June 5th, 2007

Ask.com wages Google search war, NOT AdWords battle

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 1:39 am

Categories: AdWords, Google, Search, Search Advertising

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Ask.com, Google AdWords, Google Search, Salary, Donna Bogatin

Ask.com goes 3D in a big effort to one-up Google’s recently debuted Universal Search.

Why then, does it not solely go the Ask.com ad sales route as well, instead of continuing to rely on arch rival Google for its revenues?

Just weeks ago, in Ask vs. Google: Can $100 million buy IAC search happiness?, I reiterated: I have been asking if Ask will finally bite the who needs Google bullet and NOT renew the Google sponsored advertising links deal this year?

IAC Ask.com corporate parent CEO Barry Diller has promised to act within the coming months. Will he do the right IAC thing?

Jim Lanzone, Ask.com CEO says it is time to move beyond (Google’s) “ten blue links.” Isn’t it time as well then to move beyond Google’s “Sponsored Links”?

SEE Google showdown: Can Barry Diller win IAC search advertising war?

Ask.com now on its touted “truly new way to search”:

Today, our search experience is taking a consequential leap forward in making all that information accessible in a coherent way, with the launch of Ask3D, a completely re-engineered version of Ask.com. No, you don’t need red and blue glasses to see it. 3D stands for the three dimensions of searching - query expression, investigating results, and digging deeply into content. You used to have to visit three different pages or websites to see and search through each dimension. With Ask3D, you can now get everything you need on one page…in many cases above the fold.

This isn’t just about getting more information; it’s also about getting the right information. Accordingly, Ask3D literally morphs with each query you enter. No two searches are the same, so why should all search pages have the same stuff in the same order? We customize each page for each different query, based on relevance, but also based on what previous searchers on Ask found valuable for that query (or one like it).

Some people who see Ask3D may initially be taken aback. It looks different than other search engines (which look curiously like they did a decade ago). Some might say there’s too much going on. We feared the same thing. That’s why we tested Ask3D for nearly 6 months with 5% of our 25-30 million monthly users. Simply put, these people came away happier with their experience than “regular” Ask.com users - they had lower abandonment rates, higher pick rates, and higher frequency of use.

There are also fewer ads on Ask.com than any other major search engine.

Fewer ads perhaps, but STILL Google derived ads!

Ask.com will NEVER beat Google at the search game, unless it has the guts to wage war against Google on the entire search front, the (winning?) search and search advertising battlefield.

SEE: Google bets billions to lock-in search dominance
Why Google Search will NOT rule the Universe! 

June 3rd, 2007

Google bets billions to lock-in search dominance

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 10:47 am

Categories: AdWords, Content, Copyright, Google, Microsoft, Search, Search Advertising, Wall Street, Yahoo

Tags: Google Inc., Google Search, Donna Bogatin

If Google is to continue to be not only the darling of the search world, but the toast of Wall Street as well, it must withstand not only Yahoo and Microsoft head-on competitive search and search advertising initiatives, but up-start Google wannabes, to boot, claiming they are the next big thing in search.

Google, of course, is on the case, big time.

The Googleplex is spending billions not only investing in engineering R & D to “optimize” its SERP ranking algorithims, but, perhaps more importantly, to build-out its “massively scalable infrastructure” around the search world.

In the first quarter of 2007 alone, Google spent $597 million in Capital Expenditures, the majority related to IT infrastructure invesments, including data centers, servers and networking equipment. In 2006, Google invested $1.9 billion in CapEx.

Saul Hansell, the New York Times today touts he was “allowed” inside access to the Google search engineering team who “explained more than they ever have before in the news media about how their search system works.”

Perhaps the Hansell assertion is correct that Google never before “explained” to the “news media” about how Google search “works,” but that does not mean that the Google “secret” search sauce, as presented by Hansell, has not already been understood, presented and analyzed by some in the media, without need of “special” access to a sanitized Googleplex meet and greet. 

While interesting, Hansell’s article serves to confirm Google search operations modus operandi, rather than uncover any spanking new Google search ground.

SEM Beware: Google deals blow to search engine marketing I underscored upon the announcement of Google’s much ballyhooed Universal Search last month. I wrote:

In one fell Universal Search swoop, Google has wreaked havoc not only on searchers and Websites, but on the entire multi billion dollar search marketing industry.

Think the almighty Google PageRank was an impossible organic nut to crack? Even fearsome Matt Cutts won’t be able to finessse his way through the Sisyphean search engine marketing challenge that will be the “new and improved” Google.com.

