Thursday, November 29, 2007

Search Industry Job of the Week: Country Marketing Manager Google Australia

Job Title: Country Marketing Manager - Google Australia

Job Reference #: Unknown

Position Type: Full Time

Name of employer: Google

Location: Sydney, Australia

Date Posted: November 2007

Position description:

Do you love Google? Interested in learning more about one of the most cutting-edge technology companies in the world? We are looking for flexible, hardworking, experienced people, passionate about Google, to analyze, measure, position, package, and promote Google's product and business offerings in Australia.

Major responsibilities:
  • Build and manage a world class team to handle all of Google marketing efforts in the region.
  • Lead the development of Google's marketing plans for consumer, advertiser and publisher products in Australia, working closely with cross functional teams in the region and around the world.
  • Ensure the monitoring of consumer, industry and competitive behaviour in Australia and provide local market expertise to the Google team.
  • Create the Australia agency strategy, solicit and evaluate agency bids, and manage agency relationships.
  • Drive the implementation of marketing campaigns including: Direct marketing, affiliate marketing, online/offline advertising and promotions.
  • Marketing communications materials including sales collateral, merchandise, print and online advertising, email newsletters and blogs.
  • Trade shows and industry events and advise where company participation or sponsorship would be appropriate.
  • Standalone Google events and workshops, where appropriate.
  • Co-marketing, reseller and other third party relationships.
  • Ongoing retention programs for consumers, advertisers and publishers.
  • Local market research.
  • Effectively champion the needs of the local markets.
  • Contribute pro-actively to the overall development of Google through ideas and creativity based on solid market and sector knowledge.
  • Evaluate marketing opportunities and initiate programs to increase awareness and usage of Google products.
  • Oversee the Australia marketing budget.

Requirements:
  • MBA or masters preferred.
  • Fluent in English.
  • Minimum 8-10 years marketing experience in the Australia market.
  • 3-5 years Internet, online services/media industry experience.
  • Minimum 4 years business-to-business marketing experience.
  • Strong aptitude for determining the optimal way to position products in the market.
  • Understanding of the search, online advertising, or web publishing markets.
  • Understanding of Google's strategic and competitive position.
  • Proven ability to deliver outstanding and highly innovative marketing achievements with limited budgets.
  • A proven track record of increasing awareness, product usage and revenue through well-executed marketing efforts.
  • Thorough knowledge of on/offline advertising, tracking and reporting.
  • Strong leadership skills.
  • Entrepreneurial and thrives in fast-paced and dynamic environments.
  • Motivated and creative with the ability to self-manage.
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills.
  • Project management skills and the ability to multitask across projects and products.
  • Demonstrated excellence with agency and client relations.
  • Thorough knowledge of off/online advertising planning, tracking and reporting.
  • Strong aptitude for determining the optimal way to position products in the market.
  • Understanding of the search, online advertising, or web publishing markets.
  • Understanding of Google's strategic and competitive position.
  • Team player able to work on multi-part projects with multiple teams and able to ensure that local and global project deadlines and budgets are met.
  • Strong computer application skills including PowerPoint, Excel and MS Office.

Salary range: Unknown

Closing date: Unknown

More info from: Google Jobs

Contact: Send resumes via online form Google Jobs Application Form

To see more search industry job vacancies visit: Search Engine College Jobs Board

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Monday, November 19, 2007

Broken: AdWords Keyword Analysis Tool

Not sure if this is a regional issue or not, but Google have confirmed a technical bug with the Keyword Analysis tool for some AdWords accounts, including mine.

For the past 24 hours or so, whenever I try to view the Keyword Analysis tool for any of my keywords, I get the following message:
----------
Ad Showing? No
The keyword phrase doesn't currently trigger any of your ads. There are several possible reasons your ad isn't showing for this keyword, such as:

* You just added the keyword to your campaign. You may experience a short wait as your keyword goes through the review process.
* Our server is experiencing a delay.
* Your ad delivery is being spaced throughout the day.
------------
I get the same message for every keyword in my account, but the keywords are not new, I'm getting click-throughs and my daily budget is large enough to prevent ad delivery spacing. In response to my email, Google wrote:

Dear Kalena

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about the Keyword Analysis reasons. I'm sorry to hear that you've had trouble with your AdWords account. We've identified a known technical issue affecting a limited number of accounts. Our engineers are currently working to solve the problem and hope to reach a resolution shortly.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

The Google Australia & NZ AdWords Team

Let's hope they get this fixed pronto! Anyone outside Australia having this issue?


