Last Friday, Google’s Official Blog announced the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, the first big product to be born from Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick back in 2008.
The DoubleClick Ad Exchange offers an open marketplace for display ads, allowing advertisers to bid in real time for any ad space being sold by publishers across a variety of Websites.  Both Yahoo and Microsoft have been in advertising exchange since their 2007 acquisitions of RightMedia and AdCN respectively so the Ad Exchange is a little late to the party.

Google’s additional prep time was based on their belief “that a better system built on better technology can help grow the display advertising pie and benefit everyone.”

Ideally, the Ad Exchange will bring a new level of simplicity and transparency to the display advertising field.

Taking a cue from their success in search advertising, Google is welcoming display advertising n00bs.  The Display Ad Builder was recently launched for easy display ad and campaign set up. (This actually does look super simple to use.)  Current AdWord advertisers will be able to use their existing AdWords interface to run display ads on sites in the Ad Exchange.  More advertisers should equal more pie.  Publishers also benefit from the Ad Exchange’s real time bid feature which would allocate ad space based on who is willing to pay the most at that particular second, maximizing return for every impression.

At the same time, the Ad Exchange provides advertisers access to more publishers and tools to cost-effectively purchase ad space based on target audience and impression data.  Google is hoping to bring the ‘long tail’ concept from search into the display ad world by making it easier for advertisers to find cheaper, less popular sites that can bring similar or better return than the big ticket, high traffic sites.

Of course, this is where some ad executives reach a bump on Google’s road to a pie filled world, noting that if the Ad Exchange succeeds, the big ticket, high traffic sites are going face increasing competition from smaller, cheaper sites.  The Ad Exchange open market bidding could lower the price of high-end ad space which would be problematic for high-end publishers.

Others never believed in the pie filled world to begin with and shrug off the Ad Exchange as just another ad network.

As a dedicated Googler, I am eager to see where the Ad Exchange will take display advertising if anywhere at all.

There are so many of these “local search” engines all over the place today, helping small businesses increase their sales and promote their business for free.  Google’s Local Business Listings, Yahoo’s Local Listings, Yelp, Superpages, YellowPages…the list goes on and on.  If you’re a small business owner, the options are endless (this de-centralized nature of local search is actually the biggest problem facing the industry today, but that’s a topic for another day).

The biggest question, however, is what can we expect out of these local search engines?  Are they really any better than a simple search engine?  Think about it.  When was the last time you really used Yellowpages or SuperPages to find something?  Sure, I’ve used Yelp for some help on Restaurant reviews, but I’ve used MenuPages more.  I’ve never touched the Yahoo local listings, and the only way I’ve ever used Google’s local listings was when it was integrated into my basic searches.  I’ve never gone to local.Google.com to find the nearest hardware store in the city.  What I have done is search for the term “hardware store in nyc”.

Just where is all of this going?

Let’s backtrack a couple years, and look at history.  Back when Yahoo! was first starting out, there was no search feature.  Search engines really didn’t exist.  Back then, Yahoo! was a directory, and a very comprehensive one at that.  However, through the years, Search has evolved and become all that you really needed to find something on the internet.  Directories became obsolete.  Even though Yahoo! still hosts one of the most comprehensive directories on the web, people don’t really use it to find anything.  Search became the way everyone found whatever they needed.

I like to think of today’s local search industry in a similar manner.  Local search, while currently very cool and quite a novel idea, is still outclassed by the search engines that came before it.  The only one of these local search engines that I can see surviving into the distant future is Google Local, as the search giant has been working to integrate the service into its search engine seamlessly.

Well that’s a surprise…Google to take over the industry…again?

Earlier this summer a Microsoft employee created a “search engine taste test,” named BlindSearch, to test how results are evaluated when a search engine’s brand is taken out of the equation.  It works like this: A query is entered, then blind results are displayed from three engines (bing, Yahoo! And Google).

The disclaimer reads: “I work for Microsoft. This site is not affiliated with my employer, it is not a Microsoft initiative,  it’s simply me having fun in my spare time.”  But I think the premise is to make people reconsider why they feel Google is best.  I was skeptical that I’d like any of the results more than Google’s, so I gave it a go.  Here’s my not-so-scientific sample.  The terms I chose were things I am probably going to need to research in the near future.

