Search Engine Marketing Blog by FullTraffic

See Where Exactly You Are Being Driven With New Google's Hierarchical Result URLs

2009-11-18T07:27:00-03:00

Google has recently launched a really cool feature. They have changed the display mode of the green URL they provide at the bottom of the results. We mean this:

The new feature replaces some of these URLs with a hierarchy showing the precise location of the page on the website. What does this mean? That some of the search results will show you context information of the result, before you decide to click or not click on the link.

An example from Google:

Consider a search for the biography of Vint Cerf (Google's Internet Evangelist). The URL for one result, "www.google.com/corporate/execs.html," shows that the page is located in a page about "execs," under "corporate," which is on the "google.com" site.

What's great about this feature is not just the display, but also its functionality. Suppose you want to see all the Google's executives. Just click on "execs" and the system will drive you to the page. If you want to go to the Corporate page, click on the word. If you want to go to Google, you need to click on the first part of the link. Isn't it nice?

Google hasn't included FullTraffic in this change yet, but we hope they will do it soon.

How does Google do this? Let's Google explain it by themselves: "These are standard navigational tools used throughout the web called 'breadcrumbs', which webmasters frequently show on their sites to help users navigate. By analyzing site breadcrumbs, we've been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future."

So if you have a well structured website, that's great for your user's navigation. But now it will have an added value: it will look perfect on Google's results!

And if you are a user, the search engine giant is giving you now a broader and more organized information about the websites you are searching for. This will assist you in your decision wheter to get in or not, thus saving you time and uncomfortable situations.

Get 50% More Visitors on Targeted Packages

2009-11-17T13:14:39-03:00

You don't need to be a marketing expert to know that your business messages must be as direct as possible. We don't mean just about the message's content, but also its channel. When you need to reach your customers, the best way to do it is directly. And directly means targeted.

Fulltraffic's Targeted campaigns allow you to reach exactly who you want to reach. When you target your traffic, you can be sure you get quality traffic, not junk neither spam.

Whether you have great content to share or stuff to sell, having targeted quality traffic becomes crucial to do whatever you want to do with your website.

Now we are offering a special promotion so that you get more from your targeted traffic. See the details in this promotional image:

When purchasing a Targeted Package service you get:

Visitors accessing your website directly from high quality websites
Real Time Stats
Get more than 10,000 visitors per day
95% different IPs (you won't get the same visitor twice)

Get your package right now. Click here!

Check Your Website's Keywords Popularity With the New Google's Webmasters Tools

2009-11-16T05:19:59-03:00

A new feature is available at Google's Webmasters Tools. The new recently launched interface contains a "Significance" column, which compares the frequency of a keyword on the web to the frequency of the most popular keyword on your website.

When you click on a keyword to view more details, you will get a list of up to 10 URLs which contain that keyword. Why and when is this helpful? Sometimes, some of your URL's are hacked. Other malicious users hack your content, keywords and URL's for their benefit. In this case, you will start noticing your site appearing in search results for terms totally unrelated to it (for example, "Viagra" or "casino"). Then this feature will help you find those keywords, identify the pages that contain them and erase any hacked content quickly.

The "Significance" feature is relevant when you re-implement your site on a new technology framework, as well.

And of course, the "Significance" column will show you how relevant is your website on the internet. If your website's most popular keywords match the web's most popular keywords, then you are there! If not, well, this feature will help you make a change. It will lead it to become more popular.

Google Upgrades Its SafeSearch Feature: Now You Can Lock It

2009-11-12T12:11:45-03:00

Google has updated its SafeSearch feature. SafeSearch is a feature that allows parents and teachers to have full control over their children's search safety.

By selecting a number of criteria elements, people can filter the search engine's results, avoiding their children from stumble with sexually explicit content.

What Google has recently updated was the possibility for users to lock the filtering level for "Strict". Now when users do this, only they can change the level by introducing their password. By doing this, Google promises that people who shouldn't see XXX content won't see it, although they say the system is not 100% accurate.

The other thing they updated is the status view. Now colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked:

If these colored balls are not seen, it is easy and quick to re-lock, by getting in the Google user's account.

We think this feature is not just good to block adult content from children, but it has also an added value. Thinking in SEO terms, searches done with the SafeSearch activated are done in a reduced web room. This means searches will be more accurate (always they are not explicitly XXX), throwing out all the junk stuff.

This feature could improve traffic for non-adult related websites and improve the users experience.

