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According to ClickZ:

“The holiday season will be a real proving ground, to see how quickly
Google responds to issues,” Jeremy Hull, account leader at Range Online
Media, told ClickZ. “Do they have an adequate team in place, with
policies and procedures that are scalable for the holidays?”

This all became an issue in May, when Google changed its policy to let advertisers bid on trademarked keywords they don’t
own under certain circumstances (reselling a product or discussing it
in an informational way is now permitted).

This impacts big brands by increasing competition for bids for their branded key words and driving up the bid price. Also, non-trademark owners might sell trademarked items and steal search traffic from the rightful owner of the product.

Jeremy Hull, account leader at Range Online Media, tells ClickZ:

“Anything you could buy as a knock-off on the streets of New York and
rub the logo off with your fingernail…those are the same brands you
are seeing victimized by fraudulent behavior online as well. So, major apparel, luxury, jewelry, fragrance, and other
well-known and sought after brands are the hardest-hit by trademark
infringement.”

According to comScore’s third quarter earnings for 2009, pure play ecommerce companies are getting 6 in 10 dollars online — the highest rate ever.

Google is set up to punish companies that use others’ key words in a
competitive, critical or negative way. The problem is that the search
giant expects brands to monitor their own trademarks and report
violations. During the holiday season, when there is a general deluge
of shopping, advertising and branding, it’s harder to monitor exactly
what’s going on with other people’s advertising.

And letting other people bid on branded key words is not all bad for the original brand — especially if they’re selling the item and sending revenue back to the manufacturer. That’s Google’s argument. Here’s how a spokesperson defends the
change to ClickZ:

“Some trademark owners support other advertisers using their
trademarked terms in ad text to generate traffic and sales of their
products; other trademark owners feel differently.”

The next few months will show if Google or wary advertisers were right on this issue. It worked for them in the U.K.

According to NetImperative, when Google announced that anyone would be able to bid on branded terms there,

“many
assumed the amount of Internet search traffic that brand owners receive
from searches for their own trademarked
brand terms would decrease, because competitors and affiliates could
now bid on these terms,” commented Robin Goad, Director of Research at
Hitwise. “In fact, there was only a tiny decrease in traffic to brand
owners’ websites following the changes. UK Internet users have stayed
loyal to their favourite brands, but at what price? It seems that the
top brands in the UK have chosen to increase paid search activity on
their own brand terms rather than lose traffic to competitors or
affiliates.”

Of course, that turns out to be good for Google’s bottom line. But if brands see negative effects over the next few months, Google may be forced to switch to Yahoo’s model.

Yahoo!’s policy permits
the purchase of another’s trademark as a keyword only if:

“the advertiser presents content on its Web site that (a)
refers to the trademark or its owner or related product in a
permissible nominative manner without creating a likelihood of
consumer confusion (for example, sale of a product bearing the
trademark, or commentary, criticism or other permissible
information about the trademark owner or its product) or (b) uses
the term in a generic or merely descriptive manner. In addition,
the advertiser’s listing should disclose the nature of the
relevant content.”

Also, Yahoo self-polices violators.

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The move highlights the differences in culture at the two companies. And Dodge’s fairwell note serves another purpose for Google, as an ad for how loyal Microsoft devotees can switch to Google products.

Google has been steadily working to develop free software and products that compete Microsoft’s core business of paid services.

Dodge’s dismissal from Microsoft was generally panned, as he presented an innovative face for Microsoft and spent a good deal of time interacting with the tech community. Dodge posted a note on the job switch to his personal blog today and notes that the first thing he’s did was abandon Microsoft Office products for Google:

“I made the switch to Gmail last week and it has been awesome! Outlook
has been an old familiar friend for years, but it was getting kind of
tired. Gmail is new, fast, web based, and has all the features I need.
I especially like the way it threads conversations making it easy to
keep everything in context. And of course the search capabilities are
world class. One other subtle thing…no spam. I never realized how much
corporate spam invaded my Microsoft inbox.”

Of course, it makes sense that Dodge would sing the praises of his new employer. And his criticisms of the software giant — that it laid off 5,000 people while maintaining “$37 billion in cash and huge profits” — could be written off as the ramblings of a disgruntled former employee.

But Dodge, aside from his skills that Google seems eager to tap into, is the quintessential consumer that Google wants to poach from Microsoft. And he’s written the pitch for why others should make the switch as well:

“Vic Gundotra at Google was the first one to contact me with an
opportunity…90 minutes after the news of the layoff hit. That fast
decisive action was refreshing, and such a contrast to the slow,
secretive, bureaucracy at Microsoft. That speed and decisiveness also
reflects different approaches to hiring great people, building great
products and serving customers well.”

