This looks to be pretty major -Starting today, Google is adding a wiki function to the search results,

“Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you’re an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it’s not there at all and you’d like to add it. Or maybe you’d like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.”

As with all things Google related, people are pretty quick to jump in with their opinions. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch is not a fan,

“Google search wasn’t broken. It’s one of the few things on the Internet that isn’t. I love it, as does 62% of everyone on the Internet. This new stuff is a mess of arrows and troll comments and stuff moving around the page.”

While someone (sorry, I couldn’t find a name on the blog) over at I’ve Said Too Much, has responded to that with a post simply titled ‘Arrington is Wrong’,

“Google seeks to build a massive distributed curated search into which we are all adding intelligence without ever being aware of it. It is, I would contend, the Big Thing At Google For 2009.”

Meanwhile, over at eWeek, they’re a lot more enthusiastic, seeing it as a boon for users, advertisers and, of course, Google,

“That’s Google’s genius stroke; we believe SearchWiki is letting us control our search destiny, but Google gets to keep putting up more search ads in front of us. Google wants us to find what we’re looking for, and now it has provided a way to keep us in Google.com to do so.”

I’m personally not sure right now.

I think it will be clearly used for Google to start collecting yet more information about what people think of the search results – with the positives and negatives that suggests. People will try and game the system, promoting themselves and so on. If, however, enough people use it, then hopefully the ‘wisdom of crowds’ will help to improve things by adding that human element which is often missing from Google.

That said, I can’t help but agree with Arrington that it looks a mess. Remember how clean Google used to be?

When they first launched it was one of the major things that set them apart. All that lovely white space. The sponsored links were completely separate from the natural SERPs. No nasty banner ads. Just good search results.

But now, between the maps, local search, images, addresses and so on – these additional buttons just seem like yet more clutter.

Will it work? I don’t know. If I search for something, I’m used to Google telling me what I need to know. Using their example from above, I would not use Google to revisit a trail map site time after time, I would bookmark it instead, either on my PC or with Delicious.

I can see times when it would be useful to remove particularly bad results, but how often am I going to suggest a site be added?

And the notes I suspect, will be more trolling than useful unfortunately. I’ve tried a few so far, and there’s nothing that enhances my searching at all. A search for Liverpool FC, for instance, just has 3 right now:

Comment by: Searcher, 9:05am – searching: lfc
“great”

Comment by: Mike, 6:41am – searching: liverpool
“Liverpool FC”

Comment by: 360spin, 8:39am – searching: liverpool
“Wow!”

How do they help me at all?

Perhaps Google is threatened by the growth of social networks and feels that is one area search can be improved. I’m not so sure.

What do you think?

In the latest round of updates at the end of last week, Google announced that they would (finally!) be adding more detail about where your clicks are coming from:

“Previously, these pages divided statistics into two categories: search, which included Google and search partners, and the content network.
Now, we show one set of statistics for Google and another set aggregating search partner performance. Search partners include AOL, Ask.com, and many other search sites around the web. ”

This is a major change, comparable to when Google started showing where exactly your ads where coming from in the Content network.

That was a huge step forward, and one that made sense for Google. Previously advertisers were skeptical about throwing money down a black hole which included some very, um, shady Made For AdSense sites alongside the high quality sites they may have wanted to target.

However, these latest changes don’t go far enough. Yet.

We can now see how Google stacks up against the other search partners, but not how the individual partners (Ask, AOL, etc) are performing individually. Rich, over at Destilled is asking the question, “Have Google Shot Themselves in the Foot?”, and it’s a valid point.

Here’s the data for one of the accounts we manage:

(I removed the campaign names for anonymity for my client)

As you can see, in each case the cost per click for the search partners is higher, up to 25% higher, than it is on Google, but even more importantly, the number of conversions (final column) are way down. So I’m paying more, and getting less. That is why all the Search partner ads are now set to ‘Off’. I’d rather spend where it is working.

So, what happens now?

Well I suspect that that many others will follow suit and shut off the complete search network, for example, see this thread at Webmaster World:

“At first glance it looks like 90% of my conversions are from google search only not the network.”

“Wow, just split stats on an account. Bye bye Search Network!”

“We totally disabled Partners in a few campaigns after seeing 100 to 200% higher conversion costs.
No wonder they didn’t show this data for so long.”

