You know those text ads on the right hand side of Google search result pages?  I wonder who is trying to cash in the 2008 US Presidential race.  Back in February Michael Bassik over at techPresident did an investigation into which 2008 Presidential candidates had purchased text-ads.  I've decided to take a brief look at any site buying ads for searches for candidate names.

Let's see who is trying to cash in on the Democrats.  Click here for the Republicans.

Read below for the ads that I found, but here's a few general trends I found: (more…)

I’d like to take a moment here and point out a nifty new feature on Google maps. Google just launched something called “My Maps”, which gives users the ability to create their own maps, adding their own personal landmarks, lines, and shapes. You can keep your maps private, or make them available to the public via Google Earth and local searches.

I was messing around with My Maps this morning and found it incredibly easy to use. You can add pictures to your placemarkers, choose from a variety of different types of markers, and really customize the map to fit your own purpose. There is no programming or tech knowledge necessary at all; simply use your Google account to create and save your own map.

I made a map this morning that has some great DC area restaurants (and some other random stuff) on it.

Initially, I can think of a few ways that this will be useful:

• Bloggers writing about any kind of traveling. In theory bloggers could create a Google map so that their readers can visually follow where they are going (or where they have been). For example, a friend of mine went on a cross-country road trip last summer, and this would have been a really cool feature for her to use in her emails to her friends back home.
• Business sponsoring events. What a great way to enable supporters to not only get directions to an event, but to find nearby businesses and conveniences. Businesses or organizations holding conventions (think: political conventions), fundraising events, luncheons, conferences, etc., could create Google maps to show patrons where area hotels, restaurants, and airports are located in relation to the venue.
• Political support groups. On Hillary Clinton’s Senate website, she had a feature that allowed supporters to sign up to have Hillary Clinton house parties. This version of Google maps would have been a great collaborative tool. Supporters could have added their location to the Google map, allowing Hillary Clinton supporters to find one another for the purpose of having house parties. I’m sure politicians for the 2008 cycle will come up with more than one way to use this feature for their online campaigns.
• Businesses with lots of clients. Instead of just listing corporate clients on a website, businesses could post their clients on a Google map to give prospective customers a new way of looking at client lists. Colleges and universities could use this as a similar marketing tool: instead of showing pie charts of where students are from, use a Google map to illustrate these facts.

Anyway, those are just a few ideas. I think that this customizable map product is a pretty powerful tool. It’s a lot of fun and, more importantly, it has the potential to be useful. Happy Mapping!

You can read more about the launch of Google MyMaps on O’Reilly Radar.

I had a couple of great conversations with people about SMS at the recent Politics Online Conference. That's what I like best about conferences — the interaction gets me thinking. It got me thinking and talking about SMS and here are my thoughts on the viral potential of SMS.

What makes a medium a good conduit of a viral message? Widespread use. 

First of all for SMS cell phone text messaging to be successful as a medium that encourages viral message spreading amongst a specific demographic, its use needs to be frequent amongst this demographic. I decided to take a look at different kinds of current and future users of SMS to see which demographics would seem to be large enough to encourage viral message spreading via SMS.

Different types of SMS users 

Everyday SMS users

• Demographic 1: 10 to 20 year olds.
  Viral potential: High
  Example: Parents will get their kids unlimited SMS plans so as not to incur high voice plan charges.
  This seems likely and there’s also a small possibility that these kids will continue to use SMS when they grow up – I personally doubt they will because superior technology will be widely available by then. In any case, I think this definitely is or will be the most important SMS demographic.

• Demographic 2: low-income individuals and people working in environments with no internet access.
  Viral potential: High
  Example: Used successfully in organizing immigration reform demonstrations in Washington DC.
  SMS may work well with demographics that do not have regular access to email and IM. Email and IM are more powerful and more functional, and home broadband users and office employees have access to both of them during most of the hours in a day. 

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A mock up of the Google homepage done in the Yahoo! design style is making the rounds today. Steve Bryant, who put this together, did a great job on it. But let’s just say I’m of the definite opinion that Google has been smart to keep things simple.

