Industry click fraud rate holds at 16.2 percent

The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.2 percent for Q2 2008. That’s down slightly from the 16.3 percent rate reported for Q1 2008 and up from the 15.8 percent click fraud rate reported for Q2 2007. The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 27.6 percent.

Google Knol is open to everyone

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

New Google toolbar PageRanks coming

Matt Cutts is letting us know that a new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days. He also expects that in the next few days some older penalties on websites will be expiring. This might be good news for guys like David who got heavily penalized a while ago!

What’s special about Cuil?

During the past few years, many search engines have tried to be the next Google. None of them has succeeded. The difference between these companies and Cuil is the team that stand behind the project:

* Anna Patterson: worked on Google’s search index
* Russell Power: worked on Google’s search index
* Louis Monier: founder of the AltaVista search engine
* Tom Costello: worked on IBM’s WebFountain project.

The team behind Cuil knows search very well and they have worked behind the scenes at Google and other major search providers.

Why does Cuil think that it’s better than Google?

Cuil has four major claims with which it wants to distinguish itself from Google:

1. Cuil claims to have the biggest index

Cuil claims that its index is bigger than Google’s and that this is necessary if you want to return relevant results for topics that aren’t very popular.

2. Cuil thinks that popularity is not as important as Google says

If Cuil’s concept of indexing succeeds, PageRank and linking might be a thing of the past. Cuil thinks that popularity is useful but not for very complex searches. According to their website, Cuil tries to analyze the content of web pages and to put it into a greater context.

3. Cuil uses a new results page format

CuilInstead of a long list, Cuil returns the results in three columns and it adds images to the search results when possible. Cuil also offers roll-over definitions and offers ideas to refine your search.

4. Cuil does not collect user data

In contrast to other search engines, Cuil does not log any personally identifiable information. IP addresses, names or cookies are not stored.

Microsoft has a big idea on ranking pages listed in a search engine index for later retrieval. A query seeking information on a topic ought to bring up pages ordered at least in part by how long people spent on such pages in their browsers.

CNET called it a move to one-up search leader Google, which itself only uses PageRank as one of dozens of factors in determining where a page lists in response to a query. Google’s dominance of the search market shows their approach is working; Google is even a dictionary-listed verb these days.

A Microsoft research paper shows where the company sees an alternative to a site that in the estimation of many already owns the search market. Through looking at “user behavior data,” Microsoft’s researchers suggested they have a more reliable way of assessing a particular page’s importance.

Microsoft’s China-based researchers claim to have this figured out. But it will need data that goes beyond click-throughs to measure adequately.

That brings up an interesting idea: how much access will people, both visitors and site publishers, be willing to give Microsoft to make for a better search experience? Microsoft probably has the ability to utilize its own resources, like the Windows Live Toolbar, to help grab such data.

Not everyone will use a toolbar with their browser, of course, and Microsoft doesn’t want to be in the position of trying to push it on people, lest they run afoul of their antitrust minders at the Justice Department.

Google’s PageRank succeeds partially due to its invisibility. The typical Internet user simply doesn’t see a crawler’s work behind the scenes, and computers can accurately count those inbound links in short order. BrowseRank may be the next great advance in search, but if it relies on active participation beyond a link spider’s actions, it may not get the critical mass of data it will need to succeed.

Google maintained its 77.4% share of US search marketing dollars, while Yahoo captured 17.8% of spending and Microsoft Live Search maintained its 4.8% share. Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo Search still have good ROI in comparison to Google, which makes them essential marketplaces for advertisers that need to meet their increasingly scrutinized revenue targets.

Google’s Matt Cutts: the Google toolbar does not help indexing

Sometimes people think that the Google Toolbar led to Google indexing a page. Both Philipp Lenssen and Google OS did controlled experiments by visiting unlinked deep pages with the toolbar, and both concluded that the toolbar did not lead to those urls being indexed.

Why Google slows down acquired companies

Google had acquired Jotspot some 16 months earlier, during which time Jot was only available to existing customers and closed to new signups. Looking through the list of companies that Google has acquired, Jotspot would be considered lucky as many others have died, stalled or lost out to competitors because of the acquisition process.

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Can you remember when you first came across spam?

He can. It was actually porn spam and that is why he remembered it, he said! Dirty Matt!

What do you think are the biggest challenges for search engines in the next five years?

Users expect more!

How can small webmasters compete with big players in their markets?

Be creative (oh really? never heard that before) pick a certain niche and become an authority in that niche! Become an expert of a small aspect of a big niche. Move fast and think about new techniques.

Every webmaster should know about?

Google Webmaster Central. You can find all of your backlinks there, can check for keywords that are leading visitors to your sites, checking Google crawlers, find broken links on your site and many other statistics! Matt his favorite from webmaster central: Google will tell you if you have hidden text or other spam on your website.

Do you think there is a difference in the way Google interacts with webmasters in different countries?

Yes, every market is different and they are all important! Google is sensitive with different markets.

Do you check for paid links which pass PageRank on every website you visit?

Yes, I do.

What are the funniest questions you’ve ever been asked at a conference?

How much can I get away with? Quite funny! Won’t tell.

What would you do if Google finally killed all spam and you suddenly had loads of time?

I like gadgets, open source, ubuntu, linus and esspecially plugins. Firefox extensions, photoshop extensions! I enjoy writing them and using them.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen…Even though he goes out on a purge to get rid of all link sellers, he is still a person like you and I. Pretty funny that his first spam was from a porn. Even those that go after spam get spam. Funny.

BOSS is a new, open platform that offers programmatic access to the entire Yahoo! Search index via an API. BOSS allows developers to take advantage of Yahoo!’s production search infrastructure and technology, combine that with their own unique assets, and create their own search experiences.

Google blog: Introduction to Google ranking

The most common question I get asked about Google’s ranking is ‘how do you do it?’ Of course, there is a lot that goes into building a state-of-the-art ranking system like ours, and I will delve deeper into the technology behind it.

Google Suggest preparing for global launch?

Google France’s homepage tests a query suggestion feature based on Google Suggest. The feature seems to be enabled only for the homepage and there’s a setting that lets you disable it. In March, other people noticed Google Suggest enabled by default at Google.com.

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Google has been hit with a second lawsuit for fraud stemming from its parked domains program, which serves ads on otherwise empty Web pages.

This latest suit, brought in federal district court in San Jose, Calif., comes less than one week after attorney Hal Levitte filed a similar case.

In the new lawsuit, online retailer RK West, which operates the online store Malibu Wholesale, alleges it purchased ads Google without realizing they would appear on parked domains. Parked domains typically have no content other than ads. RK West alleges that many of the clicks generated by parked domains are “invalid.”

The company said in its lawsuit that it had been charged for clicks from parked domains “that had little relation to its business.”

“Despite indication that some of the clicks from parked domains were invalid, Google failed to disclose to the plaintiff specific domain names in which these ads were clicked on, making detection of invalid clicks difficult and even worse concealing any evidence of invalid clicks,” the lawsuit alleges. RK West eventually went through its server logs and discovered the source of the clicks, said Alfredo Torrijos, one of the company’s attorneys.

RK West does not define “invalid” in the complaint, but Torrijos said the company took the position that clicks made by users who don’t have a genuine interest in making a purchase are invalid.

The company has alleged fraudulent concealment, unjust enrichment and a violation of California’s business code, and is seeking class-action status.

RK West’s lead lawyer, Brian Kabateck of Kabateck Brown Kellner, has a history of bringing click fraud lawsuits, having sued Google, Yahoo and IAC. His law firm settled with Yahoo and joined in a $90 million settlement with Google.

In April he sued Google on behalf of David Almeida, who alleged that Google tricked him into paying for AdSense ads on the company’s publisher network, when he only wanted his ads to appear on search results pages. source.

This could be just another attempt to get money from Google, Google is big and everyone wants a piece of the pie! But on the other hand I find it quite misleading that they automatically opt-in new advertisers to their search partners and content network. Someone thinks they are advertising on Google and all of the sudden their ads are appearing on other sites.

I like their Content Network myself and have had good results on it but only a fool or someone obviously not aware they’re being opted into the Content Network is going to pay $10+/click there.

What do you think of this issue?