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 5th, 2007

Salesforce.com plays Google ad sales game: Big tease? Big letdown!

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 12:05 am

Categories: AdWords, Google

Tags: Game, Salesforce.com Inc., Google Inc., Intuit Inc., Advertisement, Google AdWords, Donna Bogatin

What does Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff have in Google store, after all?

Google piggybacks on Intel: What about Intuit? I underscored when Intel announced a not so “groundbreaking” collaboration with Google last month; I compared the Google Intel AdWords resale deal with the not so fruitful Google Intuit AdWords resale deal. 

Upon the Wall Street Journals’ tease a few weeks ago of a “major” Google Salesforce.com alliance, I predicted Google partners up? Salesforce.com deal NO Microsoft killer. I speculated a possible Google-Salesforce.com deal would also be inspired by the Google Intuit deal.

Moreover, contrary to the grandiose visions projected by WSJ, ““Google, Salesforce.com weigh alliance to battle Microsoft,” I also underscored, just three days ago in Salesforce.com CEO: Google is good, very good, the existing Salesforce.com-Google AdWords connection, which has been in force for quite a while.

This past Friday, I wrote about the ongoing Salesforce.com Keiden AdWords collaboration: Salesforce for Google AdWords debuted last year, designed as a for fee program, based notably on technology obtained with the Salesforce acquisition of Kieden Corporation, a third party search marketing company.

I aslo warned, however, that the Google-Intuit Web-based “alliance” announced many moons ago with much fare should NOT serve as a best practices for Salesforce.com emulation.

Apparently though, even the CEO Marc Benioff best of them finds it difficult to not be swayed by Googley charm.

Following perhaps one of its biggest recent teases, Salesforce.com now offers a big letdown: Salesforce.com and Google “are expected” to launch a “combined Web site” today that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google’s AdWords.

Google, Salesforce.com YAHOO? NO! (Not so) BIG DEAL!

While the “deal” may be hailed as representing  a “market opportunity” of 900,000 Google AdWords customers and a pool of 20 million small businesses, neither Google or Salesforce.com shareholders ought to be uncorking any big future revenues champagne.

It seems that Benioff did not reach out to CEO peer Steve Bennett, regarding the non-event that Intuit’s AdWords resale deal with Google CEO Eric Schmidt resulted in.

I projected a big Googley letdown for Intuit, from the get go, upon the Google Intuit announcement last August.

“We haven’t seen a huge lift” is how Bennett has subsequently evaluated the supposed QuickBooks-AdWords mutual booster.

I aptly predicted last August: Google QuickBooks 2007: Death of Yellow Pages, local newspapers? NO 

I said of the Intuit-Google AdWords resale deal upon its announcement in 2006:

Google has been unsuccessful to date in capturing the small business advertising market on its own and in collaboration with a direct sales partner; Its alliance with Intuit does not present itself as a sure fire way to improve its track record.

Contrary to Schmidt’s beliefs, savvy small businesses are not waiting impatiently for Google to give them a turnkey desktop icon enabling Google to fetch all of their company financial information to do what it likes with.

Contrary to Schmidt’s beliefs, savvy small businesses are not waiting impatiently for Google to give them a turnkey icon on their desktop so they can get sucked into the Google-centric AdWords raise your bid continuously auction scheme.

NEVERTHELESS, big-time CEOs, of big-time companies, continue to set themselves up for big Googley letdowns.

The latest, Benioff of Salesforce.com, via his “new” Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords. Not quite spanking new, the Group Edition replaces Salesforce.com’s entry level “Team Edition.”

The big innovations?: 1) Link to Google.com for buying Google AdWords and 2) Salesforce.com analytics enabled Google AdWords client landing pages.

As I oft say, Google love does not conquer all; Neither does the Google “brand.”

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT CEO TO “FALL” FOR GOOGLE ADWORDS SALES?

ALSO: Google OS? Why Microsoft STILL rules

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

May 31st, 2007

Google: YAY! Checkout goes mobile

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 2:54 pm

Categories: AdWords, Advertising, Google, Google Checkout, ecommerce

Tags: Google Inc., Mobile Marketing, Checkout, Donna Bogatin

The Google Engineering team does not seem to have synched its news cycle.

