policy change only allows ONE ad, per search query, for both affiliates and parent companies sharing the same domain name. Therefore, 'www.store.com/item.html', 'www.store.com/item.html?affID=10', and 'www.store.com/item/affid10/' are all considered by Google's Editorial Guidelines to be the same URL as they are all advertising 'www.store.com.'

Mike's Marketing Tools introduces Google AdWords & AdSense product categories

I've added two new categories my marketing tools web site; Google AdWords and Google AdSense. These two categories cater to the growing number of products being offered to Google advertisers and website publishers.

Google announces new AdWords policy for affiliate ads

With the new policy, Google will only display the top ranking ad, per search query, for affiliates and merchants sharing the same URL. The display URL in the ad must match the landing page URL. You may not frame the webpage in another site. Affiliates will also no longer be required to identify themselves as an affiliate in the ad. However, current ads will continue to display the affiliate status until it is changed. The new policy will come into effect sometime in January.

Google AdWords to limit one advertiser per landing page after new year

This is not an official announcement, but there is a lot of talk in the forums that Google will be changing its AdWords policy to only allow one advertiser per landing page, after the new year.

The criteria for who gets the ad will be based on rank (CTR and CPC), though back-ups will be in place for when the spend is gone for one so another can come in.

This policy change is going to have a serious impact on search engine marketers, especially affiliate marketers, that use Google AdWords as their biggest source of traffic.

For more information, check out these two discussion threads; One Customer Per Landing Page in Search Engine Watch Forums, and Google - Affiliates - Update in WebmasterWorld.

Google Launches Site-Flavored Search

Google adds Site-Flavored Search to its Google Labs service. Site-Flavored Search uses a Google search box to deliver custom web search results, based on a profile filled out by a site's webmaster. The profile reflects the content of the website, and when the site-flavored search box is placed within the pages of that site, users are able to view search results that are "flavored" to be more relevant to them. [Full story: Site-Flavored Google Search - Google]

Google Adds WebSearch to AdSense

Google adds WebSearch to its AdSense program. WebSearch is for publishers who wish to provide web search for their users, directly from any web page. WebSearch results pages use Google's search results and monetized with Google AdSense ads that are targeted to the user's query – providing useful information for the user and a new revenue stream for publishers. [Full story: What is WebSearch plus AdSense for search? - Google]

Create Your Own Discussion Lists With Google Groups 2

Google is testing a new version of Google Groups available on Google Labs. Google Groups is a free service which helps groups of people communicate effectively using email and the Web. In this new version, users can easily create their own announcement lists, restricted mailing lists, and public web discussions in a matter of minutes. Just as with the original Google Groups, users can read and search all public Google Groups content, including more than 845 million Usenet articles. In addition, every group includes its own Google-fast search, making it easy to find discussions locked away deep in a group's archive. [Full story: About Google Groups 2 Beta - Google]

Google Developing Email Ad Service

Google is developing a service that could dramatically extend the reach of its keyword-based advertising by linking such ads to email. In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of email newsletters. They have recently made several email-related acquisitions, including an email management software maker. In 2001 Google registered the domain name googlemail.com. There are also rumors that Google could be preparing to launch free email to compete with offerings from Yahoo and MSN's Hotmail. [Full story: Google eyes email-based ad delivery - ZDNet UK]

Google's DomainPark Cashes In On Parked Domains

Google DomainPark allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. DomainPark delivers targeted, conceptually related keywords and advertisements to parked domain name pages by using Google's semantic technology to "understand" the meaning of each domain name. DomainPark currently powers over 1 million domain names. Web sites must generate more than 750,000 page views per month to qualify. [Full story: Google DomainPark - Google]

Google Searches 5.5 Billion Web Pages

According to the Google.com homepage, Google searches 3,307,998,701 web pages. Yet, when I searched for the word "the" (screenshot) I noticed that it showed "Results 1 - 30 of about 5,500,000,000" at the top of the search results page. Has Google added 2.2 billion pages to its index? Why does Google claim to search 3.3 billion web pages, when it appears to search 5.5 billion pages? Did the additional 2.2 billion pages contribute to the big changes in rankings felt by so many people during the past few months?