Now see this video to learn how to lock SafeSearch:

News Corp. Considering to Block Google for Their News Content

2009-11-10T06:25:34-03:00

"There are no websites, no news websites or blog websites, anywhere in the world, making any serious money". That's what News Corp. magnate Rupert Murdoch recently said in an interview with Sky News.

We think that it is serious money what you get from your websites. It is serious money at least for you, who put all your energies in your enterprise. However, Murdoch is a heavy shark and his decisions have a serious impact on the industry. So when he says he will block Google from free search content from his websites, we should pay attention.

And that's exactly what he said. He said he is willing to block Google's searches for his websites' content. “I think we will. We do it already, with The Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get the first paragraph of any story, but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com, you get a paragraph and a subscription form.”

Mr. Murdoch believes Google "steal" content from his websites and that readers should pay for content. “It costs us a lot of money to put together good newspapers and good content. They’re very happy to pay for it when they buy a newspaper, and I think when they read it elsewhere they’re going to have to pay. Not huge sums. You’d be surprised how much can be done, how cheaply, into the average home.”

Now, Murdoch having saying these things, it looks like he is'nt looking at the numbers. Look, for example, what Bill Tancer, General Manager, Global Research at Experian Hitwise, says:

"In fact, on a weekly basis Google and Google news are the top traffic providers for WSJ.com account for over 25% of WSJ.com's traffic. Even more telling. According to Experian Hitwise data, over 44% of WSJ.com visitors coming from Google are "new" users who haven't visited the domain in the last 30 days."

Look at his charts:

Murdoch's defenders say social media websites like Facebook and Twitter could increase visits to news sites instead of Google. However, the distance is quite big and Google seems to absolutely dominate the market. So, shouldn's he be more moderate with his declarations? Or maybe he has strength enough to overcome Google? What do you think?

See the interview:

New Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Interface

2009-11-08T14:02:52-03:00

If in addition to FT Packages you are using Google AdWords, you may have noticed they re-designed the interface for Conversion Tracking.

Now Conversions, Webpages and Code are three separated tabs that allow you to see the details of the Conversion data.

Conversions

As you are tracking conversion actions, you may want to view all the details of them.

In this tab you have two main columns to see all of these details. The "Tracking Status" column shows whether those actions are being tracked properly. There you can see if a conversion has ever been recorded, if it has recently stopped recording, or if it's working just fine.

The "Value" column displays the accumulated value of the conversion actions. You assign a certain value to each action, so the details displayed here are based on that value.

In addition, you can use the "New Conversion" button to set up the conversion actions to be tracked. These conversion actions can also be imported from Google Analytics.

Webpages

Knowing which of your website pages are converting is vital for your campaign. So the Google staff has added this function so that you can see it clearly.

The new interface offers the same three columns you see under the Conversions tab (Tracking Status, Value, Conversions per click).

This shows you a breakdown of the number of conversions per page on your site. By this way you can identify which pages are performing as you expected and which not. This means you can also see which pages are poorly performing and which ones are highly efficient.

Code

As you may have full control over your campaigns, this tab allows you to grab the tracking code for each conversion.

Moreover you can change the value of an action, which aids in ROI calculations.

You can read Google’s explanations on the new interface here.

Google Re-Launches Webmasters Chat After A One-year Stop

2009-11-05T12:48:21-03:00

After a one-year stop, Google will re-launch next week its Webmaster Chat between webmasters and Google experts.

The event will take place on Friday, November 13th, at 10:00 am, Pacific Standard Time (GMT -08:00, San Francisco). It is named by Google the "Holiday Webmaster Webinar". Its meeting number is 574 659 815 and the password is "webmaster".

Google considers the holiday season an important period of time for online business, so they want you to be prepared for it.

The Webex will be hosted by Senior Search Quality Engineer Greg Grothaus, and AdWords Evangelist Fred Vallaeys. They'll be discussing a range of webmaster best practices and useful Google tools.

Their presentation will be followed by a Q&A sessions - webmasters will be allowed to ask questions and they will follow the answers in real time.

You can access this online meeting both through your computer and your iPdone. Follow this instructions:

Go to GoogleOnline.Webex.com
Enter your name and email address
Enter the meeting password: webmaster
Click "Join Now"

To join the teleconference only:

Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 866-469-3239
Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-650-429-3300
Toll-free dialing restrictions here

Google usually issues this kind of events to enhance webmasters' search and SEO experience. The better you understand Google's logic, the better the performance of your website will be.

The last webex was held on October 2008, after which it came the long pause that will come to an end next week.

If you join this kind of events, you may find a way to exploit even more FT's campaigns for your website. These campaigns are vital for the performance of your venture, and Google's knowledge is an advantage to understand the online world.

