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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. :)

When you log into AdWords they have a notice that you should switch over to the new Google Accounts by January 15th, 2006.

Once you switch over a new user access sub tab appears, which allows you to share your AdWords account with co workers without needing to share your personal Google account.

Google has more information about sharing an account and how to send invitations.

Not too long ago Google was giving out Google Account passwords.

Google Print now allows you to search full text of books in their Google Print program.

After you search you can click on a result and enter your Google Accounts password to view a full page and the two pages before and after it.

The WSJ stated:

The company said it won't display advertisements on public domain book pages or any book pages Google scans from a library.

Perhaps Google realizes being the default search means they can have a few loss liters, and not monetizing the public domain works undermines the Google is a greedy company statement cried far and loud by critics of the program. Google Print is facing numerous pending lawsuits.

The most recent blog meme is Google's Blogger is a mass spam system.

David Sifry says he thinks that between 2 & 8% of blogs are spam, but I think just like people his systems are not good at detecting much of the spam.

Google maintains that they care:

When spam goes up, it directly affects the quality of those results. I'm exceedingly sympathetic with these folks because, well, we run one of those services ourselves.

But do they really care?

Think of blog search as a form of vertical search. If blog search is less useful and filtering through the spam

• kills profit margins

• slows blog search innovation

then more people will opt to use general search.

While Jeff Jarvis thinks Google should share it's tricks for not indexing blog spam I don't see why they would want to. Since Google has not put much effort into making their blog search anywhere near as good as their regular search I don't think they mind if nearly all blog search engines are full of spam.

Blog search full of spam = user may as well use general search = $ for Google. And, on another front, that helps Google ensure blog search sucks really bad until they create the solution, and then they get credit for doing right what their competitors could not :)

Just as a curiosity question, how hard would it be to attenuate trust, only trusting new blogs if they were co-cited by multiple trusted sites? There has to be an algorithmic way to do it. If you were worried about new sites being locked out then you could offer multiple search options:

• the filtered trusted version

• the unfiltered version
• perhaps people could even enter their own trusted friends, levels of trust, minimum trusted citations, or make trust a slidable scale & use AJAX to reorder the results as the trust score is adjusted

On top of owning general search Google also wants to be the first port of call for vertical search. Just look at their recent desires on the real estate front.

Through monetizing spam production with AdSense and making publishing free and easy Google pollutes competing information systems for personal profit.

The same thing that is going on in vertical search scene is also going on in general search. Google has an algorithmic probationary period for most new sites. The same sites tend to rank MSN Search & Yahoo! Search quicker and easier.

By paying search spammers via AdSense Google is funding the information pollution that undermines the usefulness of competing search products. As I have stated in the past, Google generally does not give a shit if AdSense is on spam sites or sites that make money stealing other's copyrighted work.

Now what happens if Google ends up indexing AdSense spam sites? Well suddenly it is a real issue then, and they pull out the we care card. Matt Cutts recommends you report it to Google, but the hidden message there is that Google cares only when the spam ranks in Google.

Meanwhile all the A list bloggers are asking Google to fix the problem when they fail to realize the profits this problem brings Google.

Maybe a large part of being the company that organizes the world's information is encouraging entrepreneurs to stuff garbage in rich competitors databases.