Of course, Google doesn’t really need help getting people to use Gmail, but old habits die hard, and Microsoft makes more than a little money selling its Office suite. Google offers many of the same features for the low price of free, but getting people to make the switch isn’t easy. Here’s Dodge saying why they should do it:

“I have been experimenting with Google Docs and have been able to do
everything I did in Microsoft Office. I can’t think of a single feature
missing from what I need every day. There may be some edge cases…but I
haven’t bumped into any yet.”

Of course, Microsoft can’t be held accountable for every former employee who wants to spout off about the company. And there is no method to ensure that every employee stays 100% satisfied to avoid losing them to competitors. But this little move by Google’s Gundotra was more than just a quick hire, it was a subtly innovative PR move.

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The hearings are designed to poll expert opinion from a wide range of experts on five key areas:

• For what online communications are manufacturers, packers or distributors accountable?
• How can manufacturers, packers or distributors fulfill regulatory requirements in their Internet and social media promotion, particularly when using tools that are associated with space limitations and tools that allow for real-time communications?
• What parameters should apply to the posting of corrective information on Web sites controlled by third parties?
• When is the use of links appropriate?
• How should adverse event reporting be addressed online?

From a web advertising perspective Google and Yahoo! have lobbied for a less restrictive online advertising environment and have started to experiment with new formats of ads to better address the regulatory needs of the US pharmaceutical marketplace.

Google has developed a presentation on its proposed healthcare ad format.

It will be a while before definitive outcomes emerge from these hearings, but the US is taking the lead in considering these issues from a regulatory perspective and it would be great if bodies like the ABPI took a similar approach to dealing with social media issues in the UK.

US-based agencies will develop a valuable advantage through gaining experience in a market that is ahead of the UK in a regulated approach to social media for healthcare clients. You can keep up to date with current developments at these hearings by following the Twitter hashtag #FDASM.

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Knowing what people think and feel when they see your newspaper’s brand is more important than ever.

The global recession has driven home one fact that many in media seem to have forgotten about: newspapers and media as a whole are businesses. While they are “in the business of news”, they’re also in the business of making money. Fail on the latter, and the former ceases to happen.

Managing the newspaper’s public facing image and brand is critical to its success. If the public decides they don’t like your paper, then your paper is less likely to sell print copies or record significant enough unique web visits. But if your paper is well-liked and seen as an asset to readers’ daily lives, the paper wins out.

What I’m suggesting is that newspapers assign more of their resources to ensuring its brand image is in good standing and that the paper is doing all that it can to inject itself into arenas that would reflect positively on the paper.

If you’re a journalist reading this, the above paragraphs probably amount to heresy in your eyes.

The immediate question journalists will have is: What does this mean for me? Another thing the media collapse has taught us is that newspaper employees need to have a greater stake in the success,  both in business and reputation, of the newspapers they write for.

In fleshing out my ideas for this blog post, I took to Twitter to get the input of the media professionals who follow me.

Saleem Khan, Canadian freelance journalist and National Chairman of the Canadian Association of Journalists, makes the point that journalists would have a role to play.

Some journalists will likely have some difficulty reconciling the role of someone who champions their employer’s public face and reputation with their role as objective reporters. The point that Saleem makes is a very good one. Reporters are the public face of any newspaper.

The more well-known and well-liked a reporter is, the better it is for the newspaper’s reputation. Case in point: New York Times tech maven David Pogue and expert economist Thomas Friedman. While they don’t define the papers they write for, their presence and reputations make significant contributions to the New York Times’ reputation.

Those are examples on a larger scale. Mark Hamilton, journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Canada, has a good example on a smaller scale:

This is a good example of personal branding fusing with organisational reputation to become something that is mutually beneficial to the individual and to the organisation. A brand manager would be acutely aware of this. Part of their job would be to understand what readers think of these star reporters and determining how they can be positioned within the organisation so that the mutually beneficial relationship reaches new heights.

Sounds like a lot of marketing jargon, right? That’s true, it is. A brand manager would have one foot firmly placed in the marketing department at any newspaper. But there’s more than one stakeholder here. A brand manager must act as three-way conduit between readers, editors and publishers.

The brand manager would work with a wide array of people at the newspaper. Among them would be the paper’s community manager. Holly Seddon, head of community management at FreshNetworks weighs in:

By working with editors, publishers, community managers, reporters and the advertising side, a newspaper brand manager would have all the data and input they would need to make informed decision about the direction at the newspaper as a brand and organisation should take to ensure its continued success.

