Happy Friday the 13th, everyone! It was super hot in the beginning of the week and I still am sporting a funky red V on my neck from the sun during the Yahoo! Search Marketing Power Lunch in the Sky that I attended on Tuesday, but it looks like this weekend will be nice.
Google Buys Postini
Google has a vested interest in just about everything. Earlier this week, they announced plans to acquire Postini, an online security company, for $625 million. That's a good chunk of money. I worked with Postini for spam filtering on an internal network several years ago, so I'm guessing they'll be doing something like that on Gmail in the future. Cool.
Should we suspect that these acquisitions mean that Google will control 90% of the market by 2017? I don't know. Microsoft Live Search is gaining momentum.
Let the race begin.
Frequent Updates and Social Media: Check!
If you have a blog, you're likely to get indexed in Google a lot quicker than a static and not-so-frequently updated site, as we're learning. Some people are seeing their content being crawled within 3 hours. I had something similar happen to me on a blog that was also recently launched. Lee Odden beats the record, though: he saw rankings within one hour. Wow. Lee, I guess yes, it's been happening to the best of us. :)
Maps Gone Wild
Google Maps got a functionality boost yesterday, including integration with Mapplets, allowing for users to personalize their maps with a great deal of little apps. Fun stuff.
Got Banned in Organic Yahoo Search? Pay Your Way In
That's right. If you've gotten banned in Yahoo for whatever reason, you can get out of that slump with some green. The Search Submit program is a guarantee that your site will be crawled just as long as you pay the dough and get approved.
Google Solves Everything ... Except Robberies
You can learn how to break open a safe. You can learn how to pick a lock. You can do a lot of things with Google, which it did earlier this week when two punks decided to steal $12,000 from an indoor amusement park. They got away with it, too. Google, where are you now?
Google Tests AdSense for Mobile Phones
Got a phone? Ads are coming soon. Google is now testing AdSense on mobile phones. Are you pumped? If so, Digg the story. If not, Digg it anyway.
Recent Patent Application Says More About Google AdWords Quality Score
Bill Slawski discovered a patent application filed for the Quality Score of Google AdWords. There's some good stuff here for AdWords advertisers to gauge their score: length of time on the ad, length of time on comparable ads, number of searches performed after looking at the ad, etc. Google has added 44 possible factors. Wow.
Google has 10,000 Human Evaluators
The algorithm is one thing. Ten thousand human evaluators is another. Relevancy can't always be computed mathematically.
However, ten thousand? That's a lot of people. Who are these people? We may never know.
Let's Watch a Search Marketing Commercial
It's Friday, what do you care? Check out this search marketing commercial on YouTube, and then play it with the sound really loud (and speakers, of course). When your boss walks by and asks why you're watching the video of a competitor, just tell him I sent you. Or tell him it's all about social media, baby. I mean, really, they used YouTube. Sweet.
Enjoy the weekend!
