Google Announces Ad Planner

Today, Google announced Google Ad Planner, taking a direct shot at services offered by comScore and Nielsen. Differing from Google Trends for Websites, Ad Planner is aimed at media buyers looking to identify target sites for ad placements. In a market where Nielsen and comScore charge hefty sums to advertisers for access to their data while at the same time being loathed by publishers for the inaccuracies of their panel based measurement systems, Ad Planner is likely to gain acceptance fairly quickly.

There is also a level of integration with DoubleClick's MediaVisor product. The possibilities for integration between the DoubleClick and Ad Planner are endless and will give Ad Planner a distinct advantage over competing services. The service is currently in closed Beta right now but I'm hoping to get my hands on a login so I can test it out.

Stop Complaining about Google Trends for Websites

So, as I'm sure you're aware, late last week Google announced the release of Google Trends for Websites.If you haven't checked it out yet, or read one of the many reviews, it basically offers (approximate) site traffic volumes, top keywords, and related URLs for sites Google has a sufficient amount of data for.

Google joining the ranks of potentially (or known) inaccurate sources for traffic data (comScore, Alexa, I'm looking at you..) asides, a few folks got seriously up in arms over this release. SEOBook.com screamed "The Death of Privacy," and Lisa Barone (doing her best high school sophomore imitation) said "Not Cool, Google."

Why do people forget the contract we have with Google. We allow them to index and store our site content and use their free analytics tool without any pre-conditions on how they may use they data collected in the process. To be clear, I believe that Google wields way too much power over the Internet economy. But that doesn't matter.

If you don't want Google to have your data then stop using Google Analytics, uninstall the Google tool bar (which everybody loves to complain about), and block the GoogleBot using Robots.txt. If you want to continue to use their free services and benefit from the SEO-bubble we're all living in, then please shut up.

Google Webmaster Tools API

There are some things I don't like about Google, but then there are things like this that remind me of what an innovative company they are. No other company today embraces the internet community quite the way Google does and (most times, it seems) they truly strive to provide tools with real value.

Today, on the official google webmaster central blog, Google has announced the release of the Webmaster Tools API. While the initial function set is limited (outlined below), this is a nice way to provide access to webmaster data and promises to deliver greater functionality in the future.

Here's the list of currently supported features:

• Managing Sites
  • Retrieve a list of your sites in Webmaster Tools
  • Add your sites to Webmaster Tools
  • Verify your sites in Webmaster Tools
  • Remove your sites from Webmaster Tools
• Working with Sitemaps
  • Retrieve a list of your submitted Sitemaps
  • Add Sitemaps to Webmaster Tools
  • Remove Sitemaps from Webmaster Tools

An immediate use for the Webmaster Tools API (as functionality expands) would be an automated notification system for crawl errors, Sitemap errors, etc. I'm sure I can think of a few more.

What creative uses do you think a fully functional Webmaster Tools API could be used for?

Twitter Backup

Louis Gray is reporting today of a new service that fills the (frequent) hyper-communication gaps that open up every time Twitter goes down. This one is called twitAbit and it will basically hold your posts until Twitter resumes service. Two observations / questions:

1. What does it say about Twitter that an entire service industry is cropping up to handle its failures?
2. What kind of business model is it that assumes Twitter will also have stability issues? I mean, if Twitter ever gets its act together twitAbit is out of business.

Related Posts: Twitter Sucks

Feedly Review

As I increased the number of RSS feeds I subscribe to, I switched from iGoogle to Google Reader for RSS management. I considered FriendFeed briefly but the whole lifestreaming focus of it I find cumbersome. I like some organization to my information and seeing things flow by in a steady steam simply isn't useful for me. Google Reader did a good, basic, job of allowing me to categorize the feeds I read and keep track of what I've read, what I haven't, and what I have no intention of reading.

Then along came Feedly. Louis Gray has posted an excellent review of Feedly and rather than re-hash everything he's written about the feature set, I'm here to say that I've tried it and after just one day I'm hooked. The Feedly interface provides intuitive categorization, beautiful and clean presentation, critical functionality at your fingertips, and fluid discovery of new sources.

For anyone that has more than 30 RSS feeds filling up their To-Read list, I highly recommend giving Feedly a try.

Google: More Freshness in Every Query

Yesterday Google announced updates to their query recommendation algorithm that will process newer information in a more timely manner.

I tried a few searches for items that have recently been in the news and the results were good - for example, a search for "Iowa" recommended "Iowa Flooding". The same search, however, also recommended "Iowa DOT." I suppose the state department of transportation would be in high demand given the recent flooding, but seeing that recommendation is occurs to me that what's missing from these suggestions is context.

It would be helpful to the searcher is Google could present some bits of information indicating why a given search term is being suggested. Here's another example - I searched for "Father's Day" and among the suggested queries was "Father's Day, 2007." As a searcher, it's unclear to me why I should be interested in Father's Day from last year. Providing some of the deterministic data along with these recommendations would help me understand the relevance of this recommendation to my intentions. After all, relevance is what Google is all about.

Google + Yahoo

TechCrunch is reporting that Google and Yahoo are announcing (right about now) a partnership that will most likely involve outsourcing Yahoo's search business to Google. Given the amount of dominance Google already has in search this will certainly raise market concerns as such a deal could push Google's share of the search market to near 90%.

I've been fairly vocal in the past in my opinion that Google has way too much power over the internet economy at present and this certainly doesn't help matter. For me, I'd much rather have seen the Microsoft deal go through so somebody, somewhere, could introduce real competition into the market. Online search is in dire need of innovation at the moment and giving Google a bigger slice of the pie will do nothing to foster that innovation, regardless of how creative the company has been in the past.

 

Update: For those of you interested in the gritty details, TechCrunch also has the the Yahoo SEC Filing which outlines some specifics of the deal.

Any other thoughts on this out there?

Whither Google Transparency?

A few weeks back Udi Manber, the VP of Engineering for Search Quality, made a much publicized post on the Official Google Blog. In the post, he promised an increased level of transparency from the search giant and told us to watch that space for future openings of the kimono.

Well, since that first bit of bait, here's what we've gotten -

Blogging Tip

Unfortunately I've been ignoring this space for the past couple of weeks. Mostly because I'm focusing on something else when I have time to write and, really, I'm about out of SEO Venom for now and have several hundred posts piled up on Google Reader so I'm not exactly up to date.

Anyway, the best blogging tip I've read and employ myself nowadays is to stock pile your posts. If you're anything like me, your day job and family take up most of your days and finding time to write each day is nearly impossible. So, when you do get a free hour or few, get a bunch of ideas into draft format. They don't need to be perfect, but you'll be able to finish them off quickly later on. It's also a good way to keep your post frequency up as you can slowly publish items you've already written over the course of a few days.