My first search: “hanging picture on brick wall”

I need to do this, one of these days.  My naïve attempt ended with a chunk of brick on the ground; no picture hung.  Here’s what BlindSearch displays:

The rightmost columns’ top result links to a video that doesn’t exist.  It leads you to useless re-directs.  In the center column, the top result is an online website for hardware reminiscent of the internet in the 1990s.  The leftmost column’s top result leads to a simple and elegant solution, easy enough for me to understand exactly what I need (masonry nails!). Moreover, the top 4 results in the left column are much more relevant than the other columns.  I voted for that one. It was Google.

My next search was: “tennis balls soho nyc”

In this instance, two of the column’s top results direct me to “BumbleBee Tennis lessons” in NYC. This is nice, but irrelevant.  The third column first suggests NYMag reviews of sporting goods stores, then Yelp results for tennis shops in SoHo with reviews, addresses, and phone numbers.  Success!  It was Google.

My final search: “is this avocado rotten”

This is a real problem I had the other day.  At the time, I didn’t search to find out the answer, but I probably should have.  If I had, Yahoo would have sent me to a RottenTomatoes.com movie review of “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.” While I enjoy RottenTomatoes.com, this is ridiculous. The top results for Bing and Google are very similar, except Google favors results from answers.yahoo.com (a great resource, in my opinion), and Bing’s #3 result is about the band “Rotten Sound.”  Google wins this round too, but it was a close one.

Results: Google 3. Bing 0. Yahoo! 0.

Try it out yourself:

blindsearch.fejus.com

Which search engine did you vote for? The tool’s author, Michael Kordahi, recently reported results from the first 8 weeks of voting:

“8 weeks since the launch of BlindSearch and I figured it’s about time to report some numbers back

Query count: 559,239

Results: Google: 41%, Bing: 31%, Yahoo: 28%”

Since I started using Google years back, I never felt the need to switch engines.  This tool hasn’t changed that; if anything, it reaffirmed my position.  Maybe I’m too biased, but I don’t see Google losing its 64.7% search market share anytime soon.

Almost everyone I know drinks coffee, or some other sort of caffeinated beverage.  For me, caffeine helps me concentrate more on a long day, so that I can work more efficiently later in the workday.  For others, it gives them a slight boost to their performance on a day-to-day basis.  For others, it simply makes them…chipper.  At times, the effect includes a combination of all of the above, and makes us better, stronger…faster.

Imagine what the biggest, strongest, and fastest of the major search engines would be like should it get one of these so called, “caffeine boosts.”  What would it be like?  Imagine all that you could do, with Google, powered up by a good, healthy dose of caffeine!  Wouldn’t you love to experience the awesome power of a beefed up Google?

Well now, you can.  Google has recently released its hands-on preview of their latest update to Google’s search architecture, code-named, you guessed it, “Caffeine.”  Caffeine, the preview of which can be found at http://www2.sandbox.google.com, is primarily an under the hood update that’s focused on improving the foundation of the search architecture in the search engine.  Google’s Webmaster Central teams says that this is “the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and other dimensions.”  Although there will be very minor tweaks that we probably won’t even notice right now, what this update does is open the doors for major, and dramatic changes in Google in the future.  With all the hype surrounding Bing and its newfound partnership with Yahoo, the real significant change in the future of search engines started right here, with this little, seemingly insignificant update in Google.

Again, let’s think hypothetically…what if Google was a real-time search engine?  Just throwing that thought out there…

An old standby, Google, is slowly transitioning Adwords users toward a new interface. The new Adwords interface has a lot of great features. Yet, as I am resistant to change, I’ve been reluctantly going back and forth since April to try and wean myself off the old interface. I finally got used to the new interface. In fact, I’m actually starting to like it better.
But that’s not the point of this post. Besides being sleeker and easier to use- I’m 100% converted to the new interface because *gasp* I found an error in the old one. After a couple of months of use, I discovered a few campaign issues that were only visible in the new interface.  Google slipped up- let me tell you the story.