And if that happens, I’d have to assume that Google will be forced to show the search network in greater details, if only due to pressure from their partners. If AOL is performing well, for instance, they’re unlikely to be happy about being cut out due to the deficiencies of other sites.

However, for now we have to deal with what we have, and I’m at least glad that I’ve been able to learn this much.

How about you? How do your stats measure up across the different sites?

Google announced on Monday that the Quality Score Improvements would be going live this week, with what they claim are tweaks which will benefit both advertisers and search users.

Well, they would, wouldn’t they!?

The changes, removing the ‘Inactive for Search Status’, real time ‘Quality Score’ and new ‘First Page Bid Estimates’ seem to me to be more about generating extra revenue than improving quality.

Even among those SEMs who work with AdWords for a living there is a lot of confusion about what is going on. A lot of the targeting improvements seem, well, arbitrary at best. For instance, here’s one of the search terms from an account I manage (click the image to enlarge):

It’s not ‘Great’, but a fairly solid 7/10 ‘OK’. Even some nice words of encouragement,

“What should I do?
Keep it up! Your keyword, ad text, and landing page quality are high.”

So, how is the ad performing? Let’s see:

Hmm, the ad is not showing. Must be the bid then, right?

Well, no:

Estimated bid to show on the first page:	$1.25	Based on the quality score below
Your bid:	$1.75	Max CPC

I have an keyword that is rated at 7/10, and I’m bidding 40% more than Google estimates I need to to be on the first page, and yet, “No Ad is Showing”.

No wonder people are confused.

If Google is not showing the ads, then they’ll lose money then. Well, I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

I’ve been watching my keywords pretty closely this week to see what would happen, and Google’s main suggestion seems to be that I raise my bids. Funny that.

How about this one for instance:

That’s an exact match keyword, which fits the site perfectly, has a historically high click-thru rate and used to average less the $1/click. Google now says “Bid is below first page bid estimate of $25.00″. $25! And yet yesterday, it was in the 1.5 average position.

That’s an extreme one, but we’ve seen maybe 30-40% of our keywords being told they should raise the bid according to the first page bid estimate. If that is happening across other peoples’ accounts, and it appears that it is, then we are going to see the average cost of bids being pushed up. Nobody wants to be on the 2nd or, gasp, 3rd page of results.

I’ve been working with Pay Per Click ads for a good number of years now (hence the GoTo swag shown above), and I think we’ve been down this road before. This is why many people switched to Google AdWords from Goto/Overture in the first place, because the constant battle to be in the top spots drove the cost up and up. Google was a breath of fresh air. They really did reward quality instead of who has the deepest pockets. After all, if Ad1 was paying $1, and Ad2 only $0.50 but had 3 times as many clicks, then Google still made more money. Everyone was happy. That is why I’m worried about the potential bidding wars this may lead to.

Particularly if the Yahoo-Google deal is finalized and approved.

Maybe I’m wrong. It’s still very early days and these may just be some kinks which will have to be worked out. But given Google’s near monopoly and unwillingness to listen recently, I can’t say I’m overly optimistic.

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Are you an AdWords Advertisers? Let me know what you’re seeing or what you think.

Cuil, who have seen their traffic tumble into free fall since their much-hyped (but severely botched) launch, have suffered another blow today, as TechCrunch reports that VP Product, Louis Monier, has quit the company:

“Louis Monier, Cuil’s VP Product, quietly resigned from the newly launched search engine last week, we’ve heard from a reliable source. “

Monier was one of the big draws for the simply stunning amount of PR that Cuil generated – he was hired  away from Google last year in a major coup for the young start up, but is even more well known as the Father of AltaVista, everyone’s favorite search engine before Google came along. His departure is thought to be related to the path Cuil should take.

With a resume which also includes stints at Xerox PARC,  Ebay and Google, Monier is regarded as one of the big names in tech and search, so the blow will be a huge one for Cuil. After all, he left Alta Vista, then the #1 search engine, after a similar disagreement over the move from straight search to becoming a portal (how 1999!)..and look what happened to AV after that.

This has been a strange week. On Tuesday I was very worried about two things – Hurricane Hanna looked to be heading for a direct hit, and one of our clients took a major dive in Google for their key search terms.

It’s now Sunday, Hannah has passed by with little more than some extra rain, and the client has moved back up, better than before. So, a wasted week? No!

Here’s what I’ve learned from this:

Examine the Situation

Hurricane: We weren’t as ready as we should have been. What needed to be done? Where would we stay? When would we leave? What would we bring?

