Courts Decide Google Don't Have to Police Trademark Advertising

I am amazed this piece of news has not gotten more publicity or comments in the SEM world.

While I think Google has other responsibilities (especially based on the "Do No Evil" credo) - the need to police and be accountable for the actions of its advertisers is an area I give them leeway. But this impacts so many people I am still wondering why it was not blogged about and discussed in the forums.

Have I been that out of the loop over the past two months that I missed this? Let me know!!!

Google Shoots Another Salvo at Analytics Companies

Hey I like Google and the AdWords product and their organic traffic but at times I think they come close to some type of meglamania (or is it meglo?)...

I know this is starting to become a broken record but - STOP - Larry and Sergei you are going to lose that cachet and that could be the momentum that changes things.

Why are you pushing all these analytics products - a smarter consumer is a better (spends more) consumer?

When Danny Sullivan said he surrendered and would accept the Google implant everyone laughed. But now I think the establishment of "Big Brother" may be getting closer.... our Orwellian future could be the day when Apple and Google join forces and the 1984 ads Steve Jobs promoted years ago taken on a frightening deja vu.

This free tools trick is not exclusive to Google... hell I know a lot of people that are giving away products others charge for... the analytics companies are getting a rough time right now and few are standing up to say something.

When Google starts offering free SEO - which has to be right around the corner now that they are optimizing landing pages - maybe people will start yelling a little louder... but it could be a little late.

Mints, User Interfaces and Other Search Engine Similarities

The search engines seem to be becoming more and more similar these days. In the good old days they all had their own idiosyncrasies - which made it so much easier to tell them apart. Google ads' titles had 25 characters while Overture allowed you 90. Now Yahoo wants to mimic Google and MSN is changing to make the differences seem smaller.

Even LookSmart is calling their interface the AdCenter just like their former search partner MSN.

Uniformity I know makes things easier for analytics and using the same ads on different platforms, but the branded differences were okay by me.

I just came back from Shop.Org and the big three were there - funnily Yahoo and MSN were pushing there search products while Google was all about Checkout. In previous events Yahoo would have been promoting their shopping cart and MSN the quality of their content areas, while Google would have been the sole search pusher.

Even the handouts from MSN and Yahoo! were the same - mints.

MSN you lost the mint round!

Is Google Overreaching?

Okay they grabbed a chunk of AOL, bought KeyHole (the satelite pics part of Google Maps), Picasa - the free pic editor, swallowed Urchin into Google Analytics, created an online word document program, started a widgets area where others could showcase their efforts and basically created a shareware platform, and then came the last two BIG moves - $900 million to MySpace to lock up their advertising and $1.65 billion for YouTube (and a quick agreement with Warner and Sony to help promote their online videos).

Factor in they have started working on selling offline advertising areas: print, radio and television and are juggling deals for gaming ads too - the giant is getting bigger.

But are they losing sight of the bread and butter that got them there? Ask is pushing away with their continued TV ads, I seem to hear Yahoo! being yodelled over the radio quite a bit and MSN is getting aggressive with search.

I agree YouTube is hot right now but there are many stories of poorly timed purchases - just ask the NY Times - and the numbers are so high it would be tough to see them recouping the money if others join the fray.

There are some who see the YouTube pruchase as an attempt for Google to add more entertainment to counter Yahoo... hey with the numbers YouTube brings Google will fast be pushing at Yahoo's number one staus at Alexa... hey if they are not making good money from banner ads it could be a bust.

Keeping others away from MySpace was a smart move... the YouTube one could have a different result. But hey they still have another $6 billion sitting in the bank so watch out world Larry and Sergei have money burning a hole in their pockets.

Why not buy their favorite fast food chain? Wonder how much BurgerKing would cost???

Domain Hell Strike The Blog

Okay sorry for being offline for so long but I really learned alot about domain registration and the limbo known as soon to expire and die....

A friend and I were originally going to do something with the smart-keywords domain and he was the one to register it. When we went on to other projects I started to use it for the blog mainly. So in my ignorance is bliss state I happily went about blogging oblivious of the need to transfer the domain. So when it came time for renewal I was not the one that got the email and my friend had it in a large pile of other domains that he was no longer using and thus it fell into the frozen state.

When I finally was informed it went offline I happened to be in the Dominican Republic on vacation. So from there it took 2 weeks to get it back on track.... part of which was due to the inept tech people I spoke to over at GoDaddy - though the woman who finally helped me was a delight. It is amazing how good customer service is vital even in our online world.

So it is back and hopefully will stay that way for quite some time to come.

ESPN To Sell Own Text Ads

Barry Schwartz aka RustyBrick over at Search Engine Watch has reported that ESPN is dropping the Yahoo Content ads and is now about to launch their own ad system using Quigo's AdSonar software.

This could be the start of some large independent sites going the way of controlling their own destiny. Should be worth watching.

Google Experimenting With Ad Placement

Now you see them...: Google has confirmed that it's experimenting with an ad placement system that makes some ads disappear after a user has ignored them multiple times. Apparently, Google is testing the removal of sponsored listings in the "one box", the shaded featured area above search results, if those ads go unclicked-through four or five times. (The phenomenon was first noticed by search marketers who refreshed results pages four or five times without clicking in the one box.) In some cases, the ads are removed; in other instances, they migrate to the top of the search ads on the right rail. A Google spokesman told ClickZ that the trial was designed "to further ensure that users will find ads only when they're most useful and advertisers will receive the most qualified leads." On the plus side, that could work to drive conversion rates up, if ads were shown more often to users who had proven receptive to clicking on them; but there's also some speculation that it could drive ad prices up too by reducing the total ad inventory.

Now that is interesting... funny no-one notified us and we have bitched about the floating ads we are seeing....