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My 2 featured articles for the week ending July 7, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of Jul. 3, 2006

1196 - July 6, 2006 - 3.18 PM EST

Accoona now available in Europe

The Accoona search engine is already available in English and in the Chinese language, but Accoona has now launched in Europe as well. A nice feature about this search engine is, if you type www.accoona.eu in your Internet browser you will (depending on where you live in Europe) be forwarded automatically to a home page adapted to your local language.

This works by simple IP address recognition of the country where you live.

New languages available are German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. However, not any Scandinavian languages as available as of yet.

Accoona was developed by an American company with strong connections in China. Accoona has a twenty-year contract with the English-language Chinese newspaper China Daily delivering search services to their website.

Accoona claims they are using artificial intelligence in order to improve search results. Nevertheless, we found several irrelevant listings on the first results page using various search queries.

Posted on Businessblog™

1195 - July 6, 2006 - 11.49 AM EST

eBay says NO to Google Checkout

Online auction giant eBay has changed it's Safe Payments Policy to specifically prevent any of its members from using Google Checkout.

The reasons behing eBay's decision aren't clear. While Google's new Checkout feature is slated to compete directly with eBay's PayPal, in reality it's simply a credit card gateway, and the same one eBay spends millions with as the top Google AdWords user.

Additionally, credit cards are specifically allowed with all payment gateways such as Verisign, CyberSource, Authorize.net, Secure Checkout, etc.

Here's a relevant excerpt from eBays new Terms of Use policy:

Payment Services not permitted on eBay:
AlertPay.com, Anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, eCount.com, CardServiceInternational.com, CCAvenue, e-Gold, eHotPay.com.

And also: ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gCash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, GraphCard.com, GreenZap.com, iKobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, Neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, Paychest.com, Payingfast.com, Paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, Rupay.com, Scripophily.com, Sendmoneyorder.com, Stormpay, and xCoin.com.

Posted on Businessblog™

1194 - July 5, 2006 - 11.20 AM EST

Smarter.com to include generic listings

Smarter.com, a shopping search engine that once only listed specific merchants who paid for traffic referred to their sites has had a change of heart.

With a new site redesign expected to launch today, Smarter.com will now include non-paying listings and wishes that the improved user experience will be good for its advertisers.

"There are more products than what some merchants were able to list with us," said Paul Willmes, product representative at Smarter.com. The company is a unit of MeziMedia, which also includes CouponMountain and MoreRebates.

Additionally, Smarter.com will try to build its index of products by welcoming cost-per-acquisition advertisers. Formerly, it focused on only those willing to pay on a cost-per-click basis.

To add to its index, the company has begun to send a spider (bot) to retrieve product listings from the open Internet. Willmes says the shift has resulted in more than doubling its products database.

The idea is that consumers will respond to the added breadth and depth of listings by visiting more often, eventually expected to result in more leads delivered to advertisers.

Posted on Businessblog™

1193 - July 4, 2006 - 3.32 PM EST

Google AdSense planning CPA testing

Google's AdSense program division wants to test publisher revenue payments on a CPA (cost-per-action) basis. Additionally, and according to an e-mail sent to the SeekingAlpha network, Google is inviting AdSense publishers to test its new AdSense revenue structure.

The SeekingAlpha network received this message: The Google AdSense team would like to invite you to test a feature that provides you with a new way to earn revenue from your website by hosting ads that are compensated based on a CPA (cost-per-action) basis.

These ads are very different in that you will be able to choose amongst a selection and you will also have more flexibility in promoting them.

Here is the Google AdSense email in its entirety:

How do I participate in the CPA test?

Simply reply to the invitation email and express your interest in participating and we will send you some sample CPA ads. You can then choose which ads you’d like to host and we will send you the code to copy and paste on to your site. It’s just that easy!

What can I do to optimize my revenue from the CPA ads?

While we encourage you to experiment as much as possible with these ads on your site, here are some general tips on implementing a CPA ad:

1) Ads that blend in with the site and are placed prominently tend to perform better. Look to integrate the ad within the page.

2) Ads that are relevant to the interest of your site visitor also tend to perform better. For example, if you have a travel site, having ads relevant to airline travel would generate higher interest.

How do I get paid?

You get paid whenever a site visitor clicks on the ad on your site AND performs a specified action, such as generating a lead or purchasing a product.

Do these compete with regular content ads?

These ads will not compete with contextually targeted ads. Instead, they will show across a separate network, the Content Referral network. To place one of these ads on your site, you can set up a new ad unit that supports any of our current ad unit sizes. Read more...

Posted on Businessblog™

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