Website: Had any major changes been made? Were other companies affected the same way? What was being said at Webmaster World and other boards?

Taking Action

Hurricane: We made hotel reservations which could be canceled right up to the last minute with no penalty. We sorted through documents, cleaned out the old and organized the relevant ones. Bought extra candles, water and supplies.

Website: Looked through the code for anything that had gotten ‘messed up’. Checked out some competitors to see how they were looking. Analyzed the traffic that was still being sent from Google.

Waiting. And waiting.

In both instances there was a lot of waiting.

Hurricane: Once we had established that we were ready as we could be, there was little to do but check the NHC tracking maps and listen for local advisories regarding a possible evacuation.

Website: There was still plenty of traffic coming from Google, it was just some of the most searched phrases that had taken a hit. We weren’t banned at least! We still had good back links. Nothing was obviously wrong on the site. So…we wait.

Happy Endings

Hurricane: By Thursday it was pretty clear we should dodge the worst of it. Schools were closed as a precautionary measure on Friday, but other than some stronger than usual wind, and a little extra rain, we were fine. Yay!

Website: We tried to limit checking to once (okay, maybe twice) a day. On Saturday things were still not looking great – we had second page positions, but they were bouncing around between #19 and #20. Then, on Sunday, the storm blew past and the sun came out – back up to top 5 for both the affected search terms. Yay!

Conclusions

Somethings are just simply beyond your control. Yes, you should prepare for hurricanes and you can optimize for Google, but that doesn’t stop bad things happening.

What is important is that when it looks like trouble, then you know what to do.

It is said the when Alexander realized the size of his domain, “he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer” – Google, however, just moves out to space.

Yes, having won the search engine wars, dominated the pay-per-click sphere and, presumably, it’s just a matter of time before becoming the number one browser, Google has taken the next step and left Earth’s orbit.

Well, OK, not quite, but they did launch their own satellite today, from a rocket emblazoned with the Google logo.

The Delta 4 rocket owned by GeoEye will provide Google with exclusive satellite imagery for Google Maps. According to the press release,

“GeoEye- …(is) designed to take digital images of the Earth from 423 miles and…the satellite camera can distinguish objects on the Earth’s surface as small as 0.41-meter or 16 inches in size.”

However, U.S. Government restrictions mean that Google will only be allowed to use resolution of 50cm – but with most commercial mapping right now at 60cm, it’s still a big improvement.

So, Google will have at least one satellite capable of reading your license plate from space.  And to think, some people are still worried about Google tracking their online behavior!

OK, this maybe something of a cheat, but I have a good excuse. I had fully intended to download Google’s new browser Chrome yesterday, test it out and write up my thoughts, but with that hurricane looking like it was heading directly for my house, I had more pressing matters.

Now Chrome has been available for almost a complete day, the Twitterverse, the Blogosphere and maybe even some people in the real world, have had a chance to chime in with their thoughts. Which leaves me wondering what I can really add to the conversation with just a brief test time.

So, not wishing to seem redundant, I thought a round-up of reactions might actually prove more useful.

History

Wired pretty much has the definitive article about how Chrome came in to being, Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web. Highly-respected tech journalist Steven Levy gives a birds-eye view of the whole project, from its beginning to the actual release. Includes some interesting stuff – would you believe that Google actually, um, ‘fibbed’ about building their own browser?

“After a 2004 New York Times article quoted “a person who has detailed knowledge of the company’s business” saying a browser was in the works, Schmidt had to publicly deny it.”

Hmm…

How it is Different

The most current versions of browsers have been improvements upon older versions, but those older versions were for the original www – not today’s web of applications, JavaScript and ‘constant connectedness’. Google wanted to rip it up and start again:

“All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there”

I Feel the Need – the Need for Speed!

You bank online. You check your email on line. You work, live and play online. So speed is a bigger and bigger issue. Chrome is certainly a step up, at least according to Jof Arnold:

Many others are saying the same thing. Techcrunch found that,

“After just ten minutes of jumping from site to site, I was amazed by how quickly I was able to get around. And unlike some browsers (I won’t mention any names), opening a slew of tabs doesn’t matter — it’s just as fast with or without tabs.”

Hicks Design call it “fast and nimble. In a Camino way”, Eamon Costello says it’s “seriously fast” and, at the time of writing, there are about 5 tweets a minute with the search string, “Chrome is fast”!

So, let’s assume it’s new and it’s fast – what does this mean?

