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Google offers 'Insights for Search'

Google has taken its popular Google Trends and launched a spin-off product called Google Insights for Search. Geared toward advertisers, it's a tool to track a particular search term's popularity across the Web and geographic regions of the world.

For Google, this can help boost advertiser confidence and potentially win its program some new converts who would've otherwise been skeptical regarding how effectively they could target an online ad campaign.

With Google Insights for Search, you can search for a term to track how much it's been googled over time, where on a "heat map&… Read more

Microsoft testing self-serve AdSense rival

Updated 5:20 p.m. PDT with Microsoft confirmation.

Microsoft is ready to start expanding its AdCenter engine to allow at least some publishers to include contextual advertising from Microsoft on their site.

According to a letter detailing the program and published on TechCrunch, Microsoft is doing a pilot program that allows smaller publishers to use contextual advertising from Microsoft, putting it potentially in competition with Google's AdSense and Yahoo's publisher network.

In a statement provided to CNET News on Thursday, Microsoft confirmed the trial.

"Microsoft's self-serve advertising offering for publishers is still under development and … Read more

Lawyer sues Google over unfruitful ads

Update at 10:44 a.m. PDT: I added Google's "no comment." Update at 9:50 a.m. PDT: I added more details from the complaint.

AttorneyHal K. Levitte has sued Google over ads that cost $136.11 but that allegedly didn't yield any useful results.

The suit was first reported by InformationWeek.

Google placed 202,528 Levitte International ads shown in relation to parked domain pages--Internet addresses that have been registered but that have no Web pages--and 1,009 ads on error pages that can be shown when people type invalid URLs into their … Read more

Google taps 'Family Guy' guy for Web series

Google has enlisted Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to create an original animated series that it will distribute on the Web via its AdSense advertising system, according to The New York Times.

Google plans to use AdSense to syndicate the program--called Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy--to thousands of Web sites that are popular with MacFarlane's target audience, according to the newspaper. Advertising will be incorporated via "preroll" ads, banner ads, or "brought to you by" ads, according to the report.

MacFarlane is also reportedly working with advertisers to create original advertising to run … Read more

Google brings display ads to mobile devices

Google is expanding its advertising business into a new domain: graphical ads that appear on mobile devices.

As with the company's text-based mobile ads, the Google image ads are displayed on the basis of keywords that appear on Web sites that people visit with their mobile phones, Google said Wednesday.

Mobile devices are a new frontier for the Internet in general and for the advertising business that Google and many others are building atop it. The mobile Web has been hobbled by tiny screens, slow and unreliable connections, and carriers' data-access fees, but a new era is arriving.

Apple'… Read more

Yuwie: Social networking gone very wrong

I came across a very disturbing social networking site last week called Yuwie. It's another site that's decided that for some reason, using a free, and highly functional social service populated by your friends (like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.) is worth ditching for something built with very little ease of use or original design, but created to help you make ludicrous amounts of money by selling out your friends.

It works like this: you get a share of money for every page view on the service (the site makes its money by selling ads). Also, the more people visit your page, the more page views you get a percentage of. Yuwie then takes it a step further with referrals, letting you get a percentage of money from the activity of any friends you've invited to the service, along with their friends, and people who their friends have invited. This goes on for 10 "levels," so you could theoretically have close to 100,000 referrals if your friends and their invitees continue to invite others who use the service beyond the one-month probation period.

Does this idea sound familiar? It's a pyramid scheme. The problem with this, economically, is that it's unsustainable. The people at the top can't possibly pay out the promised amount, and the people stuck at the bottom aren't getting the same benefits as those who have spammed referrals to their friends higher up in the chain. Speaking of spam, even if you're on there with your friends, you're bound to get an intolerable amount of spam from people you don't know as the service grows. The second most popular group on the service at the moment has been specifically designed as a place to add random groups of other folks to beef up your bonus money. Is this the kind of network you want to be a part of? At least the site isn't asking for a sign-up fee--if it did, it'd be illegal. And it ought to be.

The worst part is that Yuwie is pretty much a carbon copy of MySpace, circa two years ago, with nearly identical profile features--meaning you're not really getting anything more than you would with a mainstream social network.… Read more

Apple's iWeb gets tight Google integration, widgets

Apple's iWeb, one part of the iLife consumer apps suite, has received an interesting update this morning. iWeb is Apple's consumer-level Web site creation tool, and it gives users a simple way to drag and drop various Web site elements as well as fill in the included templates. The latest version is getting integration with two of Google's services: AdSense and Google Maps. iWeb users can now sign up for AdSense right inside the application, and pick how they want it to show up on their site. From the looks of the screenshots, it's much easier … Read more

Associated Content's questionable associations

I was quite intrigued this morning when I read Elinor Mills recent article Pay-for-blogging raises questions on news.com. In essence, Mills story examines whether or not Associated Content exists to harvest adsense dollars like so many spam factories out there, or whether it is simply an open publishing forum married to a sustainable business model. As Mills explains: The company asks bloggers to write on the subjects of their choosing and accepts text, video and audio. Contributors can be paid based on the quality of the article and keyword optimization.

In most ways, Associated Content's methods seem fitting for any typical Web site--do your best to get play on Google search results and make money off its advertising. In fact, Associated Content is hardly the only company churning out content to match with Google ads. The success of Google's AdSense program, which matches ads with content on Web sites, and the growth of blogging applications have led to the emergence of pay-for-blogging companies that help match willing writers with sites that want content. Mills continues by explaining that the reason people have been critical of the company revolves around the quality of the material generated. Some of these critics do appear to have valid concerns; Danny Sullivan at search engine land explains that the site isn't quite in-line with Google guidelines despite the fact that the site is co-founded by Tim Armstrong who sits on Google's board, and Kate Kaye is concerned with the various companies that Associated Content has partnered with.… Read more

Google AdWords/AdSense

Category: Productivity

Google's ad services allow anyone to put advertisements up on their site. They can be anything from generic banners all the way to contextual ads that show offers related to content on the site. In addition to site ads, site owners can also purchase AdWords, which are purchased keywords in search terms. When a user buys one of these words, a link to their site will show up in the sponsored area to the right of a Google search using that word.

One of the reasons Google's ads have become so successful is that they can … Read more