Google to Buy Sprinks

Primedia announced today that it has reached a search and contextual advertising agreement with Google Inc. that includes a four-year distribution and revenue sharing agreement for Primedia's About.com as well as the sale of its Sprinks unit to Google. Sprinks is the pay per click advertising network which serves About.com and numerous third party distribution partners. The deal extends the reach of Google's base of more than 150,000 advertisers to the targeted audiences served by About.com's 450 topic-specific Guide Sites that cover more than 10,000 topics and the CMMG 127 targeted magazine-related sites. [Press release: PRIMEDIA's About Links With Google for Targeted Advertising - PR Newswire]

Google AdWords Unveils U.S. State & Regional Targeting

Google has just unveiled a "Regional Targeting" feature for its AdWords program. Now instead of specifying only the countries where your ads will appear, you can also choose individual states and regions as well. For example, if you set your regional targeting preferences to the San Francisco-Bay Area, users based in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Oakland will see your ads; users outside this area will not. You can target your ads to over 200 state or regional areas within the United States. The regional targeting system works by mapping anonymous IP addresses of browsers to the 210 Designated Marketing Areas (DMARs) in the United States. Google AdWords regional targeting follows the Designated Market Areas (DMAs) geographic market design, first created by the A.C. Nielsen Company as a way to define television markets. DMAs, composed of counties or split counties, are updated annually based on historical television viewing patterns. Every county/split county in the United States is assigned exclusively to one DMA. Right now, you can target your ads to the state or region level, which often includes surrounding cities or suburbs. Google are working to provide more precise targeting options, such as targeting by city. [Full story: Google AdWords FAQ: Regional Targeting - Google]

Google Buys Kaltix

Google on Tuesday announced it acquired Kaltix, a three-month old, three-man Stanford startup that's working on personalized and context-sensitive search. [Full story: Google Gets Personal - Internet News]

Amazon.com to Compete With Google's Froogle Comparison Shopping Engine

Amazon.com plans to spin off a subsidiary to invest and develop their own e-commerce search engine. A9, the new Amazon.com subsidiary, will officially launch in October with approximately 30 employees. The goal is to invent and develop the best e-commerce search technology for the Amazon.com Web site and to license to third-party firms as well. This will put Amazon.com in direct competition with Google's Froogle comparison shopping engine. [Full story: Amazon.com Takes Aim at Google - Internet News]

Google Sends Sobig Virus To Its Media Email List

Google sent me an early surprise birthday gift today, but I immediately threw it into the trash bin! As a subscriber to Google's media email list, I received an email infected with the "Sobig" virus. Seven hours later Google sent an apologetic follow up email that ended with, "...please do not open the attachment." Oops! Too late! Just kidding. ;o) It begs the question that if a tech-savvy company like Google can't even keep their computer's virus-free, what hope do the rest of us have?

Ebook Review: Google Cash

I've just added a review of a Google Cash, by Chris Carpenter, to my Mike's Marketing Tools web site. The downloadable ebook is a self help guide on how to make money by promoting affiliate programs via pay per click search engines, such as Google AdWords and Overture. [Full story: Google Cash - Mike's Marketing Tools]

Stanford's PageRank Team To Out-Google Google

A stealth start-up out of Stanford University is hoping to out-Google Google. Kaltix was formed in recent months by three members of Stanford's PageRank team--a research group created to advance the mathematical algorithm developed by Google co-founder and Stanford alum Larry Page that cemented Google's fame. Kaltix hopes to improve upon PageRank, with an attempt to speed up the underlying PageRank computations. That, in turn, could lay the groundwork for a breakthrough in a cutting-edge area of Web search development known as "personalization," which aims to sort search results based on the specific needs and interests of individuals, instead of the consensus approach pioneered by Google. Without discussing Kaltix's plans publicly, the company's founders have published research that claims to offer a way to compute search results nearly 1,000 times faster than what's possible using current methods. Kaltix's method is apparently similar to looking for a tree in a forest by examining only a clump of trees rather than the whole forest. It takes days to compute PageRank. Kaltix is out to compute it much faster, so that it can compute on a per-person basis. [Full story: Searching for the personal touch - ZDNet]

IBM: Web Fountain is "Google on Steroids"

