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Ah, well, I'll give you a preview of my Ad Age column for Monday:
Yahoo will carry some Google ads, for searches where it thinks it would earn more with Google and for “backfill” where it has no ads at all. We’re all still waiting for exact details on how it will work, but the “Panama” system and Yahoo selling its own ads isn’t going away.
Indeed, I suspect Yahoo will purposely keep it a mystery how and when you can expect Google ads to appear on Yahoo as a further incentive for advertisers to continue doing business directly with Yahoo.
Desphinn isn't for spam. The spam button is for that. One of the reasons we brought in desphinn was because without it, some people were reporting stories they disagreed with as spam. You can disagree with a story being popular, but that doesn't mean it is spam (which is typically completely off-topic submissions not about internet marketing). I'd suggest looking at these very long past discussions about desphinn:
http://sphinn.com/story/23311
http://sphinn.com/story/27933
If you read the story, they've done special things for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Given that Google is a California-based company with a healthy contingent of gay employees, some might think it unacceptable that they shy away from it, as well.
Story: Is Desphinning rude?
It's not so much wanting to not have the moderators work. It's just that when we have to make a judgement call, then we get others questioning it. Killing spam is one thing. But slowing a story that doesn't seem to deserve it? That's what desphinn is for, so the community can directly do that, and so it's transparent.
Odd, try this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=gay&gl=us
Let me know if you see them now. That forces a "US" display to happen, which perhaps might override some South Carolina filtering, if that's even happening.
Yes, they are official -- provided directly from Compete. Glad to have them out there so that people could dissect them more.
Just to give more of the backstory, when FriendFeed launched back in October, I asked for Sphinn to be added. Nothing happened, so I asked again in April (FriendFeed ahd nicely asked me to remind them, and I figured that was enough time for the dust to settle). I was told they were working on new features, services and mainly an API. Now it's two months later -- more services get added, and we're still not. We have nearly 20,000 register members here, tons of commenting and submitting activity, and I'd like to see my own damn activity here in my FriendFeed there. So on the squeaky wheel model, if you're with me, start squeaking that we should get added. And yep, I'll get FF (and Plurk) added to the social media profiles you can list here on Sphinn.
@stymiee: It's hard to give Microsoft crap over HP since Microsoft hasn't been the one running to the courts arguing that consumers need choice. They're not being hypocritical. it is Google that's said search choices should be made by users. They employed that to remove a default option from IE. Then they cut deals with computer makers like Dell to impose themselves as the default choice. it is two-faced at best. Microsoft cutting a deal with HP is simply playing the game Google itself established.
As for your other points, hey -- I love Firefox and use it everyday. But Google has enough money to pay Firefox heaps without also having to demand it be the default. It could instead use its wealth to help support Firefox and the idea of consumer choice that it squawks so much about in areas where it feels threated (and doesn't when it's ahead).
And Live is a good search engine. It's losing marketshare for a variety of reasons. You can count among them the fact that it is locked out of being in front of Firefox users. That's hardly the killer reason, but it contributes. Send comment HTML is disabled
Heh. Dan, I know I can change the default. The point is that Firefox is setting it for me without asking, because it has a paid deal with Google. But in IE, it doesn't do that because Google fought against Microsoft saying it was all for letting consumers chose.
@SEOIvan, I'm not saying Search 4.0 has hit now. I'm saying it's a next step that will be happening in the coming years.
"Sphinn will tell you to use their contact page to report these matters. But the last time I used it, I received no response. Besides, blogging it alerts you to these issues before they are removed to save face. If you are aware that not all front page news in Sphinn is reputable and / or trustworthy, than you are equipped with another opportunity to research things further before accepting everything you read in naivety."
The reports are not ignored and should be done. If we don't respond, that doesn't mean nothing is done. Often we take action on what gets sent without needing to do follow up.
As a regular participant in Sphinn, I'd really encourage a report having been done in addition to blogging. At the very least, it might have alerted us more rapidly to something before it hit the home page. It would also have been nice if either the spam report button or the desphinn option had been used.
The mods aren't perfect. Stuff will get past us. This looks like it has some suspicious voting, so I'll pull it. But we do offer three different ways for the community to help -- and none of those were used in this case.
Did I miss someting in the letter? I mean, they didn't say it was a particular ad that was a problem. Isn't this a standard letter they'd send to anyone that they think is generating low quality clicks?
I can appreciate the irony, but to be fair, this isn't apple to oranges.
First, that's not a "Google Checkout" box that's appear. It's Google Shopping results, like here. Just like regular Google web search, you have paid and unpaid results in shopping. Notice in that link I gave how there are no paid results.
Now that box showing up in Google's web search results that's "promoting" particular vodka sellers? That's just Google Universal Search integrating the unpaid results from shopping search. Google's not selling those products, nor are they being advertised.
If you want to consider unpaid listings as advertisements, then a general search for vodka on Google should bring up no merchants in the unpaid results at all, right? But that's not the case -- and hasn't ever been the case despite the no ads policy being in place. So what's the news now? Nothing has changed -- in fact, we've even had shopping results inserted even before Universal Search just like now.
