Online Marketing Top Stories and News
(Date ~ July 16, 2007)Cookies: Google cookies expiring sooner for privacy (Article produced by GoogleBlog)
We are committed to an ongoing process to improve our privacy practices, and have recently taken a closer look at the question of cookie privacy. How long should a web site "remember" cookie information in its logs after a user's visit and when should a cookie expire on your computer? Cookie privacy is both a client and a server issue.
On the server side, we recently announced that we will anonymize our search server logs — including IP addresses and cookie ID numbers — after 18 months.
Now, we're asking the question about cookie lifetime: when should a cookie expire on your computer? For background: a cookie is a very small file which gets stored on your computer All search engines and most websites use cookies. Why? Cookies remind us of your preferences from the last time you visited our site. For example, Google uses our so-called "PREF cookie" to remember our users’ basic preferences, such as the fact that a user wants search results in English, no more than 10 results on a given page, or a SafeSearch setting to filter out explicit content. When we originally designed the PREF cookie, we set the expiration far into the future — in 2038, to be exact — because the primary purpose of the cookie was to store preferences, not to let them be forgotten. We were mindful of the fact that users can always go to their browsers to change their cookie settings, e.g. to delete all cookies, delete specific cookies, or accept certain types of cookies.
After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies — as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why we’re announcing a new policy.
(Date ~ December 9, 2005)
A new addition to the Quality Score (Article produced by Adwords Blogspot)
In August, we introduced the Quality Score along with the launch of quality-based minimum bids, letting you know that we evaluate many factors, such as your ad text and clickthrough rate (CTR) to determine the minimum bid for your keyword. Today, we started incorporating a new factor into the Quality Score -- the landing page -- which will look at the content and layout of the pages linked from your ads.
Why are we doing this? Simply stated, we always aim to improve our users' experience so that these users (your potential customers) will continue to trust and value AdWords ads. Have you ever searched on a keyword, found an ad that seemed to be exactly what you wanted, and then clicked on it only to find a site that had little to do with what you were searching for? It's not a great experience.
Incorporating landing page assessment into the Quality Score will help us improve the overall advertising experience for users, advertisers and partners by increasing the quality of the sites we present in our ad results.
Advertisers who are providing robust and relevant content will see little change. However, for those who are providing a less positive user experience, the Quality Score may decrease and in turn increase the minimum bid required for the keyword to run. To help define site quality, we've created a general set of website design tips and guidelines that should help you evaluate and optimize your site.
So, take a look at these guidelines and remember that the more valuable and relevant your site is to your user, the more effective your advertising will be -- and the better your chance of converting a click to a customer.
(Date ~ October 10, 2005)
Google Wants to WiFi San Francisco (Article produced by KTVU)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc. wants to connect all of San Francisco to the Internet with a free wireless service, creating a springboard for the online search engine leader to leap into the telecommunications industry.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company filed an application late Friday to provide wireless, or "WiFi," service that would enable anyone in San Francisco to connect to the Internet.
Google submitted its 100-page bid in response to a request from Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is looking for a company to finance a free wireless network to lower the financial barriers to Internet access in his city.
More than a dozen other bidders are competing with Google.
If Google is picked for the San Francisco project, it would provide a testing ground for a national WiFi service -- something that many industry observers believe the company is pondering as a way to ensure people can connect to its search engine anytime, from just about anywhere.
"It makes sense for Google," said Chris Winfield, who runs a search engine marketing firm, 10e20. "They say their mission is to organize the world's information, so the logical next step is to provide the access to it."
Google spokesman Nate Tyler said Saturday that the company doesn't have any plans to offer a WiFi service outside the San Francisco Bay area.
"Unwiring San Francisco is a way for Google to support our local Bay Area community," Tyler said. "It is also an opportunity to make San Francisco a test-ground for new location-based applications and services that enable people to find relevant information exactly when and where they need it."
Google has been quietly experimenting with WiFi service in a few connection spots around the Bay Area and New York during the past few months. In another sign of its interest in Internet access, Google recently bought an undisclosed stake in a Maryland startup, the Current Communications Group, which is trying to provide high-speed connections through power lines.
If it wants, Google has both the financial clout and the incentive to get into WiFi. What remains unclear is whether the company has the telecommunications expertise to build and maintain a WiFi service.
The company has nearly $7.1 billion in cash, having just raised $4.17 billion in stock offering completed last month. That stock sale prompted several industry analysts to conclude Google might be preparing to build its own high-speed Internet network.
Offering free WiFi service could pay off for Google if the greater access gives the company more opportunities to field search requests and ultimately serve up more advertising -- the vehicle that provides virtually all of its profits.
Building its own wireless Internet network connection also would help Google save money by reducing the fees that it pays to the telecommunications middlemen that provide a bridge between the company's data centers and Internet service providers whenever Web surfers make a search request.
Any free Internet access service would threaten to siphon revenue from subscription Internet service providers like SBC Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. that have invested heavily in high-speed connections that depend on phone lines and cable modems.
A Google WiFi service also could divert traffic from many popular Web sites, including Yahoo, MSN and AOL, if it's set up to automatically make Google's home page the first stopping point.
(Date ~ March 1, 2005)
Did-it, Enquiro, and Eyetools Uncover Google’s Golden Triangle (Article produced by PRweb)
New EyeTracking Study verifies the importance of page position and rank in both Organic and PPC search results for visibility and click through in Google.
(PRWEB) A joint eye tracking study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it.com and eye tracking firm Eyetools has shown that the vast majority of eye tracking activity during a search happens in a triangle at the top of the search results page indicating that the areas of maximum interest create a golden triangle.
Eye test - (where eyes hit page the most)
Organic Ranking Visibility (shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location)
Rank 1 - 100%
Rank 2 - 100%
Rank 3 - 100%
Rank 4 - 85%
Rank 5 - 60%
Rank 6 - 50%
Rank 7 - 50%
Rank 8 - 30%
Rank 9 - 30%
Rank 10 - 20%
Side sponsored ad visibility (shown is percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location)
1 – 50%
2 – 40%
3 – 30%
4 – 20%
5 – 10%
6 – 10%
7 – 10%
8 – 10%