Google Beta Tests New AdSense Ads

Search Engine Roundtable website posts about Google Beta testing new AdSense Ads. Some say, that AdSense has been beta testing this since last October, but it is worth reading about though.

read on...

AdWords API announced

Google announced the AdWords API!

Google guys say: The AdWords API beta program is an open invitation to developers to explore new concepts (and then write great software) for managing Google AdWords advertising campaigns. Large advertisers can use it for their complex ad management needs, like tying product margins to optimized keyword bids.Third parties can use the API to build new interfaces to manage their client accounts. Best of all, an API enables the creation of all sorts of unanticipated ideas. In our experience, it's better to wear "Not Invented Here" as a badge of honor than as a chip on your shoulder. Come sign up for a developer token and show us what we've been missing.

There is also a new blog for this feature at http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/

MSN(beta) is Now Live

MSN has removed the beta-wrap from its proprietary search engine and is now showing self-generated results at MSN.Com.

Beta results had started bleeding into MSN listings over the past three weeks but since Sunday (Jan 16), the .COM (US / Global) version of MSN has consistently mirrored those found at MSN(beta). Regional versions of MSN continue to display Inktomi (Yahoo owned) / Regional partner generated results (Jan19, 05).

Share-it! Gerrit Schumann leaves the company

After acquisition of Europe's biggest software distribution company share-it! by Digital River, the share-it! founder Gerrit Schumann decided to leave the company. In his farawell letter he says:

After almost eight years of living, breathing and enjoying e-commerce, the founders of share-it! have decided to leave the company and move on to new ventures. The integration of share-it! into Digital River has been a very successful and a great experience for us. It is the right time to move on and make room for next generation of leadership. The other founders and I will transition out of the company over the next sixty days and ensure a smooth transition of our duties.

Than he introduces us to Don Peterson, vice president of client management, who has been appointed to lead Digital River in Europe:

(...) I have enjoyed working with Don over the last several months and I am fully confident that I will be leaving share-it! in good hands. Don's 20 years of experience includes a variety of client-facing roles at market leaders such as IBM and Accenture. He also has founded and developed two successful private firms, and integrated them into larger acquiring companies.
To assist Don in continuing to deliver great service to our authors, a number of key share-it! managers have been promoted to senior positions.

We wish you all the best and success for the future, Gerrit!

Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links

Yahoo and MSN united with Google on implementing the new "nofollow" attribute.

In the first cooperative move for nearly ten years, the major search engines have unveiled a new indexing command for web authors that they all recognize, one that they hope will help reduce the link and comment spam that plagues many web sites, especially those run by bloggers.

A number of blog software makers have already signed on:

Brad Fitzpatrick - LiveJournal
Dave Winer - Scripting News
Anil Dash - Six Apart
Steve Jenson - Blogger
Matt Mullenweg - WordPress
Stewart Butterfield - Flickr
Anthony Batt - Buzznet
David Czarnecki - blojsom
Rael Dornfest - Blosxom
Mike Torres - MSN Spaces

The new "nofollow" attribute that can be associated with links was originated as an idea by Google several weeks ago and pitched past MSN and Yahoo, as well as major blogging vendors, gaining support.

read on...
Google comments...

New NoFollow Link Tag Introduced

This is big news for the search engine industry, and it's important that search engine optimizers and website owners take notice.

Google has introduced a new link tag, and it's ultimately designed to tell the search engines to ignore the link when it comes to calculating their algorithm. This new link tag is called rel="nofollow" and it can be added to any typical href link. By adding the tag to a link on your site, you're telling the search engines to ignore it. According to Google, "From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results."

Yahoo!, MSN Search, and other search engines are taking Google's lead and beginning to recognize this new link tag called the (rel="nofollow") tag.

This new (rel="nofollow") tag, though, may begin to be used on many other sites--you can begin using it immediately, in fact.

Some website directory owners might consider adding links to their directory but only removing the (rel="nofollow") tag if the link submitter pays them to remove the (rel="nofollow") tag.

Google recently commented on the issue, "We think any piece of software that allows others to add links to an author's site (including guestbooks, visitor stats, or referrer lists) can use this attribute. We're working primarily with blog software makers for now because blogs are such a common target."

According to Ken Moss, the General Manger of MSN Search Dev & Test, "Any link with this tag will indicate to a crawler it is not necessarily approved by this page and shouldn’t be followed nor contribute weight for ranking...Over the coming weeks, our MSNBot crawler will start respecting this new tag, and sometime after that MSN Spaces will start to support this as well."

Smoke and Mirrors or Just Good SEO?

Discussed on WebProWorld

We sell business software, and up until November, we were consistently in the top 3 pages for the search term 'sap business one' (in the uk), but we have since slipped to page 13 and cannot seem to crawl back up at all, we are wavering between the top of p13 and the bottom of p12 (...)

read on...

The reality of failure

How can you tell experienced programmers from beginners? New programmers think if they work hard, they might succeed. Experienced programmers know that if they work really hard, they might not fail. Allow me to elaborate with an interview with Steve McConnell

Domains of choice

by Google Blog

Sean Knapp from Google says:


In the realm of the Internet, there's no shortage of acronyms for all the parts of a web address. Top-level domains like .com, .org and .edu are, logically enough, "TLDs." Then there are country codes like .es (Espana, or Spain) and .kr (Korea), which are referred to in some circles as ccTLDs. Though we try hard to avoid such puzzling shortcuts, we do add country and territory domains to our roster when we can. Now Indonesia, South Africa, Tonga, Bolivia, Krgyszstan, Jamaica, Belize, Seychelles, the Virgin Islands and the Cook Islands join more than 100 other countries and territories with a Google of their own, so people can restrict searches to their country or their language.

XIII Final of Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy

Today is the XIII Final of Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy (The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity)

Donate!

It is the biggest, world's unique and most prosperous charity organization in Poland. Its objectives, included in the status document, are saving children's lives, health promotion and education in the field of preventive treatment. Between 1993 and 2004 The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity has collected and spent over $50 mln for saving lives. Besides humanitarian work, the Foundation is also a powerful medium spreading the ideology of kindness, friendship, tolerance, and openness.

Free time: Are you a nerd? quiz

by Sebastian Zaklada, Software Submit.NET owner



It is not really a software marketing entry, but it is fun. It looks like I am nerdier than 94% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

Google AdWords changes

Google are limiting the number of affiliate ads that show up in search results.

See this link for a discussion on the topic.

And by the way, Happy New Year everyone!