Theo Valich in Toronto the Inquirer, Friday 12 October 2007. 17:24:00

At least, thanks to the lads from Wireless Nomad

WE'VE BEEN FOLLOWING the birth pains of Google's idea to position free Wi-Fi hotspots in San Francisco for quite some time now, and it seems that all the efforts of major Gabe Newton and Google resulted with a stillborn baby. A lot of other US cities also have major problems with putting a free wireless network out there, but as a reason for failure of many projects TV experts blame classical providers, who don't want to see their traditional model of revenue going down the drain. However, here in Toronto - things are rather different. Thanks to the lads from Wireless Nomad, we found a spot in St....

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On Friday, Google Operating System noticed that Google Reader will tell you Google Reader subscriber numbers for a blog when you search to add a new feed. It didn’t take long for different folks to start collecting subscriber numbers for different blogs. I haven’t asked the Reader team about this, but it looks like this is just the counts for Google Reader subscribers. Before charging off to compute a bunch of stats, you should know a few things:

1. A blog can have multiple feeds, and you may want to add up the subscribers for the most important feeds.

For example, here are subscriber numbers for my blog:

I got that data by going to Google Reader, clicking on “Add subscription” and then searching for the string “mattcutts”. If you have a unique string in your domain name, that’s a good way to see the top feeds for your site.

I’ve used orange letters to highlight that I have a feed at FeedBurner, a MyBrand feed (served by FeedBurner, but with a CNAME from my domain so I control the feed with DNS), an Atom Feed, and an RSS feed. If you add all those up together, you get 9980 subscribers. So I’m 20 readers short of ten thousand Google Reader subscribers. By the way, I think that MyBrand is one of the least-used but greatest features from FeedBurner (which was acquired by Google earlier this year). With MyBrand, your feed is served by FeedBurner, but you keep the control of the feed url in case you decide to leave FeedBurner some day. The best write-up on MyBrand that I’ve seen is this tutorial by Danny Sullivan.

2. You may have more users than your top few feeds suggest.

Modern blogging software such as WordPress can generate lots of different feeds. For example, for any post on my blog, you can subscribe to a separate feed for the comments on that post. All those little feeds can add up, so you might have a lot more subscribers than even the top few feeds on your site suggest. Which leads me right to:

3. FeedBurner can aggregate all your different Google Reader subscribers into one number.

If you just want a nice summary number, or to see the breakdown of feed readers, I recommend FeedBurner. It’s free and gives you useful stats for any day you want. Here’s a recent Monday’s stats for my blog:

Of course, FeedBurner will only give you stats for your own site. That’s why everyone is having a good time looking at the Google Reader subscriber counts. Just remember that Google Reader subscriber stats will skew toward Google users. That’s probably why some Google-focused blogs do better in Google Reader’s stats when compared to some other metrics.

Just as an aside, how cool is it that on Firefox with the Google search box, if you start typing in math, the auto-suggest will give you the running answer as a suggestion — without even hitting return? Here’s what it looks like:

Nice.

Anyway, if you want to lift my Google Reader subscribers above 10,000, just add my RSS feed or my Atom feed. I’m in a multi-week blogging lull as I work on a non-webspam project at the Googleplex, but I’ll be blogging more in 3-4 weeks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You might be noticing a decrease in your Adsense referral earnings lately, well that’s because Google Adsense has placed a restriction on referral earnings while it checks on whether click and and conversion data generated from Adsense Referral ads are valid. Since the start of validation, Adsense has restricted the earnings generated from Referral products to less than the maximum amount that you can earn from valid clicks of Referral Products. So if you are earning $1 dollar per valid click from a Referral product, you might earn only a fraction of that amount.

The Inside Adsense post did not mention of a definite date as to when this validation period would end. Advertisers will be charged of the maximum rate once the validation period. But publishers’ maximum earnings from Referral product will only return to normal once they are passed through the validation test.

This is somewhat an understable move from Google Adsense, since everybody knows how rampant click frauds have been going on with Adsense. But to be uncertain on how long that validation period is going to last is somewhat a bit off the mark. The validation process should have been done simultaneously for all publishers, since that is how the earning restriction is being carried out. It would certainly result in a big loss for high-referring publishers.

And we should only wonder how come, click fraud validation is being done only now and only for Referral Ads. Given that Referral Ads are remunerated on a per conversion basis unlike regular Adsense units which are remunerated on CPC basis, the more bases for those Ads to be validated for click fraud first.

But then, it is Google’s decision and we could only comply with them or if not, better consider other advertising options.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Which is it?

It becomes increasingly hard to work out where the control point in handset design is. Once we all thought it was the hardware, then it was the operating system, and just as we start to think that it’s the service layers above the operating system, then it’s all in the network, an finally Apple comes along and tells us it’s the hardware all over again.…

'God made those airwaves for us'

The heads of America's four largest television networks have joined forces to oppose a plan that would stream high-speed internet access over unused TV airwaves. And in doing so, they're taking aim at one of the great oddities of the modern tech industry: a partnership between Google and Microsoft.…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube videos continue to get more and more portable as Google integrates them into other search products, and approaches a semblance of return on the $1.65 billion it paid for the video site.

