Google Local Hits The Gym
Friday, June 12th, 2009 | Internet Marketing, Local Search | No Comments
While not as robust as the data available through Google Analytics, the newly pumped up metrics available through the Local Business Center are a welcome step in the right direction. Previously, Google only reported on the number of impressions (how many times your listing appeared in search results). Now they provide additional search data and user data. Click on the thumbnail below to see an example:
Google Local Business Center Dashboard
So how should you flex all that extra marketing muscle? You experiment of course! In the example above, none of the people who saw the local listing clicked through to the main website. Maybe adding some pictures or getting reviews posted to their listing would help their click-through. Maybe adding a coupon to the listing with a strong call to action would drive more traffic. While you could have performed all of these updates before (cause), only now with the new reporting can you answer the big question, “So what happened?” (effect) And the answer to that question, is where the money is!
So go to www.google.com/lbc to learn more or give us a call with your questions.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.netsearchdirect.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
Twoogle?
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | Internet News, Social Networking Sites | No Comments
As recently as last week, there were loud buzzings about the possibility that Google was on the verge of acquiring Twitter, the increasingly popular micro-blogging service. Twitter has mostly denied this on its corporate blog, but it got me to thinking anyway. Aside from the obvious questions about how Google would potentially monetize the service in order to realize a return on its investment, how would Twitter change as a Google-owned property? Would it be better, worse, or just different?
I believe it would be infinitely better. On the surface, much would probably remain the same. As an example, since Google’s acquisition of You Tube in November 2006 very little has changed cosmetically on the site. Additionally, the Twitter website and interface were designed to be as simple and straight forward for new users as possible. A design aesthetic that Google obviously shares.
I think the bigger changes for Twitter would be “under the hood” and they would be awesome. Anyone experienced the joy of this image before?
Twitter has left the building!
It’s the screen you see when the service has reached capacity and shut down. It’s been “lovingly” labeled the Fail Whale; I call it plain annoying. New users continue to discover Twitter every day increasing the load on the system. This can’t be a surprise, so why not scale their infrastructure accordingly? Can you remember the last time Google failed to return a search result to you? Has it ever!?
Imagine Twitter running with that kind of IT mega-power. So long, Fail Whale, nice knowing you! Happy users continue to spread the good word about the service and adoption rates climb ever higher.
Drop me a comment if you agree or see other benefits to a united Twoogle or Gwitter!
Google, you crack me up.
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | Internet News | No Comments
The folks at the Googleplex like April Fool’s Day more than I do. Or at least they have more fun with it.
Every year, Googlers come out with some new jokes. There was Google Paper (where you could have your Gmail inbox printed on paper and shipped to your house), Google Romance (to find your soulmate), and many more.
This year, they’ve really outdone themselves. Here are my favorite Google pranks of 2009:
- Brain Search - for use on your cell phone; hold your phone up to your head, hit search to scan your brain, and it answers your question without you needing to ever type a query
- New YouTube Viewing Experience - for your viewing pleasure, all YouTube videos now have the option of being played upside-down
- Gmail Autopilot - by far the most useful; analyzes all your outbound email so Google can automatically write responses to your emails on your behalf
The Things you Can Find on Google Earth
Thursday, January 29th, 2009 | Internet News | No Comments
Swiss police found a two-acre field producing 1.2 tons of marijuana after browsing Google’s satellite mapping software, Google Earth. The bust included 16 people who were charged with selling seven tons of marijuana in the last four years.
Lesson of the day: Google knows everything about you. Even what’s in your backyard.
Net Neutrality: Round Two
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 | Internet News | No Comments
One day after Cox announced they are going to start “managing Internet traffic” by prioritizing what you’re doing online (bye-bye P2P), Google has announced a project that will let the end-users know if their traffic is being “shaped”.
First off… what’s going on with Cox?
Unlike what we saw with Comcast a few months back, Cox has come right out and disclosed what traffic will be high and low on their priority list.
High priority traffic:
- Web (Web surfing, including web-based e-mail and chat embedded in Web pages)
- VoIP (Voice over IP, telephone calls made over the Internet)
- IM (Instant messages, including related voice and Webcam traffic)
- Streaming (Web-based audio and video programs)
- Games (Online interactive games)
- Tunneling & Remote Connectivity (VPN-type services for telecommuting)
- Other (Any service not categorized into another area)
Low priority traffic:
- File Access (Bulk transfers of data such as FTP)
- Network Storage (Bulk transfers of data for storage)
- P2P (Peer to peer protocols)
- Software Updates (Managed updates, such as operating system updates)
- Usenet (Newsgroup related)
Maybe Cox didn’t hear what happened with Comcast? Here’s a reminder. Comcast lost their fight with the FCC and was ordered to stop throttling traffic. It’ll be interesting to see how long Cox’s filtering lasts, seeing how this situation is slightly different from Comcast’s. Afterall, Cox is warning customers in advance and telling them exactly what is top-priority traffic. Still, I’m a firm believer that I (NOT my ISP) should be the one prioritizing my traffic.
And Google’s new tool…
“Father of the Internet” Vint Cerf, now VP @ Google, said in a recent blog post:
“When an Internet application doesn’t work as expected or your connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP (Internet service provider), the application, your PC (personal computer), or something else?”
In that same post, he announced the deployment of 36 servers in 12 different locations in the U.S. and Europe to analyze Internet traffic. The ultimate goal? Users will be able to find out if their ISP is inappropriately blocking/slowing their bandwidth.
