Search Engine Optimization News Blog

There is a surprising announcement from Google regarding its advertising program Adsense. Google is shutting down its Video adsense. It came as a surprise to many because Google is constantly exploring new territories and expanding its grounds to make its Adsense program and the advertising network stronger. Google has over half of its revenue generated through its advertising networks. In this scenario to scrape one of its revenue generation streams is rather surprising. Advertisers will not get the adsense videos displayed in their sites. This will come into effect from the end of April 2009. This can upset the publishers as they will not be able to signup for the revenue sharing through adsense videos.

However, publishers can still embed videos in their websites from YouTube but this cannot be done via the adsense interface anymore. They have to get it done the usual way of visiting YouTube and get the codes to embed the videos of their choice. As of now, users will be able to launch the videos in their adsense slots by selecting the video option in the adsense interface. Users will also be ale to select the videos to be added to the adsense publishing.
The latest decision of Google to scrape adsense videos make many suspect that it was not successful in generating enough revenue through videos. The click through rate should have been considerably lower when compared to the regular text ads. Moreover, people may not wait patiently for the videos to load. Video ads also take a  lot of space on the webpage.

Google’s adsense videos were launched barely a year ago. This program was launched in February 2008. Just a year has paused by and Google has decided to role the tent. Many publishers were too hopeful that adsense videos will increase their revenue manifold. But to their surprise all those who opted for video adsense reverted to text ads and banner ads once they noticed that their adsense revenue dropped very badly. Internet users are used to clicking on links rather than on videos; we have been used to banners and links for too long to change the habit too swiftly. Probably if Google were to continue with its video ads for long enough people would have got used to the concept of video ads and the click through rate would have increased over a period of time.
There is another side to the coin; advertisers too may not have been too enthusiastic about  video ads as it would have been lot more complicated to launch video ads while they can launch their text ads in a matter of few clicks. Moreover, video ads did not go well in countries where the internet speed is not up to the standard.

Google probably has enough reasons to justify its scraping of the video ads.

Once upon a time Google featured alternative search options at the bottom of the page. Now for those who wax nostalgic, there is a way to return to the glory days and choose what websites and search engines return results.

Retro Links is a Greasemonkey script to add new search options to Google’s search results page, and works with Firefox. When Retro Links is installed, it looks like this:

Check

Matt Cutt’s blog for information on how to get this nifty search tool.

Google is revamping its effort in China to overtake Baidu. Google through its new efforts to get a better marketing share in China is offering free music downloads to its Chinese users. So far Google has not ventured into offering music downloads to any other part of the world. It is a clear indication that Google is trying to do the extra mile to cover the Chinese market. Google already tried to make some efforts last year to acquire Chinese market but it did not make see much success. Google is hoping to reach new milestones this year with the Chinese market. Google knows the potential of the Chinese market, it is one of the largest internet communities in the world and if it gets a break through, it will increase its profit manifold.

Google is trying to take advantage of the popularity of the free music downloads that is currently seen in China. Google is hoping to form alliance with the big music brands like Warner music, Sony and Universal music. When compared to the United States, Google has no comparable growth in China. Baidu, which is the Chinese portal, rules the search market in China. People prefer Baidu because it is more of a portal like Yahoo and MSN. They prefer to find everything in one place rather than using a search only search engines. All in one portals are more colorful and have variety, which attracts the Chinese market. Unless Google makes changes to mimic Baidu, their success rate will be rather slow.

Though people will come to Google for free music downloads, they will continue to stick to Baidu for rest of their needs. It is surprising that even Yahoo and MSN which share the portal like nature did not do well in China. China is also known for movie downloads and the current move of Google is making its competitor wonder whether Google will go yet another step and allow its users with free movie downloads. Currently, Baidu holds 62% of the Chinese search market, which is closely comparable to Google’s position with the US.

