Make Money Online

As 2008 winds down, we’d like to follow tradition and close out the year with a look back at a few of the biggest happenings in AdSense.

In 2008, we introduced new features like AdSense for feeds and an improved version of AdSense for search to help you generate additional forms of revenue. We brought Google Ad Manager out of beta to help publishers with smaller direct sales teams more efficiently sell, schedule, and deliver their ad inventory. At the same time, we worked towards providing more information within AdSense accounts. In April, we enabled the Ad Review Center in all accounts to help you review ads placement-targeted to your sites. And in response to requests for more insight into your reports, we launched link unit reporting and began inviting publishers to link their AdSense accounts with Analytics.

Internationally, we launched AdSense for content in Thai and also expanded Western Union payments to a number of new countries such as Egypt, Taiwan, and Panama. To help more publishers find answers to their questions, we launched AdSense Help Forums in Hebrew, Czech, and Slovak.

On the English Help Forum, we celebrated our 50,000th member and then unveiled a new platform with additional capabilities. Now, forum participants can vote on the best answer to their questions, subscribe to individual discussions, and receive replies to their threads via email.

In news closest to home here on the blog, the Inside AdSense family continued to grow with the launch of blogs in Russian and Traditional Chinese. With your support, our 13 global AdSense blogs received 3.8 million pageviews from 2.4 million visits this year. Through our blogs, we brought you a Newbie Fridays series, ‘Optimisation Essentials‘ videos from our Australian team, and began distributing AdSense stickers. Check out the sticker requests, postcards, and notes we received in the photo on the right

Last but not least, the 2008 Reader’s Choice Award for this year’s most visited post goes to our April Fool’s joke, ‘Introducing AdSense for conversations’. Co-author Julie Beckmann had this to say: “A lot of hard work went into omega testing the product for this post. While I found the hat fit snugly, I was disappointed to learn the effect my Orange County upbringing had on my chats — 17 ‘like’s’ sprinkled into a two-minute conversation? My chats aren’t fit to be placement-targeted.”

Thanks for helping to contribute to an eventful 2008 — we’re looking forward to an even more exciting 2009. Happy New Year!

Posted by Arlene Lee – AdSense Publisher Support

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Year in review: 2008

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I’m very impressed to see these thoughtful blogging guidelines from the US Air Force. Corporations should take some notes from these very clear tips, that also leave room for creative response.

See original here:
Air Force Blogging Guidelines

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As 2008 comes to an end, we all get a fresh start in 2009. Whether you’re beginning to dabble in internet marketing or encounter it on an everyday basis, here are some basic tips to be a better internet marketer in 2009.

1. Read, read, read! I personally read many blogs daily. If you’re unsure where to start, you can go to Alltop.com where most of the popular blogs reside. There are Alltop sites for SEO, SEM and Social Media.

2. If you’re not on Twitter, sign up! Twitter is a great way to learn from others and interact with people that are in the same industry as you. As soon as you follow one person, see who they follow. You probably follow one person because they’re interesting to you, so you’re bound to find someone else through them that interest you as well.

3. Be a Blogger, or at least contribute to one. Having a blog is quite a task, but if you have a lot to say about a specific topic there is always at least one person out there that will listen. Having a blog is also a great way to test different internet marketing strategies without redesigning your existing website.

Continued here:
How To Be a Better Internet Marketer in 2009

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Every year right about now we round up our blogging activity across Google. Ready? Here goes.

This is our 368th post of the year on the main Google blog, which is 23% more than in 2007. In addition to more posts, we are thrilled to know that we have many more readers now — 78% more, to be exact. The number of unique visitors jumped from 6,738,830 last year to more than 12 million (12,000,723) in 2008. And readers are coming from all over: the UK, Canada, India, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Japan and beyond. The top non-Google referrers are Yahoo, Digg, Reddit, Lifehacker and Slashdot.

We posted quite a bit about new products (10) and new product features (56), but nothing caused as much excitement as our earlier-than-planned unveiling of Google Chrome. This post alone had 1,735,093 unique visitors and generated 12% of our total-year pageviews on the blog! There was also the much-anticipated announcement of the first Android-powered phone. And people enjoyed reading about our design philosophies. Who knew a little change to a favicon would generate such interest?

