Web’s Best Blog

Google has added the “Google Webmaster Central” site to their roster of blogs, in order to facilitate communication between the search behemoth and us common folk. Google has occasionally issued webmaster communications in the last few years through various media, but it would be assumed they could consolidate any sort of alerts into this new central blog. The blog is manned by Matt, Vanessa, and Adam, so with three authors you could assume they’ll update often.

Vanessa Fox posted an interesting article on 8/4/2006 about a new webmaster tool from Google which may help people who have suffered from indexing woes because of the famous “non-www” versus www routing issue. If a 301 re-direct hasn’t done the job, you can use the form they mentioned in order to finally just tell them which version who consider to be the main one. That seems like a reasonable way to handle the issue for website owners who have experience chronic frustration with the 301 issue.

Google has also delivered more tools that report on the crawlability of your websites. They go into graphic detail concerning any issues the spiders might run into. If you feel like you’re being plagued by some sort of crawling issues, this could be the key to unlocking the solution. You’ll get a report on what Google is actually seeing when they crawl.

All in all, this blog is worth checking out. I have no idea how often this blog will be updated, but I’ll keep an eye on if for updates.

For a time period Google was a media darling, where they could seemingly do no wrong. Lately I’m noticing a change to that fact. Despite their big recent quarter in earnings, many are questioning their methods and objectives. One big problem is click-fraud, and this week you can expect an end to the $95 million case of fraud against them.

Google has maintained that they take adequate measures to combat click-fraud, but critics aren’t quite as sure. People are even unhappy about the Google Party Jet.

So what’s a company of Google’s ilk to do? Probably release even more products that ever. They’ve adopted a launch-a-product a minute mentality which is seeing them flap their jaws and follow it up with a big yawn.

Add to this the fact that the broken Google search engine never gets fixed, and I’m starting to wonder why I have a Google section at all.

I guess it’s because people still like talking about them and they still have the search market on raps. How long this trend will last I can’t say, but the negative sentiment is getting worse.

Say what you want about Google, but they’re still ruling search engine traffic in a big way. Despite what you may hear around the internet, more people than ever are using Google, indicating pleasure in their search results.

Good news for anyone who gets traffic from search engines, the report indicates that search volume was up 30% overall in the latest quarter.

Search is going up. Google still dominates search. If you want to do well in search engine marketing, you need to cater to Google. Sort of keeps the whole webmaster community in the same space they’ve been in for years.

Every day, non-Google traffic becomes even more essential for websites who hope to thrive on the ever-increasingly commercial web.

I can always tell Google is doing some sort of update. Why? Because they drop an 8 year old domain of mine that has 51,000 links and brings in enough revenue for my mortgage each month. This has happened on 9/22/2005, 12/27/2005 and 6/27/2006. I doubt this is an algo change. The reason the complete drop is baffling is, every single ranking for the whole site drops.

Each time my site dumps, a crappy competitor rises from the surface. He’s using old school spam tactics from 1999, but enjoys a resurgence every time this happens. What word can we expect from Google concerning this? Apparently none. They’re whole PR department has been on vacation for a month, so it’s up to all of us to just relax and wait for the inevitable changes when our quality websites come roaring back to the surface. Or not.

What I choose to do anymore is ignore this shuffling. It’s out of my hands. Every time the shuffle happens, the bottom falls out of my CPM too, so I’m forced to endure a pay cut, at least until it “sorts itself”. To focus on this negative event would drive me crazy. Instead I bulld even more pages and attempt to reach out using other methods of getting traffic, so that I won’t be crushed like a gnat by the elephant Google when it decides to do something.

I haven’t seen the rumored backlinks or PR updates occur either. Yawn, I’m going back to work .

That’s the rumor around the internet today. I strapped on my trusty spyware-infested Internet Explorer with PageRank Bar installed and headed out to see. The only thing I can see is:

Pages that are updated:

• Pages created before April or so

Existing pages apparently haven’t been update, so this is sort of a boring non-event, unless it gets more exciting in the next few days. Undoubtedly this is related to the fact that Google is broke. We’ll probably see a series of some sort of correctional updates, but I can’t be certain. Only Google engineers know for sure, and they haven’t been talking.

Hopefully the update would move Google a wee bit closer to some stability in their results. The fluctuation now seems to be almost constant.

Are you seeing any changes on your website? Do you even care?

The moment that PayPal has been dreading has arrived: Google debuts Google Checkout. Analysts were allegedly unsure if whether the system was designed to compete with Ebay’s PayPal:

The new offering, referred to in news and analyst reports as GBuy or Google Wallet, promises online sellers an easy way to add a checkout to their sites and can be used in addition to other options such as PayPal or a merchant’s own pay system.

I’d have to say, based on the description it certainly is. One of the main features of Google Checkout is that the information is stored on Google’s servers, so that you don’t have to give it out to each vendor, which should encourage more people to shop online, because of increased security. I’d say that’s an almost exact description of PayPal.

