WebProNews

Tag: Videos

  • Looking at Polaroid’s Photo Sharing Service

    A couple months ago Polaroid launched a new online photo and video sharing service called Polaroid Studio. It didn’t initially receive a whole lot of buzz, but WebProNews stopped by their exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas earlier this month, and got a look at just what Polaroid Studio’s all about.

    You can use the service to upload photos or videos, but it offers a unique feature in that you can customize what your photo albums look like. You can choose backgrounds, pick how many photos you want to display across, up and down, etc.

    Social media hounds may particularly like the Facebook app, which lets you easily import the photos into Facebook from Polaroid Studio. The site also has a store right in it where you can purchase various items with your photos on them. If you want a coffee mug, a Calendar, playing cards, or whatever, look no further than the site where you are already keeping your photos. That’s kind of convenient.

    The service is still young, but so far it claims already over 62 million photos. They are also about to launch a pro version for professional photographers that they will be able to take and brand as their own.

    Related Articles:

    > Checking Out Boxee’s Version of the Future of TV

    > A Close Up with Sony’s New Personal Internet Viewer

    > The World’s Smallest USB Drive and Portable Hard Drive

  • Get Your Breadcrumbs in Google for More Links in Results

    Last summer it was discovered that Google was testing breadcrumbs in search results (breadcrumbs being the hierarchical display commonly used in site navigation. For example: Home Page>Product Page>Product A Page). Then in mid-November, Google announced that it was rolling out the use of breadcrumbs in search results on a global basis. What this means for webmasters is that if you can get your breadcrumbs into Google’s results, you essentially have more links on the results page. You have a separate link for each page in the breadcrumb trail.

    Do your site’s breadcrumbs show up in Google’s results? Comment here.

    The company said they would only be used in place of some URLs, mainly ones that don’t give the added context of a link the way that breadcrumbs do. Interestingly, there seems to be an incentive for those who go the breadcrumb route because of the multiple links that you just don’t get with regular search results.

    Google Breadcrumbs display

    Google’s move was generally well received. This was reflected in the comments from WebProNews readers on our past coverage. For example, a commenter going by the handle Stupidscript said, "It’s definitely a good time to start wrapping your head around the notion of ‘providing context’, because the web is heading into its "semantic" period … where each link will be more or less valuable based on its relationships with and context to information found behind other links."

    Google’s use of breadcrumbs in search results is the focus of a recently submitted question to the Google Webmaster Central team. The question was, "Google is showing breadcrumb URLs in SERPs now. Does the kind of delimiter matter? Is there any best practice? What character to use is best? > or | or / or???" Google’s Matt Cutts responded:

    Matt says you should have a set of delimited links on your site that accurately reflect your site’s hierarchy. He also notes, however, that it is still in the "early days" for breadcrumbs.

    "Think about the situation with sitelinks," he says. "Whenever we started out with sitelinks, it took a while before…for example, we added the ability in Google Webmaster Tools where you could remove a sitelink that you didn’t like or that you thought was bad. So we started out, and we did a lot of experiments, and we’ve changed the way that sitelinks look several times. And we have different types of sitelinks (within a page, and the standard ones you’re familiar with). So we’ve iterated over time."

    In this same way, he says, Google is in the early stage with breadcrumbs and he has seen different experiments with them. For example, there have been prototypes where the breadcrumbs were in the rich snippet gray line, above the regular snippet. "Having it in the URL is kind of nice, but it could still change over time," he says.

    He says the best advice he can give is to make sure you have a set of delimited links that accurately reflect your site’s hierarchy, and that will give you the best chance of getting breadcrumbs to show up in Google, but Google will continue to work on ways to improve breadcrumbs. He says any new announcements about it will likely be made on the Google Webmaster blog.

    While Matt doesn’t exactly lean toward one way or another with regards to which character to use as asked about in the submitted question, all of the examples I have seen highlighted show the ">" used. That includes examples from Google’s original announcement on the inclusion of breadcrumbs (if you see other ways, please point them out in the comments). Based on that, if I were going to choose one, I’d go with that.

    There are three types of breadcrumbs (as described here): path, location, and attribute. Path breadcrumbs show the path that the user has taken to arrive at a page, while location breadcrumbs show where the page is located in the website hierarchy. Attribute breadcrumbs give information that categorizes the current page. Obviously, location breadcrumbs would be the ones Google is using (although with personalized search becoming more of a factor, who knows in the future?).