But it wasn’t all just product news; there was much else to cover in 2008. To mark Google’s 10th birthday, we took a moment to reflect on the enormous impact the Internet has had on people’s lives since our founding. Some of our in-house experts shared their thoughts on how various technologies will evolve in the next 10 years.

Like many of you, we were on the edge of seats watching all of the U.S. election action. We posted 27 times about political subjects, providing information about voting tools, how the political process works, and what was top of mind on Election Day. It’s clear that technology will be playing an even bigger role in politics in years to come.

Of course, we had some fun too: We kept our long-standing April Fools’ Day tradition going with the announcement of Project Virgle; we covered new ways to get around the Googleplex and the masterminding of a giant Ferris wheel; and we raised our glass to a couple who got married with Google.

And the Google blog network keeps on growing: 44 new blogs launched this year, for a total of 127 active company blogs. A few highlights: eight new developer blogs (the Open Source blog is shining star, with 370,000 unique visitors since its start in February), and 22 new ads-related blogs, nearly half of which are in languages other than English (there are AdSense blogs in Traditional Chinese and Russian; and AdWords blogs in Danish, German, Turkish, French, Russian, Korean, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Spanish). There’s even an Analytics blog in French. And we also welcomed three new regional blogs, for India, Africa, and the Ukraine. Sharing information with people wherever they are in whatever language they speak is a priority for us, and each of these new blogs helps us get a little bit closer to this goal. If the total number of Google blogs makes your head spin, don’t worry. We’ve developed a new blog directory and gadget to help you more easily track news and updates from us.

We’re looking forward to another robust year of keeping you informed of all the goings-on at Google. In the meantime, we wish you and yours a very happy New Year.

Posted by Susan Straccia, Google Blog Team

See original here:
Google blogging in 2008

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The holidays are a time for giving, and Googlers across the globe have found some creative ways to give back to their communities this season. From raising money and crafting greeting cards to building gingerbread houses and giving blood, Googlers from east to west have been busy spreading good cheer. We’ve highlighted just a few of these efforts here, and we’re looking forward to many more opportunities to give back in the new year.

London
The UK engineering recruitment team started to plan its annual Secret Santa gift exchange. But as they began thinking about last year, they realized that hardly anyone on the team could remember what they’d received, let alone given. Instead of spending 10 pounds on gag gifts, they decided to use the money to make a difference. After discovering that a local children’s hospital was in desperate need of gifts, they quickly raised enough money to buy a Nintendo Wii gaming console for one of the wards.

Mexico City
In the past, Google has held a “Doodle 4 Google” contest in the US, the UK, and Australia, inviting kids K-12 to submit a homepage doodle inspired by a particular theme. This year Mexico held its first such contest (theme: “the Mexico we want”). For each doodle submitted, Google donated to a non-profit that works to eradicate childhood malnutrition in Mexico. In total, more than 70,000 kilos (154,000 pounds) of food and aid were donated. Winner, Ana Karen Villagómez, was recently recognized in a ceremony in Mexico City; her doodle (pictured below) will appear on the Google homepage on January 6.

Boston and beyond
Boston Googlers delivered gifts to some very grateful students at a local school and spent the morning reading and playing with the children. The Chicago office held its first-ever holiday blood drive, donating 36 units of blood. And the Ann Arbor office held a “CANstruction” competition, creating sculptures out of canned food, personal items and baby items, which were all later donated.

We hope that your holiday season is filled with plenty of time to slow down and reflect on what’s important to you, and that you too feel inspired to find ways to give back to your own community in the new year.

Posted by Eileen Duffy and Sarah Falck, AdWords Account Associates

See original here:
A grateful season

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You know those little icons on your desktop that designate the presence of a active program or the same icons in a browser that designate the presence of an active file? Mac or PC you have been using them for years, right? Well according to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) only Michigan based Cygnus Systems, Inc. owns the rights to visual representation of that active program or file via a thumbnail. And Cygnus is suing to protect those rights.

According to Ars Technica, application developer Cygnus first filed for the patent in 2001 as a continuation of an original application filed in 1998. The patent covers thumbnails, or more specifically the navigation and access of files based on representational thumbnails.  In May 2008 US Patent # 7,346,850 was granted.