The Hansell “conversation” with top Google engineer Amit Singhal, at “the top of a bright chartreuse stair case in Building 43″ of the Googleplex, supports my contention.

Google, and Hansell, seek to present an image of Google perpetually “tweaking” its “ranking algorithm” to optimize in a “frantic quest for perfect links”:

The search quality team makes about a half-dozen major and minor changes a week to the vast nest of mathematical formulas that power the search engine.

Not only does Google continuously change the manner in which it determines SERP ranking, Google may weigh “more than 200 types of information” in determining Google search rankings.

I characterize such an ever moving Google search organic ranking target as Sisyphean, Hansell dubs the Google organic search maze a “magical, mathematical brew.”

Undoubtedly NOT so magical, though, for those SEMs seeking to know what is actually brewing at the Googleplex, in in order to optimize client Web properties for ranking within the golden top SERP threesome.

After all, as Hansell dutifully spins, “what Google does is akin to ‘rocket science.’” How can a mere search marketer compete wth a Googley rocket scientist!

Search markters will not be the only ones frustrated by Google’s big Universal Search changes, though. In making Google SERP results even less of a known quantity, Google runs a big risk of alienating its core search audience.

In Why Google Search will NOT rule the Universe! I make a case for why Google’s new Universal Search SERPs will meet the fate of the now infamous Coca-Cola threatening New Coke fiasco.

Just as Coca-Cola used millions of dollars worth of market research to justify turning its back on the 100 year old strong secret Coca Cola formula for success and ended up back peddling and drowning in New Coke tears, the new Google.com will regret it ever fiddled with the successful, but unadorned and unimaginative, Google.com.

Hansell also makes a big search deal out of 1) Google’s copying and caching of “the entire Internet”  in its “huge, customized data centers” and 2) The Google search results “freshness quandry.”

Neither Google issue is a new one.

I have written extensively about Google’s server farm build out, SEE: Google plots server farm land grab in Europe.

Google Web page caching? It has been subject to “fair-use” lawsuits. SEE: Will Google pay for content?

Google SERP (un)timeliness? Upon Universal Search, I wrote: Google Search: Big, bad multi-billion dollar sandbox on just that notion, and how it serves Google AdWords purposes quite well:

If Google was indeed a public service, its sandbox could theoretically be disallowed due to age discrimination!

I have oft underscored that Google’s exclusionary “sandbox” results in automatic “banning” of perhaps the most relevant Web pages for a given search query, based simply on Googler-derived arbitrary notions of “aging.”

Will Google really change its aging tune, though? As it stands now, the Google sandbox assures all the more need for a new Website to buy AdWords, if it wants any Google love!

It is not news that Google SAYS it will be more open to Website “youngsters.” SEE: Google’s Matt Cutts SERP quality scoring patent? What it means.

Time will undoubtedly NOT tell, given the more Google “tweaks,” the less anyone knows what is really going on in the Google search world.

One thing will always be a given, though: Can’t “get in” Google? No problem. Google AdWords will be happy to take your Website, if you bid high enough, that is. 

ALSO: Google Universal Search $25,000 query in Jeopardy
Google gets defensive, all over the world
Google defends $165 million ‘few strings attached’ tax breaks

June 2nd, 2007

Welcome to Google: The friendly monopolist

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 4:23 pm

Categories: DoubleClick, Google, Microsoft, Privacy, Search, Search Advertising

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Donna Bogatin

Google love is tough to shake. What about Google monopoly power though?

Following the Google Feedburner deal, “My soul, and ten other things that Google owns,” Adam Ostrow notes.

YES, but it isn’t Feedburner that tilted the scale. Upon the first rumors of Google-DoubleClick, I headlined “Google (to be) a Monopoly.” When the deal was officially announced, I updated my story to headline: “Google: $3.1 billion cash for Web monopoly!”

I reported the Feedburner acquisition yesterday: Google gets Feedburner and in the Web’s private business.

It actually has been a Googley given for some time that Google is determined to CONTROL (NOT ORGANIZE) ALL the world’s information, and profit from all the world’s advertising.

So what? Would sum up the world’s reaction.

I opined earlier this week (before Google Gears):  Why Google is more dangerous than Microsoft, underscoring that Google has learned a thing or two from Microsoft, NOT in a good way.

