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********************* Catch and cache past installments of SearchWrite SearchNews in the http://www.searchwrite.com/Pages/searchnews.htm ********************** +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Microsoft has won a high-profile technology industry battle with Google and Yahoo to invest in the social networking upstart Facebook. The two companies said on Wednesday that Microsoft would invest $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. While Google would have been a closer fit in terms of it overall philosophy (more open than not), it may have just been too expensive to buy out Microsoft from its current deal to supply ads for Facebook in the U.S. Given its deep ties with Microsoft, sticking with them was always the path of least resistance. And one could argue that Google has never felt comfortable targeting ads based on private user profile data, which seems to be the great promise of Facebook, ad-wise. Microsoft doesnít share those qualms. The Facebook growth story, as recounted repeatedly by executives, investors, and spokespeople there, is that the company has been steadily growing at 3 to 3.5 percent a week, a rate supposedly unchanged since Facebook opened its doors to all users. Through the miracle of compounding, that rate should give Facebook 200 million users in nine months. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A major Google page rank update has punished large scale blog link farms and similar sites indulging in heavy cross linking and paid link offerings by dramatically cutting their Google PageRank scores. Here are just a few sites affected: * Engadget (from 7 to 5) Google has always been against paid links and the idea of selling Page Rank. Recently they have become more aggressive in lowering the Page Rank of sites that sell paid links. Take for example Text Link Ads. This service, which matches link sellers with link buyers, has been removed from the Google search indexes. The only way for them to get included in Googleís search results is by buying ads via Google AdWords. One editor of a site that used TextLink Ads and got its PR bumped down lamented: "Two weeks ago I lost 80% of my search traffic due to, I believe, using ads from Text-Link-Ads, which does not permit the "nofollow" attribute on link ads. That meant an overall drop of more than 44% of my total traffic. It also meant a 65%-95% drop in Google AdSense earnings per day and a loss of PageRank from 7 to 6." He has removed the text links from his site and is negotiating with Google for reinstatement but estimates a loss in revenue of $10,000 for the year due to this change. And this is for a relatively small site. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Google Maps and Google Earth are helping to organize information and images from the wildfires in Southern California. So far more than 373,000 acres of land has been burned and 350,000 homes evacuated. Google Maps shows burn zones, evacuated areas, evacuation centers, safe areas, and closed roads. There are also pictures and videos. You can get a live stream of news online from radio station KPBS and they are also posting information on Twitter. Here is the KPBS map. Itís amazing that people are creating the news and contributing ñ putting up the maps and keeping them updated. Newspapers and television stations are keeping people informed. We get our news so many different ways. Californians are checking the maps to see how close the fires are getting to their homes. The Google Earth Blog details the fires from space including imagery from NASA and the US Forest Service.
Anyone running Google Adwords advertising needs to be concerned with the ìQuality Scoreî of their ads. When ads score low they can be deactivated and the only way to run the ads again is to pay more. Conversely, if your ads have a high quality score youíll pay less per click and your ads will be promoted higher in the pinging order. Google also uses the quality score to set minimum bids on specific keywords. Google's new Keyword Analysis page features a detailed breakdown of a keywordís Quality Score and how it might affect where the ad is shown. Google will also let you know how your keywords and landing pages are performing and provide recommendations to improve them. As an example, if you run an ad for a keyword that clicks through to a page that doesnít relate well to the keyword, your quality score will suffer. The Keyword Analysis page will tell you this and offer suggestions on how to improve it. Youíll also see your Quality Score rating, your minimum bid, and whether your keyword is showing ads. Just click on the magnifying glass next to any of your keywords and youíll go to the Keyword Analysis page.
After taking the time to create social profiles for your company or brand across the Web, wouldn't it be nice to have a handy script that publishes text links to each of those profiles, all in one place? Dazzlin' Donna of SEOScoop has created just that! The code generates cut-and-paste code that you can style however you want with a CSS class. Get your Sidebar Link Code Generator tool code today.
