Entries from April 2008

Loren Baker, Editor

Google Responds to Adwords Quality Score Variable Leak

April 30th, 2008 by Loren Baker, Editor | 5 Comments

Yesterday on Search Engine Journal, Eric Lander posted some screen shots of Google openly serving confidential advertiser information in their AdWords results, such as the max CPC and quality score variables such as thresh and Pscore.

The sharing of max cost per click numbers by Google has sparked concern from some advertisers, fearing that their competitors […]

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Julie Kent

Google Board Member Ann Mather a Target of the SEC

April 30th, 2008 by Julie Kent | 1 Comment

Ann Mather, who has served on Google’s board of directors since 2005, is now coming under fire from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in connection with a shady backdating scandal at Pixar.  Mather was the CFO at Pixar from 1999 to 2004.
Google disclosed in an SEC filing of their own that the LA office […]

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Loren Baker, Editor

SEORipOff.com : Stain of the Search Marketing Industry

April 30th, 2008 by Loren Baker, Editor | 6 Comments

If you are in the field of search marketing, search engine optimization, or online marketing in general; you have probably seen the ads in Google AdWords and AdSense for SEORipOff.com (I’m not going to link to them, with or without a Nofollow), a complaint site where companies who have been ‘ripped off’ by an SEO […]

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Ann Smarty

Looking for ‘Bad Guys’ - Discovering Networks of Sites

April 30th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 7 Comments

Creating networks of (interlinked) sites is a widespread tactic of PageRank and ranking manipulation. To own a lot of websites is perfectly OK but to own a lot of websites for the sake of “link juice” is not good (per Google at least). The line is not always easy to define algorithmically therefore most often […]

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Arnold Zafra

Feedburner-Google Integration under way, Adsense on RSS to push through

April 29th, 2008 by Arnold Zafra | 2 Comments

When Google acquired Feedburner last year, one of the changes that were announced was the integration of Adsense ad units into Feedburner members’ RSS feeds. Nothing much has been heard about this since then, until now.
The official Feeburner blog has announced that as part of the full integration of Feedburner into Google applications and services, […]

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Eric Lander, Associate Editor

Google Leaks Quality Score Variables (Pscore, mCPC and thresh) in Search Results

April 29th, 2008 by Eric Lander, Associate Editor | 17 Comments

Earlier this morning a colleague of mine was conducting a search and called me over to show me something interesting. Immediately below each of the sponsored search results (AdWords) were three separate variable names and values. The numbers that have been shared publicly, and documented here on this post include those for major […]

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Ann Smarty

How to Analyze Page Keyword Prominence

April 29th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 9 Comments

While keyword density is really something SEOs should really stop paying attention to, keyword prominence is a concept that still should be analyzed and evaluated.
Keyword prominence can be analyzed by a key phrase usage in:

the title of a page;
meta description;
H1 and H2 tags;
Alt tags;
Anchor text of both internal and external links;
Bold and italic text;
beginning of […]

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Arnold Zafra

Windows Live Search Mobile intros Shop and Search on the Go

April 28th, 2008 by Arnold Zafra | 2 Comments

Windows Live Search is on th roll the past couple of days. It’s latest offering, a convenient mobile application for product search. Product search on mobile phones provide a listings of popular products, user ratings and price comparison from different online stores. It could come in handy when you passed by a gadget store and […]

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Julie Kent

Private Detective Sues Google for “Unwanted” Ads

April 28th, 2008 by Julie Kent | 1 Comment

Another day, another lawsuit. David Almeida, a private detective, has filed a lawsuit against Google claiming that hundreds of thousands of companies that have signed up to advertise on Google may have been deceived into paying for ads that they did not want. Almeida and his attorneys are hoping that the lawsuit will […]

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Julie Kent

Deadline Passes with No Deal Struck: Will Microsoft Continue to Fight for Yahoo?

April 28th, 2008 by Julie Kent | No Comments

Three months ago Microsoft made an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo Inc., and today they are no closer to acquiring the company than they were then.  On Saturday, the deadline passed for Yahoo to accept Microsoft’s bid.  They did not accept, and now Microsoft is left in a quandary: are they still worth pursuing?
Negotiations […]

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