CNBC relaunched its website a few days ago after being offline for six months due the expiration of its deal with Microsoft. Here is a quick look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly on the redesigned site.

The Good

(1) According to Techcrunch, the site will have between three and eight hours of fresh video content available each day. A web show called “Market in a Minute” will summarize market happenings twice per hour. Sounds good.

(2) Most CNBC anchors appear to have their own blogs on the site that are being updated nearly every day (see Phil LeBeau’s blog here). You can search for tags, sectors and companies across blogs. This makes it easy to access all blog entries that mention, say, Microsoft.

(3) CNBC Plus will allow users to watch live CNBC TV content from their computers for $9.99 a month. That is not that interesting to me, but for business users this might be a good option.

(4) You can easily save/submit CNBC content to Digg and del.icio.us (see right). I’m not sure the content here lends itself to those sites, but it is worth a try.

The Bad

(1) The design of the site feels heavy and, well, old. The whole thing has that Microsoft/MSNBC.com feel to it. The site is also very slow.

(2) Given the video focus, it is disappointing that the only option is to play Windows Media Player versions of the videos. If you are only going to offer one video option, it seems like it should be Flash given the success of YouTube and others with that format.

(3) There is no way to comment on staff blog entries (or any other site content), although they do have a weird feature where they invite you to sent them comments via regular email. As far as I can tell there isn’t any really any user generated content on the site.

(4) I don’t see anything in the company profile area (Microsoft example) that would cause people to switch from sites like Yahoo Finance (example) and Google Finance (example).

The Ugly

(1) The search is completely broken. You can see the results for a sitewide search for “Autozone” on the right (which is that there are nor results). This despite the fact that there is clearly an Autozone story on the site homepage. Searches for Microsoft also produced no results.

(2) The Video section has a promising Most Viewed feature that presumably allows you to access the most popular videos. Unfortunately, when you click on this link it says there are no results. So I guess that is broken as well.

Crowdsourcing has been all the rage in the tech community the last few months. The term was coined in a June 2006 Wired Magazine article and describes a circumstance where “volunteers and/or low-paid amateurs use their spare time to create content, solve problems or even do corporate R&D.”

Following are some notable examples companies using crowdsourcing:

• Google Image Labeler allows users to help Google improve their image search results by labeling pictures with appropriate tags.
• Amazon’s Mechanical Turk “enables computer programs to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do.”
• Gannett recently launched an initiative that will use citizen journalists to help the organization gather news on a daily basis.
• The Texas Border Patrol recently launched a website that allows any citizen to watch the TX/Mexico border online and report suspicious activity.

I find these projects fascinating. Interestingly though, political campaigns have been using crowdsourcing for years to help influence swing voters and get out the vote. Now we just have something to call it. (more…)

There has been a lot of buzz about using Google Bombs to disseminate negative articles in political races (such as this recent article on MSNBC’s site and this one on the New York Times site), and we even wrote about it briefly here yesterday. While I agree with my colleague, Todd Zeigler, that the overall impact of such efforts is probably minimal, I do think that it can work from an execution standpoint, although I question its efficacy in making an impact on the actual results of the election.

Given that the election is now less than two weeks away, Google Bombing plans have been criticized for being too late because Google can take up to 30 days to index a website.  While it is true that Google can take up to that long, it does not always require that much time and it can work within a matter of days - if the correct set of conditions are met. From experience and reading various articles, I have learned that if an established website or blog (that has already been included within Google’s index), which receives a lot of links from other sites and is updated frequently, posts a given piece of information, it will begin appearing within the search results fairly quickly and relatively high within the rankings for relevant terms.  On the other hand, if something is posted on a site that is new, that has few links from other sites, that has not been included within the search index previously, and/or does not produce new content on a regular basis, it can take weeks to begin appearing and it will likely not appear as high within the results.