You could argue that if Google wants to ban things in ads, they should ban the same things in editorial results. But Google's never claimed to be consistent here, when I've talked to them about it in the past. Some things they don't want ads for (some things they also by law can't take ads for), and that's it.
I suppose you could also argue that aside from Google Shopping, there's the completely separate Google Checkout payment system, and Google shouldn't allow vodka or alcohol to be sold through that system. But that might be the case already. I haven't checked there terms, but if I restrict a vodka search on shopping to just merchants that sell also through Google Checkout, I only seem to get things like books and posters.
Heh. But not actual alcohol.
FYI, I did check the actually Google Checkout policy, to see if they accept merchants that sell alcohol. They don't. So not only are the Google Shopping Results being discussed not ads, but Google Checkout merchants (a subset of those listed with Google Shopping) are specifically prevented from using that to sell alcohol.
No, they're not promoting anything. Look, you can't advertise cigarettes on Google, right? So do this search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cigarettes
Those are 10 web-wide listings. Not paid, just 10 listings that come from crawling the web, some of them from places that sell cigarettes. Are they promoting anything in there? Not to me -- it's standard ranking.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=earthquake
That gives you a news unit at the top of the page, news results that are being inserted because they're deemed relevant by the universal search algorithm. It's making an automatic decision to insert the unit there, and an editorial one. It's not a paid thing.
So here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=vodka
Same algorithm decides to do a special unit to show editorial links out of Google Shopping Search. If that's "promotion," then Google had better not be showing the news results I pointed out earlier (cause they'd be promoting news content) or listing anything from the web about cigarettes as I pointed out, because that could be argued as promotion as well.
Bottom line to me -- these aren't ads. These aren't listing Google is selling to anyone. So I just don't get the idea that some advertisers are being treated special much less the idea that Google itself is selling alcohol.
To be clear, I don't think Google's being inconsistent. I think some people might want to argue that, but I'm not. I'm saying the opposite. The consistently do not try to enforce their ad policies on editorial results in web wide search, and they are not trying to do the same with editorial shopping results.
Heh -- I love all this got pulled together. I've been meaning to eventually go back and compile up the rant myself. Such a timesaver :)
Funny, John -- I was thinking exactly the same thing about the phone after I read in the morning Daily Telegraph again how the news first spread by Twitter. Really? By Twitter, I thought -- like no one was on the phone? I remember talking to my mom on the phone during the SF 1989 earthquake as it happened. So I got the news pretty fast then.
And what about IM? No one was IMing when this happened? But thinking about it more, Twitter probably deserves credit for being the first "mass" media outlet where the news came out. It's a small mass, but it was a place where it could spread. An individual could have blogged it, of course -- but Twitter is damn fast.
And yeah, actually, it's important for a couple of reasons. For one thing, any time there's an earthquake, people are searching for news about it. That's why I referenced those past articles I've written on SEL -- because there's a search aspect to all this. Ask.com, for instance, has an excellent real-time earthquake reporting smart answer.
It's also an important marketing discussion. Seriously, if you run the USGS, you want a message going out that you're "behind" on earthquake reporting, when that's your job? I mean, it's not like anyone at the USGS is going to lose their jobs. But no, it doesn't make them look good (except for the local offices that I mentioned that let you get updates directly via Twitter). And that's important for any organization to consider -- if there's important news going on, do you want some joe twitterer to be breaking it, if it was the type of thing you'd break yourself?
It was interesting looking at the USGS alert page, to see how it had evolved. Years ago, they wouldn't have had a web site to report news. They got that, then they added email alerts. And yes, RSS feeds, which a few years ago many people didn't think were necessary. I'm pretty sure we'll see them add Twitter to the list in the coming months.
Heh -- hating on the Twitter, John :)
So to be clear, I didn't write that twitter was the best thing since sliced bread and thank goodness we had it or we'd have never heard about the earthquake. In fact, I was pretty annoyed that I kept seeing everyone parrot how if it weren't for twitter, we'd have been so behind on the news. The reality is that the USGS does get things pretty fast -- and then the news agencies start revving up. I think news reports starting hitting within 30 minutes, if I remember some of what I read.
So I saw it as more debunking -- plus another way to educate that if you want to find out if you just had a quake, there are ways you can do it far more efficiently than hoping it will flow through Twitter. The folks in Reno have been going through this a lot, where they have had all these shakes and are trying to figure out how big and where. And since these are relatively small in nature, they're not going to hit the news wires all the tie.
In terms of what type of outlet Twitter is, I don't think it fits into any particular metaphor. It's what you want to make of it and what you decide to get out of it. Yes, it's a communcations channel even of the ham radio style, if you're talking occasionally for fun to a few people who care. But you bet, it's a media outlet. Go find me blogs that have 25,000 subscribers. Plenty of them have fewer but get attention.
Scoble, attention lover and hypemaster he might be, has built a popular microblog channel with Twitter. And other people have as well. Perhaps it really will all go poof. But me, I think it actually has legs and once that online marketers probably need to understand more, pay attention to and figure out what to do with it for their own needs.
Mightyfunk, good point. I guess I was saying that it understands the words compared to a regular search engine and focused more on that than the contrast between how a human comprehends.
Story: Yahoo The Failure: Myth Versus Reality