The latest is today's announcement that Google will imbed YouTube videos throughout Google Earth, where geographically relevant. This comes days after the announcement that it will scale YouTube's universe of addressable inventory across the AdSense network. Together, these give YouTube content more places to live, and and more places to be monetized (more directly with the latter).

Today's announcement basically means that any video uploaded to YouTube that is geotagged will automatically show up on that location in Google Earth. Though this will attract an early adopter-sized following, it could eventually open up lots of possibilities for travel videos and also small business video advertising which is gaining steam all over the place.

For any small business or individual that does get on board, there would seem to be an opportunity to upload existing video creative to YouTube, geocode it with the precise location of the business and have it be among the first score this map real estate.

The real opportunity in a local search sense, however, is if this is brought to Google Earth's online cousin, Google Maps. Similar functionality already exists there through the MyMaps personalization feature, but it requires users to upload videos to personalized maps.

The Google Earth/YouTube integration, by comparison, has a lower barrier to build overall video content by having YouTube uploads to be geotagged for everyone to see. Although again, there won't be people lining up to do this initially.

This is also analogous to functionality in Flickr that lets photos be geotagged and show up in Yahoo! Maps. And of course there are scores of map mashups for more static media to be represented on a map in a thematic way (the Google Maps Mania blog does a good job chronicling these). Greater video integration just takes this to the next step.

With the growing popularity and portability of online video, it could begin to tie closer together with local search. Involving YouTube, a household name, in the process could lower the barrier for businesses (and anyone else) to get themselves and their videos "on the map" in a more meaningful way.

Want to watch YouTube videos by location but don't want to fire up Google Earth to do it? Check out Google Maps mashup Mappeo.

The Official Gmail Blog has announced that Gmail's storage counter has received a much-needed bump in its storage growth rate, which will put Gmail storage at 6GB by January 2008. Additionally, the premium Premier Edition is seeing a jump to 25GB from 10GB. We've covered how to free up space in Gmail (and so have you), but these storage bumps should go a long way toward keeping Google's promise that "you'll never need to delete another message."

Martin Veitch the Inquirer, Friday 12 October 2007. 15:05:00

Because you're worth it

ATTENTION all those exploiting freebie Gmail accounts to run commercial businesses, stash file-sharing libraries and the like - storage is going up. It's hard to believe that many people run out of Gmail storage but Google says some do, and is therefore giving away more. The current counter on my (largely unused) account says I have 2941MB remaining at present. That should be enough to be going on with. Of course, you can always get more by paying for it. No, I thought not. Anyhow, it's all a far cry from the days of worrying about the counter on the 2MB Hotmail account....

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On every blog, discussion board and conference agenda there is a similar topic… Paid Links. Now, most of what I have written here on Search Engine Journal was done to provide support, to give advice or to serve as a guide. Today though I’m feeling feisty… and I just want to go off on a rant here on paid links.

More specifically, I’m going to discuss why paid links are here to stay — despite the efforts of Google to penalize advertisers and publishers.

They’re Controversial

Before SES San Jose wrapped up, the “Are Paid Links Evil” session was what everyone was talking about. In particular, it was Michael Gray’s Powerpoint presentation that triggered recaps and reviews from Lisa Barone, Tamar Weinburg and Rand Fishkin.

In an instant, thousands of web marketers were tuned in and waiting for the next shoe to drop. Before we knew it, Michael made his presentation, called “A Tale of Propaganda and Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt” available for download on his site.

And now, everyone has access to his arguments.

Admittedly, I wasn’t in attendance at SES San Jose. I am however wise to the fact that since that SES, there have been articles and debates, raging on and on for marketers to dispute. Paid links is a controversial topic… And if we’re always talking about them — they will never go away.

Paid Links are a Google Product

I know that you can launch a site and have it indexed without the use of paid links. If you plan to be competitive though in your search marketing efforts, then paid links are part of the equation. From paid directory listings to purchasing links on highly relevant web sites… paid links will help to deliver results.

Google has gone so far as to forbid paid links. They have become so intent on penalizing those buying and selling links that they are requesting users to report any knowledge of them. Isn’t it interesting then that one of the main factors in a link’s value is directly associated with Google’s PageRank? In other words, Google’s own proprietary methods of determining a site’s value — is what makes a link worth buying.

Combine that with the fact that you need links to get indexed and ranked well — and Google has essentially brought this upon themselves. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Paid Links are a Google Product… and one of the few that has easily gotten out of Google Labs because of it’s overwhelming success.

Become a Smarter Link Buyer

If you are buying or selling links, clean up your act. Google will try to cut down anyone caught buying and selling paid links for the purpose of altering search results. That does not mean you need to eliminate paid links from your arsenal of tools though. Highly relevant links are still useful for traffic and contextual purposes and if you know what to look for there are still many bargains to be had.

The key when working with paid links is to always do your research. Evaluating backlinks, PageRank, traffic estimations, domain age, link types and anchor text will all help you to become a more savvy link buyer.

Selling Links Discreetly

Google will never be able to fully police paid links. Paid links are a form of advertising and you have the right to sell advertising space on web sites that you own and operate.