Google Commerce Search Launched to Upgrade E-Shopping

2009-11-05T12:37:19-03:00

Google has created a shopping cart software for online retailers called Google Commerce Search. It is now on the air and you can start using it (see the video below).

This new product is aimed both to online sellers and online buyers, who will enjoy an upgraded shopping experience, Google promises.

The feature uses Google's search technology and it is adapted to e-commerce websites. That makes it a feature aimed at improving online shopping websites' search and usability.

When we say it includes Google's search technology, it means it includes spellcheck, stemming, and synonym matching. If the potential buyer does not remember the exact name of the product, he can type whatever he remembers and Google Commerce Search will suggest him/her the right and complete information.

The feature is integrated with Google Analytics by default, so retailers can track the incoming traffic to their website/products.

Google Commerce Search is also highly customizable, so after the retailer uploads his/her products, they can decide how to display the information. They can even highlight special offers and products, and connect related products so that searching become easier for customers. The result is a Google-hosted shopping cart.

In their announcement, Google explains that visitors spend an average of just 8 seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website, "so having a good search tool is important for turning visitors into buyers".

In addition, Google Commerce Search is hosted in the cloud, "meaning it lives online, so e-commerce sites can get up and running quickly".

Google has strategically launched this new feature a couple of months before the holidays season, when commerce in general and e-commerce in particular rises and even traffic peaks are experienced.

The cost of the service depends on how many products/SKUs in the retailer’s data feed, and how searches are done on the retailer’s store.

So if you are an online retailer, you can now use this new Google feature and buy a FT Package. By doing the latter, you will drive lots of potential customers to your online store and then provide them with a comfortable and fast shopping experience. The result could be an important increase on your sells.

New Features and Products at FT to Enhance Your Investment

2009-11-04T11:09:10-03:00

Here at FullTraffic we try to continuously improve our service. Hope you are already enjoying, but we want to give you more! So here are some upgrades we've made recently.

Visitors Details

As a customer, you can see now the details of each hit you get. This includes:

Country
State
City
IP
Date and Time

These details will let you know your visitors much better. This means you can improve the performance of your Website and even maximize future campaigns. Every cent you invest will pay you much more!

Change URL

Changes occur, right? You may have wanted to drive traffic to your Website "X", but you suddenly changed your mind and you wanted to derive that traffic to your Website "Y". Or you closed one Website and you opened a new one. Or you simply changed your Website's URL.

Now our service includes easy URL changing, so that hits that are being sent to one URL can be sent to another instead. Once the campaign is on "delivering" status, you can insert the new URL you want the traffic to be delivered to.

Just go to your "Live Stats" and get into the active campaign. Once there, you will see the link “Change URL”. Follow the instructions.

Details for QUICK PPC

If you buy a QUICK PPC service you will be able to see the details of every click:

Country
State
City
IP
Referrer URL
Date and Time

These details will let you know everything about the performance of your Website, its content and each one of its pages.

When you get these details, you can focus your next campaign on where you certainly know it pays.

We want to provide you accuracy and full exploitation of your investment.

New Country / Category Campaigns

We offer now a new kind of campaigns: Country and Category Targeted Visitors.

In this new campaign you can select one Country and one Category to say us where you want the hits from.

These hits are delivered in the form of High Quality "Pop-Ins" (embedded windows to the publisher Website). The visitors are 95% IP UNIQUE and most campaigns will complete within 10-20 days. Delivery rate may reach 100,000 daily visitors, depending on your request.

Use the drop-down menus to choose among 73 Countries and 34 Categories!

Know Everything Quickly and Easily

We have notably upgraded our Frequently Asked Questions section, so that you can find all the answers to your questions easily and quickly.

First, you can now access the FAQ's directly from our homepage. Scroll down until you see the "Quick Answers" section. When you click on one question or one answer, you will be driven directly to that answer within our FAQ's section. There you can see other answered questions.

Second, if you have already a FT account and you need a specific answer, go to our "Contact Us" section, where you can access our Ticket Support System. You can add a ticket with your message and the system will take you to the answers directly related to your question. You can e-mail us, chat with us and/or call us. Our Support Team will be pleased to help you.

Third, you will find much more FAQ's than before. We want to be sure that you know exactly what you are investing your money on.

YouTube Views

We are working on a new product: YouTube Views. This new product will drive real traffic to your videos on YouTube.

As you know, the more views you get on YouTube, the more your video becomes popular, and you get a better position in the organic search results.

We are sure you will enjoy it. So stay tuned!