I wrote:

Microsoft’s “Evil Empire” financial success was derived from cunning ecosystem manipulation and brutal industry intimidation aimed solely at creating and extending Microsoft monopoly pricing power.

What really sealed Microsoft’s monopoly fate, however, was a no holds barred, take no prisoners modus operandi. Thanks to Bill Gates’ dogged persistence and shrewd maneuvering, Microsoft achieved the industry domination he sought, no matter who or what tried to cross Microsoft en route to unrivaled economic power and world glory.

Today’s technology power house, ”Do No Evil” Google, is no different, in desire or effect. In fact, Google power is even more insidious, because Google has the “consumer” on it side.

Just one day after I pitted Google’s intentions against those of Microsoft, Google announced Google Gears: The world then immediately came tumbling down, overwhelmingly against Microsoft and near unamimously cheering for Google.

I (no surprise to readers of this Digital Markets Blog) had a different take on things.

SEE: Google Gears: NOT a Microsoft killer

What gives now, post Feedburner?

Ostrow starts out appropriately noting “are there any parts of our online lives that don’t reside somewhere within the Googleplex?” So what though, it seems from the Mashable post.

Ostrow goes on to point out a few Google services he uses, and that’s that. Ostrow provides neither Google outrage, nor Googley cheer; In fact, he doesn’t offer any conclusion or summation whatsoever.

What are we to conclude then? Google owns our souls, and that is a good thing?

Seemingly. The first commenter to the post, Kevin Keating, cheeringly affirms:

Sounds good to me! I also tell Google where I want to go on the internet, and let them remember where I’ve been so I don’t have to. And I’m more than okay will ALL of this because what’s private to me is and will always be private. And that, my friend, is the secret love I harbor for…

Oh, I totally almost gave it away.

WELCOME, MY FRIENDS, TO THE GOOGLE WORLD, WHERE THE “FRIENDLY” MONOPOLIST RULES (in a not so friendly fashion).

SEE: Google security alert: Universal Search scarier than Google Maps

June 1st, 2007

Google gets Feedburner and in the Web's private business

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 3:55 pm

Categories: Google, Marketing, Metrics, Search Advertising

Tags: Google Inc., Feedburner, Donna Bogatin

Another day, another way for Google to control more of the confidential data of the Web’s businesses:

Google is now the proud owner of Feedburner, a “leading provider of Web feed distribution and management tools,” at a rumored acquisition price of $100 million.

Worried yet about Google Big Brother peering into your online business?

Google Analytics: Should Google be minding YOUR Web business? I undercored last month: Is it really prudent for Web sites to open their back office to Google? Should Google really know how its AdWords customers are investing in online advertising with Google competitors?

Google enthuses over its newly Googley Feeburner: “we constantly aim to give AdWords advertisers broader distribution to an even wider audience of users.”

Dick Costolo, Feedburner CEO and estatic new Googler, weighs in on why Google is keen on Feedburner:

1. Google’s competencies and focus around publisher analytics, distribution, and monetization map perfectly to our suite of services.
2. Publishers want a single dashboard and single source for the metrics that give them feedback about the value of their content and its impact on their business. By combining our market leading feed metrics with Google’s market leading site and marketing analytics, publishers now get a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their audience. This ‘total perspective’ has long been a goal of ours, and we think our combined analytics offering is going to provide publishers with previously undiscovered insights and opportunities.
3. The measurement of awareness advertising is evolving from unique impressions to audience engagement. By providing our hundreds of thousands of publishers with Google’s world-class advertising marketplace and metrics, we can provide far more value to publishers and begin to deliver this next step in ROI measurement to advertisers.

Data, data and more business proprietary data, moving over to Google’s worldwide server farms for perpetual “safekeeping.”

What is to become of this latest big batch of confidential information on the businesses of others that Google acquires in acquiring Feedburner?

Feedburner is a website operated by Google Inc., Feedburner states. As such, the Google Privacy Policy rules. NOT a very reassuring state of affairs!

SEE BEWARE: GOOGLE’S BIG, BAD PRIVACY RISKS

May 24th, 2007

Why Google CEO is 'harmless'

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 10:29 am

Categories: AdWords, Advertising, Google, Radio, Search, Search Advertising

Tags: Donna Bogatin

While the world expresses “shock and awe” over Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s ”Big Brother” reveries uttered across the pond in Europe last weekend, courtesy of “dead media” Financial Times, I actually heard the Schmidt ”personalization” routine live and in person in New York City last Friday, at the Personal Democracy Forum.