When it comes to links though… If you hope to attract buyers willing to pay premium rates — you must be willing to protect them. Do not label your ads as being “sponsored”… Do not highlight links that have been bought. Keep them simple, and you’ll continue to earn link sales.

It's no wonder the majority of Lifehacker readers voted Remember the Milk the best web-based task manager out there. Remember the Milk's got all the best features modern webapps have to offer: email/SMS/IM integration, tagging, advanced search, keyboard shortcuts and even offline access with Google Gears. Chances are you work across several computers and need a single, always-accessible place to consolidate your work, personal, school, and family to-do's. Remember the Milk is a great way to do just that. Let's take a closer look at Remember the Milk's basic and more advanced features.

Managing Tasks

In the Tasks view, the tab labels switch to categories, by default: "Inbox," "Personal," "Study," "Work," and "Sent." (Yes, "Inbox" and "Sent" are initially confusing and not exactly intuitive "categories," more on those in a moment.)

RTM automatically includes a starting task in your "Personal" list due today called "Try out Remember the Milk." It's colored orange because it's marked as high priority. To add your own new task to your "Personal" list, click on "Add Task" (or simply hit the T key) and type in a description, as shown.

Hit Enter to save the new task in your list. Once you do, on the right hand side, a task box will contain editable details about that task. There you can set when it's due, whether or not it repeats, about how long it will take, and any associated web site addresses. You can even click on the "Notes" tab and add more freehand text information about the task (like directions to the salon or which stylist to request.) A simple task like calling the salon to schedule an appointment for a haircut probably doesn't need too many more details, but more complex tasks—or tasks you'll share with other users who may need more direction—are when you'll most likely use the notes and URL fields.

Prioritizing tasks

Completing tasks

Managing Lists and Tags

To add a new list, click on the "Add List" link. The right RTM lists you create and manage depend entirely on your life, businesses, and current projects. I deleted the "Study" list, and added "Web Site," "Book," and "Home Improvement" lists to RTM, as shown.

Note: You'll notice that the "Inbox" and "Sent" lists have lock icons next to them. That's because they're permanent lists that serve a special purpose: to act much like email does. The "Inbox" contains tasks that you've emailed or added to RTM without specifying a list, or that other users have sent you. The "Sent" list contains tasks you've sent to other RTM users, like your coworker or spouse.

In addition to categorizing your tasks into tabbed lists, you can also slice and dice task lists down further using tags. In the Tasks view, select any task from any list and in the details box on the right hand side, click on "Tags" to enter keywords for a task. For example, you may tag the tasks on your "Home Improvement" list by room, as shown.

Once you've tagged your tasks, you can easily view the list of home improvement items for the garage, or for the patio, or for the home office, for example.

Warning: It's easy to waste time organizing your tasks in a rich application like RTM, which has lots of ways to categorize and input information about something. Remember: our purpose here is to actually get things done, not build a perfectly-organized list. Use only the tags, fields and lists that will help you, not just satisfy some innate desire to perfect a complex categorization system.

Setting Task Reminders

RTM supports several instant messenger networks for IM reminders, including AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, Jabber and Skype. To receive text message reminders on your cell phone, use the dropdown to select your cell phone service and add your mobile number.

Note: Make sure RTM knows what time zone you're in so you receive reminders when you expect. In the Settings area, select the "General" tab and make sure your time zone is correctly listed there.

Searching tasks

Advanced Search Operators

• priority: Specifies the priority of the tasks you're searching. For example, priority:1 will search the highest priority tasks and priority:none will return all tasks that have no priority assigned.
• dueWithin: and due: Specifies a date range for due date. For example, dueWithin:"3 days" returns tasks due in the next three days. (Note: enclose any descriptions that involve more than one word in quotes to associate the entire phrase with the dueWithin: operator.) Similarly, due:"Oct 10" will show you all the tasks due on the 10th, and due:never displays all tasks with no due date set.
• timeEstimate: Specify the estimated amount of time a task takes. For example, timeEstimate:"1 hour" returns tasks that will take an hour; and timeEstimate:"< 1 hour" tasks that will take less than an hour to complete.

Save Searches in "Smart Lists"

More RTM Techniques

• Offline access: Get organized with RTM even on an airplane! Using Google Gears you can sync your RTM data to your local computer, edit it when you're offline, and sync back changes when you're back online.
  
• The Weekly Planner: Users who like to work with their to-do list on paper should print out the weekly planner view at http://www.rememberthemilk.com/printplanner/your.username/. (Substitute your.username with your RTM name in the URL.) Available from RTM's default homepage (click the "Weekly Planner" link), this page gives you a week's worth of tasks with priority and list information and large checkboxes ready for you to X off with your pen. Similarly, on any given list in RTM use the "Print" link in the List box on the right hand side to print out all the items on that list.
  
• Add tasks via email: RTM users who live out of their email inbox (or have easy access to email on their mobile phone) can easily dash off tasks and send them to RTM via email. In the Settings area, go to the Info tab and copy the special, private Inbox Email Address that RTM has assigned you to your email's address book. From there you can send tasks via email to RTM: simply put the special email address in your message's To: field and the name of the task in your message's subject line, and leave the message body empty. Send the message and the task will appear in your RTM Inbox. Advanced email users can even assign priority, tags, and notes using special message formatting rules. (See the details on how to compose your task email messages to fill in RTM task fields.)
  