IBM has developed a search engine called, "Web Fountain," which Paul Horn, IBM's senior vice president of research refers to as "Google on steroids." The technology was originally developed for a record company. It reads and understands text, and uses natural language to make correlations between words. Unlike traditional search, Web Fountain searches everything on the Web, including chat rooms, when set to that parameter. In the case of the record company, Horn says Web Fountain was a two-week leading indicator of sales. "The buzz in the chat rooms for an upcoming CD indicated what was going to be a hot seller." Could Web Fountain be a real challenger to Google? [Full story: IBM's Path From Invention To Income - Forbes]

Google Removes Related Searches From AdSense Ads

Google has remove the related searches feature on its AdSense ads a day after it was quietly introduced. The new feature caused a huge uproar in the webmaster community as soon as it was introduced because publishers were not compensated for the clicks it sent to Google. According to a forum member known as GoogleGuy - an unspecified employee of Google - unprecedented criticism from webmasters made Google change their mind about the feature. GoogleGuy goes on to say, "As a result of this feedback, we decided to temporarily disable this feature. We will soon re-release this feature with greater flexibility for the publishers. I don't know if this will be opt-in or opt-out, but I believe publishers will be able to turn off the feature if they don't want to use it." I guess Google aren't as clued up on public opinion as they are on search engine algorithms, but at least they listened when the din got too loud. [Full story: Related Searches - WebmasterWorld]

Google Launches News Alerts

Google has just launched Google News Alerts, a service that sends you a real-time or daily email of news articles that match the topics you specify. Possible uses include monitoring a developing news story, keeping current on a competitor or industry, getting the latest on a celebrity or event, or keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams.

'Google is Terrible' - Larry Page, Google Co-Founder

Quote of the week: "You [Walt Mossberg] think Google is good, I still think it’s terrible"--Larry Page, Google Co-Founder & President, Products. [Full story: Sergy Brin and Larry Page on TV: A Conversation at a Recent Conference - ResourceShelf]

Google Launches AdSense For Smaller Web Sites

Google has expanded its self-serve program called AdSense that helps operators of small Internet sites automatically place targeted advertising on their content pages and get paid each time a site visitor clicks on one of the ads. With its new contextual advertising services, Google aims to give the company's network of 100,000 small to large advertisers targeted venues through which to reach potential customers. Google has been offering contextual advertising services for Internet sites with more than 20 million page views per month since March. [Full story: Google Expands Content-Based Internet Ad Services - Reuters]

Google AdWords to Appear in Lycos Europe Properties

Google signed a deal with Lycos Europe to distribute its Content-Targeted AdWords listings on the portal's member-generated Web pages in eight European countries. The contextual ads will appear on a total of four million pages of Lycos Tripod in the United Kingdom and Germany, and will roll out to France next month. Denmark, Italy, Spain and Sweden follow in August. The ads appear in skyscraper placements on Tripod pages, displaying four paid listings on the right side of the page targeted by both country and language. [Full story: Google, Lycos Europe Ink Content-Ad Deal - Internet News]

Judge Dismisses SearchKing's Lawsuit Against Google

U.S. District Court Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Tuesday granted Google's motion to dismiss a suit that alleged the company manipulated search results in its powerful Web index and denied a motion for a preliminary injunction brought by SearchKing, who claimed Google unfairly removed links to its site and those of its partners from the index, causing financial losses. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that Google's formula for calculating the popularity of a Web page, or "PageRank," constitutes opinions protected by the First Amendment. "PageRanks are opinions--opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query," according to the decision filed in the U.S Western District Court of Oklahoma. "The court simply finds there is no conceivable way to prove that the relative significance assigned to a given Web site is false," the decision said. "Accordingly, the court concludes Google's PageRanks are entitled to full constitutional protection." [Full story: Judge dismisses suit against Google - CNET News]

Google Bucks Trend By Lowering All AdWords Minimum Bid to 5 Cents

Google has lowered the minimum price of all keywords in its AdWords program to 5 cents per click. Google hopes to entice more advertisers to try the service. This is a surprising move considering that Google's closest rivals, Overture and FindWhat, recently upped their minimum bids to 10 cents per click. Most keywords on Google command far above the 5 cents minimum, with industry analysts estimating that AdWords commands near or over the average of 37 cents per click that Overture reported last quarter. [Full story: Google Reduces Minimum Bid on Some Keywords - Internet News]

Study Reveals Overture Generates 99.8% More Revenue & 30% More Sales Than Google AdWords