It is a shining example of what is wrong with the US Patent system which is woefully incapable of dealing with either the rapid growth of new technology online or the expanding number of companies that exist in the space.

Established in 1790, the purpose of the US Patent Office is to issue state and federally recognized writs designed to help protect legitimate innovation. As long as there have been inventors there have been profiteers who seek to use intellectual property as leverage against a competitor or simply to extort money.  In such cases, the existence of a patent can protect the creative, intellectual and financial rights of the holder.

However, modern patent profiteers are not so easily contained.  As Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy stated in a concurring May 2006 eBay Inc v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006) decision,

“In cases now arising… the nature of the patent being enforced and the economic function of the patent holder present considerations quite unlike earlier cases. An industry has developed in which firms use patents not as a basis for producing and selling goods but, instead, primarily for obtaining licensing fees.” (PDF of text of the decision)

The Case of Amazon

Let’s take as an example one of the most famous cases, US Patent # 5,960,411, known as the Amazon 1-Click patent which covers a “method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network.” Twenty-three days after the patent was issued Amazon tried unsuccessfully to wield it as a weapon against Barnes & Noble in a suit filed in 1999.

This led to cries for a boycott of Amazon spearheaded by the slightly fanatical Richard Stallman. Thankfully, mainstream voices like Tim O’Reilly founder of O’Reilly Media, jumped in. O’Reilly stated he felt Amazon’s patent was, “a land grab, an attempt to hoodwink a patent system that has not gotten up to speed on the state of the art in computer science.”

The 1-Click suit was settled in 2002 under undisclosed terms. Shortly after the settlement Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos posted an open letter on patents (interestingly the letter can no longer be found on the Amazon site). In the letter Bezos calls for patent reform stating that the “vast majority of our competitive advantage will…come not from patents”. He does however say that they will not give up their patents; instead Amazon will simply be more careful in how they use them.

But the fact is that Amazon also owns the patents for 404 Pages (US Patent # 7,325,045) and for Affiliate Referrals (US Patent # 6,029,141) among a host of others the common use of which can be found on almost every website online.

Think about it.  How many web designers and how many company websites use 404 pages?  Almost every website you see online today. And as for affiliate referrals, well apparently the whole industry is indebted to Amazon.

Hopefully the backlash from Amazon’s use of the 1-Click patent was strong enough that they learned from the “harvest of ill-will”, as O’Reilly put it, received from the online community. However, Amazon’s current patents, including the cookie patent which is still active, cover more territory than I feel comfortable leaving to any one company’s discretion.

Should Software be Patentable?

The case against patenting software or codeware is made using three arguments:

1. Software is already afforded copyright protection thus it is adequately protected
2. The creation of software code is not dissimilar to mathematical algorithms which are not patentable. According to Gottschalk v. Benson 409 U.S. 63 (1972) “an algorithm or mathematical formula is like a law of nature, which cannot be the subject of a patent.”
3. Software patents currently 17-20 years in term, have a disparate negative impact on freeware and thus stifle innovation.

Personally, I feel that the copyright argument only is tenable in cases where the software is sold via packaging or download. Designed to protect the publication, distribution and adaptation of an author’s work, copyright does a very poor job protecting code tied to web development as any site that has been scraped can testify, due to lack of enforcement ability.

The math argument is indeed perplexing due to the similarities between math and code. However, the way software has evolved, allowing for people and companies to interact with it through hardware in a way that is inherently different than the way math has evolved due to ease of access. The idea that under the math argument, patent law would treat have to treat software different than hardware which through common use it is coupled with, is untenable to me.

Finally there is the argument of the disparate impact on freeware. It is true that large corporations have the legal resources to wield patent legislation tactically against potential competitors. The reverse edge of the argument is that under the current structure corporations also have the legal resources to stifle Open Source software by patenting ideas that are already in the public domain.

Rise of the Prior Art Database

The call for patent reform as put forward by O’Reily and Bezos was published in 2000. In his letter, Bezos states that the process could take “2 years or more”. Ironically that is approximately the date of the settlement with Barnes and Noble. Aside from putting that issue to rest has anything significant change happened?

Although it was mentioned again in a Wired interview, the prior art database which would provide an easily accessible resource of prior art examples to help determine the originality of an invention, that Bezos’ offered to fund in his letter has never materialized.

