Google has been dominating the search industry for years now and we are only seeing the gap between them and the next best search engine widen. Many new search engines have come and gone trying to challenge Google and the ones that have been around for years seem to just be holding still. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has teamed up with Amazon.com to create a new Internet search engine that they hope will rival Google and Yahoo.

Wikipedia has chosen to use their existing open-access style web site to create this new search engine which is being called Wikia Search. Jimmy Wales and one of his money sources, Amazon.com, is creating Wikia Search, because they believe that with the enormous growth of Google, its search results have become susceptible to manipulation and spam. “Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’ and you will not get any useful results” said the 40 year old Wikipedia founder.

The creating of Wikia would be a completely new approach to the way search engines bring back results. Google, Yahoo and all the other major search engines have incorporated a computer algorithm which determines the relevancy of a web site to what the user entered in the search engine. Each search engine has a different algorithm and will show different results. Google is known as having the best and most relevant results for most searches. Wikipedia’s Wikia would avoid the computer algorithm all together and switch to its online encyclopedia style of human edited content. “Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision. This page is good, this page sucks. Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way” said Wales. Jimmy Wales’ theory will replace the computer algorithm with human editors who will decide which pages are the most relevant to a search term.

Wikipedia has become increasingly popular over the years and people seem to like the fact that the content is user generated and can be edited. This new style of search engine has the possibility to do well because of the already popular Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales uses the example of people manipulating Google and Yahoo search engines but with human edited search results, you can still have the same issues. What is to stop a Wikia editor from taking a bribe to rank someone number 1? It doesn’t even have to be that dramatic. The human editors of this search engine may unintentionally have favoritism for one web site or another. There is yet to be a strong contender to Google and only time will tell if Wikipedia’s new search engine can seriously compete with the search giant.

Google introduced AdWords as a way for website owners and businesses to advertise on Google and its partner web sites throughout the Internet. Because of its flexibility, AdWords has become one of the most common and strongest advertising programs on the Internet. Google gives the advertiser much more control over how the ad appears, where the ad appears and allows you to advertising options for all kinds of budgets. It is very simple to set up a Google AdWords account. After your initial set up, you can select your relevant keywords, phrases and search terms that you would want your ad to show up for. You can select as many keywords as you’d like but they should be relevant to what your business or web site contains. Once your account and keywords are set up, your ads will appear in Google’s sponsored results when someone uses the keyword phrase or terms that you selected. The easy and quick setup makes Google AdWords a great way to advertise on the Internet instantly. But it’s not free and since every time your ad is clicked it costs you money, how do you maximize your return on this advertising investment? Here are some tips and strategies to maximize the benefits of AdWords and turn out a good conversion rate and return on investment (ROI).

• Make the most out of your advertisement’s headline. Scientific studies show that the first thing a searchers eye catches it the headline. That is what it’s there for. You need to ensure that your headlines are descriptive and contain the search terms that the user is looking for. Your advertisement’s headline has to be descriptive to whatever is on the web page. Loading your headline with keywords is going to look spammy to a user and you will notice very few click throughs. Use your keywords in this headline but make sure it reads naturally and appeals to whoever is searching for that term. One of the best ways to optimize this headline is to try out a few different possibilities. If you are torn between 3 or 4 different headlines, try each of them out for a week and see which one has the highest conversion rate and continue to use it in your Google AdWords advertising campaign.



• In the beginning, start low on your AdWords bidding. The temptation may be to top the highest bid so your ad shows number one on the first page of the search results but this may end up being very costly to you. The best approach is to start off with a small bid and get a feel for how Adwords work and how well it is going to work for your particular web site or business. After you have sufficiently tested out AdWords and have a good feel about how much it is really going to cost you, weigh the cost against the benefits and increase your bids if you feel it is the right choice.
• Make your Ad description interesting. Before a visitor clicks on your ad, they are probably going to read the full description. You want to make sure that this description gives them a good idea of what they are going to see if they continue to click on your advertisement. Avoid stuffing the description full of old fashioned sales gimmicks and words. Make sure that your description is accurate and relevant to what is on your web site. If you misrepresent your web site anywhere in your ad, whoever clicked on that ad is not going to be happy and will probably not trust you or your site. This is a quick path to a low conversion rate which will cost you a fortune. Every time your ad is clicked it is costing you money. You only want qualified searchers clicking on your ads. Give them a good idea of what they are going to get when the click through to your web site.