Google Maps' "MyLocation" Available on Desktop PCs

2009-07-10T11:16:46-03:00

Now Google Maps' "MyLocation" is not exclusively available to mobile users but also to desktop users. This feature does exactly what you would think: marks your current location.

However, you've got to be using a compatible browser. If you haven't upgraded to Firefox 3.5 or Chrome 2.0 (or any browser installed with the current version of Google Gears), then do it before you try to use the feature, because without any of them it won't work properly.

Then when you load Google Maps, look for a teeny tiny new box between the zoom in/out bar and the compass circle. Click that box and you'll be prompted to give permission to share your location.

Up until now, desktop's MyLocation do not display the famous blue circle that uses in the mobile version to find your specific location. This means that while it says to you the area where you are, it cannot tell the specific point where you are.

Google uses nearby wifi points to determine location, but it may not be able to provide one every time.

StumbleUpon Integrates Submission Process to Facebook and Twitter

2009-07-10T11:13:12-03:00

As you know, social media is one of the best ways to strengthen and support your SEO campaign at FullTraffic. And as you know StumbleUpon, though being an excellent tool to share your work (over 8 million users), was the forgotten lady these days, when Facebook and especially Twitter attract all of the attention.

From our point of view, StumbleUpon shared part of the guilt, since it was quite separate from those services. However, the situation has lastly changed, since StumbleUpon launched Su.pr, which integrates the three services.

This new tool that shortens URLs and also enables the submission of links to StumbleUpon while also offering the option to simultaneous update Twitter and Facebook.

SU's official blog explains how it works:

All you have to do is type your message, enter the URL of the site you'd like to share with your friends and followers, hit post and the message is posted along with the shortened URL. In addition to this simple syndication method, we provide you with tools to identify the best times to post, schedule future posts and see real-time results on clicks, tweets and traffic associated with your posts.

Like other URL shortening services, you can see how many times the link has been clicked on, which is highly valuable.

Especially useful is the bookmarklet that you can use to make the process of submitting to three different social networks at the same time even easier.

Ads in Facebook to Overtake Ads in MySpace by 2011

2009-07-10T11:05:30-03:00

Last month we informed you about the opposite trend Facebook and MySpace experience - for the first time, Mark Zuckerberg's social network had overtaken MySpace in the local U.S. market, after overtaking it in the global scenario.

Now we see the economic consequences of it. Beyond the management changes and staff reduction of 30%, the advertising is going towards Facebook. In June's post we said MySpace had still a more robust range of advertising options than Facebook and that advertisers had not find a good way to invest more on Facebook than in MySpace.

However, the reality one month later is different. Social Media appears to be an unsteady landscape tied directly to the popularity, trendiness, and momentum of any given network at any given moment in time.

According to eMarketer, US ads spending at MySpace will fall 15% to $495 million in 2009 from $585 million in 2008, while Facebook will grow from $210 million in 2008 to $230 million in 2009.

It is also expected that Facebook surpass MySpace revenues by 2011. According to Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst, "Facebook, once a distant second to MySpace, has outperformed its rival in nearly every measure of usage-and is on track to surpass MySpace in ad spending by 2011".

In general, she predicted a nice future for social networking and their ads potential: "The expected rebound in spending will come as more companies focus on creating and implementing an overall social marketing strategy. And it is a clear indication that the experimental phase of social network marketing is finally drawing to an end".

Although ads spending is 3% down this year (recession, remember?), budgets will grow by 13.2% in 2010 and 8.2% in 2011, according to eMarketer.

By now, advertising spending on Facebook and MySpace alone account for 2x the total advertising dollars going to all other networks combined.

Google's "Technical Quirk" - An Algorithm Change?

2009-07-06T08:09:00-03:00

Google has made an update in its PageRank that is making troubles to some webmasters. We are not referring to the June 24th update but to a newer one.

You can find discussions on this topic in WebmasterWorld's thread also in Google Webmaster Help threads, but there are many others out there.

In the Google Webmaster Help, user TeaMan asked:

"we take care of a website www.goodtea.eu which had the Google page rank value of 2 about a year ago. Since a certain moment in time it has been assigned a value of 0. There were no major changes to the web site. Is there a way to find out why the web site has been assigned a page rank of zero?".

Googler JohnMu, replied to one webmaster saying that he/she should not worry about the last PageRank change because it was likely a "technical quirk":

"You have a nice-looking site :). As far as I can tell, it looks like the change in Toolbar PageRank for your site is only due to some technical quirk and not something that you need to worry about".

JohnMu has then been asked if the PageRank's "Technical Quirk" is somewhat widespread... but up to date he has not answered...