    Update:     In the comments, one reader says:

    My site breadcrumb is seperated by |. Somehow, Google seems to put the > character in of their own accord. I’ve seen many results with breadcrumbs in the SERPS, and I havn’t seen any with a seperating character other than >. I do think Google puts in the > character regardless of your site’s seperating delimiter.

    Have you seen an increase in clickthrough from breadcrumbs in Google resutls? Discuss here.


    Related Articles:

    > Google Rolls Out Breadcrumb Display in SERPs

    > Google Makes it Easier to Tell Where Results Originate From

    > Get More Links in Your Actual Google Results

  • Video Advertising Takes to the Highway

    If you’re interested in new trends in advertising, you may be interested in the possibility that you will be seeing trucks driving around playing full HD videos. Hopefully you won’t be so interested that you stop paying attention to the road.

    Flick Studio is making these trucks with the hopes that companies will be interested in purchasing them for their own advertising purposes. The idea comes from trucks that are already out there, which feature rolling ads. This takes the concept to a whole new (and likely expensive) level.

    Information about FlickTruck is scarce. The FlickTruck site only shows a couple videos (which offer no real details) and a GPS tracker tracking the journey of one of the trucks, "Flick-2". However, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas recently, WebProNews spoke with David McDonald of Flick Studio (FlickStudio.com or FlickTruck.com).

    As you can see, it’s a truck with 3 big TVs built in. The displays are higher than 1080p. The are WUXGA and can be viewed easily in broad daylight.

    Flick Studio began producing the trucks six months ago, and currently there are only two of them. Those are just to drive around executives who are interested in the technology. Who knows where they will go from there?

    Related Articles:

    > Checking Out Boxee’s Version of the Future of TV

    > A Close Up with Sony’s New Personal Internet Viewer

    > The World’s Smallest USB Drive and Portable Hard Drive

  • Amazon Kindle Publishers and Authors to Get More Royalties

    Amazon announced details of a new program in which it will provide a new 70% royalty option for the Kindle, meaning authors and publishers can earn more royalties from every Kindle book that is sold. Under this new option, authors would get 70% of the list price, net of delivery costs. The option will not replace the current option of the DTP standard.

    "Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books."

    Could higher royalties help push e-reader devices further into mainstream usage? Many think they are going to get much more popular anyway. When authors and publishers can get more money out of Kindle books, it’s going to help push more publication of e-books, if not Kindle-specific titles.

    Rory Cellan-Jones at BBC News has an interesting piece, which asks, "Is publishing about to have an iPod moment?" It looks at the very real possibility that e-readers will become much more mainstream.

    "…2010 is supposed to be the year that publishing’s digital revolution really gathers pace," he notes. "There is now a wide range of e-readers on the market – in the UK devices like the Sony Reader, the Cool-er, and Amazon’s Kindle are all making it relatively easy to download and read e-books."

    We recently got an up-close look at the latest Cool-er devices at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas. You can check that out below.

    As for the Kindle itself, DTP authors and publishers will be able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. For that new 70% option, books must meet the following requirements:

    – The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99

    – This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book

    – The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights

    – The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.

    – Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

    The option is only for in-copyright works and is not available for books published previous to 1923, which are public domain. The option will only be available for books sold in the United States.

    Related Articles:

    > Amazon Sells More Kindle Books Than Real Books On Christmas

    > Amazon Kindle Breaks Monthly Sales Record

    > Amazon In eBook Deal With Best Selling Author

  • How Google Rates Links from Facebook and Twitter

    The first Matt Cutts Answers Questions About Google video of the year has been posted, and in it Matt addresses links from Twitter and Facebook, after talking about his shaved head again. Specifically, the submitted question he answers is:

    Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website. How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, FB to a website?

    Do you rely on links from Facebook and Twitter updates? Discuss here.

    Essentially, Matt says Google treats links the same whether they are from Facebook or Twitter, as they would if they were from any other site. It’s just an extension of the pagerank formula, where its not the amount of links, but how reputable those links are (the company uses a similar strategy for ranking Tweets themselves in real-time search).

    While Facebook and Twitter links may be treated like any other links, they do still come with things to keep in mind. For one, with Facebook, you have to keep in mind that a lot of profiles are not public. When a profile is not public, Google can’t crawl it, and it can’t assign pagerank on the outgoing links if it can’t fetch the page to see what the outgoing links are. If the page is public, it might be able to flow pagerank, Matt says. With Twitter, most links are nofollowed anyway.