Advertising is the life blood of your business. Don’t throw money away by ineffectively using AdWords. By following these basics, you can make the most out of your online advertising budget and reap the rewards.

The Internet’s most used search engine, Google, recently announced that it will be changing its practices regarding how much, how long, and what data it logs from users searches. Currently, Google logs what keywords people search for, their IP address, and other information like Web cookies which authenticate the Internet user and keep information to make the site more customized for that particular individual. Some people are saying that Google needs to respect its users privacy better and should not keep this much data. One practical use of these logs would be the government using them to identify that a particular computer performed a certain action. Privacy advocates don’t believe that this information should be available and the fact that Google tracks this much information could be a major privacy issue should Google’s servers be exposed by hackers; similar to what AOL has recently experienced when it accidently exposed the search history of over 650,000 users on the Internet.

At the time being, all the information that Google currently tracks is kept forever. There is no system in place to delete or disguise this information after a certain amount of time. Google’s proposed plan would make the last eight bits of the IIP address anonymous and also disguise the cookie information so it wouldn’t be able to identify one particular user. This data would be storied in its entirety for up to 18 to 24 months when it would be disguised so that it couldn’t be associated to one user. Once this plan has been implemented, it will go back to its current data logs and anonymize their old information as well. Google users will have the option of opting out of this process however.

Many privacy advocates still don’t believe that Google is doing enough to protect the privacy of its users even with these steps. Anonymizing the last 8 bits of an IP address still narrows it down to 256 possible computers and users which may be enough for investigators to obtain information that they should not be able to. Most people who are demanding Google change its ways don’t believe that just changing the information it stores will get the job done. They want the data to be ultimately destroyed and not stored. If Google insists on keeping this private information, it shouldn’t be stored for more than 6 months. They do not believe there is any reason to store IP addresses and cookie information. Of all the major search engines, Google is known to store more information about its user’s searches than any others.

Google claims that it need to retain the entire IP address for at least 18 months in order to track usage patterns and diagnose problems. Many European governments also require search engines retain data in its entirety for 18 to 24 months, or longer in some cases. Regardless of what Google ultimately decides, they will have to comply with the law in each country. Although Google stores a surprising amount of data from each of its users, it is the only major search engine to try to protect it from the government.

The issue of Google and its privacy policy has become increasingly important with its recent acquisition of DoubleClick. Three separate public interest groups are in the process of filing a complaint with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) because they believe the acquisition is a threat to the privacy of consumers. Access to DoubleClick’s servers would supply Google with a large amount of data about the consumer activity of Internet users. Estimates include 233 million North American users, 314 million European users and over 1.1 billion Internet users around the world whose privacy would be impacted by this acquisition. The complaint filed with the FTC would also include an investigation of Google’s current policy of storing data and require Google to make it easier for users to request a copy of what information is being stored in association with them. The collaboration of these 2 companies and their data would supply Google with an excessive amount of information that would make it unfair for competing companies and dangerous to those whose data is stored and collected by Google.

Blogs are the perfect arena to make some extra cash with Google’s AdSense. If you understand AdSense a little better, you can optimize your blog to maximize your AdSense revenue. AdSense is driven by content – the more content, the more targeted ads you will have. How can you generate that much content? It could take years to come up with thousands of pages of content. One of the best and quickiest ways to pump up the size of your blog content is to include content from outside sources. But there’s a little more to it. You should comment on the stories and put your own ideas in your blog. This will make your blog postings unique and avoid duplicate content across the web. You will need interesting and informative content to draw visitors to your web site who will in turn click on your AdSense advertisements bringing in extra money. People will not be interested in your blog if you just throw any random information on there. Try to focus on a single topic or niche and draw visitors in with interesting stories, articles and your own personal commentary.