Over the past week, I have reported and analyzed both the Google CEO’s keynote and Google’s paid sponsorship mission at the Forum, at length:

Google CEO Schmidt on ‘Personal Democracy’: Up For Sale
Google sweet talks its way to political power
Google CEO on Education: Google Search is key
Google: John McCain’s secret campaign weapon 

AND in How Google will get inside YOUR head I quote Schmidt at the Forum, on iGoogle:

With the personal version of Google, iGoogle, the computer will get to know you so well, it will say good morning, you are late this morning, but you are always late; It will almost understand how you think and mimic behavior.

Not only does Google aim to “understand” and “mimic” everyone, it wants to be everyone’s “friend.” SEE: Google gets VERY personal: Can we be friends?

BUT, should we really fear the Google CEO’s personalization projections, or is Schmidt simply flexing a very creative imagination?

Are Schmidt’s dreams of personalization fantasies, or realizable realities?

Friday, Schmidt echoed a similar personalized for Eric ”wish” he “shared” almost one year ago, in NYC as well, as I reported at the time in ”Google targets GPS-based in-car personalized advertising“:

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, believes that when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs. For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store.

Schmidt shared his vision for GPS location-based delivery of highly targeted and personalized advertising via in-car radios at a luncheon with a group of publishing executives in New York City yesterday.

While Schmidt predicted a realization of his vision within the next one to two years, he did not share his vision for how the Google owned dMarc Broadcasting, a “digital solutions provider for the radio broadcast industry,” would enable such digital ad delivery via car radios. Google acquired dMarc in January to bring “radio advertising to Google AdWords advertisers.”

Well, the year has come and gone. What is the status of the Google CEO’s “wish” for made for Eric radio ads?

Personalized radio ads by Google?

Google has not even mastered old school pay for placement radio advertising, as I have been reporting and analyzing extensively over the past week, as well.

SEE: Google radio ads hit snag and Google Radio Ads: NO match for AdWords

May 23rd, 2007

Google cracks advertising code, big time

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 3:28 pm

Categories: AdSense, AdWords, Advertising, Google, Google Ads, Search, Search Advertising, Video, YouTube

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Donna Bogatin

Remember life before Google? When GOOD ads meant NO ads?

The world was not as rich in those days, as the Google team does not cease to remind us.

What have Brin, Page and Schmidt bestowed upon the world to make it a better place?

FIRST: Google AdWords, “Relevant advertising can be as useful as search results or other forms of content.”

NEXT: Google AdSense, “Advertising can enhance the experience for visitors to a publisher’s website.”

THEN: Google YouTube Videos: “Video Ads must be thought of as content, clever advertisers give YouTubers commercials for content.”

NOW: Google AdSense for Video: ”Users  want ads to enhance their video watching experience, in-stream ads in video will add value to publishers’ video content and help to deepen engagement with users watching the videos.”

Why is the Google founding team so keen on spreading the advertising by Google gospel? Because it is a new found religion for them!

YES, as I underscored last week upon the announcement of Google Universal Search, Brin and Page are Google Inc. converts to advertising worship.

SEE: Why Google Search will NOT rule the Universe!:

It could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.

What a difference a decade and billions of dollars worth of GOOG makes?

“Innocent” academics no more, Google is purely in the commerical realm and founders Brin and Page NOW argue from the consumer point of view that the more search ads the better for consumers to find what they want.

One BIG Google caveat, of course, consumers ONLY want Googley ads!

ALSO: How Microsoft beats Google in ad agency battle

May 20th, 2007

Google trumps Microsoft IE7 in search war?

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 11:06 am

Categories: AdSense, AdWords, Advertising, Google, Google Software Applications, Microsoft, Search, Search Advertising

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Donna Bogatin

Among the many Google claims to fame is that it has chosen to “ignore conventional wisdom in designing its business.”

Subsequently, rather than “If you can’t beat them, join them,” Google takes to the notion, “If you can’t beat them, hijack them!”

Case in point: Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, “Optimized for Google.”

Did you know “Google recommends upgrading to the new, safer Internet Explorer 7,” courtesy of Microsoft?

Does it not seem like just yesterday that Google’s ordinarily congenial vice president for search products, Marissa Mayer, complained “We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN.”

It was actually one year ago, and despite Google’s attempts to portray Microsoft as an anti-competitive IE7 bully in Internet search before the U.S. Justice Department, the antitrust authorities determined “Internet Explorer 7 includes a relatively straightforward method for the user to select a different search engine.”

