More than 160,000 small businesses tested Office Live during its beta program, according to Microsoft. How many small businesses can Google claim as Google Apps for Your Domain beta testers? Microsoft Office Live, “a set of Internet-based services tailored to the needs of small businesses,” officially comes out of beta in the United States November 15, [...]
-- ZDNet's Donna Bogatin
View original article here.
Cosmo Buono calls himself a technology "dinosaur." But look to this longtime New York City piano teacher for insight on how Google (GOOG) keeps setting financial records.
Buono wanted to find contestants for an international piano competition he's staging. A student recommended that he advertise on the Google search engine, so he went online to give it a try. Now, when anyone searches for "piano competition" or "international piano competition" his ad appears near the top of search results.
His budget: $50. His response: 35 new contestants, so far. "I was up and running in 15 minutes," says Buono, 54. "For somebody like me who isn't comfortable with the PC, it was quite a revelation."
Google set a record again this month with a 70% third-quarter revenue jump that has Wall Street salivating. The stock hit new heights last week to nearly $500 a share. Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney says it's poised to hit $600.
Since it went public two years ago, its share of Internet searches has nearly doubled, while its ad revenue continues to dwarf rivals such as Yahoo (YHOO) and MSN (MSFT).
How does Google do it? With millions of customers such as Buono, who use its simple and ever-expanding search advertising program, AdWords, to reach customers. Google is on a roll because it is "the best and most used search engine," says Mahaney. "More people want to do searches on Google than Yahoo."
A simple concept
AdWords works on a simple concept: Advertisers offer their wares for a fee in the "sponsored search" section of search results, which appear on Google as well as AOL, Ask.com and EarthLink. Clients bid on keywords — the phrases people use when searching — and pay if someone clicks on an ad. Advertisers can pay from a penny to more than $1 per click, and set a monthly budget.
"The entire process of signing up was really simple," says Buono. "If I can do it, anyone can."
Google makes updates to AdWords every two weeks. The program has greatly expanded beyond the simple search ad. What's new:
•Geo-targeting. Clients can choose which ZIP code they want their ad to appear in, and can have the ad appear on Google Maps.
•Time-slot preference. Want your ad to run only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., when people are at work? No problem. Advertisers can refine their campaigns down to the hour.
•Starter edition. For folks who want a simpler, speedier way to get an ad online. Google asks new advertisers to type in their ZIP code, website address, a 10-word ad, monthly budget and keyword search terms. Click "continue," and type in contact and payment information, and the ad is online.
"We're trying to make the process less intimidating," says Richard Holden, Google's director of product management.
Don't have a website? No problem. Google says 50% of small businesses don't have one. It will create a bare-bones site for new clients, with a basic listing that includes phone and e-mail contact, ad copy and a photo.
Permeating the Web
The companion to AdWords is AdSense, which expands the text ads across hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs representing what Google says is 80% of the Web. website owners share in revenues whenever an ad is clicked.
Clients include tech sites such as Engadget and Macworld and big guns such as MySpace (NWS), The New York Times (NYT), The Washington Post (WPO) and Slate.
Last week, Google moved to increase the reach of AdSense with a tool to let anyone create a narrow version of its search engine for a website or blog. A blogger with a fan site devoted to Beyoncé could add a search tool devoted to the singer. A wedding-planning site could tweak it to only have results from florists, caterers and venues.
website owners get the service free in exchange for showcasing Google ads.
"In terms of potential earnings, this is the biggest one to look at," says Chris Winfield, who runs 10e20, a New York firm that works with clients on Google advertising campaigns. "Millions of people will put this on their pages, and Google ads will be all over those pages."
This summer, Google began offering advertisers the ability to run video ads on the AdSense network.
Businesses upload an ad — which can be created with consumer-level video equipment and software — directly to Google. They choose the types of sites they want to appear on, from general interest to those devoted to beauty tips, entertainment or more.