Did you know almost 78 percent of Google's click-throughs to e-commerce sites comes from Google.com's algorithmic results, not from its paid search listings? In September 2002, independent market research firm comScore gathered data on users who clicked on Overture and Google paid search listings across 5,000 participating e-commerce sites. The key findings were Overture ads produced a conversion ratio of 2.6 percent, generating $2,024 per 1,000 click throughs. While Google AdWords ads produced a 2 percent conversion ratio, resulting in $1,013 per 1,000 click throughs. According to the comScore study, Overture ads generated almost double the average revenue and 30 percent more sales as 1,000 clicks from Google AdWords ads. [Full story: Overture Beats Google with Superior Results, Listing Control and Service - Overture Services]

Google Signs Up Ask Jeeves UK

Ask Jeeves announced on Friday that Google has replaced Espotting as the paid-listing provider for its UK subsidiary, giving the search leader a key distribution outlet abroad. The two-year deal calls for Google to provide the top three listings on results page of the Ask Jeeves UK search engine, under the heading "Websites I can show you." (The listings will be labeled as sponsored.) The two companies will split the revenues generated from advertisers' paying each time a user clicks on their listings. Ask Jeeves said it selected Google over both Espotting and Overture Services. Espotting signed a paid-listing deal with Ask Jeeves UK 18 months ago. Both Espotting and Overture will remain in Ask Jeeves UK's meta search results, at the bottom of the page. [Full story: Google Signs Up Ask Jeeves UK - Internet News]

Google Alert Releases Version 2.0

Google Alert today released version 2.0 of its free web-based service that lets people stay up to date with their interests by automatically performing daily Google searches and sending email notifications of new results that appear. Version 2.0 contains many new capabilities, including an integrated online browser for exploring search results, and live HTML and RSS feeds for integrating those results into web pages and desktops. Google Alert is not affiliated in any way with Google, but uses the Google Web APIs to perform its automated searches. Google Alert is a free service, offered for non-commercial use and subject to Google's API terms.

OneStat: Google Is #1 Search Engine With 55.2% Global Usage

OneStat.com today reported that Google has a global average usage share of 55.2 percent during the last 2 months, making it the most popular search engine on the web. The 7 largest search engines on the web are Google (55.2%), Yahoo (21.7%), MSN Search (9.6%), AOL Search (3.8%), Terra Lycos (2.6%), Altavista (2.2%), and Askjeeves (1.5%). Research is based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day. [Full story: Search engine ratings: Google 55.2 percent global usage share according to OneStat.com - OneStat]

Reveries Interviews Tim Armstrong, Google VP of Advertising

An interview with Tim Armstrong, Google VP of Advertising. In it, Armstrong discusses how Google's advertising network originated and how was it developed, whether the Google model will eventually put traditional banner ads out of business completely, and what makes the recently acquired Blogger.com attractive as an advertising medium. [Full story: TIM ARMSTRONG, vp advertising, Google - Reveries]

Google to Introduce Web Log Search Engine

Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab. CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement on Monday, at a conference for librarians and researchers. 'Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs,"' reported Reuters. It isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be. After Google acquired Usenet groups from Deja.com, it developed a unique user interface and a refined search engine, and removed the groups from the main index. Google recently acquired Blogger, and sources suggest this is the most likely option. Bloggers too are likely to welcome their very own tab as a legitimization of the publishing format. But many others will breathe a sigh of relief as blogs disappear from the main index. [Full story: Google to fix blog noise problem - The Register]

Google CEO Has No Near Term Plans For IPO

Google Inc., has no plans right now to go public, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Monday. Asked at the JP Morgan Technology and Telecom conference here, what market or other conditions would be needed to persuade the company to make an initial public offering, Schmidt declined to answer, saying with a smile: "that would be speculation."

Final Part of AlwaysOn's Interview with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt

This is the final of a four-part interview series with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. In it, Schmidt gives an update of his views on Moore's Law and its effects on the tech boom. [Full story: Google's Schmidt Takes On Moore's Law - AlwaysOn]

AlwaysOn Interviews Google CEO, Eric Schmidt: Part 3 of 4

In part three of AlwaysOn's four-part interview with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, they talk about Google's various revenue streams; powering search vendors, internal search engines, self-service advertising, and international markets. [Full story: About Google's Schmidt - Part 3 - AlwaysOn]