• Keyboard shortcuts: Switching between mouse and keyboard to navigate RTM's web interface can become tiring quickly. To get around faster and more efficiently, teach yourself RTM's extensive set of keyboard shortcuts that let you access almost all of its features without reaching for the mouse. Print out a copy of RTM's keyboard shortcut reference.
  
• View your RTM tasks on your calendar or homepage: You don't have to be at the RTM web site to see your tasks and due dates. Subscribe to your due tasks in iCal, Google Calendar, or view them on your iGoogle personalized homepage or Netvibes.

Phew! Beyond all that, RTM also offers a host of sharing features this post didn't even touch on. How are you remembering the milk and everything else in your life with RTM? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, has a thing for really good to-do managers. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Firefox with Greasemonkey or Stylish: Take advantage of every pixel of Google Maps screen real estate with the Google Maps Max Greasemonkey script/Stylish user style. GMaps Max wipes out the top header whitespace and displays your map full screen, with an optional driving directions sidebar. The Maps Max script also removes the Google copyright symbol and increases the inset map window four times. Check out some side-by-side comparison screenshots.

Default Maps view:

With the Google Maps Max style/script enabled:

You must have the Greasemonkey or Stylish extension installed in your copy of Firefox to turn on Google Maps Max, which is a free download.

Reporters Without Borders, together with a local source from an internet company who wants to remain anonymous, published an in-depth report [PDF] on the workings of Chinese internet censorship. Some of the findings:

<<Various forms of communication have been established between the leading commercial websites and the supervisory bodies – phone, email, SMS text messages, MSN, QQ and RTX (Real Time eXchange) instant messaging, web platforms and a weeky meeting. The Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau uses these different means of communication to instruct sites to not publish an article, to not cover an event or issue, or to put a stop to certain comments. The employees of these privately-owned sites are expected to liaise with the bureau and respond to its orders as quickly as possible. (...)

[T]he employees of the 19 leading Beijing-based websites attend a meeting at the Internet Information Administrative Bureau every Friday morning from 9 to 11, at which all the subjects that most interested Internet users that week are evaluated and bureau members criticise some sites. Then the bureau members announce the subjects to be covered in the coming week, the articles to be written under their supervision, and the articles to be eliminated. (...)

The Beijing Information Office has introduced a new system of “licence points" for websites. As well as being fined, sites can have points withdrawn. If they loose all their points, they risk to get their licence withdrawn. But they have the possibility of recovering lost points and are encouraged to do so.>>

The report also mentions that the Publicy Department’s Bureau of Information and Public Opinion organizes a weekly meeting on the state of public opinion in China. To gather information for these meetings, 39 sites are “sounding out public opinion,” including Google partner Tianya, the report says. Also, as the report mentions, companies like Yahoo are invited to a yearly “online media trip to the place where communism was born” – with an encouragement to write about these excursions – as another form of opinion shaping. I don’t know if Yahoo employees ever accepted the invitation, but as you may know companies like Yahoo or Google agreed to self-censor their sites in China.

[Thanks A.!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Recently I was trying some searches out on Google, and I decided to try out "San Francisco Pizza". It was neat, because it came back with a nice Google map at the top of the results, as follows:

So I then moved on to the next search, "Boston Pizza". The results were quite different:

During my recent visit to the Googleplex, I spoke to Carter Maslan, the Director of Product Management, for Local about this. He indicated that there are still some triggering issues with the integration with Universal Search. I believe this refers to the underlying relevance algorithm in Universal Search that weighs the relevance of search results from several vertical search properties, and then integrates those into the web search results.

For some reason the Boston local search results don't pass muster in this analysis. However, Carter also indicated that this is something that Google is working on, and you can expect to see a far greater penetration of web search results by Local search in the future.

Don’t say Google treats their employees like kids... real kids play Lego on the floor, not on tables!

[Photos by Alvy from Google New York offices, with permission.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Wired columnist Clive Thompson says that Google, his PDA, and other tech all enable him to stop remembering things like phone numbers, birthdays, and events. Looks like it's a common phenomena among those of us who "grew up" with tech tools:

This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birthdate, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.

2008 Republican US Presidential candidate Ron Paul was speaking at Google 2 months ago as part of the Candidates@Google series. What’s interesting to note is that this video on YouTube received by far the most views so far – over 292,000 at the time. In comparison, the second-most viewed video of this series is with Hillary Clinton, and while it’s up for 7 months already, it received only over 47,000 views... though still a high number for these talks. (Some online sources I’ve seen say that Ron Paul has become a bit of an internet phenomenon... recently even convincing CNBC to pull a poll in which he received an unusually high amount of votes.) The second most-watched video from the @Google series overall is from author Christopher Hitchens’ visit; his video assembled over 60,000 views in the past month. Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow is also in the top 10 ranking at place 6 for his talk.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Invite guests, add events directly to your preferred calendar software, or share post-party photos and blogs at Windows Live Events, Microsoft's foray into the online event planning field. In addition to standard online invitation features seen at Evite and other spots, Live Events allows the anticipated weather for an event to be displayed, along with pictures and maps chosen by the host. Live Events requires a Windows Live sign-up to use and can pull contacts from Hotmail accounts, but allows syncing through iCal, Google, and Yahoo calendars, along with Outlook.

