Google settles Adwords lawsuit

Google has settled a lawsuit with American Blind & Wallpaper Factory over its search ads, bringing a four-year long dispute to an end.

The retailer had claimed that Google’s Adwords programme allowed other firms to infringe its trademarks when bidding on keywords, but pretty much looks to have climbed down as the trial approached.

Google said no payment had been included in the settlement and will not have to make any changes to Adwords’ rules.

It promised not to make any changes to AdWords’ trademark policy that would adversely affect American Blind in return for the suit being dropped. Each side will pay its own legal costs.

The move chalks up another victory for Google in the US, although it has been defeated in similar cases in France. Now it just faces the prospect of a legal skirmish with the world’s largest airline.

Google launches interactive widget ads

Google today launched Gadget Ads, a new interactive rich media ad format which will allow advertisers to measure users' responses to the ads, as well as updating ad content in real time.

The new ads designed for use across Google's network of sites, and aims to offer a way for internet users to interact with ad content in a way that is not possible with standard web ads.

The measurability of the Gadget ads will appeal to advertisers, and goes beyond merely measuring how many people clicked on an ad.

Instead, advertisers will be able to see how many users interacted with the ads in a number of ways. For instance, in the case of video ads, advertisers can see how much of a video has been watched, whether menu controls were used, and so on.

For web users, the ads avoid the need to click through to another website, as all content can be viewed within the ad on the website you have visited.

Google has been running a beta of the new ad system with a group of AdWords advertisers, including Honda, Intel and Paramount. Some examples of the Gadget ads can be viewed here.

Google will set some standards for users of these ads - animations longer than 15 seconds will not be permitted, reading or writing cookies is also forbidden, as are popups or other external alerts.

Advertisers can choose from CPC or CPM pricing models for the Gadget ads, while Google will be offering the usual targeting options available to help place the ads effectively.

How much traffic can Digg or Google News drive to your site?

Whilst looking through our site visitors stats recently I noticed two big spikes in traffic.

What may have caused them...?

Below is a graph taken from our web analytics software (the nice folks over at WebSideStory ) showing the number of visitors to E-consultancy.com over June and July this year.

You can see that traffic typically ticks along at around 4,000 unique users a day with it busier during the week than at the weekend. But you can also see two big spikes - one in June and one more recently at the end of July.

The first spike drove around 12,000 unique users to our site. The second around 35,000 unique users.

Looking into it, the first spike came from Digg. Specifically from here - http://www.digg.com/programming/Are_all_AJAX_homepages_doomed_ which points to a blog post we created at http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/361247/are-all-ajax-homepages-doomed.html and got 429 "Diggs".

The second spike came from this appearance on Google News which pointed to a blog post at http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/361446/10-reasons-why-i-ll-swap-my-ipod-for-a-zune.html.

Three things I noted from this:

Firstly, that 'social media' sites like Digg can indeed drive a lot of traffic. So too can aggregator sites like Google News. Even for a niche player like us there is a lot of attention and traffic that you can get this way.

Secondly, that if you are in B2B marketing (which we are, given our users and subscribers are all online marketing and e-commerce professionals) then you can get a lot of attention (including PR etc.) if there is something of a consumer spin to what you are talking about e.g. the big traffic spike we got was because 'iPod' is such a popular keyword and topic. And it is particularly easy to do this online.

Thirdly, in both cases, if you read the user comments and Digg comments, there is both commendation and criticism of what we originally said. Some of it is subjective and open to opinion, some of it I think the users / readers probably have a fair point. So the collective wisdom is indeed greater than any one organisation. But that's the beauty of the internet and 'social media' as a platform for debate and collective self-betterment (if that word exists?).

Clearly the more important question as a business is what brand value (or damage) and what commercial value (or damage) such traffic-driving might have. Certainly if we were flogging advertising on a CPM basis (which we don't) then it's pretty easy to see the value...

Pay-per-Digg service exposed

A pay-for-votes service has been launched that allows publishers to promote their submissions on Digg.com.

User/Submitter touts itself as a site "where Digg submitters pay for Digg users to promote their stories, and where Digg users make easy money".

Digg is a social book-marking service where users can submit stories and vote for content that they like. Submissions that garner enough interest are promoted to the service's front page, which typically leads to a spike in traffic.

The User/Submitter site offers Digg users 10 cents for every 'digg' they issue to listed stories. The publishers of those stories are then charged a base fee of $20 plus $1 per Digg.

It is unclear whether the service offers a genuine product or is a hoax, however. In a test by vnunet.com, we were able to create an account and were presented with a list of stories on which we could vote.

But we were unable to verify whether those stories had recruited the services of User/Submitter or were just random links pulled from the Digg.com website.

User/Submitter did not respond to several requests for comment.

Digg disables pay-per-vote service

Digg has clamped down on a new service which claims to allow publishers to manipulate ratings on the social bookmarking site.

The offending site, User/Submitter, describes itself as an opportunity for Digg users to “make easy money” by promoting articles, while charging publishers a fee for the privilege.

However, a statement on the site says it had been forced to rework its system after being discovered by Digg during trials.