Latest Google Friends Newsletter Is Out

The April edition of the Google Friends newsletter was published today. Topics include Hack writers take on Google, Want to drive traffic? Take the Free way, How do you say "Google" in, Donate your brain to science, Logo genius, New Google partners, 100,000 advertisers can't be wrong, Up and at it Down Down UnderUnder, Making web publishing pay, Adding Applied Semantics, Choice opportunity to support Google, Gearing up for the Google US Puzzle Championship, Books on our shelf, Website favorites of Googlers who live online, and Coming Up: Q&A with Krishna Bharat. [Full story: Google Friends Newsletter for April 29, 2003 - Google]

AlwaysOn Interviews Google CEO, Eric Schmidt: Part 2 of 4

The second of a four-part interview series by AlwaysOn with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, is now available. In it, Schmidt talks about online privacy. In part one, Mr. Schmidt talked about the acquisition of Pyra Labs, and how micropublishing and blogging communities are changing the online world. [Full story: About Google's Schmidt - Part 2 - AlwaysOn]

Interview With Craig Silverstein, Google's Director of Technology

Craig Silverstein from Google, employee number one and director of technology, is talking at Emerging Technology about how Google accomplishes innovates, rather than how they technically carry out their tasks. Silverstein talks about Pyra Labs (Blogger's creators), Google Labs, how they hire, and why they don't have a music search. [Full story: Google's Director of Technology Talks - GlennLog]

MovableType Goes Head-to-Head with Google's Blogger

The husband-and-wife team behind Movable Type, the popular Web publishing system (which powers this web site), on Wednesday said they plan to go head-to-head with Google's Blogger to offer a one-stop personal publishing service. Six Apart Ltd. founders Ben and Mena Trott said they had agreed to bolster their management team and take on the company's first financial backers as part of a plan to compete with Blogger's Blogspot hosting service. They also said they planned in May to introduce TypePad, a service that takes advantage of Movable Type's easy-to-use Web publishing tools and provides helps with the initial Web site set-up and on-going maintenance and improvement of such sites. It is betting on the growing demand by Web site publishers to use devices such as mobile phones and Internet-connected handheld computers to blog, allowing users to keep friends and colleagues updated on the latest changes on their Web sites. Movable Type software has been downloaded by some 250,000 Web users with an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Web sites created using the software. [Full story: Eyeing Blogger, Creators of Movable Type Expand - Reuters]

Google Buys Contextual Marketing Software Company

Google today announced that it acquired Applied Semantics, a developer of contextual marketing software. Applied Semantics' core technology is enterprise software that helps categorize and summarize articles. Now, the company is taking the same technology and using it to analyze words and understand the context of news articles in order to link advertisements related to the context. The company says it has had a team of 10 linguists over the past four years putting together what it believes to be the largest ontology database with more than 1.25 million terms and tens of millions of word relationships. [Press release: Google Acquires Applied Semantics - Google]

AlwaysOn Interviews Google CEO, Eric Schmidt: Part 1 of 4

AlwaysOn interviews Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, in this first of a four-part interview series. They discuss the recent acquisition of Pyra Labs (the company behind Blogger) amongst other things. According to Schmidt, what Google really bought was a team. "With these little companies, the asset that you get is the knowledge in the people’s heads, and that’s what we care about. They will be enormously creative in the next few years," said Schmidt. [Full story: About Google's Eric Schmidt - AlwaysOn]

Google to Make $750 Million in 2003 Handling 200 Million Daily Searches on 54,000 Servers

Here are some interesting stats from an article on Google in The New York Times--Google's revenue will soar from less than $300 million in 2002 to $750 million or more this year, with gross profit margins of 30 percent, according to a Google executive and several people who have knowledge of the company's financial situation. Last May, Ge'Lena Vavra, an importer of Italian suits in Las Vegas, decided to pay from 21 cents to $1.50 each time her ad for discount Italian suits was clicked after a search for words like "Armani" or "Hugo Boss." Before Ms. Vavra advertised with Google, she was selling about 10 suits a month over eBay. Then she bought 50 Google keyword ads using her Visa card. The next morning, she said, sales took off. She now sells almost 120 suits a month. She expects to spend $60,000 this year on Google search ads. "Our business exploded from Google, and Google alone," she said. [More proof that Google's AdWords ads work] Google now employs 800 people, yet it handles 200 million searches of the Web each day, a staggering one-third of the estimated daily total. [My estimate was 350 million - the author's estimate is 600 million per day!] To keep up with that torrent, Google has essentially built a home-brew supercomputer that is distributed across eight data centers. Several people with knowledge of the system said it consists of more than 54,000 servers [It was 10,000 the last report I read] designed by Google engineers from basic components. It contains about 100,000 processors and 261,000 disks, these people said, making it what many consider the largest computing system in the world. [Full story: In Searching the Web, Google Finds Riches - The New York Times]