The Case of the Missing Campaign

While in the old interface I decide to create an image ad campaign.  I set the settings, added my image ad, keywords and activated my campaign as usual.  Once I completed all the normal steps Adwords took me back to the main Campaign Summary screen.  Except something was different this time around, the campaign I had just created wasn’t there.  First I checked the show section.  OK, yes I’m showing all.  Am I going crazy?  I went to the Tools page, then my Change History page.  It’s there, I created it.  I click the campaign in My Change History; A big, red Incomplete in the status section.  I go back to the Campaign Summary screen…not there.
I call Google. The first person I speak to thinks I’m crazy until I tell them to check My Change History. Their advice: create the campaign again.  I hang-up, decide to go against their advice and call back.  The next person had no idea what I was talking about, claiming not only could they see my campaign, but it was active and had impressions. WHAT is going on here?!  After arguing back and forth the nice Google representative calmly said “are you in the new interface or previous interface?”
Case closed: the image ad campaign was active in the new interface.  But what caused the campaign to go missing?  Will the campaign ever turn up in the previous interface?  These questions are left unanswered.

Status is Everything

In a campaign I recently created in the old interface, I realized after a day that my campaign was not getting impressions. I checked the keyword statuses. Showing ads right now?  Yes.  Ad status: active.  Everything looked normal to me.
What do I do? I call Google.
This time the Google representative was in the new interface and knew exactly what the issue was. In the new interface the ad status was still pending review.  Again: no rhyme or reason as to why this happened.

The Moral of the Story

Even if you hate change like me, in online marketing, campaigns are everything. Don’t let any slip ups in the old interface affect your earnings. Switch to the new interface today.

There’s been much hoopla about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.  Bloggers all over have been talking about it.  It’s the topic of discussion these days.  This isn’t going to be a review of Bing.  I’m sure you can find hundreds of them anywhere online, written by people scrambling to write about either “the next big thing” or Microsoft’s “next big blunder.”  Take your pick.  There’s plenty of both.

No, what I am going to discuss here is what Bing’s release means for the search world? What does it really mean for the online community? These are the important questions that should be asked by everybody.  “How does it affect me?”

Before we get into all that, let’s slow down and take a look at what Bing really is.  Microsoft, in its press release, said that Bing “was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences.” In other words, Bing was developed to organize the world’s information in online search, because apparently, there’s too much of it currently in online search?  And by “today’s search experiences,” Microsoft is talking about Google, right?

Lofty goals, of course.  Microsoft wants Bing to be the search engine of the future because apparently, Google isn’t good enough.  Using Bing, though, I keep on getting the feeling that there’s nothing here on Bing that isn’t on already on Google, or that isn’t incredibly easy to access on Google.  I guess you can make a case for the travel portion of Bing, but even on Google, just search for travel, flights, even Kayak, and you’ll get the same service that Microsoft is using for Bing.

What it looks like, is that today June 3, 2009, on Bing’s official release date, Microsoft unveiled what looks like an attempt to copy Google, years after Google was released.  Just look at the top bar above your search results, and tell me that it wasn’t copied from Google! Thank you, Microsoft, for giving us what we already have.  You have demonstrated that once again, you are behind the times, and that in every fight, Google will continue to win.

I’m sorry, but even though I tried to keep this from turning into another Bing review, I could not.  I guess Bing was simply destined to be compared to Google at one point.  But don’t take my word for it.  Why don’t you go “Bing and decide.”

Yesterday at their annual Searchology conference Google announced an exciting new feature coming soon to search results. They are called Rich Snippets. I keep wanting to refer to them as rich chocolate snippets for some reason, perhaps my overexposure to a certain brand of vitamin enriched chocolate milk during my youth, but I digress. So what are they, and why do you care?

Rich Snippets are basically a collection of really helpful enhanced search results that will be integrated right into Google including reviews, customer quotes as well as personal information from online profiles on social networking sites. Google is rolling this out slowly, but it seems inevitable for it to become as integrated as universal search has over the past 2 years.

As a search marketer, my first reaction was, “Oh cool, everyone will want to click on sites with the golden stars.” I wanted to tell everyone with reviews integrated into their site to start modifying their sites to use micoformats and RDF (the data formats Rich Snippets rely on) to be ready for the coming revolution; however, it’s not quite that easy. Google will still algorithmically determine whether or not your listing contains those eye-catching review stars based on the query and your site’s relevance. You also have to consider the user experience of seeing a review before clicking through to a site. Will they still click through? And, what happens if your competition uses Rich Snippets and their reviews are a bit better than yours. Say goodbye to your traffic.

