Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

On the 21st of August, Google changed the formula it uses to decide which sponsored ads show up above the natural search results.   

The basic formula for judging which ads show up was as follows:

Ad position = Quality Score X Actual Price advertiser is paying per click

The new changes will replace the actual price an advertiser is paying with the maximum price an advertiser is willing to pay peer click.

The changes have been controversial to say the least.  Some have even accused Google of trying to milk advertisers for all they’ve got (this is the name of the game after-all isn’t it?)

 What is Google’s justification for the change?  The official line is:

Actual CPC is determined, in part, by the bidding behavior of the advertisers below you. This means that your ad’s chance of being promoted to a top spot could be constrained by a factor you cannot influence. By considering your ad’s maximum CPC, a value you set, you will have more control over achieving top ad placement.

In addition to increasing control for advertisers, the improved formula increases the quality of our top ads for users. This is due to more high quality ads becoming eligible for top placement, thereby allowing our system to choose from a larger pool of high quality ads to show our users.

The bottom line is this, if Google’s changes mean decreased ROI for advertisers, eventually these advertisers will move to a more profitable advertising model and Google will lose business…

I’m pretty sure the big G is a bit smarter than that!

Google announced today that it will be launching a new “in-video” ad format on its sister site YouTube.  The new ad format is supposed to be 10 times more effective than the existing ad formats.  The new ads will be in the form of “animated overlays that appear on the bottom 20 percent of a video,” said a Google spokesman.

The ads are designed to pause the video and appear within the first fifteen seconds of the videoclip and last for ten seconds.  Users will have the option of either stopping the ad and continuing to watch the video or clicking on the ad to go to the advertiser’s site.

The new ad format will only appear on videos supplied by YouTube’s official content suppliers and not on “amateur videos” which constitute the vast majority of the site’s content.

Google bought Youtube almost 10 months ago for $1.65 billion and has stayed away from monetising the videos until today.  Google will charge advertisers $20 CPM (20 dollars per 1000 times the ad is displayed), a price it deems appropriate for potential exposure to 190 million visitors per month.

You can start seeing the ads today, although, I for one would rather watch the video, sorry G!   

Network Solutions’ Snr VP Stephanie Leffler talks about how companies can ensure that their Web sites come out at the top of the search engines. 

Enjoy… 

Google has launched Google Moon in honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969,

They’ve also added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to make it even more interesting.

This is what Google’s always been good at, making all the world’s information accessible to the average joe and jane on the street. 

Its also fantastic for kids learning about the moon landings at school; they can now actually see where each mission landed and if they hover over the pin, a bubble appears summarising the mission.

A small step for Google, a giant step for the development of search!

If you’re thinking of redesigning your website or changing your site’s architecture for any reason, its worthwhile to keep in mind the following SEO best practices:

1. Use the mod_rewrite (Apache) or ISAPI Rewrite (IIS) to map old URLs to new files

2. Analyse your major traffic entry pages and ensure that these pages are not deleted or changed unless it is absolutely essential to do so.

3. Do not permanently delete all pages until they have passed their popularity to the new pages on your site, this can be accomplished using the above mentioned  301 redirects

4. Contact link partners and ask them to change your link destination to new pages on your site.

If you follow the above 4 step you’ll ensure that you do not lose any traffic and popularity associated with you pre-designed site.

Good luck!