Discovery.com's Search Engine Traffic Rose 300% After Optimizing its Homepage

Discovery.com saw a 300% increase in shopper traffic it received from search engine Google.com after it redesigned its home page based on analytics information gleaned from Omniture, Inc.’s SiteCatalyst analytics tool. Data from SiteCatalyst, which was implemented by Discovery.com late last year to gather visitor data and improve performance and revenues, revealed that the store’s traffic from Google was far below an industry average of 35%. Determining that this was the result of its dynamic home page design, a format not easily recognized and grabbed by Google’s engine, Discovery redesigned the home page in a standard HTML format and saw the increase in traffic in just 30 days. [Full story: Analytics boost Discovery.com’s search engine traffic by 300%, sales by 35% - Internet Retailer]

China Search Alliance Confronts Google's Penetration into China

China Search Alliance, a combination of more than 200 Internet portals, accelerated its expansion to meet the upcoming challenge from the global search giant Google.com, which is expected to officially launch its service in China this year. The Alliance will sign a strategic partnership agreement with NASDAQ-listed SINA, the most popular Internet portal in China, on search collaboration. China Search Alliance was initiated by China.com, a news portal of central government-backed China Internet Information Center (CIIC). Leveraging the abundant resources of its members, the alliance hopes to attain the top position on China's search engine market. The alliance projects a 20% market share in China this year, and aims to take over half of the market next year. In China, about 97% of netizens use online search engines every month, and the market for search ranking services is expected to create a yearly revenue of RMB 200 mln (USD 24 mln). An Interfax source said that Google.com has decided to penetrate into China this year, and is choosing a general agency out of 4 candidates. [Full story: China Search Alliance accelerates expansion to meet Google's penetration into China - Interfax]

Google Ducks Promised News Policy Pledge

A follow up to an earlier story, "Google News to Accept Press Releases for its Automated News Harvester"--On Friday, Google confirmed that it included press releases in the data stream. The written policy statement promised by Google never materialized. "But I never promised," Google Inc.'s spokesman said. He then insisted, with some urgency, that we speak to Google Inc.'s Director of Consumer Web Products, Marissa Mayer, in a great hurry, because she was about to be whisked away to an airport and hence, wouldn't be seen for days. So we caught up with her and discussed the News Policy for a full 18 minutes, until she complained about a bad line and promised to call us back in five. Needless to say, she didn't. [Full story: PR rules, OK? Google ducks promised news policy pledge - The Register]

Google AdWords Partner List

Do you advertise in the Google AdWords program? Aside from Google itself, do you know which web sites your ads are appearing on? The latest issue of the Weekly Search Engine Facts newsletter offers a comprehensive list of 33 existing Google AdWords partners. An additional list of 14 sites will be adding Google search results, and probably AdWords, in the near future. There's also a list of Google affiliates and ad networks who are displaying Google's new content-targeted ads, an automated system that matches Google ads to web page content. Visit the MEC Retailer's Research Log and you'll find a slightly different list of Google affiliates, with some 29 URLs listed. Between the lists, they probably cover most, if not all, of Google's affiliates.

Google News to Accept Press Releases for its Automated News Harvester

Google has redefined the term "news" so that press releases from corporate sites or lobby groups are acceptable content for the "automated" news harvester at its Google News web site. Google has promised to do a very rare thing: and actually publish its guidelines for what it considers as a news site in written form. To date, the rules have been vague and verbal (we were offered a verbal version several times today, but insisted on something in writing). We will learn of these guidelines on Monday, and share them with you the moment we receive this historical document. [Full story: Google News: press releases are OK - Official - The Register]

Microsoft Agrees to Acquire Google for $6.4 Billion

Microsoft has agreed to acquire Google, a privately held company that provides search services for search engines and web portals, for $6.4 billion the software maker has announced. Microsoft plans to use the acquisition to beef up its MSN web search service. Its mission will be to expand the MSN portal's range of online services, the company said in a statement. The unit will be part of Microsoft's MSN Network, which offers internet services to 175 million users. Google and Microsoft expect to complete the transaction in the second quarter. [Full story: Microsoft Acquires Google for $6.4 Billion - Wall Street Journal]