Even though Bezos wasn’t able to put together his version of a public focused prior art database several other have stepped up to do so. The Open Invention Network launched what it calls the LinuxDefenders.org. Co-sponsored by the Software Freedom Law Center and the Linux Foundation its mission is to, “eliminate poor quality patents…and codify known inventions” thus protecting individuals from larger corporations. It advocates a peer review process for issued patents and the creation of defensive publications to high light prior art instances. Others include Wikipatents and the Peer to Patent Wiki.

Clash of the Titans

In 2007 a coalition of Patent Fairness was formed specifically to help push legislative reform. Members included Amazon, along with: Apple, Cisco, Dell, Google, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, Palm Inc., SAP, Time Warner and Visa among hundreds of others. Their stated mission is to “improve the quality of the patents being issued” and “re-balancing and strengthening the patent system”. Many of their goals were made into what’s known as the Patent Reform Act of 2007 (H.R. 1908, S. 1145).

The problem with reforming the US Patent System, as with any legislative body, is the complex number of special interests and industries such changes potentially impact. The Patent Reform Act sought to create major changes in the current system including:

1. eliminating so-called “submarine patents” often used by patent trolls that purposefully keep patents hidden only to target companies for lawsuits who unknowingly infringe on them
2. allowing for a post-grant review process via petition instead of the current limited options of litigation or USPTO reexamination
3. changing the system from a “first-to-invent” system to a “first-to-file” system which would bring the USPTO in line with the rest of the world

The Patent Reform Act met with heavy resistance.  General Electric, DuPont, Corning and many universities stepped up to defend what they saw as an attack on the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. The AFL-CIO  resisted the bill with concerns (pdf) that it would weaken protection for American manufacturers. And a coalition of headed by the Patent Office Professionals Association expressed concerns (pdf) that changes would “significantly weaken…the strongest (patent system) in the world”.

Despite the resistance the Act did pass the House of Representative in 2007. The Act however stalled in the Senate in 2008 where it fell out of the Judiciary Committee process allowing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull the bill from the floor schedule.

Cygnus’ Thumb

All of which leads us back to Cygnus Systems, Inc. which filed suit on Friday against Microsoft, Apple and Google over representational thumbnails. The lawsuit lays down a scattershot of features it feels infringes on Cygnus’ patent including those found in: Window’s Explorer, Apple’s Finder, Opera, iPhone, Safari, and Google’s Chrome. The suit not only goes after retroactive damages but also seeks a “permanent injunction” against further infringement.

Now I don’t know if Cygnus’s owner Gregory Swartz is a patent troll. He may genuinely feel he is simply protecting a technology that he developed.  In theory Swartz should have provided the USPTO with any examples of prior art he was able to find, “if” (as the law reads now in Rule 1.56) he was able to find such examples. It is telling that Information Week writer Dave Methvin found “after only five minutes of searching” prior art examples of the thumbnails in a book by David Karp titled Windows 98 Annoyances (got to love the irony in that name).

What I do know is that 10 years is far too long of a timeframe for a patent to be reviewed prior to being granted. As of the end of Fiscal Year 2008 (pdf) there are 1,208,076 patent applications still pending at the USPTO which essentially indicates a 3 year backlog. That’s a clear sign of an organization that doesn’t have the capacity to keep up with the times, much less the resources required to the determine validity of something as minuscule as a tracking cookie or as abstract as a 404 page.

Although the IEEE does raise valid points (pdf) against the structure of the Patent Reform Act as it languishes in the Senate, some sort of reform must happen. I think the easiest methods would be to a) shorten the length of software patents down to around 5 years; and b) modify US patent rule 1.56 to stop rewarding willful ignorance and require companies to search for prior art.

Without reform our industry can never hope to get out from under the thumbs of these patent trolls.

Originally posted here:
Cygnus Provides Reminder Everything is Still Patently Unclear

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Just thought I’d share a quick experience I’ve had these past couple weeks dealing with the smaller search engines. I’m sure others have had great success with them and this post isn’t meant to be any “guide”, it’s just what I’ve experienced.