There are some rumors that Google has adjusted their link algorithm to look more at how "relevant" the link is to the page it is linking to.

Google Trial in Italy Delayed Until September

2009-06-26T14:12:30-03:00

Authorities postponed up until September the trial of Google executives charged in Italy over the publication of a video on Google's YouTube where a handicapped teen was beaten has been postponed. The case was delayed because an interpreter was ill and will now be resumed in September.

"On trial are Google's senior vice president and chief legal Officer David Drummond, former chief financial officer George Reyes, senior product marketing manager Arvind Desikan, and global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer," BBC News noted. They face up to three years in prison if found guilty.

The case was delayed because an interpreter was ill.

Prosecutors argue that Google did not have adequate content filters or enough staff to monitor it, and one of them (or both) caused the inadequate publication of the video.

An important point of the sue is that the content was uploaded without the consent of all parties involved.

"If the judge rules that videos posted to sites such as YouTube or Dailymotion do need the permission of all those appearing in it before it is posted, it will have a huge impact on social media sites viewable in Italy", said Nick Lockett, a partner with DL Legal, to BBC News.

Google said: "We feel that bringing this case to court is totally wrong. It's akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post". "As we have repeatedly made clear, our hearts go out to the victim and his family. We are pleased that as a result of our cooperation the bullies in the video have been identified and punished".

The video had been posted to YouTube prior to Google purchasing the company but were made because they had not been taken down.

SEO Became More Technical, People Contracting Services

2009-06-26T14:06:53-03:00

SEO industry has become extremely competitive due to seven reasons. This includes the additional options with Social Media and the fact that searchers became more Internet literate. This is said by Bruce Clay SEO specialist on this video.

In this video Clay says that links were not important in the early days and that PPC was not nearly as competitive as it is now. In 1996 most users would scan many pages on the search engine result pages, but now they hardly go past page 1.

He thinks that what happened to the SEO industry has brought many improvements, but on the other side searches became more complex and technical. As more and more newcomers become aware of SEO's importance, Bruce thinks that they fail to dig deep into the technical and complex side of SEO and he foresees a big problem with this. We see this as one of the reasons why people pay SEO services, such as Fulltraffic's services.

But you can see this interesting video and take your own conclusions.

Michael Jackson's Death Created Problems to Google, Twittter and Other Bigs

2009-06-26T14:02:16-03:00

Michael Jackson's death has not created a global impact on music industry and traditional journalism only, but it has had its important repercussions on the Internet as well.

Google took a major hit when the news about Michael Jackson's situation broke. The search engine displayed a "We're sorry" to searches trying desperately to find out the fate of the "King of Pop".

It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

3PM Pacific peak of searches for topics related to Michael Jackson

On Twitter, the phrase "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates and according to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

The BBC news website reported that traffic to the site at the time of Jackson's death was 72% higher than normal. Other sites with performance problems were Wikipedia, AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.

In the UK specifically, visits to Jackson's homepage increased 17 fold. The website was the 9th most visited music website in the UK, and the highest ranked artist homepage.

On Thursday 25, 1 in every 1,100 UK Internet visits went to TMZ, the website that originally broke the story. TMZ's website became the 73rd most visited website overall. The site usually ranks somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 in the UK.

As expected, the subject is dominating conversations on Twitter. The service had its busiest every day in the UK on Thursday. Maybe the spike wasn't as huge as may have been expected, but that is probably due to the fact that news broke so late UK time.

Facebook to Launch a Real-Time In-Site Search Engine

2009-06-21T20:21:39-03:00

Facebook is running a test among a small number of users that allows them to make real-time content searches on the social network. They can search their news feed as well as the live feed of those who publicly post their Facebook content.

This new feature would be useful if you want to know who's talking about your company, a sports game you are watching, or the ups and downs on Wall Street. All of this skipping the need to sort through all of the updates to see just the ones you're interested in at a given moment.

Facebook's searches work with Microsoft technology, so it will be interesting to see the new Bing performance on this test.

There is no doubt this step is directed to compete with Twitter Search, a real-time search engine that lets users to know who's talking about a specific issue. The step re-assets the idea that Facebook is trying to take a portion of the market from Twitter. That was already seen through their recently launched live feed. So despite being the leader in the social network market, Facebook shows they don't take that position for granted and keep on the trends.