Wow, Rich Snippets could be a big deal!

If users can compare multiple websites based on human feedback at a glance, they have the power to drive businesses to offer improved quality and service. Oh, and if you’ve been putting off that modern, more social, web 2.0ish interactive site upgrade for years, maybe now you have another reason to consider developing it.

So I’m thinking it’s time we gave Firefox a little credit. I have been an avid Firefox user for awhile now and recently I have started to take advantage of all its perks.  These perks are not just perks; they’re life savers, also known as Firefox add-ons.  Firefox add-ons let you personalize your web surfing experience, making everything faster, easier and more efficient. Do I sound like a Firefox sales rep yet? No? Good, I’ll continue…

Twitter users can tweet from your sidebar, address bar or a popup, post currently playing songs to Twitter, tweet longer text, shrink urls and more.  I know I’m tired of opening Photoshop and piecing together half images of my screen so I can view a full screenshot.  With Fireshot you can capture a full screenshot and edit, save, mail, print and export the image into another program right in your browser.  Even webmasters can have SEO help right at their fingertips.  Type a keyword in Google, hit the SEOQuake button and a bar appears under every search result showing the site’s PageRank, Google index, links, Alexa Rank, site age, etc.  There are just far too many add-ons to choose, but needless to say I’m loving all them.

Here is a list of great add-ons I use:

• Fireshot – allows you to capture full site screenshots, edit, email, print or export.

• Twitbin – shows your Twitter updates right in your sidebar.  Allows you to tweet, direct message, view @replies and view links.

• FoxyProxy - switches your internet connection across proxy servers.

• ColorZilla- lets you get a color reading from anywhere on your screen and paste it in another  program.

• SEOQuake - allows you to quickly view a site’s PageRank, Google index, Google links, site age, Alexa Rank and more.

• Google Toolbar – this toolbar adds spell check, a Page Rank bar and buttons for the many Google  options.

• Live HTTP headers – this tool shows characteristics of the information requested from an http    request.

• Tampered Data - this tool not only shows the characteristics of an http request, but also allows you to filter out information.

We all have websites that we find really interesting and want to visit again sometime in the near future. Google has answered our calls once again! Introducing “Google SearchWiki” … the next generation in Google Search!  There, you can add, move and rearrange search results for your viewing pleasure. Got something to say?  You can even place comments so that others can enjoy your opinion. You’ll see your customized search results every time you perform a search when logged into your Google account.

For example…Let’s say you are interested in hiking.  You probably already know which websites have the most comprehensive and relevant information.  If that site isn’t on the top of your search results, you can move it there, or add a marker so that you can find it later. You can only change the placement for your personal search results, but, you can leave comments on each search result so that others can see how great/terrible the hiking site is.

My…oh my… this certainly makes things interesting…

This new feature leverages the rise of the social web and since pretty much everyone trusts their peers’ opinions on everything ranging from the quality of a coffee pot to baby names, SearchWiki seems like it’s a good idea, initially, for people to share their opinion on search results.  Of course, this type of information isn’t impacting organic search results on a broad scale yet.

SEO is an ever changing and dynamic field that changes on a daily basis.  In fact, many SEO professionals have raised huge debate on how search will evolve, and how Google is now utilizing the vast amount of information it has at its disposal.  Perhaps in the future, SearchWiki comments may impact rankings, but right now, let’s just have a little fun changing our own search rankings and leaving witty comments in dark places.

One of the funniest times of the year is upon us.  It’s April Fool’s Day!  With so many jokes flying around, especially on the web, even news from some of the most credible news sources have to be taken with a little bit of skepticism.  One of the funniest so far was actually released by Google, when they announced that CADIE, the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity was switched on, and has begun performing functions all throughout the search giant.  Although a novel idea, it is wholly unrealistic and actually quite hilarious when we see examples of one of its capabilities in the form of Gmail Autopilot, which answers your emails for you.

Other great gags out there include Wikipedia having all false information on their front page, Google Chrome’s 3D glasses, and YouTube upside down.

So get out there, have some fun, and fool somebody on this glorious April fool’s day!