At the time, the New York Times wrote in “New Microsoft browser raises Google’s hackles”:

“Microsoft insists it has no intention of deploying its browser as a weapon in the search wars. But Google suspects otherwise.”

It is Google, in fact, that is now deploying the Microsoft browser as its own weapon in the search wars.

Internet Explorer 7 “Optimized for Google,” that is.

Google now claims to be bowled over by what’s “New in Internet Explorer 7”:

Tabs: let you view multiple sites in one window
Safer browsing: with phishing protection
Convenient printing: with fit-to-page capability

“Optimized for Google” means all the difference, of course, in Google’s plan for ever increasing Google search share, over Microsoft:

Google homepage you can personalize
Google Toolbar
Google as your search engine

Google has two not so secret weapons in its Microsoft IE 7 hijacking campaign: The largest ad network on the Web, and the most visited search engine.

Google is spreading the IE7, but Googley better, gospel in prime Google.com AdWords territory, above Microsoft’s “organic” number one position, and all around the Google AdSense World Wide Web, at no cost to Google, to boot!

ALSO: How Google will get inside YOUR head

May 17th, 2007

Google YouTube: Will Microsoft, Yahoo have last laugh?

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 12:07 pm

Categories: Content, Copyright, Google, Google Ads, Microsoft, Search Advertising, Video, Yahoo

Tags: Donna Bogatin

Robert Scoble headlines: “Google to Yahoo and Microsoft: The $1.65 billion was worth it,” as an end game conclusion to Google’s much ballyhooed Universal Search: 

Ahh, now you all understand what I meant when I said YouTube is a moat, not a revenue generator. By putting YouTube results into Google’s main engine Google ensures it will have better searches than Yahoo and Microsoft (who were, truth be told, getting damn close to matching Google’s quality). And it does it in a way that Yahoo and Microsoft will not be willing to match. Seriously, can you see an executive at Microsoft advocating putting YouTube videos into Microsoft’s search results? I can’t. That’d be the equivilent of sending traffic to a competitor. It’d be what I advocate at this point, but that explains why I am a stupid blogger and not some multi-millionaire executive.

You said it!

He also said “I love Google’s strategy.” Here’s why he does, and then why his love is misplaced:

Google continues to mess with Microsoft’s strategy. Microsoft still treats each team as something that must make money. Google doesn’t do that. They didn’t care one bit that YouTube didn’t have any revenues. They knew that there’s other ways to make money off of YouTube than to force YouTube to monetize on its own.

The argument is a circular one. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has long said that the company’s end game is to drive searches through Google.com, through any and every means the company can, including via YouTube inventory (the video content inventory of others that is).

As I wrote earlier today in Google Search: Big, bad multi-billion dollar sandbox, all that matters to Google is selling more and more billions of dollars worth of AdWords.

Google YouTube is not an anti-Microsoft game. Moreover, contrary to popular opinion, Google is too shrewd to be driven by petty competitive skirmishes.

DoubleClick is not a $3.1 billion slap in the face to Yahoo and Microsoft, it is a $3.1 billion Google virtual land grab.

Google can hardly be accused of spending its billions to one-up Microsoft; Perhaps the other way around though.

Online Gaming: Microsoft Massive acquisition about $300 million; Google AdScape acquisition about $25 million.

Directory Assistance: Microsoft TellMe acquisition about $1 billion; Google boot-strapped, in-house GOOG-411

Scoble really misses the mark though in dismissing billions of dollars worth of copyright infringement lawsuits staring Google YouTube in the face:

Truth be told even I didn’t quite understand just what an impact that the YouTube purchase would have. It’s all very clear now. It also is even more worth putting up with billions of dollars of lawsuits.

Google YouTube is operating under just the same false assumption. Google has actually INCREASED its DMCA risk though, by integrating YouTube videos into Google.com search results.

And, Google couldn’t have picked a more inopportune time, given that YouTube copyright lawsuits mount.

Tomorrow is the two-week anniversary of the class action lawsuit filed in New York; The plaintiff argument is a compelling one and underscores how Google’s YouTube business model is in direct contradiction with the spirit of DMCA 512C (Google.com undoubtedly now too). How so?

Read my exclusive insider interview with the lead prosecuters Proskauer Rose in Google at Risk: YouTube class action lawsuit changes DMCA copyright game.

