Don Dodge, who works for the Microsoft Emerging Business Team, has made an interesting post on the worth of search market. Applying some math on the Google’s financial results, market cap and search market share, he says that “Each 1% of market share is worth at least $1 billion in market cap”. His post explains why major players like Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Ask are fighting hard for every 1% of search market share.

Aravindhan

Tags : Search, Google, SEM

BBC news reports that Google is to ban advertisements from Essay Writing services. Many complaints have been received regarding the plagiarism which is a great threat for integrity of university degrees. Students use to take everything from the Internet and submit it as their own.

This ban from the search engine Google has been welcomed by university authorities and angered essay writing firms. Google banned advertisements for Guns and Booze earlier and Essay Writing is also added to the list. About 12,000 essays are being sold to students in a year, says Universities UK.

From BBC news,

Google’s forthcoming ban on adverts for “academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations” means that essay websites join a blacklist of “unacceptable content” including adverts for weapons, prostitution, drugs, tobacco, fake documents and “miracle cures”.

The ban was expected to be applied across Google’s global network

Mark

SEO Tags : Google, Google AdWords,  Essay Writing  Ads

Google Universal search have begun blending results from more than just the web in order to provide the most relevant and useful results possible. In addition to that, result may include video, news, images, maps, and books. This will be advantages for both the searchers and the webmaster.

As per Google statement, searcher are mostly use to web, they were not widely use to other tools like video, news, images, maps, and books. Now web will give the result of all the tools.

To know more about the advantages of universal search Click here.

Kannan

SEO Tags: Google Universal Search

Preview for Google Adwords can be seen in http://www.google.com/adpreview page as many would have known earlier. Brad Geddes has reported that the preview for Mobile Ads is launched by Google and is available at http://www.google.com/m/adpreview.

The preview can be based on

Country & Carrier
Spoken language
Markup Language
Search type

This preview of Mobile Ads will provide you an easy understanding of how your Ad looks like? and are you in the right area? So I think it will be easy for all to provide your Ads effectively.

Mark

SEO Tags : Mobile Ads, Google Adwords, Search Engine Marketing

Yahoo has launched two websites green.yahoo.com and better.yahoo.com/planet which helps to build consumer-user awareness about global warming and energy conservation, etc. So making a Eco-friendly environment is going on amidst of many companies and its a good sign too.

Yahoo has announced a contest with the title ‘Greenest City in America’ Challenge With Reward of Hybrid Taxi Fleet. Yahoo and Google are battling out for something called “green cred”which is related to global warming and the environment.

Google launched the website “Summer of Green” to help people travel in an environmentally friendly way. Google v. Yahoo: Who Cares The Most About The Environment? is the topic reported in Tech Crunch where the care taken by the two search giants is being discussed. Search Engine Land has also discussed about the green cred and how Yahoo made it right.

This contest from Yahoo might make Google and Microsoft react accordingly to project their ideas on Eco-friendly environment.

Mark

SEO Tags : Yahoo, Eco-friendly environment, Greenest Search Engine,  ‘Greenest City in America’ Challenge

Simply Google is an unofficial portal where you can access all Google apps and services in a single page. Simply Google just turned one year old and getting 1200 visitors a day. Readwriteweb reports about Simply Google from Simply Google - All You Can Eat Google, On One Page.

Charles Knight in his post on top 100 alternative search enignes on readwrite web has mentioned that

Instead of squeezing through the keyhole in order to reach Google’s 37 search options, Simply Google places all of those choices and many, many more all on the very first page; neatly arranged in columns.

Chris McEvoy who created Simply Google said that,

my attempt to expose the hidden Google information architecture

We cannot expect Google to have hundreds of options in its super-effective simple homepage. Simple Google homepage demonstrates how many apps Google has to offer these days are pretty useful.

Readwrite web also says that is no wonder in Google getting its tag line “Search, Ads & Apps”!

Mark

SEO Tags : Simply Google, Google, Google Apps and Services

Recently Google announced a new policy to anonymize their server logs after 18-24 months.

Now Google explained, why they remember information about searches on their official blog.

Three factors were critical. One was maintaining our ability to continue to improve the quality of our search services. Another was to protect our systems and our users from fraud and abuse. The third was complying—and anticipating compliance—with possible data retention requirements.

Google also explained little bit on the above 3 factors in the post linked above.

You can protect yourself from Google snooping for the most part simply by not using their personalized services. If all you need is search, stick to that and stay away from the person accounts.

CK

SEO Tags : google , privacy

MySpace aquires Photobucket for just $300 million dollars. Photobucket is comparable with YouTube since both had very large library of videos. Photobucket also had photos which YouTube doesn’t have yet. Tech Crunch and Valleywag has discussed about the purchase. Tech Crunch also says both photobucket and MySpace has a user overlap of over 100%.

Tech Crunch has projected that Myspace should have bought Photobucket for $1.3billion when compared to Google’s purchase of YouTube for $ 1.8 billion. So techcrunch describes it as a steal. It also says YouTube was far below 40 million users at the time of purchase that Photobucket has now and people use YouTube to view the content more than updating it but its not in the case of Photobucket.

So finally to conclude with MySpace has underpaid Photobucket in this purchase.

Mark

SEO Tags : MySpace, Photobucket, YouTube, Google

Google personalized home page iGoogle, which contains small Google gadgets will have Ads in them. Media Post reports that Google has begun beta testing “Gadget Ads”.

Although the beta was revealed earlier during a marketing summit for the auto industry, The Gadget Ads will be available to all ad categories by this summer.

The existing auction system will be used for ad placement and will allow marketers the option to bid by publisher’s site or content theme. It appears that Gadget Ads will be part of the AdSense network and the pricing will be based on eitther CPC or CPM model.

To support the changes, Google has developed specific “interaction reporting” tools as part of its Google Analytics performance feedback services.

As “user engagement” evolves into a key accountability metric for measuring digital ad strategies, it will also become increasingly important for advertisers to track these statistics.

Mark

SEO Tags : Google AdWords, Google, Search Engine Marketing, Gadget Ads, Google AdSense

Karlribas and Google Blogoscoped has reported about Yahoo and Google respectively that they are testing their new search results page.

According to karlribas, Yahoo is testing its new search results page with the thin blue bar on the top which has changed its entire look and layout.

According to Philipp Lenssen from Blogoscoped, Google has also changed it layout prototype in which related search and search options are given in a vertical section. You can reproduce the same by visiting www.google.com/ncr and entering in a script in the browser URL bar.

Mark

SEO Tags : Google, Yahoo, Layout Change, Search Results Layout