"You walk into the buildings at Google, and can feel the blood flowing," says Rich Silverstein, of Goodby, Silverstein and Partners ad agency. "Instead of saying "We can't do that,' they say, "Let's see if we can.' " His agency created a video ad for automaker Saturn that ran on auto enthusiast sites via Google. The ad begins in outer space and ends by whisking the viewer to his or her local Saturn dealer. The ad was "geo-targeted" by ZIP code, with each ad tailored for the local market. "This is a relationship between the viewer and a company that's never been done before," says Silverstein.
While Google popularized search ads, the form was invented by Goto.com (later known as Overture), which Yahoo acquired. But Google has far exceeded Yahoo in customers and revenue.
Yahoo is revamping its search ad program to make it easier to use and more profitable. After several delays, it is to make its debut early next year. Last week, Yahoo said its earnings fell 38%, due to softer ad sales.
Google's lead over Yahoo is bigger than Wall Street realized when Google first was planning to go public in 2004, says Mahaney. "Yahoo is trying to play catch-up, and they're finding just how difficult that is."
Microsoft recently introduced its own answer to AdWords, Microsoft adCenter. But "MSN has 10% of searches, and Google has 50%," says Winfield. "It's good traffic, just not enough of it."
Google has been criticized by Wall Street analysts for being a one-trick pony. It makes all its money from search ads, while Yahoo has display ads, subscription fees and partnerships with high-speed internet providers. In search, says analyst Greg Sterling of researcher Sterling Market Intelligence, it is not too late for Yahoo to catch up. "Local advertising is a huge, $100 billion market, and advertisers want multiple options," he says.
-- Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
View original article here.
Dale King
October 17, 2006
It's unbelievable, really - a true phenomenon.
Its been 8 years since Google first opened its doors in Menlo Park, California. Google has undergone a lot of changes over those 8 years. But one thing still remains constant. The world continues to be catatonic over Google.
But, imagine if you will, a world without Google. Would you be able to adjust? Would your business survive? How well rounded is your marketing? Do you have multiple streams of offline income you can rely on?
The reason I ask is, apparently a lot of marketers have either forgotten about or never heard of "Florida." No I'm not referring to "The Sunshine State." Nor am I'm talking about "Florida" the tv mother from the 70's television sitcom "Good Times." No. The Florida I'm talking about turned the world of Internet Marketing upside down, just 3 short years ago.
Let me explain:
On November 16, 2003, Google had a major algorithym change that caused a ton of sites with high PR's (PageRankings) to drop down in ranking significantly...some off the charts completely. In fact, a lot of websites lost so much traffic, they were forced out of business altogether. That algorithm change was nicknamed "Florida," or Google's "Florida Dance."
It was nicknamed Florida because Google's algorithm changes are so frequent, they are given names, just like hurricanes. And if Google has another major algorithym change, (and many experts think they will) you could see history repeat itself.
I was on a popular Internet Marketing forum recently, and mentioned this fact to one Internet marketer, and his response was:
"I worry about what Google is doing today and not what they may potentially do in the future. If Google changes something, I'm sure we'll have no problem adapting to the new rules. Piece of cake.
There is always a fix for the changes. For instance, the infamous Google Slap. I'm now getting traffic cheaper then ever, and I'm still rocking name squeeze pages. That slap is the best thing that has ever happened.
I hope they do slam some PR4 and PR5 sites down to 0. It will be nice to get those sites out my way so I can weasel my way to the top of the search engines with less competition."
Quote. Unquote.
That marketer clearly doesn't get it. If Google does have a another major algorithym change, his site could be one of the one's wiped off the face of the map - as could mine.
I'm not suggesting that will happen.
I'm suggesting it COULD happen.
And not being prepared for a "worse case scenario" is akin to getting into your car and taking a long road trip without a spare tire. You're just asking for trouble.
This is what Internet marketer Dean Phillips had to say in his article "The Truth About Search Engines: Playing A Game You Can't Win."