ALSO:  Why Google Search will NOT rule the Universe! and
SEM Beware: Google deals blow to search engine marketing

May 17th, 2007

Google Book Search: Google Manifest Destiny races on

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 10:39 am

Categories: Content, Copyright, Google, Google Apps, Search, Search Advertising

Tags: Google Inc., Google Book Search, Donna Bogatin

YouTube copyright lawsuits mount, I reported earlier this week. YouTube parent Google’s world information domination ambitions continue to mount as well.

“Manifest Destiny was a phrase that expressed the belief that the United States was destined to expand from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean; it has also been used to advocate for or justify other territorial acquisitions,” courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Google offline to online manifest destiny is to acquire all the world’s books, via their digitization that is.

“Google Book Search becomes more comprehensive” Google announces to the world’s book lovers today, in its typically Google to the world’s rescue fashion:

Google Book Search allows you to instantly search the full text of over a million digitized books, but we thought that wasn’t quite enough. Now when you search you’ll get both digitized book results as well as records for millions of other books that still just exist in the analog world.

Why is Google doing this? The Googley pitch:

We’re doing this because we want to offer users the most comprehensive book search in the world - whether it’s a book you can read online now, preview samples, see a few snippets, or just read what others have written about this book. We’re still very busy digitizing millions more books, but want to make as much discoverable as possible today.

Who can argue with benevolent Google?

Anyone that believes it is NOT in the public’s best interest for a single multi-billion  dollar corporation to ACTUALLY control ALL the world’s information, and be the world’s librarian, to boot.

Next stop for Google Book Search? Google.com Universal Search, of course!

SEE:  Why Google Search will NOT rule the Universe! and
SEM Beware: Google deals blow to search engine marketing and
Google Search: Big, bad multi-billion dollar sandbox

ALSO: Google: Advertising supported books?
Google vs. Microsoft: Do you want Google to be your ‘librarian’?

May 17th, 2007

Google Search: Big, bad multi-billion dollar sandbox

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 6:48 am

Categories: AdWords, Advertising, Google, ROI, Search, Search Advertising

Tags: Google Inc., Google AdWords, Google Search, Sandbox, Donna Bogatin

Google’s organic search ranking sandbox may be the most treacherous weapon in the $150 billion market cap search engine king’s big, bad black box of Webmaster tricks.

What is the motive behind Google’s reviled sandbox? HINT: Google sandbags Webmasters with a sandbox to the spam defense SPIN.

I have oft underscored that Google’s exclusionary “sandbox” results in automatic “banning” of perhaps the most relevant Web pages for a given search query, based simply on Googler-derived arbitrary notions of “aging.”

(SEE Google search PageRank excludes relevant Websites and Google PageRank: Biased and fundamentally flawed? and Google Search: Is PageRank reliable?)

If Google was indeed a public service, its sandbox could theoretically be disallowed due to age discrimination! As is the typically Googley case, search age discrimination is good however, if Google says so.

Why? In the Google PR world, a new Website is a potentially “bad” Website, perhaps set up by “fraudsters” to spam the supposedly untouched by human hands (and soon to be extinct) PageRank machine wisdom.

But is that the real reason? Of course not.

People equate Google with God (really). If God were to create his own homepage today, would Google deem God on the Web to be unreliable until he dutifully did his probationary tour in the Google sandbox?

YES, if it served Google’s purposes, even though Marissa Meyers would be hard pressed to publicly defend her assertion that God is NOT the “best answer.”

What is the Google sandbox story? As with all Google stories, it has zeros in it, lots and lots of them. The Google search sandbox game is a multi-billion dollar one, an AdWords bonanza, in fact.

Yes, AdWords drives the Google sandbox. Despite years and years of diversification attempts and billions in investments, Google continues to be a $150 billion market cap 99% pure AdWords story.

Google’s REAL mission is NOT to organize the world’s information, it is to SELL AdWords, billions and billions worth.

What better way to sell billions more in AdWords than to ensure that a (big) AdWord buy is the ONLY way a new Website can see the light of day in a first page Google SERP, thanks to the exclusionary Google sandbox!

In Universal Search, Google has created a new, even bigger and badder sandbox, as I analyze in SEM Beware: Google deals blow to search engine marketing.

THE GOOGLE UNIVERSAL SEARCH END GAME IS MORE BILLIONS IN A ITS THE ADWORDS WAY OR THE (NOT SO) INFORMATION HIGHWAY AT GOOGLE.COM

SEE: Why Google Search will NOT rule the Universe!