Why does this happen?  Because Google’s algorithm skews towards re-indexing sites that have been established as ‘quality sites’ (i.e. it has a lot of links from other ‘good sources’ on the same subject) on a more frequent basis than those that have not.  It also re-indexes sites that have a track record of continuously adding new content.  This clearly makes sense from an efficiency standpoint for Google as it attempts to cover the vast amount of data that makes up the Web.  It also seems to be a boon to bloggers, as blogs tend to be both link-rich and frequently updated.

In short, a campaign or politically active organization could very well manipulate the system to show negative content pieces higher within Google’s results, if they employ a popular, frequently updated, established site/blog.  It probably would not work if a new / less popular site/blog were used as the central dissemination point (a less popular site would also generate less pick-ups from the blogosphere).  Whether or not paid search placements would have a significant effect is hard to say.  Officially, Google contends that it does not give preference to advertisers within its organic search results.  That said, obviously a site that is seen and visited more frequently because of the ads will likely do better within the regular search results. 

MSNBC has a story today about the efforts of liberal and conservative bloggers to articially raise the search ranks of negative articles about candidates they oppose. 

The idea is that if I search for "George Allen" on Google, the liberal bloggers want the macaca video to show up high in the results.  And if I search for Harold Ford, the conservative bloggers want me to see the video of Ford crashing a Bob Corker press conference. 

I think the whole thing is kind of silly.  This snippet from the article sums up my feelings pretty well.

"Kari Chisholm, a Democratic new media strategist for one of Burns' opponents who lost in the Democratic primary, doubts that the Google-bombing campaign will be very useful. "It's not about chasing the 1 percent of voters that haven't figured out there's a difference between [Democrat] Jon Tester and Burns," Chisholm said."

It's about getting the folks that are predisposed to support your candidate of choice to get off their butts, get to the polls and vote.

A $500 million to $1 billion problem, depending on whom you ask.

In a front page article in The Washington Post, 'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ad, staff writer Sara Kehaulani Goo discusses the mechanics of click fraud, the new forms of click fraud — the fast growing "pay to read" and "pay to click" rings of individuals and companies around the world — and the new lawsuit against Google.

 Some figures from the article worth filing away:

• Google and Yahoo own 70% of all web searches in the  U.S.
• About 40 percent of all Internet ads are clickable text ads (the advertiser only pays when the ad is clicked on)
• Thirty-nine percent, or $1.04 billion, of Google's 3rd quarter revenues derived from affliate networks, website that allow Google text ads
• Click fraud hurts mortgage, insurance, real estate, legal and travel businesses the most

Yankee Group estimates that fraud is involved in 10% of clicks on text ads, or a $500 million problem.  Others estimate the problem is even worse, perhaps as bad as $1 billion — affecting 12 to 30 percent of all text ad clicks.  Google claims the problem is less that 10 percent.

Yankee Group argues that without more agressive measures to validate ad clicks, "fraud could undermine the the entire business model of Internet search engines by causing advertisers to lose confidence."

Update: The folks at Blip Tv contacted me and corrected my statement that YouTube was the first company to allow bloggers to imbed third party video content on their own sites. Blip TV launched that feature one month before YouTube. My original post follows.

As far as I know, YouTube was the first video service to allow users to copy a bit of code and play videos on their own blog or website.  It was a brilliant move and is a big reason Youtube has been so successful. 

Lately, some of the video services have been innovating in terms of the features and functionality they are including in their embeddable video player.  So following are my ranking of the embeddable video players for some of the major video sites, with the best listed first. 

(1) Netscape Player

Best features by far.  Allows you to easily grab the video for posting on your blog in different sizes and shows the number of votes and comments the video has attracted on Netscape.  Two small gripes: it doesn’t work in Netvibes and I find the player design a little too colorful.  For these embeddable video players I prefer extremely subtle designs that look good on every blog/website.  Overall, a great job by Jason Calcanis and the Netscape team. 

(more…)

You can make yourself a free, categorized and searchable archive of news on any topic for reference and monitoring using free web-based RSS reader Bloglines in tandem with major news aggregators. This is not something that is immediately apparent, but it's still relatively simple. Here's how to do it.