"If you go strictly by the numbers, Google, Yahoo and MSN are the "Big 3" of search engines and directories. Between them, they index millions and millions of pages in their directories. Although Google claims to index over 4 billion.
The point is, out of all those millions and millions of pages, there's room for only a very few websites at the top of the results pages.
That means, if you go strictly by the number of indexed web pages in their directories, you have a better chance of winning the lottery, than getting high enough in the results pages to where it's going to make a significant difference in your traffic. That's not my opinion, it's a fact!
You're simply playing a game YOU CANNOT WIN!
So what can you do about it?
The first thing you need to do is forget about the search engines--period! Just forget about them!
Why? Because even if you're one of the fortunate few to get a high enough ranking to where it's making a significant difference in your traffic, there's no guarantee you'll get to keep it. Since the search engines are constantly changing the rules of the game (AKA) their algorithms, you could be number one in the search engines today and totally off the results pages tomorrow. Again, that's not just my opinion, it's a fact!
If you don't believe me, just ask those thousands of devastated and bankrupt business owners whose websites disappeared off of the results pages altogether, when a category 5 hurricane named "Florida" swept through the Gulf of Google on November 16, 2003.
But that's exactly what happens when you put all of your eggs into one basket. And just like it's wise to have "multiple streams of income," it's also wise to use a variety of ways to promote your website.
It's sort of like all of those millions of people who flock to Las Vegas every year hoping to get lucky. There's only one problem. The system was not designed for you to win. It was designed to make you think you could win.
That's the allure of Las Vegas and that's the allure of the search engines--they make you think you can win. You can't!
Oh sure, just like in Vegas, you'll have your lucky few who hit the jackpot and snare a top ranking on the results pages, at least until the search engines change their rules again.
But the vast majority are left on the outside looking in, and at the mercy of so-called SEO experts who are only too happy to take your money and continue to make you think you can win the game. You can't!
What you have to do is forget about the search engines. Just forget about them! I realize it's difficult, especially with all thats been written said over the years about how critical the search engines are to your business. Believe me when I tell you, it's all a bunch of bull!
Businesses were doing just fine, when there weren't any search engines. Just fine.
I personally refuse to play the search engine game. Yes, I do get traffic from the dozens of articles I've written that have been picked up and published on popular websites all over the Internet.
But I also get traffic via word of mouth, newsletters and ezines that my articles are published in, and a few other secret methods that I use.
And you can do the same thing. You just have to get out of that search engine mindset.
Now I realize writing articles may not be a desirable option for many of you.
That's fine. However, there are many other proven and effective ways to market your website. Here are just a few: ezines, newsletters, forums, online magazines, sponsor listings on other websites, exchanging links.
Here are a few offline options: magazines, direct mail, shopper newspapers, cable television, radio, flyers, hospital newsletters, card decks, trade journals and directories, bulletin boards, tabloid newspapers.
In addition, do yourself a favor and buy the book, "Guerrilla Marketing," by Jay Conrad Levison. It's loaded with hundreds of low-cost ways to promote your business!
As you can see, you have plenty of other options available to you, besides the search engines. All you have to do is use them--and a little imagination.
It's time to stop playing a game you can't win, and start playing a few that you can!" Dean makes a good argument.
However, I disagree about one point he makes. I don't think you should forget about the search engines altogether. They're a very valuable tool and you should use them.
Just don't put all of your eggs into one basket, that's all.
View original article here.
OCT. 12: Google’s purchase of YouTube will catapult the most-used search engine into the top spot in Internet video and position the company to dominate the fastest-growing part of the online advertising market.
Internet video advertising will generate $1.1 billion in US revenue in 2008, up from $385 million this year, according to market researcher EMarketer. Google, which trailed in video, will have a site that is increasing its library of available video clips by 65,000 a day.
“This is a very, very important wake-up call to the other traditional Internet players,” said Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic, San Francisco-based Internet ad agency owned by Omnicom Group. “YouTube is a huge prize because of the traffic it brings and the engaged audience.”