Many newspapers fell apart because there was so much about their readers and brand that they just didn’t understand. Why won’t they pay for our paper? Why won’t they pay to read online? Why is no one reading us? What are we doing wrong?

Newspapers can’t be expected to win the fight to be the leading source of news and information for their readers if they aren’t armed with the necessary information about what people think of their brand.

A brand manager would have access to all of the relevant data that they need. They would also work closely with the paper’s stakeholders to elicit their feedback. With that, the brand manager can work directly with the publisher or CEO to plot a coherent, informed strategy both for the company as a whole and the brand.

As many newspapers enter the rebuilding phase, they would be smart to bring someone into the fold with sharp business, marketing and brand skills. Being afraid to try something new is no longer an excuse.

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Google’s algorithm looks at a significant number of ranking factors when it decides where a site should be in the SERPs. These ranking factors, and the weight they’re each given, change over time.

Last week at PubCon, Google’s Matt Cutts revealed a new ranking factor that may debut in 2010: page load time.

This would have potentially significant implications in two areas:

• Hosting. Those with subpar hosting could suffer if load time becomes a ranking factor. A website’s load time is, of course, impacted by the quality of its host’s connectivity and not all hosts are created equal in this area. Additionally, in the case of database-driven websites in particular, a slow server can have a significant effect on load time. This is especially true in shared hosting environments. To turn a profit on the ultra-cheap shared hosting that is still very popular, hosts cram hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of customers onto a single server. One poorly-written script on a site that gets a sudden surge in traffic can hurt every other customer on the server.If load time becomes a ranking factor, there may be added justification for spending more money on a host with quality connectivity and for leasing a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server. The location of your host could also be a consideration. An offshore host, for instance, might be at a disadvantage here, especially if it doesn’t have good peering.
• Development. Even with the best hosting in the world and a server with ample resources, slow page load times are often the result of poor development practices. Thanks to scripting languages like PHP, it’s easy to learn how to build dynamic websites. Unfortunately, not everyone who can build a dynamic website has the knowledge, training and skill to develop high-performance websites. Poor coding practices and inefficient SQL queries run rampant.If Google takes into consideration load time, it will be yet one more incentive for website owners and developers to focus on the basics. From optimizing the configuration of your webserver to implementing caching, for instance, there are a lot of ways you can achieve significant or incremental performance boosts that will decrease page load time.

Improving Load Time: Tools of the Trade

There are a lot of tools that you can employ to identify load time bottlenecks. If you’re a Firefox user, the Firebug plugin with the Google Page Speed add-on is hard to beat. It will test not only the load time of a page, but breaks down all of the requests. It also provides warnings and suggestions. If you’re not a Firefox user, free online services like the Web Page Analyzer from WebSiteOptimization.com can also display some of the same data and suggestions.

Hosting-wise, services like Network-Tools.com can be useful in determining the quality of your host’s network.

And finally, the best tool of the trade when it comes to decreasing page load time in practice: a competent developer. After all, knowing that your toilet is backed up really doesn’t help when you don’t have a competent plumber to fix it.

Just How Much Weight Will Google Give Load Time?

The big question you’re probably asking is: just how much weight will Google give to the load time ranking factor? To start, at least, it will probably be quite modest. As mentioned, there are literally hundreds of ranking factors Google takes into consideration and with page load time, Google will probably be looking for extremes (e.g. the page that takes 20 seconds to load). A fraction of a second is (hopefully) not going to make a difference.

Given that, the possibility that load time will become a ranking factor isn’t worth fretting over if you already have a website that loads pretty quickly. But that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. Two points:

• SEO success is often dependent upon paying attention to the little things. Page load time might be one more minor ranking factor, but it’s one that you can exercise control over, making it worth your while to ensure that you’re taking advantage of it and not getting penalized.
• Like other ranking factors, page load time is an important metric to be looking at anyway. If your website is a tortoise, chances are you’re already losing out in the form of reduced user loyalty, suboptimal conversions, etc. So whether or not Google makes load time a ranking factor and no matter how much weight it gives it, the possibility alone is a good reminder that page load time does matter.

Photo credit: wwarby via Flickr.

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AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong has been quickly buying up talent and increasing AOL’s media properties in the lead up to the company’s tkt from parent Time Warner later this year.

At the Roosevelt hotel in New York today, Armstrong went into AOL’s continuing strategy.

AOL’s CEO announced that online content can be “much better.”

“That’s why we are making such a big bet there,” he said during a
keynote appearance at the annual Media and Money conference, hosted
by Nielsen and Dow
Jones.