At the same time that Google Engineering gives us Developer Day with show-stopper Google Gears, Google Checkout engineers give us “Look, Ma-no wires,” to proclaim Google Checkout is now available by mobile phone, sometimes.

Google Checkout on the handheld? Where is it on the desktop?

Below is a “Universal Search” for books at Google. While there are plenty of household names AdWords customers hawking their books for sale, NONE is sporting the cute little Checkout icon.

What about Universal Search?

The top ”most relevant” destination on the Web for “books,” is Google Books, according to Google.

Google has also declared its Google Books to be the winner in the Google keyword “auction” for books! 

May 28th, 2007

Google's risky advertising business

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 11:40 am

Categories: AdSense, AdWords, Advertising, Google, Google Ads

Tags: Motive, Google Inc., Advertisement, Yahoo! Inc., Google, Michael Arrington, Donna Bogatin

Michael Arrington continues to be quite displeased with the PayPerPost business model.

“How much is your soul worth” he asks, in TechCrunch’s second “Soulless” PayPerPost story.

BUT, are media souls really in danger of being compromised merely because of one new advertorial entrant into the publishing market?

How about “old school” advertising supported media plays, or Google’s new fangled advertising/PR cum content AdWords product?

TechCrunch has reassuringly undescored that IT “does not accept payment for posts.”

WHEW! Nevertheless, Arrington has acknowledged even he may be susceptible to wine, flowers or TEARS!

In his latest tour de force feigned outrage post just last week, “Silicon Valley could use a downturn right about now,” Arrington indicated he has a hard time maintaining the editorial fortitude necessary to withstand the pressure of CEO and PR pleas to ”report” company messages: 

Entrepreneurs are no longer talking to us just to get our opinion and hope for a blog post and a little discussion. These guys need press to stand out from the scores of startups just like them. Saying no to them isn’t really an option. They show up at our front door with a bottle of wine or flowers. They instruct their PR firms to do anything necessary to get a story. More than once I’ve had a CEO break down and cry on the phone when we said we weren’t covering them. And more than once, I folded and wrote about them after those conversations.

In originally covering PayPerPost, TechCrunch lamented damage the “bad boy of blogging” may do to the “reputation” of the blogosphere:

Is this a bad joke designed to torpedo the blogosphere’s credibility in general? It doesn’t appear to be. If we’re all trying to negotiate a space between Hollywood and mainstream journalism, this is taking things way too far towards the most insipid parts of Hollywood.

Marshall Kirkpatrick’s vaunted concerns for the “credibility” of the blogosphere could actually be extended to questionning the integrity of mainstream journalism itself, and Google.

MAINSTREAM JOURNALISM “HOW IT WORKS?”

Wall Street Journal’s ”Peanut Butter Manifesto scoop,” circa November 2006, as assessed by veteran mainstream journalist, and Columbia School of Journalism graduate, Larry Dignan: 

The Wall Street Journal publishes a Yahoo memo penned by Brad Garlinghouse and it took bloggers about an hour to start pondering conspiracy theories. Among the questions summed up and raised by Donna Bogatin and a few hundred other bloggers:

How did the Journal get the memo?, Did Yahoo give it to them?, What were the motives behind the story and the memo?

Puhleeze. All of those questions are irrelevant and naive.

REALLY? Apparently, to old school mainstream media journalism, in any event. Dignan on “how it works,” the “fair trade” quid pro quo notion of standard journalism operating procedure that is:

The Journal got the memo because it’s the business paper of record. It’s called reporting and brand credibility that has taken decades to build. If you’re a CEO–or any exec–looking to float a memo you are going to the Journal. It’s your first stop to reach the folks that control your market cap.

Journalists are used to float trial balloons all the time. Say you want to acquire an wacky startup like YouTube. What do you do? You go to the Journal with a story noting “talks are in the early stages and may unravel.” Then you watch Wall Street’s reaction. If the stock is flat to up a bit on the “news” you do the deal. If the stock falls 30 percent perhaps that acquisition isn’t a good idea. This is standard practice. For instance, Microsoft internal memos don’t get leaked. They get spoon-fed to key reporters with clout.