    "At least in our web search (our organic rankings), we treat links the same from Twitter or Facebook or, you know, pick your favorite platform or website, just like we’d treat links from WordPress or .edus or.govs or anything like that," says Cutts. "It’s not like a link from an .edu automatically carries more weight or a link from a .gov automatically carries more weight. But, the specific platforms might have issues, whether it’s not being crawled or it might be nofollow. It would keep those particular links from flowing pagerank."

    There you have it. Matt’s response probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to most of you, but it’s always nice to hear information like this straight from Google.

    Do you like the way Google handls links from Facebook and Twitter? Would you do it differently? Share your thoughts.

    Related Articles:

    > Tips for Getting Found in Real-Time Searches

    > Google Makes a Second Real-Time Search Announcement

    > Yahoo Rolling Out Something Kind of Like Real-Time Search

  • Is it OK to Say No to Twitter?

    Is it OK to Say No to Twitter?

    Over the past year or more, you have probably heard your fair share of people telling you that you need to use Twitter if you hope to have business success. It’s true that there are a great many opportunities and potential benefits to using the service, but do you have to use it? Well, that depends.

    Is Twitter Necessary? Tell us what you think.

    In a recent interview with WebPronews, SiteLogic‘s Matt Bailey said what a lot of people are probably thinking. You don’t have to use Twitter.

    Frankly, it’s pretty astonishing how loyal Twitter users are considering the service’s frequent downtime and over-capacity errors. There are plenty of other ways that you could go. In this day and age there are so many marketing opportunities online, it’s ridiculous. However, they require time, and if you’re going to focus a significant amount of your time on one, you better make sure it’s a legitimate way of getting results.

    This of course depends on the goals penis enlargement you have and the strategies you implement. As Matt says in the interview, "you need to have a consistent marketing strategy," and you should slow down and look at your marketing plan.

    I’ve written before about 8 reasons you need to stop ignoring Twitter, but perhaps that title could’ve been toned down a bit. Think of these things as reasons that Twitter could be a good tool to consider using, because Matt’s right. You don’t HAVE to use Twitter. People are still running successful businesses without it. That said, it does have some advantages. The 8 reasons I discussed in that article were:

    1. Twitter Lists
    2. The Openness of Twitter
    3. Building Valuable Relationships
    4. Traffic That Cares
    5. Staying Current
    6. Connecting with Local Customers
    7. Going International and Multi-lingual
    8. It’s Still Young

    Matt makes a valid point. Twitter may not be the "it" thing this time next year. It may still be as relevant as ever, but times change. I’m sure you remember when MySpace was the king of the social networks. MySpace is still around and heavily used, but it is often overshadowed in discussion by Facebook and Twitter.

    Consider your goals (here are some possible ones). If Twitter fits into them, use it. If not, maybe it’s not worth the time. If you want to use MySpace to meet your goals, you might be able to do that.

    Twitter is showing a lot of potential though. The company kicked off the new year with a bunch of new hires (including some former Googlers), and is really looking toward monetization and becoming more useful for businesses. With the opening of the firehose, a lot of new and existing apps are going to make it possible to do a lot of new and cool things with Twitter. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone expects Twitter to reach a level of billions of tweets per second.

    Do you think Twitter is mandatory for businesses? Share your thoughts.

    Related Articles:

    > Twitter Starts the Year with Some New Faces

    > Stone Makes "Several Billion Tweets Per Hour" Prediction

    > 20 Goals for Business Social Media Use

  • A Close Up with Sony’s New Personal Internet Viewer

    At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sony introduced a new "personal Internet Viewer", called the Dash. This is a device that you can put on your nightstand or your kitchen counter, and access web content via Flash-based applications.

    While attending the show, WebProNews stopped by Sony’s exhibit to get a closer look at the device. Abby Johnson provides that look in the following clip:

    The device currently has over 1,000 free apps available, and it is open source, so anyone can create apps and submit them. Users can access things like weather, traffic, social networks, movies, music, etc. It has built in stereo speakers and a headphone jack.

    The Dash will ship in April, and will retail for about $200. The question is, will consumers be interested in a device like this?