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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Google's SPOOOOOKY Halloween Logo

Visited Google today? When you do, you'll see they've turned their logo into a spooky haunted house (pictured) to celebrate Halloween. Bwaa ha haaaa!! Happy Halloween Everyone!


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Friday, September 28, 2007

Q and A: Why do my keywords appear and disappear in Google?

Dear Kalena...

Hello, I am confused as to what is going on with my site in Google. I have a pretty good base of backlinks, not a lot but a decent amount, but when I do searches for a lot keywords my site would appear on the first or 2nd page. It would stay like that for a few weeks then it would disappear for a while like a few weeks or a month or two. Then they would reappear for a few weeks then go away again. This has happened for about 8-9 months now. I don't know if it has to do with changing algorithms. Any ideas?

Thanks!
Travis


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Travis

Google search results come from a wide range of data-centers located around the US and the world. It is very common for Google to pull search results from one datacenter for a week or two and then switch to another datacenter.

In my experience, the search results seem to fluctuate between two major datacenters, which would account for why you are seeing certain results for a few weeks and then seeing them disappear again. See Google's own explanation for ranking fluctuations.


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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Q and A: Does Google prefer sub directories over sub domains?

Dear Kalena...

Topweddingsites.com main domain is doing fine in the serps but our state sub domains dropped from page one for all of our top keywords to page 5 and below. Trying to figure out - is it that Google has decided folders are a better way to do a portal like this over sub domains?

Donna

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Donna

As far as I know, Google doesn't have a preference when it comes to sites that use sub directories like http://www.yoursite.com/state/index.htm or sub domains like http://state.yoursite.com. Both versions are indexable. But something to keep in mind is that most search engines only index a certain number of sub levels deep on your site. So, for example, a page like http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/index.htm might get indexed, while http://www.yoursite.com/state/city/region/street/index.htm may not.

The closer your content is to the top level of your site, the more likely it will be found and indexed. It's also widely assumed that content closer to the top level is considered to be more important by Google and given more relevancy weight in Google's ranking algorithm. Many SEO experts insist that sub-domains are more effective than sub directories and rank better too.

As for your situation, I don't think it has anything to do with your use of sub domains. I think it has more to do with the fact that your State pages are all very similar to each other. For example http://ok.topweddingsites.com/ is almost identical to http://mi.topweddingsites.com/. Multiply that by 50 States and you've got yourself a serious duplicate content problem.

In their Webmaster Guidelines, Google specifically states:
"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."
My guess is that your State sub domains have tripped a duplicate content filter and have been slapped with a ranking suppression or penalty. If you review Google's definition of duplicate content, you'll see some helpful suggestions for fixing the problem.

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Thursday, September 06, 2007

Q and A: Do you really need to hide optimization from Google?

Dear Kalena...

What do you think of this article by Jill Whalen? This goes against everything I’ve learned; you need to SEO your sites but “under the Google radar” so that they don’t think you are SEOing but optimized your site by accident?

What’s a SEOer to do?

Thanks,
Reid


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Reid

I've known Jill a long time and I get where she's coming from. Basically, she means you shouldn't follow a particular formula for optimizing web sites. There are no strict rules, don't get bogged down counting keywords or the number of characters in your META Descriptions. Don't stress about having keywords in your ALT IMG attributes or using H1 tags on every page. Just improve the compatibility of your pages with searchers and visitors.

I don't agree with her idea that Google may penalize any sites they think are optimized, but I do agree that Google probably looks for over-optimized sites, especially those that use keywords in their domain names and things like that. I also agree with this statement:
"If you've done it right, an everyday user should not have any idea that a page has been SEO'd."
It's quite true - a beautifully optimized and copywritten web site should no show obvious signs that it has been SEO'd. As I say in the SEO courses I teach, I don't recommend you obsess about keyword density or backwards engineering the search algorithms. Just design and optimize a web page with your visitors in mind and the rankings will usually follow.


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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Q and A: Has Universal Search come to Australia yet?

Dear Kalena...

Has Universal Search come to Australia yet? If not, do you know the timeline? I'm explaining Universal Search to someone in the library system in Australia, and cannot determine if it is effective yet in Australia. Thank you!

Keri


Kalena's Answer:

Hi Keri

Yes, Google's universal search is alive and well Down Under. To see it in action, simply go to www.google.com.au and conduct a search for Darth Vader.


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Thursday, August 02, 2007

Q and A: What's the difference between these two Google backward link searches?

Dear Kalena...

As always, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Much appreciated! Here is yet another question: I have been recently mystified by Google's link:www.yourwebsite.com search feature. If you do the search with a space between the colon and www you get different results. Example link:www.yourwebsite.com vs. link: www.yourwebsite.com

Can you explain the difference?