The $1.65 billion purchase gives California-based Google tools to take a bigger share of advertising budgets by selling video spots, where Yahoo! and Microsoft’s MSN already compete. Video will be the fastest-growing form of Internet advertising over the next three years, reaching 4.7% of the total by 2008, New York-based EMarketer said.
“The way that we’ve been approaching the ad model is to look for new, creative ways to engage users with brands,” YouTube CEO Chad Hurley said yesterday in an interview. “By us working with Google, it’s going to give us a lot of options.”
Shares of Google have risen 2.8% this year. Microsoft shares have risen 5.3% this year.
Google and YouTube will look to build on initiatives like YouTube Underground, a music contest sponsored by Cingular Wireless LLC. YouTube is asking unsigned bands to upload clips and users will vote on the best acts.
In August, YouTube added “brand channels” that companies can customise. Hotel heiress Paris Hilton was first to use the feature to promote her album.
Yahoo, the most-visited US website, sells video ads on sites including Yahoo Music. The company started accepting clips from its users in May. Analysts including Jeetil Patel of Deutsche Bank in San Francisco said Yahoo missed an opportunity by not buying YouTube and said that Google may eat into Yahoo’s sales of graphical banner ads by attracting advertisers to video. Yahoo declined to comment.
—Bloomberg
View original article here.
One thousand six hundred and fifty million dollars. With that, you could buy the latest US nuclear powered aircraft carrier and have $250 million left over to fuel and staff it. You could hire 16,500 people and pay them each $100,000 to work for you for a year. Or, for a firm like YouTube, with 65 employees Google is paying over twenty five million dollars per employee which, coincidently, is the exact amount spent on lap dancers in Los Vegas each year.
Under the term "Outside the Box" should be Google's logo. This company successfully has pulled insane seeming ideas and made them work. When they went public, they refused to provide financial analysts any real direction, something most thought would result in cratered stock and a failed public offering. In addition they set an initial stock price that was crazy high only to watch the stock price go up to astronomic levels.
On the news that they bought a relatively unprofitable 65 person company for $1.65 billion (with a "b") the stock should have dropped through the floor. Instead, Google's shares were up on the rumor and up again on the news.
While this may simply be unbridled trust in a company that can seem to do little wrong, it may also have a very real foundation that could result in a positive investment return. On the other hand, it could also be just plain whacked. Let's look at both sides of this deal.
Google + YouTube: Brilliance squared
What would it be worth to get Bill Gates as a senior employee back in the late 70s? Assuming he was given the tools he needed, clearly his worth, all by himself, would be significantly more than what Google paid for YouTube.
We often forget that often a small number of people can make the difference between a successful company like Google and a failure like Netscape. Google seems to get the power of people; and with the YouTube acquisition, they get a core team that not only made YouTube the leading video site but was also critical to PayPal - another property Google is now competing with.
These people may be serial successes, in other words, folks that simply understand how to do things successfully and can do it repeatedly. If even a small number of the folks they acquired with YouTube are, in fact, the kind of person that can be a Donald Trump, or a Steve Jobs and they can both hold on and provision them to their potentia,l they not only jump to the of the on-line video heap they have the true potential of becoming the next truly big player in technology.
Part of this serial success thing is luck but it certainly looks like both the Google and the YouTube folks have that in spades and the recent deals both have signed with the record labels would indicate that this luck is holding up very well for both firms.
They also did the deal with stock and not cash which should help tie the employees of YouTube to the new combined entity very tightly for awhile.
Now Google is building what amounts to a new TV Network that is based on an Internet delivery model. That is one of the reasons they are renting a large and expensive office building over one of the largest fiber hubs in the world. YouTube now becomes the true foundation for that network. With Google's resources, YouTube is set to do something amazing.