    Related Articles:

    > A Print Shop for a New Decade

    > Cisco Leaving a Big Mark on Consumer Electronics Show

    > HP Unveils New Touch Notebook and Some New Minis at CES

  • Succeeding In SEO Requires Change

    As you know full well, the search industry is constantly changing, and that means SEOs and businesses must adapt. This is always made abundantly clear at the change of each year as the previous year is reflected upon, and predictions about trends in the upcoming year are discussed. SEOs know that adaptation and ongoing education are crucial. The problem is that businesses don’t always understand just how much the search landscape actually does change. This can present a whole different set of challenges for both the small business and the professional SEO.

    What are some SEO tactics you’ve had a hard time convincing clients to employ? Discuss here.

    Searching for Profit founder Amanda Watlington recently discussed some arising trends in the search industry and how understanding the changing search landscape is of vital importance. One example of change is the possible inclusion of site speed as a ranking factor in Google. Matt Cutts dropped that bomb a couple months ago, and while many welcome it, a lot are dreading it.

    For one, businesses and clients of SEOs simply may not be so eager to put forth the time and money required to make the necessary adjustments to their sites to optimize for speed, although it is clearly in the best interest of the customer’s experience anyway.

    Another challenge, as Watlington mentions, is personalized search. Companies don’t always get that not everybody is necessarily going to see the same search results for any given query, and it can sometimes be difficult for SEOs to convince them that this is the case.

    Although things appear to be looking up, budgets have been tight, and businesses are demanding better results for their bucks, but they are not always aware of the big picture, which is why it is up to the hired SEO professional to educate them as best they can, and for other businesses to educate themselves.

    Luckily, there are plenty of industry resources freely available on the web. After all, you’ve probably read about the very tactics you have in mind there yourself. SEOs should find instances to back up their case to convince stubborn clients. Some of them are just hung up on outdated trends. Obviously this can make it hard to produce the results they are after.

    "The evolution has been slow, and I don’t think we’ve helped it as much as we could," Watlington says of companies’ understanding of SEO trends.

    If you are the client of an SEO or a business trying to get things done yourself, don’t stay hung up on old tactics that might be outdated. At this point, these are some of the things you should keep in mind:

    – Site Speed (it’s going to matter, so don’t ignore it…here are some things to consider)

    – Personalized Search (Not everyone is going to see the same Google results)

    – Universal Search (Showing up here requires attention to different indexes)

    – Real-Tme Search (look for more evolution in this area)

    – Changes in Local (there are frequently tweaks made by Google here)

    – Some things do stay the same (things like reputable links will always be in style)

    – Most importantly, stay informed (just keep up with the latest in industry developments)

    As Watlington notes in the interview, metrics are very important, and there has been a great deal of focus on them in the industry in recent years. New metrics come about, just as new tools do. Metrics can help illustrate the bigger picture, custom-fit to a particular organizations goals.

    What are the biggest challenges you face when dealing with changing SEO strategies for your own companies or your clients?  Comment here.

    Related Articles:

    > Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

    > Google Ditches Local Listings for SEOs and Designers

    > Can You "Rank" in Google if Everyone Has Different Search Results?

    > What’s Better: PPC or SEO?

    > Things to Consider if Page Speed is to Become a Ranking Factor

  • The World’s Smallest USB Drive and Portable Hard Drive

    The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas wrapped up this past weekend, but the experience will be felt throughout the year as the companies that demonstrated upcoming products release those products to the world. One of the companies presenting at the event was Verbatim, and they have some new portable data devices on the way.

    WebProNews got a look at some of the company’s upcoming offerings, which can be viewed in the following clip:

    Among the Verbatim’s upcoming offerings are the "smalest USB drive in the world and the "smallest portable hard drive in the world). These are the "Tuff-‘N’-Tiny" USB drive and the Titan SX portable hard drive. The former, which is waterproof, dust proof, and shock resistant comes with password protectection software, and in 2, 4, 8, and 16GB capacities. The price points are affordable too, with the 2GB drive priced at $12.95 and the soon to be released 16GB drive retailing for $86.99. The Titan SX portable hard drive will come in 320, 500, and 640 GB capacities at the end of February, and up to a TB by Q3.

    Also on display was the upcoming InSight USB portable hard drive with always-on LCD display.  Check out the video to catch a glimpse of the products.

    Keep an eye out on WebProNews and the WebProNews Video Blog for more interviews and product demos from CES.
     

    Related Articles:

    > A Print Shop for a New Decade

    > A Close Up with Sony’s New Personal Internet Viewer

    > HP Unveils New Touch Notebook and Some New Minis at CES

  • Once Upon a Time There Was a Business That Needed a Marketing Campaign

    The most powerful marketing campaigns are often the ones that we as consumers can identify with or connect to in some way. One way that businesses invoke such a feeling from potential customers is by telling a story with their marketing. This is called (appropriately) storyteller marketing.