I have a niche running now and it’s doing very well, actually better than any campaign I’ve ever run. My big meat of traffic here came from Google, but I wanted to expand and test out a bunch of smaller traffic sources to see what would happen and try and boost the revenue up a little more. Here’s what I tested and how it went :

Looksmart - always hated Looksmart but figured I’d test it. Sent a bunch of clicks with 0 conversions, total bust here and I’ll probably never even bother with them again.

Ask.com - this was the highest volume, I hit my $250 budget easily every day. Shame I spent $750 without a single conversion, the links were working and everything so it was just the traffic. No beans here.

Miva - this was my first time playing around with Miva. Their system is horrible and errored out a hundred times before I just gave up with it. Send a few clicks in a few days before I just paused it. Bust.

MSN/Yahoo - these guys are 2 of the big 3, but I’ve just grown to dislike them more and more over time, especially Yahoo. Yahoo tries to copy Google in almost every aspect and just fails bigtime over it. MSN isn’t too bad, I guess I just have bad luck over there because it doesn’t convert that well.

Pretty much I learned that with this niche at least, I’m going to stick primarily to Google content. It’s just not worth it to mess with the others when even if they profited, would make 1/20 of what Google makes because of the drop in volume.

And in general, I’ll probably just stick with Google, Facebook, and Myspace for my traffic sources. They’re all a pain to work with in 1 way or another, but they all do work if you can figure them out.

More here:
Experiences w/ Smaller Traffic Sources

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Link baiting is a technique used to generate inbound links to your website. When done properly, this style of content will get you more links, better keyword relevance, improved online visibility, greater authority, and more trust from the search engines. With all these benefits, it’s no surprise that link baiting has become a staple in internet marketing. However, it’s easy to make mistakes when link baiting, effectively shooting yourself in the foot.

1. Being Controversial for No Good Reason- If there was a yearly reward, then Wired Magazine’s Paul Boutin would be the de facto prize winner this year with his now infamous piece entitled Kill Your Blog. Remember that link bait doesn’t have to be synonymous with controversy. Sure, a great percentage of link bait is controversial content, but there are other styles of link baiting that work just as well (how-to’s, tools, resources, etc.) So, if you have a reason to be controversial, go right ahead. But if you’re just trying to stir the pot to generate some buzz, people will see right through your flame baiting ways.
2. Not Understanding Your Audience- Another common link baiting mistake is the author not understanding his or her audience. Social media users are finicky individuals. If your link bait is aimed at going hot on Digg, Reddit, or another social media site, you need to write in a way that connects with them. If you don’t understand what they like, they’ll be all too happy to bury you.
3. Failing to Deliver on Headline’s Promise- But it’s not enough to write a great headline; your next task is to deliver on your headline’s promise. Don’t trick your audience with a gimmick headline that doesn’t reflect the content in your post. Here’s an example. I recently clicked on an article offering 10 strategies on a particular subject. When I landed on the article, it had just 3 tips, and it said the rest of the list would be in a future post. Needless to say, I never went back.
4. Not Knowing How to Promote Link Bait- Contrary to popular belief, great content doesn’t always go hot. It’s not enough to simply craft the perfect piece of link bait; you have to know how to promote it as well. The best thing you can do is to find someone well versed in social media marketing. Get to know someone who routinely gets content to go hot on the major social media sites, and you’ll significantly improve your chances of having a successful piece of link bait.
5. Not Editing Your Content- Remember earlier when I said social media users are picky and have no problem burying you? Well, the quickest way to have them turn against you is to not edit your content. Whether you make silly grammatical errors or your information is just wrong, a poor editing job can kill your link bait’s chances of catching on. Don’t give people an extra incentive to bury your content.
6. Having an Unreliable Web Host- Even if you don’t make any of the above mistakes, your link bait can still fail because of a bad hosting service. The last thing you want is for all of your hard work to be negated because your server crashes. Make sure your site is ready to survive the Digg effect before you publish and promote your content.
7. Offering Nothing New- This perhaps is the most important item to remember; once you have hooked your audience you have to provide them with fresh new content. Think about this way: why would tons of people link to a post that’s been done multiple times before? If you don’t offer your readers something new, they won’t feel compelled to reward you with inbound links. Remember to put your unique stamp on your content.