It is funny how often companies, who should know better, forget the value of people. Both Apple and Microsoft have bled an incredible number of incredible people over the years. Google appears to be going the other way and the result could truly be amazing.
Google + YouTube: Netscape revisited
Google often looks like what happens when you get a lot of money over a short period of time and lose your sense of worth. For a company of 65 people making little money, a purchase price of $1.65 billion seems so incredibly high that you have to wonder if someone lost a really big bet and this was the result.
Netscape and a large number of the Dotcoms went down this path of having way too much money and not enough sense in terms of how to spend it. Granted, this acquisition is in exchange for stock and it doesn't reduce Google's working capital, but stock has a price as well and that's a lot of stock going to something that isn't particularly productive yet.
Netscape fragmented badly partially as a result of its acquisitions and partially because its executive staff was simply not up to the job of running a company like Netscape. Google could be overspending its way down a similar path.
For each of the employees Google is acquiring the financial benefits should be significant and the distractions of this newly found massive wealth to the YouTube executives will create a significant problem - one that may be impossible to overcome, particularly if the stock price drops catastrophically before that stock can be sold.
Google's stock is trading in the stratosphere and revenues of the company is still largely based on advertising revenue, which is not the most stable form of income sources. Any major drop - or for that matter increase - could result in distractions that the YouTube folks simply can not overcome to get the job done. Finally, once you get this kind of money you tend to read your own press and think your stuff doesn't stink. In short, key employees may become unmanageable "superstars" who are expensive to maintain and impossible to motivate.
The end result could be the departure of these critical employees to other start ups or simply their virtual retirement - which would render Google's acquisition worthless.
The Result?
Like most things, the result will likely be in the middle. But if these folks could be hugely distracted by wealth, the money they got from the PayPal acquisition would have already shown some of this bad behavior and we wouldn't have a YouTube to begin with. Still, that's a lot of money changing hands and distractions like this don't come around often.
I think we are going to see something amazing out of all of this, not sure whether or not it will work, but the experiment will be worth watching and you have to believe there is an Apple angle in here someplace. In fact, this could be an early test of what an Apple merger might be like though, if Google would give $1.65 billion for YouTube, just think what they might give for that company?
In the end, we will likely get a new network out of all of this and probably more. Given what a pain it is to get content right now, this has to be an improvement we can all look forward to.
By Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group. He can be reached at renderle@enderlegroup.com.
I’m not sure if this is a surefire way to get a site booted from Google AdSense or not, but Hari K Gottipati, a Software Engineer with Motorola Inc (according to his blog) has figured out a way to earn Google AdSense Page Impressions without displying the Google AdSense ads.
“This weekend I was working on some thing where I needed to hide iframe based on some action. I figured it out putting the iframe inside div tag and hiding the div tag is very easy. And then I realised that Google adsense uses iframe to display the ads and wanted to see how Google prevents me fectching the ads into a hidden iframe.”
Hari says that there is no way for Google to determine whether or not the iframe is hidden because he is using a div wrapper around the iframe.
Hari adds:
"Each time a visitor visits a page with an AdSense tag, a piece of JavaScript writes an iframe tag which displays the text or image ads. If you put the Google adsense script inside a div tag and if you hide the div tag, users won’t even notice the Google ads. But it actually loads the ads from Google servers into the iframe. It only works with page impression option, because Google count the number of impressions each time you load the ads into iframe."
I don’t think Google has the mechanism to check whether the user is displaying the ads that loaded from Google server or not. Its very difficult for Google to determine this case as iframe itself is not hidden, it is used inside div tag which is hidden.
Just how much could a site make by hiding its AdSense ads so no one clicks on them? I’d imagine that the CPM Impression money would be merely cents and the return on investment would be in the negative, as Google would lay the wrath of God down on publishers for doing so.
I do however believe that Hari is testing this hidden iframe just for fun and he has a nice “now you see it, now you don’t” example on his young blog, Me, My tech watch & My tech thoughts.
By Loren Baker
View original article here.