    Dana Todd of Newsforce recently sat down with WebProNews to discuss Storyteller marketing’s revival. She has some interesting things to say on the subject:

    As noted by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, back in the summer of 2008, covering Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, Gary Stein, Director of Strategy for Ammo Marketing highlighted five stories that can be told:

    1. Origin – where did you/your brand come from
    2. Purpose – tells us why you are a business
    3. Vision – similar to origin but is where are we going
    4. Education – Starbucks educated people about traditions of coffee
    5. Ethics – when someone walks the walks of what they are doing
    6. Connection – reaching out and talking to the customer

    In that same session, Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus added that the story should be simple, repeatable, and memorable. She also said that suggested that good places to find your brand’s story are from employees, your customers, and even suppliers.

    As our own Abby Johnson points out in the above video, every business has a story. You may know what that story is, but if you look hard enough, you can find it, and you can use it. Chances are people will be able to connect with that story on some level (if it is the right story), and this can be a powerful way to keep your brand in people’s minds.
     

    Related Articles:

    > Small Businesses And Social Media

    > The Future Of Online PR

    > Is Retargeting the Most Under-Utilized Marketing Strategy?

  • Google Tries to Carve Out its Place in Mobile

    Arguably the biggest news in the tech industry so far this year, has been Google’s launch of the Nexus One smartphone. The company rocked the mobile space when it announced that it would be selling the device on its own without the need of a carrier contract (although such contracts are available).

    Google Nexus OneThe device has come under fire from some consumers, who complain about poor 3G connections, as well as customer support issues. It has reportedly been difficult for people to get the support they’re after via phone call, with the company apparently preferring online and email support.

    Google has acknowledged the problems that exist though, and seems to be taking the position that everything will get straightened out, chalking up the trouble to a new way of doing things. One Google spokesperson is quoted as saying:

    "We’ve worked closely with our Nexus One launch partners to make support available through a variety of channels. This is a new way to purchase and support a mobile phone, and we’re committed to sorting out the few kinks that do exist."

    Google is advertising the Nexus One hard. For a while, it even had its own spot right on the Google.com home page. As other have noted, the company has been flooding the web with ads for it in general.

    The Nexus One is only the beginning of Google’s mobile plans though. In time, the company will release more devices. WebProNews recently spoke with GoogleAndBlog author Michael Martin about the company’s plans in the mobile market (keep in mind this was shot prior to the release of the Nexus One):

    The Nexus One has been forecast to sell 5 or 6 million units this year, and generate between $2.6 billion and $3.2 billion. Google is currently selling the phone for $529 on its own, with T-Mobile offering it with a two-year contract for $179. eWeek reports that it costs $174.15 to make, according to iSuppli.


    Related Articles:

    > Google Unveils Nexus One "Super Phone"

    > Nexus One Sales Of 5-6 Million Units Forecast

    > New Google Phone Has Tech Community Licking Chops

  • Google Talks to People About Online Auto Habits

    Are you familiar with "Google on the Street"? This refers to a series of videos Google has put together in which it goes out and talks to people on the street about various online behaviors, to see how responses stack up against their own Insights for Search findings.

    The videos are periodically posted on Google’s UK Barometer Blog. Topics covered in the past include online shopping, consumer confidence, and travel. The most recent entry paints an interesting picture about how people use the Internet for auto-related services.

    Google on the Street - Cars

    People take on the following topics in the video above (you’ll have to click through to watch it on the blog, because it is not embeddable): 

    – How do consumers use online to help build their consideration list?
    – How do people search online?
    – Do consumers buy cars online or do they need to visit a dealership too?
    – Do people buy parts and book services online?
    – What is their perception of branded websites?
    – What do brands get wrong/right on their websites?
    – What is the role of social media in the decision making process?
    – Do people find online video useful and what do they want to see?
    – Real time research: How do on and offline world’s fit together?

    As long as you’re on the blog, you might be interested in browsing through the past entries in the series by clicking on the " on the street " tag. It’s interesting to see the responses of actual people on different matters, rather than just tables of data.

    Related Articles:

    > Google and Predicting Search Trends

    > Google Shares Proposal for White Spaces Database

    > Average Person Spends 13 Hours a Week Online

  • Are Google’s Ads So Relevant That People Won’t Block Them?

