I have to confess a certain fondness for Google, an admiration that has grown out of frequent innovation and creativity. And its frequent luck in the form of success.

Then again, my livelihood doesn't overwhelmingly depend on the whims of Google, so the idiosyncrasies of its search and other services is professionally interesting and not much more.

But to a growing legion of small and midsize e-commerce players today, Google's evolving rules and exact methodologies can devastate—or make wildly successful—and these are matters where those small players have virtually no say.

Despite efforts by Yahoo and others in recent months, no one has come close to touching Google's overwhelming marketshare for Web search. In the olden days, this was called "cornering the market" and it was a good thing, to be congratulated in the nearest wood-paneled corporate watering hole.

But there are few parallels to Google's success in the history of American commerce. In its heyday, Detroit's big three auto makers were king makers for tons of auto supply and car component firms, but their clout only impacted one vertical—automotive—and it was split among three manufacturers.

In Google's case, succcess is consolidated with one company and yet impacts any e-commerce anywhere around the globe, selling absolutely anything, from car doors to cream cheese to karate lessons.

If the latest Google rules smile on you, you'll have a very different day than if it changed their processes and you didn’t discover it until an hour after your competition did.

Source: eweek.com

Philipp made an interesting observation this morning about the difference between Google AdWords and AdSense units — the clickable zones on them are noticeably different enough to raise some concern. It appears AdSense units are designed for accidental clicks — or at least not designed for no accidental clicks.

A long time ago, Google made the ad units on their result pages only respond to clicks on the title link — before that, you could click anywhere on the advertisement. Why did they stop doing this? Here’s what they said: "these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad"

Now the question is, even after updates to AdSense, do they still allow “accidental” clicks? It seems to me this is being done in their best interest and at the same time ripping off a lot of advertisers who choose to show their ads in the AdSense network.

Source: blogs.zdnet.com

What could have prompted Yahoo to hire its first-ever chief compliance and ethics officer? Could it have been the criticism executives received at the annual shareholders meeting about two weeks ago over Yahoo's cooperation with the Chinese government on censorship?

Yahoo allegedly provided information about a Yahoo Mail user in China to the government that led to his arrest and subsequent 10-year sentence. That man, a journalist, recently joined a lawsuit filed against Yahoo in the U.S. in April by the World Organization for Human Rights USA and the wife of a Chinese dissident who claims Yahoo aided in his arrest and conviction as well.

On Thursday, Yahoo announced that it has hired David C. Farrell to develop the company's global ethics program. His responsibilities will include working to ensure the compliance with corporate best practices and overseeing data privacy and corporate social responsibility efforts.

Farrell previously served as the chief compliance officer at Sun Microsystems.

At the rancorous June 12 meeting, Yahoo shareholders blasted then Chief Executive Terry Semel for the company's declining revenue growth and stock price, which likely played a part in Semel stepping down the following week. He handed the reins to Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

Also at that meeting, Yahoo shareholders rejected two proposals related to the company's international policies, including one that asked the company to commit to not proactively censoring its Internet sites in other countries, and another that asked the company to establish a committee on human rights.

Maybe this is Yahoo's compromise.

Source: news.com.com

One of the most common questions our support teams receive from advertisers is “why can’t I see my ad on Google?” While it may seem like a good idea to monitor your ad by searching for it, here's a list (in no particular order) of possible account issues that are difficult, if not impossible, to troubleshoot by simply looking for your ad on Google.com:

1. Your ad has been disapproved.
2. The keyword you used to search for your ad is not performing well and has become inactive for search.
3. Your ad rank is not high enough to allow your ad to show on the first page of search results.
4. Your ad is showing, but in a lower position possibly due to a shift in the competitive landscape.
5. Your regionally targeted ad doesn't include the region (e.g. city, state, or country) associated with your computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address.
6. Your ad is targeting a language that’s different from the language you’ve selected for your Google.com preferences.
7. Your daily budget has been exhausted and your ads are no longer showing for the day.
8. Your daily budget is lower than the recommended amount and Google is spacing the delivery of your ads to ensure you receive traffic throughout the day.
9. You’re using ad scheduling and your ads are currently not scheduled to run.
10. Your account hasn’t been activated.

AdWords is all about results and we understand that you want to monitor your ads. However, searching for your ads on Google can lead to a diluted clickthrough rate (CTR) as well as account changes based on results that may not represent what the average user sees (more on both points later). For these reasons, we strongly recommend against monitoring your ads solely based on a Google.com search. Below, we've highlighted three great tools to help you monitor your ads quickly, accurately, and without negatively impacting your performance:

1. "Search” using the Ad Preview page rather than Google.com

For those of you who search for your ads simply to monitor their positions on Google.com, the Ad Preview page is a perfect alternative. The Ad Preview page enables you to view ads (and search results) as they would appear on a regular Google.com search results page to most users, without accruing extra impressions for your ad. Remember, anytime you or your colleagues search for your ad on Google.com, the keyword associated with your ad accrues an impression. Over time, this may decrease your CTR (as the number of impressions increases but the clicks do not) and, in turn, may lead to a lower Quality Score.

In addition, if you search for your ad multiple times on Google.com (not using the Ad Preview page), our system may adapt the results you see. This means you may begin to see your ad in a lower position than before.

You can access the Ad Preview page by adding “/adpreview” to the end of the usual Google URL – http://www.google.com/adpreview.

2. Use the Ads Diagnostic Tool

For ads that don’t seem to be showing at all, the Ads Diagnostic Tool is a good place to start. Located within your AdWords account, the tool can tell you if your ads are not showing due to approval status, cost-per-click (CPC) and budget price settings, ad and keyword performance, ranking status, geo-targeting settings, etc.

You can access the Ads Diagnostic Tool information two different ways – for a quick diagnosis, point your mouse at the magnifying glass icon next to any keyword in your account. A help bubble will appear with information about that keyword. For a more thorough analysis, go to the tool itself by clicking Tools on the Campaign Management tab.

3. Account statistics and reporting

Your best bet when monitoring or troubleshooting your ad activity is reviewing the statistics in your account. Unlike searching for your ad, your account statistics provide a comprehensive overview of how your ads are performing overall. These statistics can provide you with the average position of a keyword that's calculated, not estimated, across all the geographic locations, languages, network sites, etc. that you're targeting.

In addition, your account offers numerous reports that you can run as needed, or schedule to run and have emailed to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis – this means you get all the data without even having to log in to your account!

We understand that it's natural to search Google.com when curious about how your ads are performing; however, we hope you'll keep in mind that how your ad appears, or in some cases doesn't appear, for you, may not reflect how it appears to the vast majority of people who are searching for your product or service each day.

For more information please visit: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/07/not-seeing-your-ad-on-googlecom.html