Wow, Google is really on a roll these days.  Just in the last several months they have plans to roll out their Android software to compete with Apples iPhone, then weeks ago they launched Knol, a slow competitor to Wikipedia.

Now Google CHROME??  This new open source browser is supposed to take aim at Microsoft’s Iternet Explorer, and FireFox, truly amazing.  They also have a comic you can look at.  Tech Crunch has some pretty good info on this thing too.  Honestly, I am scared at What Google is doing, I mean they built their whole model on search, and pioneered the search industry, in my opinion they seem to be doing a bit too much, too soon.  What do you think?  I want your opinion…

Yeah right.  Sure, this may help to some degree, however if you read these articles from their blog, it seems they are “Improving” or “doing a better job” at crawling flash web sites.  I personally would still never invest in a complete flash site…..Content is still king!  In fact, that is one aspect of this new algo they rolled out, to index flash “textual” content.

Take a look at these articles:

Google Learns to crawl flash

Improved flash indexing

By the way, if you notice the title of these articles, “Learns” and “improved” that should tell you not to drop everything and go build a flash site.  Personally I feel they are sending a wrong message.

I just happened to do some random searches today only to find that when you do a search for a part number, of specific search on a product, they are showing an image next to the three results that appear on the first page of SERP’s. Obviously this is a further step towards Google’s Universal search, or “Blended Search” as some call it. I think this will certainly create more clickthroughs on Google products. Remember tests have shown that an image is more likely to get a click. Take a sneak peek below:  (Picture coming soon, it dissipeared on me???)

It was announced today by Google and Matt Cutts blog that they are going sell the Internet Marketing aspect of Performics to a third party to avoid a conflict of interest.  Woo Hoo!!  I think we are all glad to hear about that.

Read more about this below:

Google’s Blog

Search Engine land

For some time now Google has been showing that it is, indeed, serious about being a (if not the) major player in the mobile advertising market.  After launching the mobile advertising platform (which is like AdSense for the mobile), Google is now dabbling in the mobile social networks market in a big way.

Google has their own SM site, www.orkut.com, but have also taken over www.zingku.com , a company that makes it possible for marketers to send advertising messages to mobile social networks.  Zingku allows users to share a variety of information like content, pictures, text messages, video, email and other activities all over your mobile device.

A very interesting feature that Zingku has introduced is the flyer function.  The function makes it possible for marketers to send promotional messages to Zingku members who can choose to receive these messages via a “zing code”.   The flyer function allows members to interact with these promotional messages by allowing them to travel through text and picture messages. (Welcome to the 21st century!)

Google is going full steam ahead with this and is tapping into the growing number of mobile users who seem to spend more time with their mobile devices than they do on a laptop with email.  Zinkgu take Google a step deeper into integrating themselves into the everyday lives of tech-savvy consumers.  (It won’t be long though until this will be common everyday marketing)

Saddle up!

Video search as I commented before in our blog, will provide driving growth that marketers will need to consider. Today I noticed interesting changes in Google’s search engine results. The sponsored ads to the right are in a full yellow box, and right below them appears YouTube videos, and news articles, just like they said they would at SMX, in fact Tim wrote about this here. They are also appearing in the top 10 results in the organic listings, so basiclly, the video gets two recognitions!

I won’t go on about ‘Stats’ showing why you need to put video in your website, but let me reason with you a bit as to why you had better get on the stick.

Think about this, when you are sitting on your couch, like Tim does all day, watching your favorite athlete (Me) are you interested in commercials? No! you are in “lean back” and “Chill” mode aren’t you? That’s because you are in “sports watching mode”.

Conversely, when you are on the internet, you are likely in “search” mode, you are looking for a service, product, or educational feedback, thus you are in ‘Lean forward’ mode, and are more inclined to view videos, or video commercials right! Yes, just agree with me, you are in the search process.

Well, I don’t think I need to convince you anymore about why you need to put video in your site, but now let me give you some practical tips, a step by step guide as to how to optimize your video for the web. You see, you simply don’t want to throw a video on YouTube thinking you are a video king, and it will be seen by thousands of eyes, you must treat this like you would a web page. So in my next post, you will find 20 steps you should follow to get your videos ranked in the search engines.

I was editing some of my PPC ads this morning, when I finally took a few  minutes to read up on this.  Google has some compelling points, like “57% of online radio listeners look up items on the web after hearing an audio ad”.  Now, Google AudioAds really seem to be aimed at the offline customer, where people can hear your ad whether they’re driving to work, or the gym, or the store, you can still get your message across.

If you do decide to advertise with Google AudioAds, or to recommend a client to do so, do your homework on this one.  Google claims you will be able to “Showcase your business on over 1,600 terrestrial FM and AM radio stations across the U.S., targeting  your [currently offline - probably in their car listening to their iPod or standing in line at Starbucks talking on their cellphone, hmmm?] customers on “top ten” stations in all 25 of the most popular US markets.”

Now, granted, these AudioAds do sound very professional, and I can wrap my mind around this ‘potentially’ working for SEM.  Listen for yourself, take a minute and listen to some of these already local AudioAds already playing. 

Maybe it’s just me, I am a little skeptical about this one.  I mean really, who has the time to create the script and spend the $50 (cheapest I saw) and up to $300 (the average) for one 30 second ad?  But more relevantly, who really listens to the radio anymore unless your stuck in an office where you have no real work requiring your full attention [I am not talking about some background music to help the day pass - some mindless 'white' noise, which I agree is helpful] ?????  iPod, iPhone, Zune, XM or Sirius, checking voicemail or calling back all your missed calls, I don’t know, it just seems like more and more people want self-directed media, socially relevant content (to them and their friends).  This seems like an “interesting” idea, and it will probably do great, but I just wonder.

What do you think?  Try it out here: http://www.google.com/adwords/audioads/

Take a look at this picture. Have you guys seen this? On several large websites, there appears a search box under the SERP’s, with the sitelinks. I have been following a forum post over at WebmasterWorld on this subject. If you hear any more about this, please let me know, my curiosity is killing me!

It appears that Google is coming down a tad hard on those that are using redirect and vanity URL’s as display URL’s. They don’t seem to be playin’ either, they made mention that this will be strictly enforced in about 5 weeks, starting April 1st, 2008. Below is an excerpt of their post and a direct link if you want to read it.

An update to display URL policy

“In response to advertiser and user feedback, and in an effort to provide more relevant advertising results and a higher quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow certain exceptions with regards to our display URL policy. This includes, but is not limited to redirects and vanity URLs. This policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers, beginning on April 1st. “