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My 2 featured articles for the week ending May 19, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of May 15, 2006

1167 - May 18, 2006 - 11.29 AM EST

The old PR debate is alive and well

SEOs, webmasters, search marketers and site owners have been talking about it for some time now and with the advent of Google's latest Big Daddy update, the debate suggesting / hinting that PageRank is not as important continues. So who's right? Would you like to hear what Google has to say about it?

Market Smart Interactive's Mike Grehan just interviewed Google's Matt Cutts at ClickZ, where Mike contributes as a ClickZ Expert.

Here’s a snippet from Google’s Matt Cutts' interview:

Is Page Rank™ such a big deal? Can you value a link on a page by its PageRank?

Matt Cutts: “There are over 100 factors in ranking. And PageRank is just one of them. It’s an important factor, but it’s by no means the be-all and end-all.

To me that shows the danger of short-sighted thinking and getting obsessed with just one facet of things, and not the facet which matters most.

Posted on Businessblog™

1166 - May 17, 2006 - 2.39 PM EST

Microsoft still trying to beat Google

Will the fight ever end? I'm not so sure but Microsoft seems determined as ever to fight Google on its own turf, and then some...

Now the Redmond company wishes to partner with DeepMetrix, an analytics firm that knows the industry well and has covered that segment for many years.

According to various industry sources, Microsoft is to accelerate its efforts to capture some of the enterprise search market from Google, and wants to pursue in that venue.

Many theories abound as to what's to be unveiled, but maybe Microsoft is increasing some of its Internet features with Web analytics firm DeepMetrix, a 15-year old Web intelligence company.

Microsoft said two weeks ago, after confirming the DeepMetrix purchase, that it intended to soon incorporate DeepMetrix's Web analytics features into AdCenter and other popular MSN features.

Another theory is Microsoft's to create a line-up of computing hardware that enterprises buy to trick out their intranets' search capabilities, or to add a hot new search engine to a Web site.

Posted on Businessblog™

1165 - May 16, 2006 - 7.34 AM EST

User interface changes at Snap.com

Snap.com relaunches with a number of user interface changes, among them a new page preview feature. Another new feature is the display of sponsored results with organic listings.

The left side of the search results page shows text summaries of each site, with ads designated by a "sponsored result" tag, and the right side displays a preview of whichever site is highlighted on the left.

Advertisers can customize the right-hand preview that is displayed in conjunction with their ads.

Users can scroll down to display different previews and, on some browsers, even interact with the actual site on the right pane without leaving the search engine.

The idea is to avoid the phenomenon in which users click through to search results pages only to click back when they find it's not what they wanted.

"The ubiquity of broadband allows us to do things in a different way," Tom McGovern, CEO of Perfect Market, the parent of Snap.com.

Perfect Market is part of the Idealab network, which spawned search pioneer Overture, later acquired by Yahoo.

Other players, notably Ask.com with its binoculars feature, have experimented with offering users previews of landing pages, but Snap.com's previews are larger and they permit more interaction than those of others.

Posted on Businessblog™

1164 - May 15, 2006 - 5.32 PM EST

Google faces three click fraud lawsuits

There are now a total of at least three interrelated click fraud lawsuits that will impact Google in 2006.

First, there is the case that got filed in Arkansas, Lane’s Gifts late last year. The second lawsuit is AIT, a case that got filed in California. Third there is the most recent case, Kinney vs. Lane.

This 3rd case is quite a kicker: it’s a suit against the plaintiffs that filed the first lawsuit in Arkansas.

The suit claims that they aren’t fairly representing all the Google advertisers and that the settlement the plaintiffs agreed to is just simply a bad deal.

Let’s start with the first suit: Lane’s Gifts. When the case began, both Google and Yahoo argued that the case should be dismissed because it was in the wrong venue, which means the suit was brought in the wrong location.

If you look at your Google contract, it likely says that you have to sue them in California, and no other location. To quote the Terms and Conditions, it says the contract is “governed by California law . . . and adjudicated in Santa Clara County, California.” Bringing a case in the wrong venue when the contract specifies the venue usually means the case automatically gets dismissed.

But this first case in Arkansas went forward while a motion to dismiss the case, based on the venue provision, was getting scheduled. Someplace midstream, Google and the lawyers for Lane came to terms. There’s nothing a judge likes better then when the two parties come to terms; it’s off his docket. But these are the terms of the settlement:

1. Based on the amount of money that Google has made over the last 4 years with AdWords, the settlement comes down to less then ½ cent on the dollar. What this really means is that the small advertiser has almost no chance at some sort of reasonable recovery. It simply isn’t worth the effort.

Posted on Businessblog™

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