The first thing you’ll need to do is get as much relevant news as possible on the topics of interest to you. There are several volume news aggregators that suit this purpose.  (more…)

Google's Sergey Brin gave a talk to students at Cal-Berkeley last October on "Search Engines, Technology and Business." The lecture is now available on Google Video.

[gv data="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=7137075178977335350&hl=en"][/gv]

Anyone conducting keyword ad campaigns on sites like Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Engine Marketing should check out these two recent articles on click fraud:

• Click Fraud is Growing on the Web - New York Times
• Click Fraud: The Dark Side of Online Advertising - Business Week

Via Rough Type and Micro Persuasion.

“Yes, America, the Buffalo Bills are back, like the neighbors who won't leave, like the horror movie villains who die but keep returning to terrorize Metropolis…” - Rocky Mountain News, January 26, 1994.

It was almost 13 years ago, and I was only 15 years old back then, but the memories of those four Superbowl losses still pain me.  I usually keep those depressing images tucked deep down in my long-term memory, suppressed so that I do not have to live with the anguish on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, a colleague of mine drew my attention to the Google News Archive recently, and the urge to review the past of my beloved team was too strong to ignore.  

I ask you - what did this urge for a nostalgic stroll through the past get me?  A reopened wound, with salt thrown on it for good measure.  A missed last minute field goal.  An embarrassing blowout loss.  A national call for my team to stop mucking up the Superbowl for everyone else in the country.  Alas, a tear emerged from the corner of my eye, and a little bit of my soul rolled down my cheek.

In all seriousness, the Google News Archive is an incredible window on the past that provides a broad view of events as they unfolded, from different regions and varying perspectives.  I think that it will be a tremendous tool for students doing research for school papers, people trying to gain a better perspective on the events and reporting styles and biases of the past, and saps like me that want a trip down memory lane.  It is unfortunate (but understandable) that most of the content I found on the site required payment to view the whole article (a couple of bucks in most cases). The titles and brief summaries still paint a pretty good picture at least.  

Regardless, it is definitely worth checking out.  Just be careful what searches you conduct.  You may find yourself reliving something from the past that you may or may not want to re-experience.  

With a young, inconsistent quarterback like Losman at the helm, it may be quite some time before I get to watch my Bills lose another Superbowl.  Or even a playoff game.

I'm a little late to this party, but last week Pronet Advertising put together a list of 10 Things You Should be Monitoring.  Jeremiah Owyang added numbers 11-17 and Joseph Jaffe added numbers 18-23.  Shel Holtz even set up a page of the New PR Wiki where people could collaboratively add to the list.  I figured I'd add to the list based on my experience monitoring through our ImpactWatch platform.  Note that my contributions are mostly specifics building on some of the concepts others discussed.

(24) Search Term Volume.  Track how many people are searching for keywords that impact your company and watch how it changes over time.  This can be done using tools like Google Trends or through Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing accounts.

(25) Search Term Rank.  See how high your company appears for key search phrases.  Obviously related to #24.

(26) Relevant Wikipedia Entries.  See how relevant Wikipedia entries are evolving over time.  You can subscribe to the RSS feed for entries so that the changes come to you.  If you decide to edit or complain, be transparent about it.

(27) Third Party Influencers.  For some, it is important to know everything certain individuals/institutions say about your industry as a whole.  For publicly traded companies, that might be financial analysts covering your industry.  For technology companies, this might be Walt Mossberg or Michael Arrington.  For others, this might include thinks tanks or trade associations.  Figure out who they are and read what they are saying.

(28) Key Stakeholders.  Employees were mentioned in the original list.  For some companies it might also be useful to track coverage of partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

(29) Press Release and/or Blog Post Pickups.  Many large companies seemingly produce a press release a day.  The effectiveness of these releases at actually generating press should be tracked so you can see if they are worth the time/effort.  Same applies for blog posts, if your company has a blog.

Note that I don't think every company should track every item I've listed above (or every item on the full list).  Some of the items I've added are only really relevant for specific industries.  But I think the cumulative list that has been developed could serve as a great starter kit for those implementing a monitoring program.