PayItToMe.com by Renaud from Belgium has a simple concept: people can post their wish products online (say, you want a particular video game, but you’re broke...) and then others can come along and grant that wish by paying for the product. Whenever that happens, a big link advertising the donator will be posted as reward. (Attention, site is using annoying Snap popups.) On a side-note, this one makes an interesting object to study in the context of the Google vs paid text links debate, because at the time none of the links to the donators are nofollowed. [Thanks Ben C.!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Don't want your newborn to grow up to be one of 10 Matthew's in his class? Soon-to-be father and developer Guy put together a maps mashup that displays the most popular baby names in eight countries. Guy says:

My wife and I are expecting our first child in April. I searched your site and found the NameVoyager. However, I was looking for decent view of name popularity outside the US. I ended up building the Baby Name Map, which is a Google Maps mashup. I'm adding data regularly to increase the international coverage, now at eight countries and growing.

You can also search by name, favorite names, and comment on names from the Baby Name Map, and see popularity charts for a given name over time. Guy also says:

Another site I'm finding useful is Nymbler with which I'm not affiliated. They do name recommendations based on other names you've rated highly. This is helping my wife and I narrow our search.

Google’s homepage and search results layout shift and move, sometimes on purpose (because different countries or types of results deserve different treatment – e.g. Google Korea), and sometimes for arbitrary reasons (e.g. the Google Images results logo is a pixel or two below the Google web results logo). By overlaying 10 different Google country versions, and 10 different types of search results, you can spot unifying as well as separating layout elements.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Dr Watson paging Sherlock...

Steve "on the" Ballmer is telling anyone who'll listen about how Microsoft is taking a pasting from Google in the search advertising racket.…

Martin Veitch the Inquirer, Friday 12 October 2007. 10:05:00

Google better get cracking with GDrive, or else

GOOGLE SEEMS everywhere on the web at the moment but one area where it might be falling behind is in online storage, and its old friends and Microsoft are the ones that stand to benefit. Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive beta has been gathering interest ever since it first appeared as a free download and the latest development is that Microsoft has doubled storage capacity to 1GB and added some nice-sounding new features. These comprise: First, the addition of RSS feeds to public folders so that when files are added, your significant others (or the great unwashed general public if that's what you've chosen) can be notified....

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Microsoft Live adds an event management service to its suite of free web services. Though Live Events is not new on the web anymore, the service might actually get some attention and interest and generate a significant amount of usage. The key to the new events management service is that it is integrated within the Microsoft Live Spaces, allowing a smooth interface with other Live services.

The key feature of Live Events is its facility for photo and video sharing after the event has passed. Event organizers can share highlights of the events to those who attended since they are listed even before the event happened. Photos of the event can be easily uploaded and shared directly into the Live Events interface. While videos need to be uploaded in video uploading site. Those who replied to the sent e-invite and attended the event will need to login using their Windows Live ID in order to upload photos and videos of the event.

Live Events invites are easily customizable and preloaded with categorized templates for birthdays, wedding, farewell and dinner. It would have been better though, if users can create their own template and design aside from the preloaded layout. Or hopefully there would be more options in the future.

If you are wondering what’s in this service for Microsoft? I just saw one, and it is a huge ad banner sitting on top of the event I created.

Click on the image to see a larger image.

[via]

Some Google employees are leaving Google for social site Facebook. Well, “some” isn’t a trend, but a couple of the remarks of those that left offer insightful perspectives. Pedram Keyani, who the Google System blog reported to have left Orkut in favor of Facebok (along with, as of recent times, Justin Rosenstein and Benjamin Ling) says, “I have the same kind of excitement about work that I had early on at Google. I can get lots and lots done and the only thing slowing me down is how quickly I can go.”

I was wondering, what exactly is slowing down some people at Google, and are those factors more than just the price to pay for managing that many employees? Some stuff like Google Presentations was in a bit of an announce-early-release-late kind of mode we are more used to from Microsoft. And at times, internal product evolutions are changed or halted, and another outside service is bought instead (think Google Video, which was replaced by YouTube as Google’s community video hosting site of choice, perhaps being part of the reason why Google Video director Jennifer Feikin left the company in May). Then again, judging from what Google China released just this year, movement is still very fast in at least some departments around the globe. There’s even some downright pirate hacker spirit going over in Beijing HQ, it seems.

Now Valleywag’s Paul Boutin follows up with a quote from Jason McCabe Calacanis at a discussion in front of a crowd interested in Facebook issues. Paul says Jason, the guy who sold blog network Weblogs Inc. to AOL, went into a “Pacino-esque monologue.” Here’s what he said (with some emphasis):

<<Social networking is second only to chat rooms as being the lowest CPM, the worst place to advertise... that’s not gonna change. And the reason for that – and this has nothing to do with Facebook, MySpace has the same problems – the reason is the content of your friends and family is more compelling than any advertisement will be.