Google Offers Expert Search Tips

Google offers expert search tips to help you make better use of Google and find what you're searching for. For most Google searches, simply typing what you want to find does the job. If you want to refine your search, however, these suggestions from Google's quality team may help. [Web page: Building a better query - Google]

Google's AdWords Ads Appear on Fastclick & Burst Media Network

Google has partnered with two online-advertising networks to display pay-for-performance text ads across sites affiliated with the networks--a move aimed at rapidly expanding the search giant's marketing business. In the last month, Google's AdWords, or text-link, ads have started appearing on sites belonging to Web publishers that are members of major ad networks, including Fastclick and Burst Media--which combined represent sales of ad space on nearly 24,000 sites. Google said it started syndicating ads to Fastclick and Burst, among others, as part of a test of its newly minted service to place text ads on pages selected for their relevance to a marketer's products or services. [Full story: Google, ad networks team on text ads - CNET News]

Big Sites Lining Up to Sell Google PageRank?

Here's an interesting discussion about a major web site selling direct text links, which some people think is another way of selling Google PageRank ratings -- Looking at the FoxNews website, I noticed peculiar looking links on the front page under the "advertising links." Many of these are direct links to business sites. One can look at them two ways. Fox is selling PageRank or they are, in fact, just selling small text link ads. My gut tells me more is going on here than just selling text ads. For one thing, there's one link there that says - "Buy This Link" The wording on that raises eyebrows. Also notice that the second link in the left column has a PR7 thanks to Fox's PR8. However, only 14 backlinks show up for that site. There are more examples of this among those links. According to the company that is selling these links, and it is listed among them as 2 different but similar urls, links are being sold for $500 to $5,000. However, that company has a Gray Bar on both of its sites. Maybe Fox is not intentionally selling PageRank, but this company which is contracting the sales of these links know what they are doing when they are selling these links. [Discussion thread: A PR8 site selling pagerank? - WebmasterWorld]

Google Signs Top Korean Portal, Daum

Google has signed a deal with South Korea's Daum Communications to provide algorithmic search services for the portal, Daum.net, beginning as early as next week. The deal means Daum, which is Korea's top portal, decided to split its search business down the middle, partnering with Google rival Overture Services in a three-year exclusive paid-listings deal two months ago. Daum.net is a sprawling portal, with more than 2 million online communities and 20 million registered users -- accounting for nearly 80 percent of all Korean Internet users. South Korea represents a huge market opportunity, as possibly the most technologically oriented Asian country, with a 40 percent broadband penetration rate. [Full story: Google Signs Search Deal With Top Korean Portal - InternetNews]

Google to Provide Web Search and Targeted Sponsored Links to Walt Disney Web Sites

Walt Disney Internet Group, and Google, developer of the largest performance-based search advertising program, today announced an agreement through which Google will provide several Disney web properties with Google's search technology and highly relevant sponsored links. Google's web-wide search results and sponsored links are available now to Go.com visitors. Additionally, Google will power site-specific searches and provide sponsored links on Disney.com, Movies.com and FamilyFun.com beginning in the Spring. [Press release: Google to Provide Web Search and Targeted Sponsored Links to Walt Disney Internet Group Web Properties - Google]

Google Changes Ranking Algorithms for Expired Domains

A Google rep said in the WebmasterWorld forum that this month' update introduced some "algorithmic improvements for spam issues." He continued, "One resulting improvement with this index is better handling of expired domains--the authority for a domain will be reset when a domain expires, even though dangling links to the expired domain are still out on the web. We'll be rolling this change in over the next few months starting with this index. This basically means Google won't take pre-existing links of expired domain names into account anymore. You can get that domain into Google. You just won't get credit for any pre-existing links. [Discussion thread: Good news about expired domains - WebmasterWorld]

Google Introduces Automated Content-Targeted Ads

Google today announced a new content-targeted advertising service that replaces untargeted ads with relevant sponsored links in and amongst web page content. Google identifies the meaning of a web page and then automatically serves relevant ads. [Press release: Google Builds World's Largest Advertising and Search Monetization Program - Google]