Every story you read has a motive. Yahoo’s motive: Look like you are doing something–anything. Say you’re Yahoo CEO Terry Semel and the peanut gallery is calling for your ouster. In Semel’s position you can’t look passive so maybe Yahoo determined it made sense to “leak” the memo to the Journal. Now before you run off yelling “Conspiracy!” this is called reporting. Yahoo wanted to see what would happen if it floated the idea of laying off a bunch of people. The Journal gets a good story and millions of in-bound links. That swap is a fair trade and standard operating procedure.

Maybe standard operating old media operating procedure, but not in the spirit of The Society of Professional Journalists’ (optional) Code of Ethics, as I reported in WSJ and Yahoo’s peanut butter: Conspiracy? NO Ethical? NOT SO last November:

Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.

Always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity. Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in exchange for information.

HOW ABOUT NEW MEDIA? Google

The Internet King is flexing its own advertising/PR cum editorial muscle, right in the heart of the blogosphere, as I have been reporting and and analyzing in:

Will Google corner the ‘paid link’ market, too? and
Google blurs line between advertising and content, again and
Is Google doing advertising evil with new model?

A new “Paid” but not quite identified as “Sponsored” Links Google advertising product, Pay-Per-Action (PPA) text link format, encourages the ”blending” of paid for ecommerce transactional links into publisher editorial, but does not require any upfront “advertorial” disclaimers by AdSense publishers for the Google ad product being shown to consumers “blended” with “objective,” non-paid for content.

What is the text link format for pay-per-action ads? Google asks, and answers:

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text:

“Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.” (Mousing over the link will display “Ads by Google” to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

Shorter links perform better because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on her/his site and in different context

Google is “excited” about its new PPA “pricing model.”

How excited will consumers be, however, if they are unwittingly mislead by the inherent ambiguities of the new Google advertising and ecommerce engine, to be distributed via the ubiquitous Google AdSense network?

A “disclaimer” upon mouseover is not in the spririt of Google.com’s “Sponsored Links” stringent policy. 

What’s more, how excited will bloggers fueled by Google AdSense be when they enthusiastically “blend” Google AdWords “paid links” into their editorial?

ALSO: Why Facebook is scarier than Google and
Will Google meet GPS on the golf course?

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 23rd, 2007

Google radio ads hit snag

Posted by Donna Bogatin @ 3:29 am

Categories: AdWords, Advertising, Google, Google Ads, Radio

Tags: Donna Bogatin

Google Radio Ads: NO match for AdWords, AND AdWords customers know it, big time.

What is the big problem now?

Who needs Google on the radio if it means having to make a big effort, spending big time, big money to create a Google Audio Ad!

Google Ad Creation Marketplace auditioning radio talent: Exclusive First Look I presented in December:

The “Google Ad Creation Marketplace” is a first for Google. One of the hallmarks of the self-serve Google AdWords platform is the ease by which anyone can login to Google and create their own Google AdWord creative in literally a matter of minutes.

Google Audio Ads will be a different Google species, however.

Google will recommend that small business advertisers hire “ad creation talent” to develop audio ads that meet the specifications required for the Google dMarc systems, at a cost of from $100 to $1000.

BUT why would they want to do that?

Not surprisingly, AdWords customers are not lining up to shell out hundreds of dollars for the right to create an ad to run a beta test for Google via a Clear Channel reseller agreement.

The Google Radio solution? Subsisidze the Ad Creation Marketplace!

Interested in running a radio campaign? Sign up now and receive $400 towards your first radio campaign.

We’ve recently opened the Google Ad Creation Marketplace, a directory of professional ad creation specialists who can help you create ads for your Google Audio Ads campaign. Ad creation averages around $400, so we’re excited to offer you a credit that will help get your business on the radio and expand the reach of your AdWords campaigns!

Google may feign Audio Ads excitement, but AdWords customers are not getting Googley over Google on the radio, even with a “$400 credit” as audio ad bait.

One more blow to Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s worldwide advertising domination fantasy, as I analyzed yesterday in How Microsoft beats Google in ad agency battle.

ALSO: Why is Google afraid to buy Clear Channel?
Google Radio: Can Clear Channel REALLY save it?
Why Google will NOT rule the world!

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 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!