Microsoft Sues Family for Click-Fraud: $750.000

2009-06-17T22:14:12-03:00

Microsoft has decided to sue three Vancouver family members for allegedly launching a massive "click fraud" scheme to damage their competitors on World of Warcraft related sites and auto-insurance sites. They are supposed to have used a program that depleted their competitors' budgets on Microsoft's adCenter campaigns, thus boost traffic to this family's World of Warcraft and auto-insurance Web sites.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Microsoft names Super Continental US LLC and UMGE LLC and their owners Eric Lam, brother Gordon Lam and mother Melanie Suen (plus an unknown number of "John Does"), as responsible to the alleged fraud.

Super Continental sells virtual "gold" for the popular computer game World of Warcraft (which values real-world money), and UMGE offers auto-insurance quotes.

Microsoft argues that the defendants cost at least $750,000 and violated the terms of use for the adCenter. The company has credited nearly $1.5 million to advertisers who were affected by the alleged fraud.

The first click fraud was notices by Microsoft on March 24, 2008. A high number of complaints from auto-insurance advertisers said there was a spike in exact-match searches for "auto insurance", "car insurance", "cheap car insurance", "auto insurance quote" and "auto insurance quotes".

"Such a spike for exact match-type keywords is extremely unusual," the lawsuit states. "It is as if one hundred people in a room were asked to type the first three words that came to mind, and all one hundred typed the same three words at the same time, with no communication and no visual cues among them".

Similar search spikes for keywords related to World of Warcraft gold was noticed at the same time.

Several events of spikes occurred since then, but the Canadian defendants managed to avoid Microsoft's catch. The events occurred on April, June and July 2008, and then in December the same year.

After doing a long-term investigation, Microsoft ha determined the fraud came from names Super Continental US LLC and UMGE LLC, that used "proxy server networks" to hide themselves.

"Super Continental US holds itself out as responsible for the sales and marketing of WoWMine.com, a Web site related to WoW with a domain name that is registered to Lam," the lawsuit states. "At the same time, the Super Continental US LLC (USA) account on adCenter also contains campaigns related to the auto insurance (keywords)."

Microsoft identified seven adCenter accounts tied to Lam, and on each the credit-card holder was either Lam or Suen. Five of the seven accounts were registered under the same apparent pseudonym - Vincent Chu - and six of the accounts were registered to the same physical address in Delaware as Super Continental and UMGE.

"Apparently to divert suspicion from his own activities as the source of the fraudulent activity, Lam himself complained to Microsoft about the incidence of click fraud on the Microsoft Network, and, he too was issued a small credit by Microsoft before Microsoft knew Lam himself was behind the click fraud scheme," the lawsuit said.

By using the program, the defendants were allegedly able to deplete the advertising budgets of their competitors and move them off of the Microsoft Live Search sponsored results, thus attracting much traffic to their own companies.

Facebook Overtakes MySpace in US Visits

2009-06-17T17:21:16-03:00

It is official: Facebook has overtaken MySpace in US traffic last May. This incredible growth of the powerful social network comes after it had overtaken MySpace and other social networks in the global scenario, according to numbers by comScore.

This fact has generated opposed situations in both companies: while Facebook hit 1 billion daily Facebook Chat messages, launched its vanity URL program, and launched a Swahili-language version, MySpace shed 400 jobs (30% of its team) in order to cut costs and returned to a "startup culture".

So now MySpace is #2 worldwide (and in the US), but they have a more robust range of advertising options than Facebook. It does not seem that MySpace, despite its decline, can disappear from the online world, unless big advertisers find ways to spend more at Facebook or learn how to leverage it with more success. In this latter case, MySpace would face a death spiral of declining viewership and even fewer ad dollars.

So now all the speculation is on you. What do you think? Will they live, will they die? Where will be MySpace one year from now?

Companies are Spending More on Internal Staff and Less on Analytics Tech

2009-06-13T11:15:30-03:00

What is better, analytics tech or specialized human resources? According to Econsultancy and Lynchpin's Online Measurement and Strategy Report, companies are trusting more and more on human capacities and they are spending less on technology:

There has been a marked shift from spending on technology to spending on internal staff, with companies now spending more on human resources than on software and licenses. The proportion of spending on internal staff has increased from 36% to 42% of total web analytics spend while spending on technology has decreased from 45% to 38%.

So, where does the extra money for internal staff comes?

23% of companies now use Google Analytics exclusively-compared to only 14% a year ago-while 57% of respondents are using Google Analytics in conjunction with another tool. This means that they are realizing that all those charts are useless if there’s no one to interpret them.

In addition, reputation monitoring or social media metrics jobs have raised. The proportion of companies looking at those issues has doubled from 21% to 40% in the past year.

