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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."

Google is a very strong brand, but in the Chinese market, branding the company under the letter ‘G’ may be a bit easier, especially for the mobile or newbie user. Google now owns one of the shortest possible domain names for the users in the Chinese market, G.cn.

Google says that this short domain name would help the web users in the country as they would be able to type it in fast. G.cn now redirects to Google.cn.

G.com however, leads to nothing and is owned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

There’s an interesting type of Google ad placement on Pac-txt.com (a game of Pac-Man recreated as interactive fiction): a cartoon monster on a black background is connected to a speech bubble which seamlessly wraps a AdSense text ad. And a thought bubble below the monster integrates a couple of “digg this"-stye icons. The ad placement is original and kinda neat... though I wonder if Google would object to such a composition?

Here’s what the AdSense policies say:

<<Publishers participating in the AdSense program: ...

• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
• May not place misleading images alongside individual ads>>

Also, the policies say “No AdSense code may be integrated into a software application” (for instance, I was once asked to remove AdSense from the Blogoscoped chat, where they were placed on top of the chat room).

For more interactive fiction check out the Google Adventure.

[Pac-Man link via Waxy.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

You can now log-in to your Google Analytics account to start enabling the new Site Search feature for a site of yours. The data won’t show right away, but apparently it will after some time (I just enabled Site Search today so I don’t know exactly what happens). Here’s how:

1. (First you need to make sure you have some kind of search engine for your site; e.g. in this blog, there’s a search box to the right side in the navigation utilized by the Google AJAX Search API; also, you must have the Google Analytics tracker script available in your pages.)
2. Go to Google Analytics
3. Next to your site, click Edit
4. On your site’s profile, again click Edit (in the top right)
5. Scroll down on the settings page and check the “Do Track Site Search” box
6. In the Query Parameter input box, enter e.g. “q” (no quotes) when your query parameter is q, as in http://example.com/search.php?q=hello+world
7. Hit the Save Changes button
8. Repeat for all of your sites

[Via official Google Analytics blog.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Even if you’re not a fan of baseball you probably know that Barry Bonds is one of the most questionable men in the game. From admitted steroid abuse to the brash ways in which he deals with the media — Bonds is nothing short of despised by most.

Like Bonds, Wikipedia comes across as one of the best and one of the cleanest players in the game. Yet when it comes to those in the inner circles — of baseball and in the search industry — both Bonds and Wikipedia represent all that is wrong with the game.

Wikipedia: Fraudulent, or Ignorant?

In a world where everything is competitive, Wikipedia comes off as being clean, right? Sure they do… They’ve got their labels and claims, like when they tell us that they’re the world’s leading reference tool. At SMX Social Media, attendees were reminded (a dozen times too many) just how difficult it is to game Wikipedia. The message a few weeks ago was clear — search marketing will not be tolerated by any of the editors or administrators donating their time to Wikipedia.

I can’t help but question though just how reputable of a source Wikipedia is. From a search engine results perspective, I can understand why Google and others would want to promote sites that making strong efforts to forbid search marketing efforts.

Let me get more to the point… If Wikipedia is the leading reference tool in the world, why does it have more than 40,000 entries that may require cleanup? To throw gasoline on that fire, let’s consider that another 1,500+ entries may not comply with Wikipedia’s content policies…

You probably find yourself disappointed in Wikipedia, unless of course you donate your time there regularly. While search marketers have every right to be irate with the preferential treatment that Wikipedia receives, it is ultimately Google’s responsibility to clean up their SERPs.

See, we already know that more than 95% of all Wikipedia entries rank in the top ten results on Google for their respective topics. That would be understandable if we were talking about unique content that serves users through providing factual information . When Wikipedia though has tens of thousands of errors, and allows anyone to edit anything at any time — it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

That Mighty Asterisk

Assuming that no one breaks his record, Barry Bonds will go into the record books with an asterisk by his name. Even if that asterisk is not placed beside his name in the books, we will always hold onto that opinion in our minds. In a similar way, users scanning search results are already dismissing Wikipedia entries — and that’s exactly what Wikipedia and Google deserve.

Preferential treatment can not be tolerated in search results; Just as cheats and frauds cannot be allowed in sport.