This is why the comments in the last panel were so foolish about it being so competitive to Google, because Google has the greatest advertising in the history of media ever created... which is search advertising. When you type a word into the box, we know what you’re looking for.

When you’re on Facebook, we know you’re looking to meet a girl or a guy, or talk to your friends or your family. It’s a terrible platform to advertise, it always will be. It will always be low CPM, but high page views that make it up in volume. It’s a terrible, terrible way to make money.>>

Faced with arguments from another panel member that on social networks, you would buy something because someone else said they bought it and that it’s cool, Jason replies, “The holy grail of ecommerce, people have been talking about this forever... and it has not arrived.” Jason adds that the kind of advertising going on at Facebook is also a very low-margin business “nowhere near search inventory.”

Then again, back in 1999, even Google didn’t have the best business plan in the world – in fact, they didn’t have any at all, according to statements made by the Google founders back in the days. Here’s ZDNet news in June 1999 (my emphasis):

<<When asked how the company plans to make money, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page would only say what they won’t do. They don’t want to become a portal. No content. And they want to avoid competing with other search engines to be the browser of choice for existing portals. In fact, Page said Google doesn’t have any real competitors at all, which may be why they don’t intend to do much marketing.

But even Internet companies, which are almost expected to lose gobs of money, need at least a revenue stream, don’t they?

“We have other ways of making money,” said Page. “You’ll see.”>>

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Gary Price of ResourceShelf reports that Google grabbed a couple of new domains circling around the subject of “add-ons.” The domains include GoogleAddons.net, GoogleAddon.org, GoogleSearchAddon.net, SearchAddon.net and variants. Google already offers a special page collecting their extensions for Firefox, and extensions are part of what’s called “add-on” in Firefox, though I don’t know if there’s any relation...

[Thanks Gary!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Microsoft Windows online storage facility, Live SkyDrive (previously Live Drive) gets some useful improvements. Registered users of the Skydrive can now upload files of up to 1GB. This was the common clamor of SkyDrive users since they started using the online file storage facility.

The SkyDrive also introduced RSS subscription to inform users of updates for public folders. This is a nifty feature for users who monitors the file upload activities of their friends.

And to make file sharing easier, the SkyDrive now allows members to share their files to anyone by simply entering the email of members they want to share their file with. Think of it as the file uploading/sharing feature of Yahoo or Google Groups. This is also somewhat similar to the recently rolled out Google Shared Stuff facility, for sharing links and bookmarks to other users.

Lastly, when a member uploads a file, the member’s name will now be displayed together with the user access restriction and the number of editors for that particular file.

Windows Live Skydrive is simply getting better. And with the absence of the once rumored Gdrive until now, Microsoft is definitely gaining significant advantage over Google in this arena.

Hopefully though, Microsoft Windows will recall that the SkyDrive is not yet available in other parts of the world. Although, it may sound expensive and a big risk, it would be great to have this free service in our part of the world.

Among other things

Advanced Internet Technologies once took Google to court over click fraud. But that was small potatoes.…

Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

Created by Markus Kison of Berlin University for Digital Media, the VanityRing displays the Google page count the wearer gets for their own name. It’s the ultimate status symbol but updated for the 2000s, beating even costly jewels. “Being in people’s mind means being important,” Markus says.

To raise your Google status even more, there are two new options from the Google store: Google lip balm and Google Rubik’s cube.

[Top link & pic via Digg and Manoj. Top image by Markus, second image by Google Store.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

As a very important part of the search marketing mix, Link Building is both a cornerstone of SEO and a more than ever dynamic & changing field with a very high demand, and small amount of seasoned professionals.

Link building includes the practices of link buying or paid link advertising, linkbaiting, press & blog relations, and social media marketing. With hundreds of companies offering link building services out there and the major link builders such as Jim Boykin turning away business, how can you choose a quality link building agency?

Here are eleven different things to consider when speaking with, choosing or comparing link builders.

1. Diversity in Linking : When looking for a link building service, make sure that they do not put all of their eggs in one basket. Some services only specialize in directory listings while others concentrating specifically in blog posts. Some only buy links by the month, some only distribute articles or press releases, while others only practice reciprocal linking.

Look for a company or contractor who can offer a bit of everything because if your link builder is locked down in one style of linking, that means your site is associated with only one style. If they’re linking for only Google, what about Yahoo and MSN?

2. Cutting Edge Linking : Directory links and reciprocal linking may have worked well years ago, but what is the link builder doing now that addresses both current and future linking and search rankings attributed to linking.

If they are active in the blog, commenting, bookmarking and social media market, chances are the investment you make in link building over the next year will payoff in the future. If they’re link building in the past, your rankings and backlinks will not payoff in the future.

3. Responsibility in Linking : Ethics in web linking is a key variable in selecting a linking partner and touches upon diversity and cutting edge linking.

Is this link builder going to talk the talk and not walk the walk?
Can they put their money where their mouth is?