Thanks!
Marco


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

That's easy. The first search is the correct query to use for determining the number of backward links pointing to your site that Google considers significant (note this is not your *true* number of backlinks. To see a more accurate list, you need to view your site within Google's Webmaster Tools).

The second search is a malformed query. What you're actually searching for with that query is all documents that have references to the word "link" and "www.yourwebsite.com" on the same page. Look at the cache for one of the listings for the second version and you'll see both items highlighted.


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Google can't index the entire web

It's sometimes hard for people to think about the Internet without automatically thinking of Google. But Dan Crow of Google's Crawl Infrastructure Group gave this sobering message last month in his interview with Jonathan Hochman:
"...the World Wide Web is very large, and Google is not even sure how large. We can only index a fraction of it. Google has plenty of capital to buy more computers, but there just isn't enough bandwidth and electricity available in the world to index the entire Internet."
That leaves Google with a massive dilemma: which pages should they index and which should they ignore? According to Dan, PageRank plays a large role. If your site has relatively few pages and they all have high PageRank, it's likely they'll all be indexed no problem. However, if you have a large number of pages with low PageRank, you probably find that they don't make the cut.

So that just leaves the $64,000 question: what can you do to give your web pages the best possible chance of being indexed? Jonathan was convinced that the following aspects have an impact on a page's indexability:

- Clean, valid HTML code
- Use of external CSS and external Javascript files
- No code bloat

During his interview, Jonathan asked Dan outright if these things would help a page get indexed and Dan agreed that they would. Pages with clean code load faster and use less bandwidth to index.

Looks like it's time to go clean up that sloppy code!

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Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Hide and Speak Article Updates

You might remember that I recently blogged about Jennifer Laycock's latest article series, where she set herself the task of building an e-commerce site and hiding it from the major search engines to prove a point.

Well Jennifer's site Bento Yum has been performing amazingly well, despite the lack of search engine love. The site has attracted a wide range of fans and customers (including me!) and despite some social networking hiccups, the experiment seems to be working a treat.

Jennifer has been busy updating her article series about the challenge and you can read her latest installments below:

Stumbling Into Opportunity

Have a Unique Selling Proposition

WordPress for Content Management

Becoming Part of the Community

Develop Very Thick Skin

Congrats to Jennifer and Abigail for developing such an inspiring site and for having the guts to kick Google to the curb!

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Friday, June 22, 2007

Q and A: How long will it take our new page to rank on Google?

Dear Kalena...

I've added a new page to our site, what is a realistic expectation of timeframe when this page will rank organically on Google? The old page ranked about 78 so we change the page URL and content hoping it will help it rank better. It has been indexed.

May


Kalena's Answer:

Dear May

What makes you think that changing the URL and content will make it rank better than before? Google has to consider the page to be highly relevant for certain keywords and phrases to rank it highly for related search queries. The URL of a page has very little to do with this.

The content of the page should certainly be optimized for any search queries you are trying to rank for, but it's how relevant other sites consider the page to be that will most impact the page's ranking on Google. Unless there are other sites linking to the page or other pages on your site linking to the page, it is unlikely to rank highly. The anchor text used within the links to the page is also important. If the anchor text contains keywords or phrases relating to the search query, that will boost the page's relevance for such search queries. Unless you cover all these factors, the page's search ranking is unlikely to change.

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Monday, June 04, 2007

RUMOR: Google to allow AdSense publishers to specify own ad formats?

I don't usually like to take part in surveys. My time is pretty valuable and I find them tedious. But when Google asks, I ALWAYS take their surveys. Why? Because I get an insight into what features they're planning to roll out by the questions they ask.

Take the latest AdSense Publisher Feedback Survey for example. Under the question "Which of the following AdSense features would you like to see Google implement in future?", they listed:
  1. Selecting ad categories to appear on your site
  2. Selecting the types of advertisers that appear on your site
  3. Managing other publishers' AdSense accounts for them
  4. Specifying your own ad formats and sizes
  5. Paying for phone support
  6. Applying AdSense earnings towards AdWords marketing
  7. Gathering information about your visitors
Wow! Some of those made me sit up and pay attention, especially # 3, # 4 and # 6. I manage AdWords accounts for clients now so it makes sense to offer a similar service for their AdSense accounts. The ability to choose your own ad formats would be awesome, as would the ability to transfer AdSense earnings to an AdWords account.

Now this is all speculation on my part. But if enough publishers request these features, I wouldn't be surprised to see Google roll them out quite quickly. Watch this space!