While music lovers will appreciate Google’s efforts, it is still a question whether the free music downloads will raise other legal issues from the music companies as well as from the music download sites. We are to see the repercussions of Google’s latest announcements on its new initiatives with the Chinese market. Chinese internet users are currently using plenty of illegal music download sites that have plagued the Chinese market. With Google’s initiative to allow free music downloads Google hopes that the use of illegal sites will come down. While closing one of the doors of the illegal market, it should not create new avenues for the illegal distribution of music. Music downloaded in China for free should not reach the other markets and it is still a question that how Google is going to take care of these issues.

comScore has come out with the results of a study about iPhone users in the UK. Compared to other mobile devices, the iPhone is kicking proverbial behind! 55% of iPhone users conduct searches on their devices, compared to only 32% of smartphone users. At least 12% of all mobile phone users search on their phones, but the iPhone comes in ahead of smartphones and other mobile phones in every major category from email to mobile music to social networking. Unfortunately, the iPhone still isn’t the mainstream mobile phone choice in the UK.

“The iPhone is indeed an early adopter phenomenon in the United Kingdom,” said Alistair Hill, an analyst from the reputable comScore. “While the device’s ease of use is certainly contributing to the lift we see in mobile media consumption, the fact that the device requires a subscription package that includes an unlimited data plan is also a contributing factor. However, it is also important to note that while nearly all iPhone owners are consuming mobile media, the device is in the hands of only two percent of mobile phone users in the UK.”

Numbers of iPhone users are expected to rise, however. The ever increasing number of applications make it the obvious choice for many consumers. Both Google and Yahoo have added recent apps and released them to more countries as well; Yahoo is releasing its Inquisitor iPhone app to 11 more countries right now:
Canada
UK
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Australia
New Zealand
The Inquisitor app is set to Yahoo’s U.S. index by default, but the options menu allows users to choose another country. Inquisitor started out as a search suggestion plug-in for Safari, a web browser developed by Apple who produces the iPhone. Since Yahoo’s acquisition of the app, Inquisitor has been extended to become a plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer as well.

Last November, Google added voice search to their iPhone mobile application, and now Blackberry users can also use the application. The updated Google Mobile App for Blackberry can be downloaded from google.com directly from your device. The voice feature is available for Blackberry devices with O/S 4.2 and higher (except the Storm). The app without voice is available for devices with O/S 4.1+. The app for Blackberry Storm is in the works and should be around the corner.

comScore has also released general study results on mobile phone internet usage showing daily usage among unique users has grown over 100% from January of 2008 to January of 2009. That’s just the number for accessing news and information, and doesn’t include the ballooning amount of social networking. With mobile Facebook and Twitter apps, the numbers are mindblowing. All the more reason for iPhone to keep adding apps!

YouTube plus overlay ads plus non-profit equals big bucks! Last week YouTube launched a call-to-action feature for non-profit partners. This allows these organizations to include in-video clickable ads leading to their web sites.

Requirements are fairly simple according to YouTube:

Organizations applying for the Nonprofit program must meet the following criteria:
**Organizations must be U.S.-based nonprofits with IRS 501(c)(3) tax status
**May not be religious or political in nature
**May not be focused primarily on lobbying for political or policy change
**Commercial organizations, credit-counseling services, donation middleman services, fee-based organizations, and nonprofit portals are not eligible for the program

This is currently only available in the US and UK. The effectiveness is apparently very, very good – reputedly one of the partners raised $10,000 in one day using these ads in a video featured on YouTube’s home page on World Water Day.

The call to action in this particular video overlay says, “Give a person clean water. 100% of your gift directly funds water wells” and links to the proper donation page.

The YouTube blog has a post by Ramya Raghavan:

“The response from the YouTube community was overwhelming — thanks to you, charity:water was able to raise over $10,000 in one day from the video. That’s enough to build two brand-new wells in the Central African Republic and give over 150 people clean drinking water for 20 years!”

YouTube is encouraging other nonprofits to add a similar call to action overlay. Organizations can go to “edit video” and fill out the fields in the section marked “Call to Action overlay.” Simply add a short headline, ad text, a destination URL, and upload an optional image. The overlay will appear every time someone watches the video!