Or are they going to take your budget and sink it into a linking campaign which will bring you hundreds of /directory/links/links4 based links, comment spamming or guestbook attacks which will harm not only your link building, but your company’s reputation in the long run.

Recently my blog was bombarded by spam links for a company who’s CEO I know fairly well and normally runs some very organic and smart linking campaigns. Seems like they outsourced some blog linking which led to obvious comment spamming.

I and other search bloggers could have outed this spamming, harming the company’s reputation in the industry, but chose not to. But what happens when the company is yours and the blog belongs to someone else?

4. Responsiveness : Will you be able to reach your link builder once you sign your contract and pay them? If you have questions associated with their linking, will they ever respond to you?

Customer service and responsiveness are key decision making points when outsourcing anything, from programming to SEO. Make sure your link builder provides you with a phone number, email and possibly even an instant messaging username. If they’re not getting back to you or taking the initiative to contact you themselves (either the contractor, owner of the company or your project manager) while negotiating the contract, then chances are you may have a problem contacting them during the process of your linking initiatives.

5. Connections and Reputation : Where did this link builder come from and who do they know? Most good SEO’s have a history and connections. Look for their profile names on forums, blogs they contribute to, or past employment history via LinkedIn.

If they’ve been in the SEO industry for a long time, their experience should reflect upon their work. If they contribute thoughtful and useful content to blogs and forum threads, then they should put equal thought into your link building campaign.

If they have no track record online and a questionable employment background, you may want to look for someone else.

If the contractor is still in University, don’t let this hinder them too much, Neil Patel and Andy Hagans are two big time link builders who made a name for themselves while they were (are) still students.

6. References : Who have they worked with or worked for in the past? Most SEO’s sign Non Disclosure Agreements with their clients, but some list client portfolio’s on their sites.

Ask your link builder for their work history, past clients and possible references. Chances are they will supply them.

Also remember, one aspect of building trust with your outsourced linking provider is how much do they tell you about their other clients. If they’re sharing too much information about their past or current clients with you, they may share your information with other clients or your competitors in the future. So a tight lip on client portfolios or client work from a link building candidate can speak millions in terms of what they can and will provide for you, and how open you can be with them about your company.

7. Links to their Own Site : One way to judge the work of a link builder is by doing backlink checks to their own site. If they are good link builders, they should have good backlinks.

Try searching on Yahoo for “link:domain”

Are they linked to from authority sites or social media sites? Do other SEO’s link to them? Or are all of their incoming links from directories and sites that they own.

Checking their backlinks can help you judge the value and worth of a link building company.

8. Pricing : Link builders can offer all kinds of pricing plans, from a price per link, to monthly link renting, to working on retainer. Some link builders offer permanent links for a set price, while others rent link advertisements for a monthly fee.

Find out their pricing plan and other pricing alternatives they may offer. Some link builders may work month to month, while some require a full year’s commitment.

If you find a good link builder, you may want to sign them on for a whole year and not month to month, because someone else may come along and gobble up all of their bandwidth for the next 12 months, and they may drop you in a heartbeat as a client. Then, you’re looking for quality link builders again (and finding this article again on Google).

Review pricing plans and which ones both work well for your company, your linking contractor, and yourself.. because the last thing you want to do is explain to your boss why you lost a good link builder because you did not want to commit to a long term contract.

9. Link Ownership : Going back to responsibility and pricing, how ethical is this link builder and who owns the links?

If they are taking your company’s money to rent links by the month, and you end your agreement with them, will they then flip the switch and eliminate your links?

Are they linking to you from their own interlinked sites under one hosting plan, or are they linking to you from sites owned by decentralized and separate webmasters? A permanent link is a permanent link. Be sure that the link builder understands this and their webmaster contacts do also.

10. Intangibles : Trust your gut when contracting a link builder. If they know the industry more than the algorithms, their linking may be incredibly natural and more beneficial than ranking for the now.

If they stress social media more than linking, they may be a better contractor for Social Media Marketing than Link Building.

What’s your first impression of this person? A strong and trusted relationship can go a long way, and you never know where you’ll be working in two or three years when you may need to hire a link builder again. Will they want to work with you again?

11. Expectations : If you want X number of links per month from niche sites, any site or any blog from link building, let your link builder know so and listen to their reaction.

If they try to talk you into more targeted expectations and more focused link building, this is not pushing back, they’re just speaking from their expertise. In the long run however, make sure that expectations are set and remember, link building is not ALL of SEO. So if the link builder does not use keyword rankings as a success metric, this can be a good thing. Links are links, and not the overall end factor of SEO, instead part of the mix.

Getting expectations on the table before signing the contract will make the link building outsourcing process incredibly smooth across the length of the relationship.

As the search industry grows, more niche service organizations appear. These companies usually boast a tagline touting the fact that they “specialize in the search engine optimization of (insert industry here)”… Some companies even go so far as to provide complete web site platforms and content management systems for their clients.

Amazingly, these companies are successful.

It makes me wonder why companies would be willing to pay a premium to receive the same exact product that everyone else in their market has.