Advances in Semantic Tags with Dubbed Common Tag

2009-06-13T11:12:09-03:00

Tagging is an excellent way to make content reachable on the web. However, tags come be problematic at a certain point, since many of them can be associated with a variety of terms and topics. Mustang could be a tag for a car or a horse. Columbus is a city but also a historical figure. Los Angeles could be tagged as la or los_angeles.

Now, Yahoo!, Zemanta, DERI (NUI Galway), AdaptiveBlue, Freebase, Faviki and Zigtag have collaborated to develop a semantic tagging format to try to unify the tagging process. The format they reached, called Dubbed Common Tag, is an open tag with metadata and unique URLs.

"Semantic tagging is an important next step in the evolution of the Web. When we add semantic meaning to tags, the content that is tagged becomes significantly easier for machines to understand," said Peter Mika from Yahoo! Research. "That in turn allows for the development of more intelligent applications for aggregating, searching, and browsing the Web."

The companies hope that over time, more and more websites and internet companies use the Common Tag. Ultimately, content discovered through Common Tags could be used in application development, furthering and streamlining the distribution of published content on the web.

Advertisers Get More Control over their Payments with Google AdWords's "Make a Payment"

2009-06-13T11:10:18-03:00

Google has developed a new payment system that gives AdWords postpay advertisers more control over their payments. This feature, called Make a Payment, was not launched yet, but you can already fill a form to get it when it's ready.

Google AdWords is the program that allows you to advertise your company or product alongside Google Search results. The traditional payment system used to be 100% controlled by Google, since the company used to bill advertisers automatically. If you have an AdWords account, you know that Google used to bill you either when you reached your specific threshold ($50, $250...) or when you arrived to 30 days, the one that happens first.

With the new feature you as an advertiser have more control over the payments, since it is you who make them. Google compares it with a credit card, since you can divide your payments as you want. This gives you more flexibility if you have no liquid cash or if you want to soften the AdWords budget's burden.

The other innovation of this new feature is that you can overpay your balance, so that you cover future billings in advance. Google explains it like this:

For example, assume your campaign consistently reaches its daily budget of $2,000. Your billing threshold is $500, which means you're charged $500 four times a day. If you initiate a payment of $10,000, then your next five days of advertising costs are covered, and you won't have to incur multiple payments every day.

Of course Google markets this as an advantage for you. This is currently true if you run a campaign and you know your billing cycle. However, the advantage of this feature is that it gives money to Google in advance, and thus increases their liquid money. I don't know if this is a specific necessity of Google these days of crisis, but there is no doubt money in advance will be the result. It is clear this does not mean that you can also benefit from the feature, since it gives you more control over your payments.

Here you can see a video of how postpay works:

Do Big Corps. On The Valley Conspire to Keep Their Talented Employees?

2009-06-06T14:56:07-03:00

Are the big companies in the Silicon Valley conspiring to avoid others to woo their top talented employees? This is a question the U.S. Justice Department is investigating on Google, Yahoo, Apple, Genentech and other giant companies at the Valley.

This question becomes more interesting when we read that a recruiter who left Google last year said to the San Jose Mercury News that the company had maintained a "do not touch" list of companies including Genentech and Yahoo, whose employees were not to be wooed to the Internet search giant. This could give material for a potential indictment on illegal trust practices.

The former Google recruiter added the do-not-touch list was periodically refreshed and was understood to be a "courtesy" to the companies on the list.

"When you are recruiting talent out of companies you do business with, you are hurting them," said another recruiter to the paper who did not work at Google but confirmed that such practices are common.

However, this information could be irrelevant according to the opinion of Palo Alto attorney Gary Reback, who has been involved in a number of high-profile antitrust cases. He said that having such a list is not unheard of and not necessarily illegal.

Nonetheless, Recack explained that if two or more companies agree to avoid poaching employees from the same list of companies, that could constitute anti-competitive collusion under federal law.

Is the case? Tina Duccini, a former technical recruiter for Yahoo, said Yahoo had no restrictions about hiring people from other companies. "Of course we went after Microsoft, Google and eBay," she said. "We prided ourselves on competing", and even managers praised them when they managed to persuade important talent to come to their company.

However, occasionally Yahoo recruiters would hear that the company's legal department had received a cease-and-desist letter from another company.

The Federal Trade Commission is looking into the makeup of Google's and Apple's boards, as well as claims that Intel has engaged in monopolistic practices. In addition, the Justice Department is examining a proposed settlement between Google and a group of authors and publishers that allows the Internet search company to sell digital copies of out-of-print books.