Key pricing of the plan for vendors:

• 2 percent of the value of each sale plus 20 cents per transaction
• The program is of course tied in with their Google Adwords plan and the current special will reward webmasters with $10 in processing fees break for every $1 they spend on Adwords

This program appears aimed right at the heart of Google’s success: the webmasters like me who do daily processing of payments online, and are involved with Google’s advertising plans. It most likely will be worth adding the option to your website. At the least, people who don’t use PayPal for whatever reason will have another option.

The product is also similar to Microsoft Passport in some ways, but isn’t a clone of either. I’m definitely interested in checking it out and will have more to report soon.

Do you plan on using Google Checkout?

Google has had enough of hiding their light under a bushel barrel. They need revenues, and they need’em now. I know the feeling, so I applaud Google’s newest attempts to get people to look at ads. One ad unit in particular I’ve been enjoying lately is the 300×250 Square. We’ve also seen several types of new ads released in the last few weeks:

• Experiments with CPA – Cost Per Action ads coming?
• Experiments with Vertical Image Units – draw their eyes with a related image file
• Newly released Video Ads – Google Video Adwords hit street

All of these new measures are likely to result in increased revenue for webmasters and Google. I applaud the moves they’ve been making lately. It will help stop the ads from become moribund. Banner blindness is inevitable. Google is pulling far ahead of closest competitor YPN now because of YPN’s lack of ad unit options. Link units alone are a huge earner.

It looks to me like there’s new life in context sensitive ads right now. Experiments are going on right now to see how these new units perform.

Check out this Google Adsense ad: it even says “Click here”!

Google is ready to compete with everyone. This time they have a major battle on hand as they go up against PayPal in a battle of electronic payment systems. Paypal is the current champ of processing payments with over 100 million account holders.

There’s no word on how Google plans on competing with PayPal, but it’s assumed they’ll go through their giant webmaster network and attempt to start their. Most likely GBuy will be integrated with Google Adsense and Adwords. The program has been in development for quite some time, so I’ll assume they have many of the bugs worked out.

Personally I’ve been pretty happy with PayPal so I doubt I’ll switch.

Years ago, netizens spoke of the Google Dance in hushed and reverent tones. No more. Now the fair inhabitants of Planet Google live in a heightened sense of awareness known as Everflux. You might think you know how or where you rank. But you don’t. This is chaos theory at its’ best. So what is the answer to the eternal question concerning Google? If I told you that, I’d have to kill you

Only the strong survive in the Post Google Dance era. Much like a scorched Earth scenario after a nuclear shower, webmasters who survived have mutated. Websites that have avoided the death sentence from the GooglePlex have done so with great cunning, earned at a dear cost. Do you think this raggedy band of survivors has developed their wisdom by ignoring the current trends? I do not. To prosper in Google is to be nimble. To borrow a common phrase: there are two types of webmasters in Google: the quick and the dead.

What small pieces of cardboard can we find floating in the carnage of the Google ocean that we can cling to out of sheer desperation? Ahh, just one my friend. There’s one secret wisdom of Google that I have never ignored and for which I thank the powers that be for my continued well being: Content may be King, but Links are the Queen, the most powerful piece in this game.

Those who ignore this Fair Queen of the Search Engines do so at their own Peril. It’s stated, in fact, that the King can never rule his Kingdom without the proper union of a well-themed Queen. The King’s attainment is limited by his Queen’s ambitions.

If you’re in the market for the finest links of their kind. If you have ambitions of establishing your Kingdom of Search, might I suggest you visit Father Google and ask of him: who is the Web’s Best Directory? I think you’ll be quite happy with His answers.

King Google has been totally mad for awhile now, but lately, the product releases and ideas are getting more bizarre. According to TechCrunch, Google is now aiming at launching a new eavesdropping technology.

The implications of this product are astounding. If there aren’t politicians working on stopping this type of product, there need to be. This is one of those ideas where any merit could be easily wiped out by the wrong use of the technology.

Techcrunch also links to the Google Research Blogspot which announces the project:

We showed how to sample the ambient sound emitted from a TV and automatically determine what is being watched from a small signature of the sound — all with complete privacy and minuscule effort. The system could keep up with users while they channel surf, presenting them with a real-time forum about a live political debate one minute and an ad-hoc chat room for a sporting event in the next.

The customer/target gets one benefit from this? And at what cost? You give your privacy rights up and get what back in exchange? Couldn’t private discussion be some of the “ambient sound” being emitted in the room? The funny thing is, people probably don’t care. They figure if it makes their task of entertaining themselves easier, they’ll do it. Personally, I’ll never allow any company to have open pipe access into my home.

The technology itself is interesting, and more power to the researchers for their accomplishment, but what a sketchy application. Potential abuse would be too great and many problems could arise. What if Google monitored a conversation “accidentally” where a murder was plotted? Would they contact the authorities or pretend to ignore it?

This product leaves me flat. There’s no benefit I’d sign off on to allow my PC and microphone to broadcast audio from my house to a corporation. What do you think of this project?