Adtasm.com | Ads in Media

 We’ve gotten a few “tips” that YouTube has actually grown larger than Google in terms of page views according to Alexa.

This is, of course, complete fiction. And it shows just how useless Alexa has become as a method for measuring web traffic and reach. Comscore tells a much different (and more accurate) story - Google is nearing 100 billion monthly page views; YouTube sees around 16 billion.

Even newcomer Compete, which measures traffic in a similar way as Alexa, seems to be getting it right. Alexa needs an overhaul. It’s long since become less than useful.

[Alexa Says YouTube Is Now Bigger Than Google. Alexa Is Useless]

Via Seobook.com 

Google recently announced they are offering an ad free search service to small businesses for as little as $100 a year. They are also rumored to be working on creating a mobile search offering to search for ringtones, cell phone games, and other high margin cell phone services:

[Read:Google Ringtone Search Beta… the Utility of Search & the Value of Relationships vs Data : SEO Book.com]

Via Computerworld.com. EBay pulls ads from Google’s U.S. ad network.

EBay Inc. has pulled all of its paid search ads from Google Inc.’s AdWords network in the U.S., an eyebrow-raising move likely to be seen in the industry as a sign of deteriorating relations between the two Internet giants.

Competition between Ebay’s Paypal service and Google’s Checkout has risen considerably over the last year or so, with Google throwing its considerable weight behind its Google checkout (at times, offering cash back to first time users). Although both companies has characterized this move as a kind of “reallocation” of resources, the very fact that Google accounts for the lion share of all search engine traffic makes this more than a simple question of competition– where can Ebay go for SEM traffic now? Yahoo? haha.

The situation can very well change rapidly (perhaps both companies can work out a face-saving measure). Adtasm will keep you updated.

What can this mean for the keywords market? Look for certain prime spots (the ones directly on top of the listings) that Ebay puts a lot of money into, especially electronics goods, to open up. Prices probably won’t go down (does it ever?), but at least we’ll see some fresh faces on the top of the search listings for a change.

What’s better than the leading computer manufacturing companies coming together to make an energy efficient PC desktop that could help reduce entropy and possibly slow global warming? 20+ leading computer manufacturers and one Google combining forces to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. That’s right Google dawns the superhero cape and tights to help save the world, one search query at a time. The Official Google Blog has the full details of their most recent altruistic efforts.

Last fall we talked about our work on efficient power supplies in the capable hands of Ben Jai, Ken Krieger and the rest of our power supply team. Since then, we’ve become involved in several projects focused on environmental stewardship. Today, for example, together with Intel, Dell, EDS, the EPA, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, the World Wildlife Fund, and more than 20 other companies, we announced the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. After working on this initiative over the last few months, we’re delighted to join with so many organizations to form this new group. In particular this project should speak to every business with computers.

Looks like Google’s one step away from actually embedding itself into your PC desktop. I guess that’s one way of surpassing their most recent privacy issues.

Some search engine marketers might be wondering if it really is advantageous to revive an old Adwords campaign. This is especially common when dealing with a new client who has had a previous Adwords campaign. The answer is relative to the older campaign’s performance. As Seroundtable.com puts it

As far as old campaigns go, if the account has a really bad history and not-so-good quality scores, it’s better to close that account and start from scratch rather than to revive an old account and have Google use that history against you. After all, as member Jeremy Brookins says, “if you move your keywords, Google continues to consider that keyword’s previous history. HOWEVER, it also will weight in an expected performance of the new
adgroup/ad/landing page, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your previous performance.”

Plus, if you are using an older campaign it will take less time to setup which can be a plus for the lazier… I mean busier SEM.

Obviously, the staff here at Adtasm can’t really work (or live) without Google, but Readwriteweb.com has the ground rules for a personal experiment you can try. How long can you go? I lasted all of5 minutes.

Complain enough and someone’s bound to hear… and maybe even do something about it. That’s just what the fine folks at Google have done. To appease the woes of the common Adsense marketers Google has announced their upcoming launch of the brand spanking new Placement Performance report. Marketers can now get an in depth view of where their ads are being placed as well as site performance metrics to better gauge ad performance. Oh, Google you really are a marketer’s wet dream. You can get the full story at Clickz.com.

Looks like Google has found another market in which this powerhouse can dominate: politics. In an attempt to sway various immigration reform proposals Google’s VP of People Operations; Laszlo Bock, provides his testimonial on the effect immigration laws has on Google. For full details of their political escapades visit The Official Google Blog.

In his testimony, Laszlo said that, due to limits on the number of H-1B visas, Google is regularly unable to pursue highly qualified candidates. This year, an estimated 133,000 visa applications were filed by H-1B candidates in the first two days of the filing period for only 65,000 available spots. Over the last year alone, the artificially low cap on H-1B visas has prevented more than 70 Google candidates from receiving H-1B visas. Therefore, Laszlo said, “We would encourage Congress to significantly increase the annual cap of 65,000 H-1B visas, to a figure more reflective of the growth rate of our technology-driven economy.” He also urged Congress to address the backlog of employment-based green cards for highly skilled workers.

Looks like big business rears its money hungry head into government once again. I wonder what kind of incentives Google will offer Congress members in attempts to persuade their decision. Maybe a $400 credit towards their Adwords account, higher page ranking or a life time supply of Google brand socks.

Ahhh, Google.com…. I could go on and on about the wondrous tools that Google has pumped out over the years for the tech-savvy (and you have to be, if you want to succeed in the world of online marketing). If you are like most decently aware Internet users, you probably have Firefox installed wherever you go. Perhaps you even have a tool like Foxmarks syncing your bookmarks so you have up to date bookmarks wherever you go. But lets say you want not just your bookmarks, but your password, your history (and all encrypted to protect your privacy along with a password), and tabs session all to follow you wherever you go. Intrigued?

Enter: Google Browser Sync.

This incredible extension for Firefox,

Continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks,
history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your
computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across
different machines and browser sessions.

Ask.com has just relaunched their search engine interface Ask3D and I have say that Ask.com really has hit the mark with this innovative update. Users can get refined search query suggestions, search results and categorized results on the same page which really provides a more through and inviting feel compared to the older SERP models. In addition to this they offer a new “binocular” feature that allows users to view a page without clicking on the link. Ask.com provides a full description of their new update here.

After spending some time using some of the new features I have to say that I am really impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I was a bit skeptical about the cleanliness and ease of use for the new features particularly the clutter that I expected to see with all this information packed into one SERP. However, I am really surprised at how intuitive and user friendly the new features feel. The SERP is organized in a very clear cut manner and with multichannel search results displayed it makes searching so much easier and quicker. The only pivotal difference that I saw, in terms of sponsored and organic results, is that there seems to be less emphasis on the sponsored results. Although it seems like this would have a negative effect the sponsored results have less of a paid advertising “feel” to them and may attract users who are wary marketers aggressively advertising irrelevant sites.

It really looks like Ask.com has got a winner here but let’s just wait until Google gets wind of the idea and makes it better.