Check it out: http://www.measurementlab.net
How Quickly Things Change
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment
I was recently reading an article on search engine land that was discussing a way to check to see if Google has penalized a domain. Basically, by adding the word “hyves” as a sub-domain to your site, and checking the PR, it would come back with a code that told you if it had been penalized. While that’s a great thing to be able to do, what’s really interesting is that, this sparked a pretty involved discussion in the forums and comments.
People were trying different domains, analyzing the results, comparing notes, and the discourse went on and on. Well skip ahead a few days, and guess what? All of a sudden that technique didn’t work anymore. You would think that Google would be pretty busy with cutting out huge chunks of services, their new personalized search results experiment, and launching a news service in Singapore, but obviously Google pays attention to these forums, and sites that talk about search engine marketing, and quietly turned that feature off.
So my point is this, things can change very quickly in the search engine marketing world. Techniques that work today, might not work next week. Only by actively staying abreast of news, SEO discussions, and the general feel in the SEO world, can you hope to improve and maintain your search engine marketing campaigns.
Google Sued over TypoSquatting on Domain Names can go forward
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 | Internet Marketing, PPC Advertising | No Comments
Judge Blanche Manning of the Northern District Federal Court in Illinois ruled that there was sufficient cause to move forward in the case brought by Vulcan Golf. For anyone that follows my thoughts on this they might remember that I believe that Google profits from, enables and in part created the typosquatting problem. Google:
“pays registrants for its use of the purportedly deceptive domain names … uses semantics technology to analyze the meaning of domain names and select revenue maximizing advertisements and controls and maintains that advertising”
What was not said is that Google profits from this action.
Creating a Slippery Slope
Monday, December 17th, 2007 | Search Engine Optimization | No Comments
If I search myself on Google and find a cyber-gripe site about me and end up getting attacked because some crazy person found it and decided they wanted me dead - is Google also to blame because they indexed the site?
What if my biggest competitor runs an ad on prime time TV openly misleading the population about my company and product and sells the same thing with a typo’ed version of my product name - is CBS responsible?
I think we create a slippery slope when we are allowed to place blame, or cast a net of liability, regarding trademark infringement to search engines. The advertising and keywords that they put up are really just user-generated content when you boil it down - and more and more websites are insulating themselves from any liability whatsoever from user-generated content.
Just look at MySpace and your favorite networking sites. Simply saying - “But! Google (or MySpace) let me put it up! Why isn’t it their fault?” is not an excuse - my mom would say, if Google told you to jump off a bridge, would you?
On this issue, I stand on the side which feels that it’s up to businesses, and their representatives, to protect their brands, and feel that a reactive position by search engines with policies which remove the infringement, protect a trademark, and remove indexed pages from their cache is appropriate.
Web 2.0 is ALL about user-generated content and vamped up advertising platforms and I don’t think this issue (and the ones related to it) is going away any time soon.
Who is Responsible?
Friday, December 14th, 2007 | Search Engine Optimization | No Comments
The other day a collegue and I had a discussion about the ads which are presented on typosquatted and cybersquatted sites. His point was that the ad presenters, for instance Google’s AdSense platform, were responsible for trademark infringements since they made a direct profit from the ads. I, on the other hand, respectfully disagree. Although Google does profit from ads that are sitting on these cybersquatted sites (more like pages), in the end the person who set them up to run also profits. Why does this matter? Because the person who set them up to run on the pages probably also registered the [allegedly] infringing domain name. If a criminal robs a bank (an inherently illegal thing, not unlike like trademark infringement) is the manufacturer of the get away car responsible too? The car manufacturer did serve, literally as a vehicle, to aid the criminal in his act, so are they liable? Of course not! Why then would we feel that Google was responsible for serving ads on a site which was cybersquatted or typosquatted when they didn’t register the domain name?
We see the culpability that search engines feel for trademark infringements reflected in their user agreements which speak to the issue, and even their policies for the protection of registered trademark terms too.
However, search engines aren’t proactive about protecting marks, they are simply reactive and I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. Should we put more weight on search engines to protect trademarked terms? Where does it become their responsibility?
I am always a champion when it comes to acknowledging intellectual property rights and protecting brands for businesses - but just because search engines provide a vehicle for advertising doesn’t necessarily make them responsible or liable for infringements.
I think it’s up to the trademark holder to protect their brand the same way they would protect themselves against any other attack. I caution that if we hold search engines responsible for selling advertising space which contains trademark infringements - where does it stop?
Typosquating - Dell Weighs In
Monday, December 3rd, 2007 | Search Engine Optimization | 5 Comments
This is one of my hot topics that I follow. I have been watching for well over a year, maybe two, and it is building momentum and getting more press on a regular basis.
My theory is that ad serving provider, Googleâ„¢ and Yahoo, have huge liability exposure to this as they profit directly from the sale of ads on these sites.
Dell Takes Cybersquatters to Court
PC Maker Alleges Domain Registrars Profited on ‘Confusingly Similar’ Names
By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 28, 2007; 4:06 PM
Personal computer giant Dell Inc. is pursuing a major “cybersquatting” lawsuit against several companies that buy and sell Web site addresses, alleging that the entities earned millions of dollars from Internet traffic intended for Dell and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies.
Dell Takes Cybersquatters to Court
Washington Post - United States
The Washington Post examined Google’s connection to the typosquatting industry in a story published in April 2006. Google maintains that it specifically …
See all stories on this topic
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