Boy, it's hot outside! It's 78F and not even noon yet, and tomorrow's high is 93. Summer doesn't start for another month. Even SMX will happen before that! I hope spring didn't fly by! I like it when there's a cool breeze outside.
Did you miss us? Barry and I were away for the holiday, and we're getting back to the swing of things (I can tell that Barry is suffering, so this is where I come in). Barry, got anything for me to do? Can I twitter for you?
Google AdSense Arbitrageurs: Your Time has Come
Google and advertisers are sick of click fraudsters. Anyone involved in the deceptive act of AdSense arbitrage will be shut down as of June 1st. Some of these people are making tens of thousands of dollars. It's time to adapt or die out. It's not fair to rob the bank off the innocents unless you have clear intention on looking into their product.
Yahoo CTR Gone Down?
To determine the success of your PPC campaign, it's important to test, retest, and continue tweaking for perfection. Like they say: Wash. Rinse. Repeat. For Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers, now is a great time for you to focus on optimizing your campaign. After all, advertisers have reported much lower click-throughs which is likely a consequence of the shorter ad descriptions. Not all advertisers feel that way, however. But now is a just as good a time as any to focus on your PPC campaigns.
Who Rules Them All?
The winner is Google for now. Ben, who took over in our absence, reported that Google's search market share has increased, while Yahoo "hovers" (with an increase of 0.1 percent). Microsoft is losing ground. Perhaps last week's aQuantive acquisition will change things. Let's give it some time.
Google Increases its Presence on the Webmaster Forums
Hello there, Bergy, Wysz, Pat, Susan Moskwa, and nathanj! These are the five newest Google Webmaster Help Forums faces, and they will be posting on the Google Webmaster Forums to increase Google's presence in the search sphere. Will we also see you at SMX? (Shouts to Susan who I'll actually recognize!)
Google Maps
Fun things can be done with Google Maps. You can search your neighborhood or you can make your commute three hours longer by avoiding highways.
Naughty, Naughty, Yahoo!
Yahoo! Autos was caught cloaking earlier this week. Later, it was confirmed that they were indeed involved in this practice. At least they changed their page.
Google Trends Gets Hot
Like the weather, Google Trends shows some pretty "volcanic" activity lately. For example, take the winner of this year's American Idol. On May 23rd, Jordin Sparks was hot. However, the momentum is dying down. She was only spicy yesterday.
Google Universal Search
Since Google Universal Search was launched, there have been a lot of questions. First of all, your custom search engine will not feature Google Universal Search results.
Now, how do you capitalize on Google Universal Search? You just need to focus on all different areas: organic search for standard content, blogs, images, video (Google Video or YouTube), news (press releases), and you should have a local presence. There are other ways to capitalize, but this should be a good start.
For those of you out of the office on Monday (that would not be me), have a great three-day weekend!