It’s true that content online has a long way to go. But is AOL the one to make it happen?

Armstrong has been able to make such a big play in the content market because of AOL’s large subscriber base. (As most media companies shed employees over the past year, AOL has been hungrily picking up journalists.)

But dial up subscribers will soon be a thing of the past, and AOL has a finite period of time to prove it can draw readers without the assistance of its dial up business.

According to Time Warner’s SEC filings this week, AOL’s dial up subscription service accounts for the “vast majority” of its operating income, but is steadily dwindling, as consumers look to broadband and cable internet providers.

AOL’s revenue through the third quarter was $2.45 billion, with operating income for
the same period of $449 million. But subscriber revenue was down 29% and ad revenue was off by 18%.

As AOL’s stable of internet subscribers slide away, the media side of the business will have to prove it can draw viewers with popular content instead of a group of viewers directed to AOL sites from their internet service provider.

That’s why Armstrong is bulking up the company’s content properties. Today, he reiteratd AOL’s theories on using content to attract revenue:

“AOL is one of the largest properties online to reach women. If you’re a Proctor & Gamble or a General Mills,
as long as you know it’s AOL content, you don’t mind that it’s bundled.”

But AOL’s growing group of blogs and media properties will have to prove that they can draw attractive audiences for advertisers without the help of AOL subscribers by this time next year.

That’s when AOL’s deal with Google runs out.

Google currently generates one-third of AOL’s advertising revenue and nearly half of the revenue for AOL Media, which Armstrong is investing his time and energy building up.

The search giant invested $1 billion in AOL in 2006, in exchange for a 5% stake
and the right to provide search results and advertising while
splitting the resulting revenue.

But in the first nine months of this year, revenue from the Google partnership slipped to $422 million from $513
million for the same period in 2008.

Google’s own search business has remained stable despite the  decline is steeper than Google’s own search revenue decline, but the loss of AOL dial up subscribers let to lower search query volume. The rest
of the blame falls to lower revenues per search query, according to AOL filings.

Alternatives for search providers are limited, and every month there are set to be even fewer AOL dial up subscribers, meaning that AOL properties will increasingly have to pull in readers on their own merits.

Google’s deal with AOL runs through the end of 2010, meaning
Armstrong has a year to get his advertising against better content
strategy off the ground before revenues really become a problem.

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The rumors are true. Rupert Murdoch is taking News Corp. content out of Google search.

The media mogul set off a storm last week when he responded to a question about opting-out from Google with the words “I think we will.”

And today, News Corp.’s chief digital officer confirmed it. News Corp. content will be off of Google search within the next few months.

But is this a game of chicken that News Corp. can win?

According to The Telegraph, Jonathan Miller told the Monaco Media Forum on Friday that News Corp. doesn’t need Google:

“The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more
often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the
least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having
content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can
survive without it.”

That’s not what Google says. The Telegraph quotes a Google spokesperson earlier this week:

“Google News and web search are
a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about
100,000 clicks every minute.”

Specifically for The Wall Street Journal, Google plays a big role. According to Hitwise, Google
and Google news are the top traffic providers for WSJ.com, accounting for over 25%
of WSJ.com’s traffic.

Miller is right that many of thosee readers are new users. Hitwise estimates that 44% of WSJ.com visitors coming from Google are “new” users who haven’t visited the domain in the last 30 days.

But over half are not. And News Corp. could potentially choke off subscribers and potential subscribers with this plan. When they stop seeing Journal search results, readers might stop seeing the benefit of paying for access.

News Corp. is hoping that other news outlets will come together on this plan. That is evident by how long it’s taking. Removing items from Google search is not the kind of thing that takes months. It’s a simple code formatting issue. But News Corp. needs other media companies to sign on, or a deal with another search engine, to ensure the plan works. Miller continued:

“We
will lead. There is a pent up need for this. There has to be a resolution
for the free versus pay debate otherwise we cannot afford to pay for things
like news bureaus in Kabul.”

If media outlets banded together with another search engine like Bing, they could potential give users access without Google.

But that is a bet that they could easily lose. Things may have gotten dire enough at enough media companies that they can band together to avoid Google. And despite its various strengths, Google would be a less efficient search engine if it didn’t return the most thorough news headlines.

A lot of factors have to fall in line for that to work, though. For starters, blogs and other news gathering services aren’t likely to go off Google any time soon. And readers may not go searching for the original source of content if they get close enough through Google, meaning that this plan could leave media companies even worse off than they are now.

As much as publishers hate Google, cutting off search results could do more harm than good.

Image: AP/Mark J. Terrill

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