It’s Google vs Microsoft

Chrome is obviously another shot at Microsoft. Which is why Google waited until they were dominant enough to really challenge in the browser wars. Clinton Skakun is rooting for an IE-Killer:

“Hopefully this browser reaches the eyes of enough IE6 and 7 users. If it kills IE it was all worth it!:D When it’s all said and done, we might just have a Internet Explorer Killer on our hands:) If it doesn’t kill IE, maybe it will cause a slight shrink their user base.”

But Hank Williams isn’t so upbeat:

“Microsoft has been fighting the browser wars with spitballs and plastic knives and they are still beating Firefox handily. So Chrome, from a business perspective, for the foreseeable future, is totally irrelevant.”

Some, however, think that the real challenge is not to Internet Explorer, but to Microsoft Office. Google has been rolling out it’s own Ajax applications, Google Docs, Spreadsheets, etc – a browser which can handle Javascript better, making these faster and more stable, will take yet more users away from desktop applications.  Preston Galla’s take is that,

“Google’s Chrome browser…takes dead aim at Windows 7 and Microsoft Office, and attempts to make both irrelevant. Google’s long-term goal is clear: Dominate the enterprise and small business market in the same way it now dominates Internet search.”

Actually, it’s Google vs Mozilla

There is already one great open source browser available, and it claims around 20% of the market share. Mozilla has also just renewed its deal with Google – so why would Google want another competitor in the mix?  Joe Wilcox has a suggestion:

“Google wants to keep that money it gives Mozilla and other browser developers…Chrome will compete with Firefox and other Google search-supported browsers. Oh, yeah, if that’s you, Google is doing evil. If you’re Mozilla and dependent on Google paid search revenue, your browser’s future is perilous. How ironic if Google does to Firefox what Microsoft couldn’t: Kill the browser.”

What Do I Think?

I’ve been playing around with it for the last day or so (I’m writing this post using Chrome right now), and it’s, sort of, well, underwhelming. Considering it has 3% of the market share in under 24 hours I expected something more. Although I’m not sure what.

Maybe I need to get used to it a little more. It took me a while to feel fully comfortable with GMail when I first began using that, and now it’s all I use. It’s certainly fast, no doubt, and it has the Google-feel to it that Docs and so on have too, but switching browsers is a pain, and I’d need a strong incentive to do that. I don’t currently think Chrome is it.

I also have a few concerns about monopoly and privacy. Do we really want Google to dominate in another field like it does in search? They have made the software Open Source, so perhaps developers can port some of the better parts over to the Mozilla project, which would be good for everyone. Right now, however, I’m not going to be switching from Firefox.

Have you tried it out yet? What do you think?

***Update***

Looks like I was right to have some fears about privacy – Jacob Morgan has the goods…

I’m a little late picking up on this, but it seems that Google Minus Google is garnering some major attention.

The site utilizes Google’s own Custom Search Engine, which allows you to tailor your search to specific sites, topics and so on, to remove all the Google-owned sites from the results.

So searches on Google Minus Google will not show any results from YouTube, Blogger, Knol, Orkut and others, removing the potential bias that some are suspecting may be going on behind the scenes.

I wrote previously that I was skeptical that Google would allow Knol pages to rank artificially well, but I may have been too hasty. Much has been made in the search engine community during the last week of some results that are doing exactly that. At the time of writing, for instance, a search for ‘buttermilk pancakes‘ has a Knol page as the top result.

Is that page really the most useful one to be found throughout the whole Internet? Better than all the recipe sites which have been around for years, all the manufacturers, How-To sites and Wiki pages? Perhaps, perhaps not. What is more important, to paraphrase Lord Hewart, is not that Google be impartial, but that that Google is seen to be impartial.

Much has been made of Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ policy. Something which initially helped establish the company as trustworthy and set them apart from the Big Business types at Yahoo and Microsoft has become something of a millstone around their neck. Every controversial move they make now is analyzed to a greater degree than perhaps it would be otherwise, and Google really needs to be careful.

There have been questions raised about Google’s role in shutting certain political Blogger accounts, silencing controversial videos on Youtube and skewing Google News results in China, among other things. All of which Google has answered with seemingly reasonable explanations.

The problem will be when there are so many questions raised about ethics, along with eyebrows raised at the search results, that people will begin to look elsewhere for their search. Google Minus Google is not going to be the answer, but it is a warning sign that Google would do well to heed.