Google Movies OneBox

Not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere yet, but Google created a movies Onebox

Philipp also noticed them testing drop down home page navigation.

Does Google Know What Sites You Own?

Google created trending information about personal search history data. Matt Cutts also posted how internally they get to take a peak at aggregate search data. I so would love to take a peak at that stuff, but all I can do is be the searcher drone :)

Having said all of that, who is the top visitor to your sites? Usually you. What sites do you usually visit the most frequently? Your own. For example, 4 of the top 10 sites that I visit are also sites I own.

Google does give you a morsel of the aggregate search data by recommending searches that similar searchers did. Anyone have idea what language #4 is in or what it says? Will clicking that search link mean that federal agents will come question my media consumption habbits? :)

And as Gurtie has many times speculated, I never sleep, as proved by my nearly constant search history by hour. WTF is that?

How do Search Engines Work?

Via Gary Matt Cutts recently wrote a brief article about how Google works. It does not go through all the advanced spam filters layered over the top, but is a good beginners guide to how search engines work.

Matt Cutts also did an audio interview on WebmasterRadio, talking about many webmaster related issues. A few things Matt notes:

Some people waste too much effort going after a trophy phrase instead of going after a broad array of easier phrases.
Goes over some duplicate content issues at a low level.
Start out with a niche and build out.
It takes time to develop...don't expect a 4 day old site to compete.
hidden text penalties can take 30 days to 90 days to lift, longer for multiple instances

A while ago Jeff Dean did a behind the scenes look at Google video broadcast.

The Googleverse

the Googleverse is a forum with posts on Google and biz related issues. Have not read it all yet, but some of it is a bit boring and some of it looks uber cool. Will post about some of it's threads in a bit more depth soon.

Blog About Early Days at Google

Xooglers - a blog about working at Google. Lots of interesting stories. [via SEW]

In other Google news, it appears they are testing click to call and are looking deeply at print ads.

Find the Easter Eggs in Google AdWords

Andrew Goodman says there is an Easter egg feature in the new AdWords system:

And did we mention pay-per-call, separate content bidding, an obscure nameless easter egg feature that I don't wish to comment on but would like to thank Google for adding apparently in response to a wish list entry I think I posted long ago at Webmasterworld and SE Watch Forums...

Anyone know what egg Andrew is talking about? A bit hard to search WebmasterWorld right now, but SEW has What are your Top 5 AdWords feature or tool requests?

Based on a bit of thinking and Andrew's posts in that top 5 features thread I think some of the cool things you can now do with AdWords are:

Run site targeted content ads without paying CPM rates by bidding on the official site names or common phrase matched page elements of sites you want to advertise on.
Target ads against competing products without competitors being able to prove you are using their trademarks or product names to trigger your ads. This prevents you from taking needless large sums of crap that I took about a year or so ago.
In the past Andrew also hinted at - trailer park geotargeting and Googleplex-cam.

Google AdWords API Intentionally Sends Lower Quality Data

I recently bought advertising on a tool which gave Google AdWords ad impression estimates via the Google AdWords API. My ad dollars, and the Google AdWords search volume tool itself, were both rendered useless when Google decided they wanted to provide more consistent and accurate keyword data.

All quotes below are from the above linked Google Groups thread.

As Ben Michelson put it:

I believe this may be just the first phase of a new "less is more" concept.

I expect subsequent versions will alternately snip out or merge previously inaccurate fields, until finally (AdWords 1.0) the TrafficEstimatorService will be void of inaccuracy by providing no information whatsoever.

Robert, another programmer, was also thrilled by the recent "upgrade"

Well done, Google. I just want to release my first Adwords program - partly based on the ctr value. I work about two month for it. Why we should develop programs for Google, if Google changes the API every two month (see also KeywordService)?

Patrick Chanezon, who was hired by Google as an AdWords API evangelist, stated:

The algorithms used in the TrafficEstimator may return some results that do not match your quality expectations, but they are not skewed in any way.

And here I thought making something inaccurate was skewing it...

Inasisi ran through some examples of the intentional data skewing and said:

If it is not on purpose, I don't understand why Google is not correcting the huge skewness in its estimates and further remove the only good statistics that we had to access to. If Google felt the need to be consistent to both the API users and the advertisers who use the UI, then they should have provided more information on the UI instead of having to strip them from the API.

For being so concerned with efficient market theory and collecting so much data Google sure is greedy with their data. They sure expect marketers to trust them with a bunch for not even trusting marketers with something as trivial as search counts.

Yahoo! and eBay allow access to their old marketplace data because it helps drive up costs, commerce, profits, and makes a more efficient market. Why can't Google get a clue on this?

Google Sitemaps Updated...

Google Sitemaps now has more features on top of showing crawl stats and crawl errors:

PageRank distribution (high, medium, low, not yet assigned)
top 5 Google search queries for getting clicks to your site
top 5 Google queries returning your site in search results

Seems like that is just a tease at giving information (and if you want real stats you have to use Google Analytics to give them more info back), but here is the Sitemaps stats FAQ page.

I don't think Google really needs or wants the site owner sitemap data so much, I just think they want to be the default service people use in case it is useful down the road. That is why they are throwing in the few extra "goodies". Storing data costs Google next to nothing.

Most likely Google is the default search tool, advertising tool, email tool, analytics tool and free information storage database for a large number of people now.

Book of the Week Club, Knight Ridder to be Sold? Speculation on Google Affiliate

Apparently the people at Google want to rent weekly digital access to books.

Web search leader Google Inc. has approached a book publisher to gauge interest in a program to allow consumers to rent online copies of new books for a week, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The proposed fee is 10 percent of the book's list price, the Journal reported, citing an unnamed publisher.

The discussion with the publisher indicates Google may move toward adding a digital book-renting service. - Reuters

In related news about other business models Google and the web may be changing or killing off, Knight Ridder, the large newspaper company, is exploring selling itself. When will Google Affiliate come out?

Free Google Analytics

Urchin on demand:

yesterday $199 a month
today free

Matt Cutts says:

Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured.

Reassured of what? That Google wants more exceptionally valuable user data :) Lest we forget what a click is worth, or that what is acceptable in search marketing changes as the algorithms do.

Danny said:

Worried Google will use your data or the data overall to better understand how much you are willing to pay for ads, based on conversions. Google said that's definitely not done, nor are there any plans to do that. Nor are there any plans to tap into the data as a means of improving regular search results or to identify "bad" sites, Google said.

Peter asks where that info came from, and I gotta wonder how smart pricing works if they ignore the value received from a click. Why would they only track it one way on certain accounts? That seems counter to that whole efficient keyword market theory so much research is being done on. What value does the data have if they are not going to use it?

Even if they only use your data in aggregate, if you are exceptionally profitable on some terms those keywords could be suggested more frequently to competitors (to help raise those keywords to near fair market value), and the smart pricing would discount less on content that your site proves converts. Search engines do not need to know how much money you are making off any term, just a peak at the ratios can help give them a good idea when they have enough other data.

You know the search engine wars are at their peak the day most computers, ISP, and general web hosting is free and you are being paid to surf. :)

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