The bottom line is even if you don’t make any of these mistakes, your link bait still might fail. It’s an inexact science that requires a long term commitment to be successful. But limiting your mistakes will increase your chances of generating more links to your website.

7 Common Link Baiting Mistakes

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From all of us here in Mountain View, have a safe and happy holiday season!

(Members of the AdSense, DoubleClick, and Google Ad Manager teams pictured above.)

Posted by Arlene Lee – AdSense Publisher Support

More here:
Warm wishes

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When I look back on four years of tracking Old St. Nick on Christmas Eve, I can’t help but smile. The Santa tracker has really come a long way. I always thought NORAD’s Santa Tracker was a great holiday tradition, but I felt like it could have been even better if people could visualize exactly where Santa was on Christmas Eve. So in 2004, shortly after Keyhole was acquired by Google, we followed Santa in the “Keyhole Earth Viewer” — Google Earth’s original name — and we called it the “Keyhole Santa Radar.” The audience was relatively small since Keyhole was still a for-pay service at that point, and we hosted everything on a single machine shared with the Keyhole Community BBS server. We probably should have had three separate servers to host the Santa tracker — that first year, we had only a portion of a single machine. That night, about 25,000 people kept tabs on Santa and, needless to say, wreaked some havoc on our servers!

Over the next two years, our Santa-tracking efforts improved dramatically. By December 2005, Keyhole had become Google Earth and our audience had become much, much larger. Our “Santa Radar” team also grew: we used greatly improved icons from Dennis Wang, the Google Doodler, and set up 20 machines to serve the tracking information. My colleague Michael Ashbridge took over the software and more than 250,000 people tracked Santa on Google Earth that Christmas Eve. In 2006, Google acquired SketchUp, a 3D modeling software that enabled us to include models of Santa’s North Pole workshop and sleigh. We also incorporated a tracking feed directly from NORAD’s headquarters, and we were now displaying NORAD’s information in Google Earth. That year, more than a million people tracked Santa.

In 2007, Google became NORAD’s official Santa Tracking technology partner and hosted www.noradsanta.org. In addition to tracking Santa in Google Earth, we added a Google Maps tracker and integrated YouTube videos into the journey as well. Now, we had Santa on the map and on “Santa Cam” arriving in several different locations around the world, with commentary in six different languages. The heavy traffic — several millions of users — put Google’s infrastructure to the test, but with some heroic work by our system reliability engineers, the Santa Tracker worked continuously.

This year, Googler Bruno Bowden is in charge of the Santa software, and we have further upgraded our server capacity. We’re hoping this version of the tracker will be the best yet. In addition to our “Santa Cam” footage, geo-located photos from Panoramio will be viewable in Google Maps for each of Santa’s stops that don’t include video. We’ve also included a few new ways to track Santa. With Google Maps for mobile, anyone can keep tabs on him from their mobile phones (just activate GMM and search for “norad santa”). You can also receive updates from “Bitz the Elf” on Twitter by following @noradsanta. And of course, be sure to visit www.noradsanta.org tomorrow morning starting at 6:00 am EST when Santa’s journey begins. Enjoy, and see you in 2009!

Posted by Brian McClendon, Original Google Engineering Elf

Read more from the original source:
Tracking Santa: the backstory

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Among the “Twitterati” (or should we call them “Twits”?) we’ve recently found out that our own CEO is considered one of the “Twitter Elite” of Boca Raton, Florida. Well, we always knew Jay was special, but even Twitter recognizes it now.

This is a cool tool that gives you some insight into yours or any Twitter profile. Check out Twitter.Grader.com to see how you measure up.

Source:
Twitter Elite

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Excerpted from:
Twitter vs. Facebook

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We all know how it feels to find the perfect gift. After scouring stores far and wide, suddenly your hunt is over: the stars have aligned to bring you just what you’re looking for — and not a moment too soon. It’s a bit the same way when a search brings you to just the right site. But what if your site’s just the right site, and users can’t find it?

We’re happy to let you know that you don’t need divine forces to play a role in the findability of your site. Nope — you can help make sure that your site turns up just when it should by taking advantage of these tips from our Search Quality Team.

1. Not sure if all your pages are being seen by Google? Search for your site’s address after the command “site”, like [site:example.com]. When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the topic of a particular page. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Webmaster Tools.