Google's recent quarterly financial report includes very little coverage of a fascinating fact in its third quarter numbers Did GOOG beat analyst estimates by fixing the payout to its AdSense partners? The third quarter numbers clearly show that It kept an extra $24m this quarter compared with three months ago. The key number to look for is Google's Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC), which is a very large number: $1.2bn in the most recent quarter. Nearly all of that goes to its AdSense partner publishers. In the third quarter Google paid out 76.70% of AdSense revenues to publishing partners or $1.116 billion. The difference is about $24m which helped Google beat its earnings estimates. Did GOOG change the ratio of payouts to AdSense publishers to help boost its earnings? We're waiting for an answer? In the meantime, the percentage makes clear a key metric which is the AdSense revenue share of the cost-per-click oh Google AdWords revenue.
Listas is a tool for the creation, management and sharing of lists, notes, favorites, and more. It allows you to quickly and easily edit lists, share them with others for reading or wiki-style editing, and discover the public lists of other users. We encourage you to try using it for meeting notes, bookmarks, shopping lists, to plan a night out, or whatever other creative ways you can think of. <http://listas.labs.live.com/>
Word on the street is that PodTech, the podcasting production company, and network, that lured Robert Scoble away from Microsoft is heading for the big sleep along with Seattle-based Judy's Book, which recently revamped its business model. After struggling to monetize its traffic, Judy's Book shifted its business model away from local reviews to emphasize coupons and local deals. The firm had raised over $10 million in two investment rounds. This follows the sale of Judy's Book competitor InsiderPages to IAC's Citysearch and the failure of Backfence.com. Lest you see this pending closure of a local site as evidence that local's not working. The truth is that it's quite complicated with little room for error by startups. For online consumers, local is growing in importance. - Internet ad spending will reach $62 billion and surpass all other media by 2011; local online spending will reach $19.2 billion. Local search is projected to be $4.1 billion. Veronis Suhler Stevenson, August 2007 - Local search is the second most popular online activity after e-mailPiper Jaffray (2007) - 60% of all local business searches now happen online (33% happen in print yellow pages) and 82% of the people using local search sites follow up their research with offline action TMP Directional Marketing-comScore, August 2007
Whrrl is a new service that allows mobile phone users to chronicle every social activity in their lives -- writing reviews of movies or restaurants or uploading photos from concerts and sporting events. It then plots that information on a map and combines it with similar content from friends, creating a personal mobile city guide. It also provides the real-time locations of people as they wander from place to place in a city, tracking chosen friends as dots on a map. Whrrl -- not to be confused with a competing service called Whirrl -- is the first offering from Pelago, a Seattle startup that scored $7.4 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Trilogy Equity Partners last year. Led by Jeff Holden and Darren Erik Vengroff, both of whom previously held high-ranking positions at Amazon.com, Pelago is one of a number of companies trying to tap the emerging arena of location-based services. The idea is that mobile phone users will want to locate friends -- who may be at a nearby restaurant -- or at the very least get a review of the restaurant that a friend wrote a few weeks ago. The service is also accessible on a PC. Google also is moving into the arena with the purchase of Jaiku, a company that allows mobile-phone users to create a running Web log of events, recommendations and other information. Jaiku describes its mobile product as "a live phone book that displays the activity streams, availability, and location of your Jaiku contacts right in your phone contact list." Twitter, which also allows people to share small tidbits of information with friends, also is a potential threat. Whrrl is not available to all mobile phone users. Only subscribers to AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile -- on about eight to 10 phone models -- can download Whrrl. A portion of the service is free, though Pelago plans to charge less than $3 a month for the location-based service. Pelago, which plans to pursue more funding early next year, employs 34 people.
One of the things that makes a blog a blog is that it links to other blogs and Websites, and comments on them. Thatís pretty basic. But what many bloggers donít realize is how to leverage the power of the outbound link to create even more inbound links. ìLink Karmaî is a real phenomenon, and while you shouldnít overdo it, donít underestimate it either. Your ideal target audience is people who can link back to you ó namely, other bloggers. Regular people with no blog or website canít link back to you. You want to reach those who can link back. So if you create resources that bloggers can use, you have a better chance for success. Now, you donít have to appeal to all bloggers ó you can just aim at those in your niche. So, the link love you take could be equal to the link love you make. And we've finally succeeded in closing our newsletter with a lyric line from the Beatles. ******************************************
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