    A while back, Google launched an extensions gallery for its Chrome web browser. Ad-blocking add-ons are among the most popular for Mozilla’s Firefox, so it stands to reason that they will be for Chrome as well. With Google’s primary source of revenue being its ads, a lot of talk has surfaced about Google letting people block its own ads with its own product.

    Is Google was smart to allow ad-blocking extensions for Chrome? Discuss here.

    A recent article from the New York Times has elevated the discussion, calling the allowance of ad blockers a "test" for Google.

    Google wants people to use Chrome. For that to happen, it has to give people what they want. One point of view would be that the people who are most likely to block ads would just as use another browser that allowed them to do so if Chrome didn’t.

    Google doesn’t think that ad blockers will have much of an impact on advertising anyway. In December, Google Engineering Director Linus Upson participated in a panel discussion about the subject. He, Charles McCathieNevile of Opera, and Mike Shaver of Mozilla discuss it in the following clip:

    Add-on-Con ’09 ads and adblockers (closing keynote) from Robert on Vimeo.

    Upson says it’s "unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying." He thinks the market will sort it out. The others appear to take similar stances.

    The real question is how many people are really going to make the effort to block ads? As Wladimir Palant, who runs Adblock Plus on Firefox, told the NYT, ad blockers are still used by a "tiny proportion of the Internet population, and these aren’t the kind of people susceptible to ads anyway."

    Based on what Upton had to say in the panel discussion, Google is pretty confident that it can deliver ads people actually want, and that people (for the most part) will not want to block them if they see that relevance.

    What could hurt Google more is if Microsoft or Firefox implemented their own ad blocking capabilities by default. This would lead to average users browsing an ad-less web, because just as most people don’t go out of their way to download ad-blocking add-ons, they are unlikely to go out of their way to allow ads in such a scenario. However, it is pretty unlikely that this will happen, particularly on Microsoft’s end. They of course have their own ads to worry about.

    If ad-blocking from the browser actually did become a big problem for Google, one would have to wonder if the company woulnd’t find some kind of work-around. For example, what would stop them from serving ads directly in the Chrome Browser itself (in a toolbar area for example)? One could envision sponsored link-style ads like those served via Gmail. With Google’s interest-based advertising, relevance would still be at the forefront. But it probably won’t come to that anytime soon (at least not as a solution to the perceived issue).

    Wondering how many people actually use Chrome anyway? Ad-blocking from the browser does after all only matter if people are using that browser. Well, the latest numbers from Net Applications have Chrome’s market share surpassing that of Apple’s Safari browser. It’s worth noting that Google just released Chrome for Mac last month as well.

    As Doug Caverly  mentioned, "Chrome’s only been around for about 16 months, after all, and Safari’s had something like six years to make friends."

    Google’s Chrome OS is set to make things interesting later this year, as well. Chrome use is growing and will continue to do. Ad campaigns from Google may ease that growth along.

    Google made a bold move when it opened up its extensions gallery, allowing for ad-blocking extensions. Could this turn out to be a huge mistake on the company’s part or is Google’s confidence completely justified? Only time will tell for certain, but Google has long stood behind the promise of trying to deliver the best user experience. If users want to block ads, Google is going to let them. Share your thoughts here.


    Related Articles:

    > Chrome Cruises By Safari

    > Chrome Ad Campaign Nets Positive Results

    > Google Pushes Chrome With Newspaper Ads

  • Google’s One-Minute Guide to Search-Based Keywords

    Google has put together a one-minute guide to using its Search-based Keyword tool. The tool was launched just over a year ago in beta. It lets paid search advertisers see what keywords they may be missing out on based on searches on their site.

    "Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various keywords," says Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew. "This means that by including all keywords that are relevant to your product or service in your campaigns, you can ensure you can ensure that you will reach a greater set of potential customers. To help you do this, you can use the Search-based Keyword Tool to quickly identify relevant keywords which aren’t yet included in your AdWords campaigns."

    The guide follows:

    Earlier this year, Google made some improvements to the search-based keyword tool. The company not only expanded the reach to Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and New Zealand in addition to the US and the UK, but users can also now select the currency they’d like to see suggested bids in on the setting page.

    Google also added some customization features to the tool this year that could lead to more targeted results for users. These include language/country-specific results and ad/search share filters.

    Related Articles:

    > Google Improves Search-Based Keyword Tool

    > Google Launches Search-Based Keyword Tool

    > Internal AdWords Tool Raises Rumors About Rankings