The hiring-practice probe became public when The Washington Post first reported in a story on its Web site late Tuesday. Citing two unnamed sources, the newspaper said the Justice Department was examining the possibility that the four companies and other unnamed firms may have violated antitrust laws by "negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees."

Bert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute, suggested that if the case were true, it would mean that now the Silicon Valley is a place with innovation difficulties: "That area has been famous for people moving around from company to company, and when they do that they pollinate the new company with new ideas," he said. Moreover, by potentially limiting the career opportunities of employees, "at a certain point it becomes indentured servitude" for the workers.

Some examples of recent moves on the industry include Bradley Horowitz, head of Yahoo's advanced development division, who became Google's vice president of product management last year. And in May, Yoelle Maarek, engineering director at the Google Haifa Engineering Center, became senior director of Yahoo research.

Despite the fact that many companies require employees to sign so-called noncompete agreements, in which the worker agrees not to be hired by a competitor within a certain period of time, when they are sued Californian law does not recognize the contract and it generally regards such pacts as unenforceable.

Digg Launches its Own Ads Platform

2009-06-06T14:51:47-03:00

Can you imagine a virtual playroom for advertisers and ads creative? We think Digg's projected Digg Ads can perfectly fit with the idea where advertisers can play and earn money at the same time.

Digg is working on its own ads network, after they pulled out of its advertising contract with Microsoft. Since then, rumors about Digg's intentions to create its own advertising platform started to flow on the web. That speculation came to be confirmed in a post by mmaser.

In it, mmaser explains that Digg members can vote on sponsored content just like they vote on submitted stories and "the more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system. Digg Ads will appear alongside stories in the river. The sponsored content will look and feel similar to regular Digg content, but will be clearly marked as sponsored. It may link to stories, video trailers, independent product reviews - many of the same types of content you see on Digg every day. The goal here is to give advertisers a way to present content related to their brands and get immediate input on whether it's relevant to the Digg audience, or not". Do you get the point of the "playroom" now?

Digg's project is a long term project, so it will take several months until they actually launch the ads platform, and several months more after they launch it to perfect it: "You'll start to see changes on the site in a few months, but we will continue to iterate over the course of the year based on your feedback", explained mmaser.

Oh! By the way... mmaser's post got 1.838 diggs. Will you Digg this post too?

Facebook Launched New Payment Terms: Listen to Its Users or Just Another PR Campaign?

2009-06-06T14:46:53-03:00

After a three-day public debate, Facebook has launched new Payment Terms on its network. The Payment Terms are directed to the Facebook Gift Shop purchases and to advertisers. The site itself continues to be completely free.

So what is the major change? It is the consolidation of payments for Facebook Gift Shop and advertising, as opposing to the previous system, when there were two separate methods.

What's outstanding, above all, is Facebook interest in feedback. They posted a draft of the changes and expected for feedback. This is a new way of making business that take users feedback seriously. (However, we don't know if that was REALLY important for them or they were doing just PR buzz.)

2.491 people left 631 comments.

In the launching statement, Teddy Underwood posted the most important FAQ's:

Does this mean Facebook is no longer free?
Absolutely not. Facebook is a free service, and we have no plans to change that.

Payments are used on the site for purchasing credits to give gifts from the Facebook Gift Shop and for advertisers who buy ads through our online system.

Why does Facebook need to store my credit card information and transactional data?
We store this data in order to make the purchasing of credits or advertising more convenient for you. We also keep this data for reference purposes in case there is an issue with your transaction and we need to retrieve that data to address the issue.

Why would Facebook need to pull my credit report?
That section of the Payments Terms is intended to apply to advertisers and developers, not to users in general.

The entire Payments Terms are available here in five different languages, and you can read the Explanation Documents we have posted to learn even more about why we included certain terms. Also, please become a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page to receive ongoing updates on your home page about future proposed changes to our site governance documents.

Meanwhile, Facebook is beginning to phase out regional networks. When you're signed into network, it will show which networks you belong to. You usually belong to a school network and possibly a company-based network if you're company is large enough. Facebook also places you in a location-based network. Many of these are so large, they're pointless. For example, I'm in the Raleigh-Durham network, but there's a million people in the area and so it's not so useful for actual networking.

The first phase-out involves the removal of regional networks in your privacy settings and removing regional networks as filters in your News Feed has already occurred. In the next few weeks, the regional option for groups and events will be removed as well. Administrators will see a notification of the change at the top of the pages they manage.

1.631 people left 489 comments on this post.

So what do you think? Did Facebook legal department take seriously its users opinions or was it just a PR strategy?