The aesthetics and usability of your site have a much bigger impact on your blog’s AdSense revenue than most people think. Internet users are becoming more aware of Internet advertising and the common techniques marketers have been using to get them to click on their ads. Also, it takes Internet users very little time to decide if the Web site they are looking at is credible, reliable or worth looking at. You must have an attractive page that won’t have Internet users reaching for the back button. It is easy and fast to throw together an ugly web page with useless content and you may get a few clicks on your AdSense ads. However, spending extra time to put together a great looking web site with good, quality content will pay off in the long run. It may take you a little longer but it is a time investment you will have to take to reap the best rewards.

Placement of the ads in your blog may seem like an obvious choice but considering alternative placement can really show big results. Bombarding your web site visitors with ads is not a good idea. If an Internet user opens your page and sees nothing but ads, they will turn and run. Most Internet users are also starting to recognize the typical AdSense bars in the usual locations in the header or sidebars. There are some instances where it might be good to include those locations for your ads but the best option is to include them near the content. They will blend in with your content and after a user reads an article with your interesting commentary at the end, they will find some ads that apply to exactly what they are thinking about. Maximizing your AdSense revenue doesn’t have to be tricky, just think like one of your visitors and it will all pay off.

Google AdSense users have been discussing whether using the Competitive Ad Filter will help increase their AdSense income. Some positive testimonials:

“I Increased my eCPM by over 25% by filtering MFA sites.”

“I noticed a slight decrease on my first day, but an increase of between 25-50% in CTR the last few days.”

“My CTR dropped 30% using the competitive filer but my RPC climbed 300%.”

Originally, the “Competitive Ad Filter” was built to block “competitors” ads from being shown on your web site. But this filter can be used to maximize your AdSense income as well. It’s known that some publishers use low paying AdWords (CPC around $0.0), taking up most of your AdSense blocks only to provide junky MFA content. This gives you bad publicity of your website, giving your visitors a wrong impression that your site is associated with such junky MFA sites. Also, each of those clicks will give you a penny at most, rendering those clicks completely worthless.

There are some web sites (e.g., AdsBlackList.com) that help AdSense users finding out those worthless AdWords ads easily. With AdsBlackList.com, if you type in the URL of your web site on which you run AdSense on, they check your site theme from meta tag info, and generate a blacklist that contains 200 sites that could weaken your AdSense performance; currently, AdSense only allows you to list up to 200 sites in Competitive Ad Filter. Also, you can report to them those junky URLs that you see on your AdSense ads. There are varied responses to using Ad Filter. Some people report 50% increase in their AdSense income, while others see their earning dip on the next day (probably because of lack of ads inventory). So it appears that the effectiveness of the filter is determined by your site theme. You can try the Competitive Ads Filter on your site, and see if the increase of RPC can compensate the decrease of CTR. If that’s the case, you will see a better AdSense income.

Here are a list of sites which are known to be low paying ads, and so should be the first to be added to your filter.

10-bestsites.com
10-top-sites.com
1s.md
25-topsites.com
5-top-sites.com
7-topsites.com
8bestsites.com
9topsites.com
alltheindustrials.com
best4sites.net
best8sites.org
chosenresult.com
dbmoz.com
e-nternet.com
everyrule.com
expert-expert.com
faster-results.com
megasearch.biz
thinktarget.com
top8sites.com
toptensites.org
webzsearch.com

According to TechCrunch, Google is in talks with YouTube, finalizing an acquisition deal that would put YouTube in the hands of Google for a mere $1.6 billion dollars. So why would either party be interested in such a deal?

Google has about $10 billion in cash on hand, while YouTube has significantly less, and is quickly burning through its stash with extrodinarily high bandwidth bills each month. YouTube also has a massive audience that Google’s advertisers would l-o-v-e to tap into via AdWords. Such advertising would also significantly increase profits for Google, as well as investor confidence in the company.

Other reasons for Google’s interest YouTube include wanting to keep it out the hand’s of its competitors, who have expressed interest in acquiring the company in the not-so-distant past. Viacom, News Corp., Yahoo, and Microsoft are all said to be interested in YouTube.

Google already has a video service, dubbed “Google Video,” which ranks third amongst the major online video services. It is unclear if this acquisition occurred, whether Google Video and YouTube would meld together into one, or remain seperate entities.

Neither Google or YouTube has confirmed or denied the rumors. The rumors apparently came from a reliable, undisclosed source close who contacted Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame.