Nick Fox, a director of product management who looks after ads on Googles search site, said the company was now testing the use of more search queries in its ad targeting. He did not describe how it was doing that. But Internet experts said that it was most likely using its cookies.
Mr. Fox said that Googles approach was different from what Yahoo, AOL and others call behavioral targeting. Those companies look at what a user did a few days earlier to show them ads about the same topic today. Google says it believes that search engine advertising is most effective if it relates to what the user has most recently searched for.
We are trying to understand what the user is trying to do right now, Mr. Fox said. In some cases, those queries are ambiguous, so you need a little more context.
Googles previous system of looking at a users immediate past query was not useful enough, he said. It is probably not just the previous query that matters, Mr. Fox said. You want to know if the user is still doing the same thing. You wouldnt want to go back a month. You wouldnt want to go back a day. But you may want to go back two or three queries.

Specifically, the company believes examining a full sequence of user queries can lead to more useful results. Today, the company only keeps track of the immediately prior search, but often users use search engines to explore subject areas broadly, said Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising platform group, at the Search Engine Strategies conference.
"I believe this notion of understanding user intent--being able to analyze (search queries) and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience--is one of the most important areas for us," Nadella said.

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...convenient and relevant for people who arent sure what theyre looking for, people who have trouble spelling and everyone in between.

Its fun seeing the numbers next to the results; I think this feature will be rather handy for those of us interested in keyword relevancy and results. Generally it looks like Google suggests the most popular results for a given query with numbers of searches for each one. Makes a nice information shortcut if youre crunching time or want to get a general idea of how popular a keyword is.

Granted, the moment I saw the feature, I thought about it more in terms of helpful keyword research than user convenience, which I think anyone in the SEO/SEM/SMM field will be prone to do.

However, Im not sure how useful the feature actually is for the average user. Ask has had a similar feature for several years now, and Yahoo has its own search assist in place, and neither has seen much growth from it (check out comscore.com for the numbers).

According to Google product manager Jennifer Liu:

Back when I was planning my wedding, I had a list of wedding songs in mind, but the problem was that I couldnt remember any of the artist names or song titles. So I started typing into the Google search box parts of the lyrics that I did remember " and like magic, I saw suggestions with the artist name and song titles that I wanted! (I was opted-in to the keyword suggestions Google Labs experiment at the time). At that moment, I was so proud to be working on Google Suggest, a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while you search.

While I can see where this would be helpful, I dont think its going to make a huge difference in the way most users search. I think this helps people, but it doesnt fully address the problem of giving users truly relevant results. I did some searching of my own with random words, but several times I didnt find what I was looking for in the suggested terms list.

So it remains to be seen how useful this feature will truly be, but well find out soon enough. For now, Im still intrigued by its quick and dirty keyword research opportunities.

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So far we have already saved 25,024.6 yd of rainforest! Now when you do a search, the result shows a Forbidden message from Google, and above it Forestle prints this message:

Google ended partnership with Forestle!

Dear Forestle user,

We just received an email from Google in which they announced the end of the partnership with Forestle. They said that we offered incentives to click artificially on sponsored links and that this was not compliant with their policies..

Well, we dont agree with that!

We displayed a note at the top of the Forestle result page that says only click on Google sponsored links if you are really interested in them. Also we saved 0.1 m per search and not per click! So where did we offer incentives to click on ads?

In our opinion Google ended the partnership, because Forestle became too successful

Another note above that message reads, Please only click on Google sponsored links if you are really interested in them. You harm Forestle, Google and the advertising websites with artificial clicking. (Im not sure since when notes like these have been added to the site.) Forestle says all of their income minus administrative costs goes to The Nature Conservancy initiative. While Forestle claims they save 0.1 m per search and not per click, on their explanations page they say Forestle earns advertising revenue from clicks on sponsored links. (I asked Google for a comment and will update this post should they reply with information.)

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Here are a few excerpts from the thread at Webmaster World:

We used to all complain about AdSense displaying off topic ads when your page was displayed in the Google cache.

That's no longer a problem because it appears all ads in the content network are now disabled when you display pages with AdSense via Google cache links.

Now the fact that cached pages used to display off topic ads was silly because Google knew where the pages came from so there was no rhyme or reason that AdSense would go off topic whatsoever unless there was an internal disconnect between Google Search and AdSense. This made no sense anyway because Google claims both Googlebot and AdSense Mediabot share the same cache of the pages, so it never made sense because both the webmasters and Google were losing money from this ridiculous situation.

Now, the pages with AdSense display nothing whatsoever so it's a complete loss for all involved.

No PSA, no off target ads, just a big blank spot making us all look stupid.

There is one caveat to this in that I've seen a couple of premium publisher sites still displaying AdSense ads in the cache, but none of the 30+ publisher sites I tested for regular AdSense ads showed anything at all in Google cache.

Personally, I'd prefer the ads enabled when cached pages are viewed and the same ads properly displayed that would be seen on the same page when in context of the website, so everyone involved could make some money, but that's no longer an option.

What's the reason for this current change?

Could it be a simple technical malfunction?

Is it possible that AdSense in cache was disabled so that the cache pages are truly "fair use" and Google isn't monetizing them?

Could it be a -url=http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/3730801.htm-sign of the times-/url- and with some belt tightening that Google doesn't want to share revenue when the visitors are on their site? Are they trying to get 100% of the PPC revenue when the visitor clicks BACK out of the cache?

No clue, purely tossing ideas around.

I'm not sure of the reason, but it's a huge change without as much as a peep about it from anyone anywhere!

It may be related to allowed sites feature. If it is enabled ad will only display on selected domain and it will not display on other places.

No, if you use the Allowed Sites feature, ads will still display on sites that are not allowed to show them according to your settings, but impressions and clicks won't be credited to your account.

Oh and ads are showing just fine on Google cache pages (though a little off-topic), so I suppose it makes sense there hasn't been a peep about it from anyone anywhere. Can't think of a reason why they're not showing for you though. Did you provide the other people on IM with a direct link to the Google cache, or did they go there on their own?

The ads are NOT showing in the cache of one of my sites and the 'allowed sites' feature is and has been turned off for several days.

The cache does show my Google CSE search but it's missing the little Google logo that usually appears inside the box.

I've allowed site turned on and ads are not displayed on page copied to .edu and other domain using cache or w/o cache. So I will go with Bill about bug. Lately adsense got few bugs and I'm guessing more site maintenance

You looked at your sites in Google cache right? I checked some other people's sites I know today and I'm seeing the javascript is running because those sites are set to collapse the area when the ads don't display, and the full space is made for the ads, it's just blank.

On my competitors website, GG ads do not show on thier homepage, but they do show on deep link pages. My site has no archive tag on all pages.

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On the Official Google Blog, Engineer Ben Gomes explains that some of Google's search experiments can be very subtle and they can run up to 200 experiments on Google sites all over the world at any given time.

"Experimentation is a very powerful tool, and we use it very widely to test potential changes to search. At any given time, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments on Google sites all over the world... experimental changes so small that you can barely tell the difference after staring at the page." Gomes says.

Most of the time, experiments with smaller changes are almost never noticed.

This is just one example of many experiments to make our searching experience easier and more enjoyable, if you want to check out some more click here.

My question is however, are these small experiments actually valuable? Google seems to think so - "We test almost everything, even things that you would think are so small that we could not possibly care (nor could they possibly matter). In fact, small changes do matter, and we do care."

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According to the adCenter blog, "This new resource complements the Microsoft adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel by providing access to the same deep audience insights directly in the adCenter Research tab."

Getting Started:

1. Click the Research tab.
2. Enter a Keyword or Website URL from which you would like to start your keyword search.

Suggested Keywords:

"Our new suggested keywords results feature enhanced insights into average ad click-through-rate (CTR) and average cost-per-click (CPC) to help you select valuable keywords that can drive traffic and ROI to your business."

"The keywords that you add are set to broad match with the default bid. You can make further adjustments by going to the ad group page in Campaign Management."

Audience Insights:

"Ever wanted to know more about the search audience? The Audience Insights graphs show age, gender, geographic, and search volume statistics for keywords in your collection to help you better understand the searches and tailor your ad content and landing pages to them."

Over at Webmaster World, a thread has been posted in regards to the announced update. Here are Aa few excerpts from that thread:

"According to adCenter, it now has a new update to the keyword research tool aimed at finding keywords more efficiently and planning campaigns. it is designed to complement the Microsoft adCenter Add-inBeta for Excel by providing access to the deep audience insights directly in the adCenter Research tab."

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Gomes wrote that Google runs anywhere from 50-200 experiments on Google sites across the world. The interesting part of the post is the examples of past experiments that Google has run where the experiments are so subtle that it's very difficult to notice the difference between A and B.

Below is one example that Ben Gomes provides, can you spot the difference?

In this case, the difference in user interaction is so clear and marked we could tell extremely quickly which one worked better: the difference is in the thickness of the plus box next to the stock quote. Now, coming to the conclusion that one is "better" is tricky, and there's many a possible slip on the way there. Does more interaction with the plus box mean that it is better? How about if users then miss good results because they are distracted by the more prominent plus box? If we've done our job right, almost without your noticing, things will work just that little bit better for you.

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Now, via the Google Inside AdSense Blog, Google has announced that the Google Ad Manager service is now open to all AdSense publishers. According to Google, Ad Manager can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure both directly-sold and network-based inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user interface, Google serving speed and reliability, and significant cost savings. Furthermore, Google Ad Manager is optional for publishers and can be implemented in their AdSense accounts, that would provide them with automated means of maximizing the revenue of their unsold and network-managed inventory.

The new features that have been employed in Google AdManager are:

1. Interface available in 32 languages: Do you prefer to work in Turkish or Vietnamese or Hungarian? Now you can! Ad Manager supports international currencies, too.
2. Ad network management: Easily manage your third-party ad networks in Ad Manager to automatically maximize your network driven revenue.
3. Automatic macro insertion: Save time and avoid tagging errors since Ad Manager now automatically detects and inserts macros from most popular 3rd party vendors.
4. Creative preview on live site: Preview the look and feel of ads on your live site to ensure ads look as expected before you start the campaign.
5. Day and Time Targeting: Don't want your orders to run on weekends? No problem. With day and time targeting, you can set any new line items you create to run only during specific hours or days, or as little as 15 minutes per week. Use day and time targeting in addition to geography, bandwidth, browser, user language, operating system, domain and custom targeting.

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Whats important for me, as a parent of an 8 year old in third grade and a two year old is that the search engine they use is a safe one. But it needs to be a search engine that kids want to use. Ask Kids gives kids a great search experience. After using it a few times this morning, I can see that it has more relevant, kid-friendly search results than any other search engine. And the search results are presented is an interesting, pleasing, graphically-vivid display"better than any other search engine. In fact, it makes Google look sort of bland.

Whats great about this new kids search engine is that its more click friendly than type friendly. If you have kids and youve ever watched them use a search engine to find something, youll know that kids are not very good at typing. In fact, theyre terrible at typing. But, even my 2 year old can use a mouse. According to Ask.com, the Ask Kids search engine was built with this in mind: you dont have to type that much in order to get good search results. Lets take a look at the search results.

I did a search for the word Texas at Ask Kids to see what would find. Right there, front and center, you get the stats for Texas:

Governor: Rick Perry (R)
Capital: Austin; Population: 22,490,022
Statehood: December 29, 1845 - 28th state admitted
Nickname: Lone Star State; Motto: Friendship
State Bird: Mockingbird; Flower: Bluebonnet; Tree: Pecan
State Song: Texas, Our Texas

Whats also good is that there are many places to click: you dont have to actually type again to find what youre looking for. You can click on over to the official State of Texas website, you can look at images on the right, and you can even narrow or expand your search with related phrases. And, best of all, you can find out the time in Texas as well as the temperature in Austin, Texas.

Whats also interesting to me, though, is that Ask Kids has sponsored search results right in the middle of the screen, right below the stats for Texas:

I know Ask.com needs to monetize their search engine, but to put up sponsored results right there in the front and center like this? Do you really think that kids have the ability to support those sponsors? It just seems kind of odd to me that contextual ads (they appear to be from Google AdWords?) would be so prominent in the search results. I would expect banner ads to be there, not contextual ads.

Just as a test, I went ahead and searched for some keyword phrases that might bring up some controversial search results, just to see really if this all-new Ask Kids search engine is more kid friendly like they say it is. I searched for viagra. Do it yourself and tell me that this search result is kid friendly:

Should AskKids.com, supposedly the best kid friendly search engine show sponsored ads for Viagra? I realize that many kids will probably not be searching for Viagra at AskKids.com. But what about their actual search results. Are their organic, natural search results even on-topic for the keyword phrase that I searched for, Viagra? The number one search result for this search phrase is Nature.com. How ironic!

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Previously, to achieve this, advertisers would have to stop the entire test (and lose all test data), so the improvement is a big timesaver for webmasters.

In case you're unfamiliar with Google website optimizer, it's a tool that allows advertisers to test copy, layout, and images to determine which combination will yield the best results on any given page. To learn more, visit the website optimizer demo.

As mentioned above, website optimizer now features a 'disable' button that removes any low performing page variations and allows for quicker, more actionable test results. Google have also made some other enhancements including:

• Updated reporting to indicate when a variation is a high confidence winner. High confidence winners are page combinations that are the most likely to improve conversion over your current page design (see screenshot below).
  
  
• Offline validation for A/B tests - ensures webmasters have everything tagged correctly for pages that aren't accessible to website optimizer online.

These updates were released by the Google team at Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose last week. I think they're a great example of how some simple changes can really improve a service offering. If you're using website optimizer and noticed the changes, let us know what you think!

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