Derrick Sheilds

Google Merchant Search: How Far is Too Far?

@Devil's Advocate: There are actually several lawsuits against Google, companies suing them for indexing their content without consent. Google generally will remove that content from their index. Like everything else Google does, however, it's a double-edged sword because not being in Googles index means they don't bring you any visitors.

The Lawsuit That Could Cripple Google: Will American Airlines Ruin Everything?

You're comment doesn't make sense. Care to elaborate?

The Lawsuit That Could Cripple Google: Will American Airlines Ruin Everything?

If you had actually read the Article, I was actually in favor of Google winning this case.

Soon To Be Worthless: Nielsen Net Ratings and comScore Media Metrix

I'm confused by the premise of the article. Give me an example of how a blogger can assign a measure of web traffic themselves...

You agree to sign the Letters of Agreement assigning all key syndicated traffic measurement firms, including but not limited to Nielsen Net Ratings and ComScore (SCOR) Media Metrix . .

This isn't clear to me. Where and how do you just 'assign' metrics like this to these companies?

Web Usability Expert: Users Ignore Ads -- Other Than Google's

I don't really see how it's a problem for Yahoo!, as yahoo's search results (obviously) have search/text ads, and Yahoo! Publisher Network displays text ads on Websites just like Google AdSense...

Rising Ad Blocker Use Poses Risk to Web Content/Ad Stocks

You bring up some very interesting points. I can understand annoying popups or really flashy banners being somewhat obtrusive, however by and large Internet advertising, at least on bigger/more-popular sites is generally subtle and relevant. I don't understand why people have such a problem with unobtrusive, relevant advertising?

Thanks for the great article.

Online Ad Spending to Overtake Print by 2011 -- Study

George,

Interesting rant, however so-highly inaccurate I don't even know where to begin. Sounds like you're in the boat of the old-school; taking the seat on board the titanic, if you will. The ships going down, my friend.

Google is not an "advertising company." The are a technology company that provides a ad-platform for "advertisers" or search marketers to cost-effectively distribute their clients brands across the internet in highly targeted channels.

It sounds like if you have a very disgruntled view of advertising and technology in general. That's all I can really respond to.

Online Ad Spending to Overtake Print by 2011 -- Study

Those numbers are promising for those of us in the online advertising arena, but are almost twice the predictions of eMarketer, who is estimating online ad spend to hit about 36.5B by 2011:

www.emarketer.com/Arti...

Google vs. Microsoft: What's Going on Here?

Jeff- I see your point however there is a difference between the syndicated ads that appear on domains and the advertisements that appear next to organic search results.

I am very familiar with arbitrage and domaining and while I'm personally against the whole concept, I do not think GOOG is crossing any lines by providing domainers with access to their ad feeds in this manner, because as I said this content is clearly differentiated from search results on the google.com domain.

So, where do companies cross the line? I think Yahoo! is coming close to the line in the current special k promotion. Considered a "Yahoo Shortcut", the promotion allows Kellog's advertisement to a.) get a Logo and b.) be labeled a "Yahoo Shortcut."

Here's another example, this time from Google. It's clever marketing and will garner a lot of attention, but perhaps needs to be labeled with more than just a "Google Promotion".

Google vs. Microsoft: What's Going on Here?

I agree with the premise of your article however I don't think it was GOOG's intention to "trick" users into clicking on contextual, text-based advertisements. While an older generation may not be able to really tell the difference, these advertisements are clearly labeled as such. What are you are saying is akin to saying that television commercials are no good because consumers are aware that the brands/advertisers paid to have their commercial shown.

As an online marketer I have to appreciate the fact there is a clear difference between paid advertisements and organic search results.

Additionally, I think it's wrong to assume that the text-ads are irrelevant or not useful to the user. Let's say you did a search for "cheap online brokerages". Of course the top 10 organic results would be (hopefully) relevant but I think it would be fair to assume that the paid advertisements would be very relevant as well.

I also think it's interesting that in your article from Tuesday you rant about how the cost of clicks is going up and is becoming less and less profitable for advertisers, and then you encourage your blog readers to click the ads on your site to see if they find something "interesting". This is clearly against Google AdSense TOS and you should be careful with requests like this.

One positive aspect to the cost of clicks going up is that big companies with real advertising budgets will (hopefully) dominate the top spots the user experience is a positive one, instead of ending up in MFA nowhere land as Jeff was speaking about above.