Google to Crack Down on “Click Arbitrage”

Google plans to crack down on AdWords clients who use low quality landing pages for their websites. Particularly those people who’ve set up “Adsense-only” pages that attract clicks from various keyword searches. The click arbitrage problem begins with advertisers who purchase keywords at the minimum bid price using Google AdWords.

Users who click that ad end up on an AdSense page which is usually filled with AdSense or other contextual advertising that pays the advertiser a higher cost per click than the advertiser paid for the keyword in the AdWord ad in the first place.

Google Keeps You Organized

Google aims to keep YOU and a few of your online friends, associated and colleagues organized with the recently released Google Calendar (beta of course.) Here’s the official line from a recent edition of the Google friends newsletter:

If you have a work life, a home life, and a social life, you know the challenge of tracking all of it - and then there’s coordinating with friends and family members too. The new Google Calendar can help. You can create a calendar, share it with anyone you invite, and send event invitations right from your calendar. It’s also integrated with Gmail so you can directly add events that are mentioned in your email messages. Perhaps most important, Google Calendar supports other popular calendar applications so you can easily import and export your scheduled info.

Check it out Google Calendar.

Adwords for Radio

Adding to its lineup of innovations and acquisitions, Google is eyeing personal GPS-based radio advertising using via the Adwords program. From the Micro Markets Blog:

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, believes that when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs. For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store.

New Google Earth 4.0

The newest version of Google Earth is here (version 4.) It’s available for the PC, Mac and Linux and platforms and supports the German, Italian, French and Spanish languages. There’s also an Enterprise-grade edition available for corporate users. The new version comes with even more high-res imagery.

You can get Google Earth 4.0 here. More info available on the Google blog.

The New, Hip, and Trendy Google.

Google Trends was released today which will let you compare search result totals to each other. Basically lets you see what is searched for the most between any given amount of terms. It’s pretty cool I think.

trends

A Field Day In The Google Press Room

Today is Google’s Press Day, which means they are releasing a lot of information about new products and it’s a small Q&A session with some of the big kahoona’s. Matt Cutts has some good information and some good questions.

As a taste…

Q: Delivering clicks to the right people important; how do you handle click fraud?

A: Click fraud is something that Google monitors for carefully. It’s a big focus for us as one of many things that we pay attention to, because Return on Investment

Read more on Matt’s site.

Will U Marry Me?

Looks like someone is getting married :)

marry me?

How Dangerous Is the Speed Limit?

I saw this video and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to post it here. Everyone needs to head over and watch this video. It really puts the test in practice of the ’speed limit’. How dangerous is the speed limit?

Google Gets a Facelift — New Beta Design

Google Beta

Google is undergoing a little makeover right now. They are sending out beta trials of the new design to random datacenters and I happen to hit tonight. I’m not a fan of it because it feels like it’s going to become very commercialized and quickly with that new sidebar. I like it on the top and all the search results where they are. You may say ‘no, that’s just because that’s what you’re used to’. Well, maybe, but I really don’t like it at all. They are wasting white space in the header now that they were using prior with those links. Maybe they’re trying to rally up the usage of the other services they provide…who knows.

Have you beed paged yet?

GooglePages Home - Beta

GooglePages has released in Beta (no doubt) — because beta is the new cool — but really, this service is for the amateurs that haven’t ever dealt with web design before. They are a little late in the game because GeoCities, AngelFire, and many other companies already do this, but this is just going to be another service of Google. They are priving many free services, this will only add to that list of services. This may be a good addition to the Blogger portion of Google already — their blogging platform. You should head over and sign up to be notified when you use the service.

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