2. If you upload new pages or topics faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Google Sitemap and include a refresh rate.
3. Label your images appropriately. Users searching in Google Image Search will more easily find the image on your site. Don’t miss out on potential traffic because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg]. Image Search is one of the largest search properties out there, so you should take advantage of it.
4. Manage your SiteLinks. Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as SiteLinks, so remember you can remove any that you don’t think users will find useful.
5. Check for errors and keyword traffic in Webmaster Tools. See our diagnostics checklist.
6. Serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you’ve retired a page permanently, serve a 404. If you’ve simply relocated it, serve a 301. The more we know about your old pages, the faster we will find the next best page on your site for a given query.
7. Users and search engines like organic content. Make some of your own!
8. Read our recently released SEO Starter Guide.
9. Watch our Tutorials for Webmasters.
10. Find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
11. Get the latest updates from the Webmaster Central Blog.
12. Find answers to your questions in our Webmaster Help Center, or ask your questions in the Webmaster Help Group.

Whether it be the perfect gift, the perfect site, or the perfect cup of cocoa on a cold winter’s night, we hope all your searches are fruitful this holiday season.

Posted by Julie Beckmann – AdSense Publisher Support

See more here:
Light up your site

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It is no surprise that Google reigns supreme as the most utilized search engine based on November’s search query numbers. More interesting, however, is that Yahoo and MSN, the next most popular search engines respectively, were both outnumbered by YouTube searches. The total number of YouTube searches this November was 2.79 billion, more that the total 2.62 billion searches in Yahoo owned sites. Meanwhile, Microsoft and its sites barely stayed in the game with 1.05 billion searches in November.

Of course with YouTube being owned by Google, this is just another step toward Google’s search monopoly.

Credit:
YouTube Now Serves More Search Queries than Major Search Engines

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Dustup over Google’s Net Neutrality Stance

The more profit is made on the internet and the more the internet grows the more Net Neutrality becomes an issue. This week the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming Google was attempting to bump its content to the front of the line delivery wise by making direct deals with ISPs. If true this would be a major change in Google’s stance towards Net Neutrality. Richard Whitt, Google Washington Telecom and Media Counsel, fired back at the Journal stating the article was “confused” and that Google was simply trying to take advantage of edge caching.

If you are unfamiliar with Net Neutrality and make a living via the internet in anyway, we here at Revenews highly recommend you take the time to learn more. These fights over access rights will define how the future of the internet develops.

Dell Wrings Million Dollars from Twitter

While Twitter is still awaiting an internal monetization model to be developed other companies have taken advantage of marketing to the microblogging audience on their network. According to InternetNews, Dell has 65 active Twitter groups the largest being the Dell Home Outlet Store group which has a Twitter following of 2,475 members. Direct microblogging of discounts and product highlights has produced $1 million dollars in revenue for Dell on Twitter in 2008.

Affiliate Trust Launches

In an industry that is constantly struggling with ethical quandaries it is always a welcome sight when a new site is launched to help provide guidance on the right way to do things. Launched this week by Ed Byerly with support from ABestWeb Affiliate Trust’s purpose is to create an informational source, including campaigns, aimed at aggressively educating merchants about industry parasites. There should be plenty of fodder for Ed and his campaigns, it will be very interesting to see them rollout in 2009.

MOG Music Network Stiffs Affiliates for the Holidays

Speaking of a lack of ethics…the MOG Music Network just announced it was stiffing their affiliates in time for the holidays. In case you haven’t heard of MOG yet they are a network of independent music blogs where the affiliate sites are mostly made up of niche blogs that post the content, create traffic and supposedly share in the revenue. According to TechCrunch, MOG sent out an email essentially changing affiliate payment terms stating that October 2008 payments which hadn’t been issued yet would be pushed out 120 days along with all affiliate payments going forward. A perfect example of how to loose your affiliates.

Synthasite Buys Clickpass

Fronted by Revenews’ own Vinny Lingham Synthasite announced the purchase of Clickpass, which works on improving OpenID technology, for an undisclosed amount. Congratulations to Vinny on Synthasite’s continued growth.

Original post:
Cashing Out: Week of Dec 14th – 20th, 2008 in Online Marketing News

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