Invest in YOUR Search Marketing

Search marketing efforts are customized and planned to focus on your specific business goals. Your business is not the same as others in the industry — so why would you want to pay for the same products and services? How in the world can you differentiate yourself from the pack when you have the same web site, the same marketing and the same underlying systems?

YOUR search marketing needs to be unique. That’s not to say that a specialized firm cannot help you… But you must do your homework and review their existing clients’ sites and search marketing efforts. Too many similarities are not a good thing!

Template Based Optimization Kills!

While that headline might sound a bit harsh, I have found it to be true. Many niche companies out there who do little more than run your company name and other basic information through a series of templates. Those templates then dictate your page titles, navigational structures, META tags, etc.

Templates are great in certain situations. For example, if you run an eCommerce site with 2,000 products — it makes sense to have an optimized template that allows each product page to be optimized.

For smaller sites (under 100 pages), there’s little use for SEO templating. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it is counterproductive. If your marketing firm can’t take the time to optimize one hundred pages for you, what good are they really?

Demand Customization

Many of these niche companies force search terms on you, telling you that they’re the best match for your business. While it could be true, ask for the supporting information to back this claim up.

Your search terms should cater to what you’re interested in, as well as what will work for your market. Niche firms should have a working knowledge of terms and engines to target — but your input should also shape the terms you measure success.

Get Involved Early and Often

As a bottom line, do not allow your firm to dictate what success will be measured by. Customized search marketing is not templated. It’s not off the shelf. And, it’s certainly not something that you shouldn’t have an impact on.

Get involved with your firm’s rep early and often to get a better understanding of what they’re doing to make YOUR business better. Too many people spend money on marketing systems and optimization plans that do little for them.

In an News Corp stated that Google ’could do a better job’ at preventing illegally copied video from appearing on its YouTube site.” Chermin also stated that there is no reason Google could not track and filter copyrighted material as well as MySpace, which is owned by News Corp and overseen by Chermin. Was this just finger-pointing and corporate sparring? What about Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit lodged against Google in March over copyright infringement, and all those other pesky lawsuits?

Let me put on my foil hat for just a moment. I can feel some serious vibes coming in. This finger pointing and posturing about who does copyright protection better is going to continue and get even more intense as the promise of advertising on video becomes a revenue-gushing reality.

Tuesday, Google announced the launch of AdSense for Video program which will let publishers embed YouTube videos on their websites using a customized player and then make money from overlaying text ads that fade in and out as the videos play. Watch those dollars winging through the broadband.

Then, Wednesday, following close behind, comes the announcement by video search engine blinkx of a new service that they are offering which allows people to make money when they embed video clips on their Web sites. The Blinkx program, entitled AdHoc, is particularly interesting in that it allows users to monetize, through revenue sharing, video garnered from a number of video-sharing sites including YouTube, GoogleVideo and DailyMotion. The video ad space is clearly booming with the options for advertisers and publishers ballooning. The ground trembles as another revenue gusher is about to blow and start pumping even more revenues toward some well known search engines.

Now, why the foil hat vibes? Isn’t this ‘my copyright detection beats your copyright detection’ just more of ‘my algo is better than your algo’ that we’ve known for years. Not quite. In an article entitled “The Cost of Copyright” Danny Bradbury discusses copyright detection technology, why the various parties do not seem willing to develop and adopt a single detection methodology which would yield a recognizable digital fingerprint for copyright materials. He points out that it’s about the advertising benjamins that await the advertising network that can provide pinpoint targeting based on viewing patterns. Fingerprinting on video has the promise of delivering lots of potential revenue-producing information on viewing patterns.This information will become ever more valuable as advertisers seek to hone in on their prospects.

Even without a foil hat, it's easy to see that the finger pointing over who has the better copyright detection capabilities will continue. It is not just my detection routines beat your detection routines, but rather I can target prospects better. In fact the it is now no longer just about the copyright material; it is all about advertising revenues.

Rings are well known status symbols, and the included jewel’s weight in carat is a comparable value for the personal ranking of its owner.

The VanityRing doesn’t have a jewel, instead it shows the number of hits one gets, when he searches Google for the name of the person who wears it, a more adequate value in our time. It is personalized using a custom software, and after the name is typed the ring will change its display to show the personal “attention carats”, while every night, when it is inserted into its docking station the ring is reloaded and updated.

- via BoingBoing

Google has purchased a social instant messaging company, Jaiku, though how it is planning on using it is being kept secretitive, according to reports.

The company in essence provides the technology for creating social portals and networking applications. Where this will lead will be interesting to watch.

The Google blog describes the acquisition this way:

"Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it's more difficult to keep track of everyone when they're running around at warp speed. That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Jaiku, a company that's been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most -- regardless of whether you're at a computer or on a mobile phone."

Google Docs is having some problems today, at least for some of us. Tadeusz earlier today reported he saw a 404 page at Google Docs. When I logged in, I received the message “The server encountered an error. Please try again later.” Then later, it started to work fine, but just now when opening a document I got the following message:

<<Sorry, but document editing is temporarily unavailable.

While we are working to restore the service, you can still view your documents – just not edit them. If you check back in a few minutes, editing will likely be available again.>>

[Thanks Tadeusz!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Inetresting article from Radaronline