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Thursday, November 20, 2008

Google Lively Not Lively For Long

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 11:49 AM

Last night in a blog post at the Official Google Blog, Google announced that one of its Google Labs projects, Lively.com, will see its doors closed forever.

After only a few short months, Google has decided to pull the plug on this popular chat platform in order to direct resources to more important areas such as core search, ads, and apps.

While I have never used Lively, it seems to me that if this site is popular, there must be a way to make some money off of it, and I am somewhat surprised to see them choosing to shut it down so quickly. Would it not make sense to try and sell? Surely a company out there could make use of this to earn a living and keep the current user base happy. Maybe they should approach Facebook and turn it into yet another app?

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 11:49 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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Friday, November 14, 2008

Yahoo Shares Drop to Lowest in 5 Years

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 9:09 AM

It sounds more and more like Yahoo should have taken the Microsoft buy-out offer at $31 a share back in February. Since then Yahoo shares have been up and down, but as of today, they are hovering around the $10 mark, a small fraction of what they once were.

Yesterday Yahoo shares dropped to below $10 – the first time their value has dipped into the single digits in more than 5 years. One thing’s for sure, if Microsoft does step up and give Yahoo another offer it will be substantially less than the previous $44.6 Billion.

Yahoo is not the only major player in the search game to see significant value declines on their stock. Around this time last year Google shares were over $700 and as of today are at less than half that with the value at $310.31 at the time of this post. 2008 has also brought significant declines to Microsoft shares as well - at just under $20 today MS has seen shares drop by almost half with their 52 week high of 36.72 from back in December of 07.

Labels: Google, Microsoft, Scott Van Achte, Yahoo

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 9:09 AM.

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Friday, November 07, 2008

Scanned Documents Now Searchable at Google

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 7:00 AM

Last week Google began turning PDF files of scanned printed documents into digital text, and as a result their searchable index has expanded once again.

Previously, only rarely would a scanned document appear in the organic search results. With the technology of optical character-recognition (OCR) implemented now these scanned PDFs will find their way into the results.

In an article posted at Information Week, one downside to this is the possibility of personal information appearing in the search results. Social Security numbers that could have gone unnoticed in scanned court documents could be discovered by Google.

"Public.Resource.org, a project that aims to make public government publicly accessible, recently found about 1,700 documents with Social Security numbers or alien identification numbers out of a corpus of 2.5 million court documents that go back decades."

Unless Google wants more future lawsuits on its hands, I can imagine that issues such as this will be rectified rather quickly.

This process of turning an image back into readable text will likely have other uses such as reading text stored within images in a website. This could open the doors to using image based text more freely in one’s site design. While this use is not in place at the moment, it seems like a natural step forward.

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 7:00 AM.

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

This Week at Google

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 4:31 PM

Well, this has certainly been a busy week at Google. One thing I can say for Google, they are very energetic and we’re never wanting for good writing material.

Yahoogle Deal Abandoned
Yahoo - Google

Right on the heels of revising the scope of the agreement between the two search giants, Google announced this Wednesday that the deal will not go forward. This came to pass after the US Department of Justice decided it would file an anti-trust suit if the agreement was implemented.

Many thought this would be a disastrous alliance and the effects it would have on the industry were very difficult to predict. We’ll never know, but I for one am glad we won’t have to find out.

Adsense Publishers Blocking Ad Display
Adsense

While searching around for article content, I came across this forum thread and it’s a real eye opener. Some advertisers are jamming in last minute political ad displays that are getting placement on completely irrelevant sites. While this isn’t exactly new, what most incenses site owners is the controversial, issue based advertisements that are not relevant and could offend large numbers of visitors to their sites. More information can be found in this article.

Google is aware of this and has posted on their blog the means to block unwanted ads, but apparently, the ads get displayed well before the AdSense publishers can review them to block.
This delay in the system has caused many site owners to turn off AdSense altogether as it is the only means of getting unsuitable ad display off immediately.

I am not really surprised by this, as I’ve always been pretty skeptical about how effective an automated system is at determining relevancy. The wide variety of sites that are complaining of this reinforces my opinion of general content display.

Regardless, the time lag involved is something Google really needs to take a look at.

Quality Score Change is a Go

Google has been doing a lot of work on overhauling how their ad ranking system works and last week they announced upcoming changes to QS. This has been made live as of Monday.

There were two major changes made:

1. They have adjusted their algorithm to take into account the effects of ad position on click through rate. Presumably this means if your ad is not always in a high position or on the first page, you will not be penalized for a low CTR (Click through rate).

2. They have also made an algorithm that allows promotion of lower bidding ads to the top slots on the basis of meeting a certain (unspecified) Quality Score threshold. The use of the term “threshold” implies that it may be a fixed score point i.e. 8/10 QS, but they haven’t made this clear.

I’ll be interested to see what effects these changes will have on existing campaigns.

Google says, “Keep in mind that these enhancements may cause changes to your ad position, spend, and performance.” “While we don't believe that any immediate changes are needed on your part, we encourage you, as always, to watch your key metrics and to make adjustments as appropriate.”

You betcha! I’m going to have to plow through all my accounts over the next little while and make sure to compensate for this.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 4:31 PM.

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Wireless Internet Approved by FCC for TV Airwaves

Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 8:15 AM

According to Bloomberg.com the FCC has approved a proposal by Google to utilize unused television airwaves for wireless internet access. Approved by a vote of 5-0 yesterday, this will ultimately allow for free Wi-Fi web access, especially in rural areas.

Any devices built to access the free wireless web will be required to utilize anti-interference technology, and makers of such devices will need to obtain FCC certification for each product.

Craig Mundie, Chief Strategy Officer for Microsoft noted a week ago, that if the FCC approval went through, that devices might be available to the public in as early as 12 months.

While this may take us one step closer to free internet for everyone, I think I may just prefer to pay for my access as I can only imagine the ads we will be bombarded with for this free access – it has to be paid for somehow. A PDF released by the FCC is available with more information.

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

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This SEO News was posted by Scott Van Achte @ 8:15 AM.