Internet Marketing

From Silicon Alley Insider:

If Google and Yahoo go forward with their search partnership, they’ll have to sign a consent decree. Which will mean, that Google might have US government inspectors digging around in its books, business practices and contracts. The measly Yahoo partnership certainly don’t seem to be worth the government snooping around.

Jessica Vascellaro of the WSJ says Google’s close to walking from the deal. This means Yahoo’s board members might want to get back on the phone with Microsoft about selling the search business to them. The likelihood that Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. will walk away from their planned search partnership has risen, say people close to the contract negotiations.

The two Internet search portals have so far failed to reach an agreement on their partnership with the US Justice Department, which has been building a lawsuit to block the deal. Following a meeting Thursday with the Justice Department, the companies could announce a decision to back away from the partnership — or a last-minute resolution, if one is reached — by the middle of next week, according to these sources.

The option to just scrap the deal has been on the table before, but Google in particular has begun considering it more seriously recently as talks with the Justice Department haven’t progressed. One sticking point has been the Justice Department’s discussion of having the companies sign a consent decree enforcing the terms of the search partnership. By doing so, the parties would be subjecting their compliance with the agreement to ongoing oversight by a judge.

Kara Swisher intelligently guesses what the reason Google gave the WSJ some of this story is to ramp up pressure on the Justice Department to cave. Google doesn’t need this deal, but Yahoo does (and if it doesn’t get it, it’s leverage to draw Microsoft into an alternative deal is very small.)

If that’s the strategy, though, it’s unlikely to work. Who, exactly, is going to complain to the Justice Department about blocking the Google-Yahoo deal? Yahoo shareholders? Not a particularly powerful constituency nowadays.

Related Article: rent a car bulgariaNo Search Deal for Google, Yahoo?
-Brian R.

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Our good and sometimes evil friend over at Google are always squeezing the algorithms in how they rank your paid listings against your competitors that are buying the same keywords in an effort to show and reward relevance. This can be a frustrating game for mom and pop shops and agencies to manage as keywords very important to your business can be turned off in a flash without any warning.

Here are some best practices that I teach and use to stay in good graces with the ‘mean’ algorithm:

1. Keyword Insertion. This is a super-duper important one to use whenever possible. Here is the tag and a good secret that not everyone is aware of: {KeyWord: YourName.com}. What basically happens when you use this tag is that the keyword or phrase search will get inserted as the link title and will be capitalized only if you capitalize both the “K” and the “W” (That’s the secret). By including your domain name or trade name then that’ll appear if the keyword phrase is too long as they won’t truncate it for you. I could almost stop right there as this step is so overlooked by most SEM shops. The other great benefit is that your keywords will be “Bolded” when displayed which usually results in higher CTR and lower bid pricing.

2. Use the Keyword or Keyword phrase in the description text field. I didn’t realize until recently how important this was in making sure that your are buying relevant keywords. If you have to break out and build new smaller ad group buckets then take the time to do it on important keyword(s). Google takes this into the consideration factor when weighing out your quality score.

3. Your Display URL. I as a measure of best practice always Capitalize my URL’s and don’t put the www. in front of them. Example: Meeta.com instead of www.meeta.com. It just jumps out at you more and is easier to read and remember.

4. CAPITALIZATION. While we are on the topic this might be the second most important best practice to follow to a “T”. You will end up fighting your brand managers and anal copywriters but don’t sleep on this one at all. Hold the line. Capitalize The First Letter On The Ad Description Text So That It Jumps Off The Page.

Example of all 4 Best Practices in play:

Your ad should look like:
{KeyWord: Meeta.com}
100% Free Dating Service!
Meet Local Singles Today.
Meeta.com

Another quick tip is that you can use superlatives in your ad description. I usually try to get a good short call to action and one exclamation point in the ad.

I’ll do another article on landing page optimization soon and how to use the Google conversion counter free tool.

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After many years of the familiar and ubiquitous “Ads By Gooooogle” Google has finally updated the look of their AdSense advertisements.

They have removed the default border and included an “ads by Google” graphic. While the ability to remove borders and modify AdSense design was always possible via their interface, the ability to modify the “ads by Google” component was never an option.



I think the jury is out on the effectiveness of these ads for both publishers and advertisers, however it is refreshing to see Google experimenting with new designs. Now if only they would let the publishers modify the font treatments we would really be getting somewhere!

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