Google made a minor change to its interface last month, streamlining the look of its results and giving it a more corporate face. Results pages now include links across the top of the search box that direct users to other services, including Froogle the new online shopping comparison tool. You can currently get your site listed in Froogle provided you have your prices in US currency as well as your standard NZ or AU figures.
Google is really pushing the envelope by offering 1GB (yes, 1000 megabytes) of free storage through their new webmail site. Google announced the news on the 1st of April, along with details of its new lunar base planned for 2007, (the latter being an April fools prank.) Gmail however, is real & will offer advanced email searching capabilities, as well as spam protection. The service is estimated to cost Google $US2 per account per year, covered by AdWords advertising related to the text in your mail (expected $US1-10 per user per annumin ad revenue). Privacy issues have already been raised as Google states they may store messages long after a user has deleted it from their account. More here … here … and here.
Google has recently added all forms of casino advertising to its ban list on the global AdWords advertising program effective 1st May. Overture, who power Yahoo & MSN’s pay per click advertising, will also be banning Casino Ad’s, however at this stage only in the US. Google has banned phrases relating to medication and copyright/trademark terms in the past. More here…
Google has introduced the beginings of a new pricing scheme for AdWords, named “Smart Pricing”. It assigns each click a value based on a variety of factors, according to Google. New variables include the site on which the ad appears, and the portion of the site where the ad appears. The result should be cheaper clicks. More here…
Overture UK who power pay per click advertising on Yahoo UK, MSN UK, and other UK sites are working with Vodafone UK to bring ppc contextual advertising to WAP enabled mobile phones.
The search results on AltaVista and AllTheWeb are now powered by the Yahoo’s own search engine database.