It says: “Digg has recently been disabling user accounts that have shown obvious patterns of using User/Submitter. At this time, please wait to use User/Submitter until we rework the system to help users avoid getting disabled by Digg.

“We should be rolling out this new version of User/Submitter in a few days.”

Google Analytics - Track Your Site Traffic

Google analytics is a great tool for your website. you can easily track users comming on your

site. Google analytics is another free service provided by google. To use this service first you have to sign up for an invitation. You have to wait until you get an invitation from google. Once you have an analytics account one can easily optimize his or her site. There are some great advantages of google analytics. AdWords users: Google Analytics can be used to track cost data from Google AdWords and only if AdWords and Analytics accounts are linked to each other. Log on to your AdWords account and follow the instructions on how to link your Analytics account with Adwords.

You will get three different type of overviews with google analytics:
1. Executive Overview
2. webmaster Overview
3. Marketer Overview

All hold their different features.

The main features include:
1. Overview
i) Conversion Summary
ii) Marketing Summary
iii) Content Summary
iv) Site Overlay

2. Marketing Optimization
i) Unique Visitior Tracking
a) Daily visitors
b) Visits and pageview tracking
c) Goal conversion tracking (very important if you are using adwords or any other advertising.)
d) Absolute unique visitors
e) Visitor loyalty
f) Visitor recency
ii) Visitor segment performance
a) New v/s returning
b) Referring source
c) Geo location
d) Geo map overlay
e) Network location
f) Language
g) User-defined
h) Domains
iii) Marketing Campaign Results
a) Campaign conversion
b) Source conversion
c) Medium conversion
d) Referral conversion
e) Campaign ROI
f) Source ROI
g) Medium ROI
iv). Search Engine Marketing
a) All CPC Analysis
b) Adwords analysis
c) Adwords keyword positions
d) Overall keyword position
e) CPC vs organic conversion
f) Keyword considerations

3. Content Optimization
i) Ad version testing
a) Overall Ad A/B testing
b) Source specific testing
c) Keyword specific testing
ii) Content performance
a) Top content
b) Content drilldown
c) Content by titles
d) Dynamic content
e) Depth of visit
f) Length of visit
iii) Navigational Analysis
a) Entrance bounce rates
b) Top exit points
c) Site overlay
d) Initial navigation
e) All navigation
iv) Goals and Funnel process
a) Goal tracking
b) Goal conversion
c) Defined funnel navigation
d) Defined funnel abandonment
e) Reverse goal path
f) Goal verification
v) Webdesign Parameters
a) Browser versions
b) Platform versions
c) Browser and platform combos
d) Screen Resolutions
e) Screen colors
f) Languages
g) Java enabled
h) Flash version
i) Connection speed
h) Hostnames

With these amazing features you will know a lot of things which you need to know, so that you can optimize and add suitable content to you website to achive maximum visitors.

Creating Google Analytics account
Visit www.google.com/analytics for signing up.
Enter your Google Account email and password.
Don’t have a Google Account, click on Sign up now to create a new google account.
Once you have setup a google account enter your Website’s URL
Select http:// or https:// from options. Enter a nickname for this account and click Continue.
Enter your contact information and click Continue.

The tracking code that you need to paste into each page of your site. Copy and paste the code given in the box into the bottom of the content, before the tag of page. If you use a common include or template, you can enter it there.

change the xxxx-x to your google analytics account number. Google analytics will start tracking your site traffic within 24 hours after the installation of the code in your website.

Upload Files To Megaupload.com - Earn Reward Points/Earn Money

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Make money from Digg.com

Those who spend lot of time digging on digg.com, why not make some money while you digg. Yes, you can earn each time you digg a post. This method is an extension about how Web 2.0 can be misused by social networking.

A site called User/Submitter offers 50 cents for digging a set of 5 posts on digg.com. All you have to do is register at usersubmitter.com with your digg users ID and they will send you the list of post’s to be dug. What is this site getting by paying 50 cents for every digg set? That’s a logical question, let me answer that. Here is how exactly User/Submitter is able to pay its users, if you run a website which has articles on it, to drive traffic to the site you pay User/Submitter a base amount of $20 and $1 per each digg. Digg.com flashes your post on its front page only if the post has been dug at least 51 times within 24 hours. A post on the front page of the digg.com can drives 10,000 to 15,000 users to the site which roughly translates to $400-$500 Adsense dollars. So by paying $71 ( $20 base + $51 for each digg) getting a huge amount of traffic which eventually means hard cash is not a bad deal at all.

Digg.com needs to come up with another algorithm to stop people from exploiting its services.

Let Spammers Pay for the Spamming emails in your Inbox!

Tired of e-mail spam? Let’s make the spammers pay for what we see in our inbox. The idea sounds thrilling isn’t it? Let’s see how it’s done.

A site called BoxBe.com lets you create a public address which will be forwarded to the advertisers and different directories. If any of the advertisers wants to send a e-mail, he will first have to pay BoxBe.com for sending the e-mail to your address. The price can be set by the user or BoxBe.com will do it for you.

Once you have funds in your account you can either donate to charity directly from you BoxBe account or the funds will be transferred to your PayPal account.

Now that’s fun, isn’t it! Earning from E-mail SPAM!