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Friday, May 25, 2007

Q and A: What can I do to improve ranking results on regional Google sites?

Dear Kalena...

I am doing some very basic SEO work for a South African website that targets the local market only. The majority of local searches are done on google.co.za, not google.com. What can I do to better my results on google.co.za for popular keywords?

Marco (a happy subscriber of the Search Light Newsletter)


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Marco

Glad you like the newsletter. Re your question, the best thing you can do is ensure the site is published on a regional domain ending in .co.za. This is because Google gives ranking priority to regional sites where available on their local search engines. It would also help if the site was hosted in South Africa as sometimes Google will check the physical location (IP address) of a site to determine its relevance to a regional search query.

Apart from that, try to use regional keywords in the visible content of the pages to ensure Google recognizes the regional market you are targeting and will match it to related search queries. And of course make sure the site is submitted to and indexed by the most popular regional search engines servicing South Africa.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Interview on Pandia

I was interviewed by the delightful Per Koch of Pandia this week about, amongst other things, Google's Universal Search and how it will impact the future of this crazy industry. We even discover a mutual adoration of Kate Bush. Check out the interview here.

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Thursday, May 17, 2007

Breaking news: Google Rolls Out Predictive Search

Just got the scoop from Marketing Pilgrim that Google has rolled out what they're calling a Universal Search Model that incorporates web search results with related results from Google Images, Google News, Google Video, Google News and Blogger in the one search interface.

Why is this important? Three reasons off the top of my head:

1) It is the first step towards a true predictive search model, based on a new algorithm integrating user search patterns and predictive formulae.

2) It will change the way people search as a whole, therefore impacting the existing business models of SEO and SEM firms.

3) It will boost the importance of non-text content within web sites - image and video content will become a major marketing channel in it's own right, rather than a tool to attract visitors to text content.

Wowsie!

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Q and A: How do I change my default search language in Google?

Dear Kalena...

When I go to write in Arabic language in Google search or any other search, it shows different language, but English language is ok. Please tell me the solution.

Thank you
Shahana


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Shahana

I'm going to rephrase your question as follows: "how do I change my default search language in Google?" If I've misunderstood your question, my apologies and please email me again.

Now, it sounds like your Google searching preferences have somehow been changed. Next time you are at the Google home page, click on the preferences link next to the search box. This will take you to an area where you can choose your default Google interface language, as well as the language/s of web pages you'd prefer to be shown when you are searching. You can see a full list of Google's supported languages here.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Website vs Web Site

When I'm grading student assignments for our Search Engine Optimization courses, I often come across alternative spellings. Some are regionally based, such as "optimization" versus "optimisation". But today I want to comment on "website" versus "web site" which I'm seeing a lot of confusion over.

There are conflicting arguments about this, but in academic circles, the correct version is considered "web site" as two words in support of W3 standards. Sites such as the Chicago Manual of Style Online insist that the two word version is correct formal usage. Then again, a search for "web site" on Wikipedia.org redirects to their definition article for "website". Dictionary.com also suggest "website" is the most commonly used form as it has developed in usage:
Usage Note: The transition from World Wide Web site to Web site to website as a single uncapitalized word mirrors the development of other technological expressions which have tended to take unhyphenated forms as they become more familiar. Thus email is gaining ground over the forms E-mail and e-mail, especially in texts that are more technologically oriented.
But perform a Google search for both versions and you’ll see that web site is much more common than website.

Personally, I believe you should always use the two-word version in your site, particularly in your Title and Description tags, because search engines won’t be able to distinguish the two words if you bunch them together as "website" and you might not capture as many searchers. If you use "website", you might also isolate pedantic readers who feel "web site" is the correct spelling. Consistency is key, no matter which version you decide to use.

So readers: which version do you prefer? Tell us via comments.

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Monday, May 07, 2007

Microsoft and Yahoo Plot to Beat Google

I am toooo tired to process a reader question tonight, so I'll leave you with the latest eye-opener circulated by the rumor mill: Rumors Fly on Microsoft and Yahoo.

A choice quote:
"Microsoft officials said Friday that they would not comment on speculation about an acquisition of Yahoo. But a person briefed on the companies’ discussions said one option that had been considered was the linking of advertising networks to generate additional Web traffic."

Can you imagine Yahoo Search Marketing combined with Microsoft adCenter? It would be PPC on steroids. Might explain the continued delays with the new adCenter rollout.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Q and A: How do I push offensive content about me off the front page of Google?

Dear Kalena...

On my personal Google page I have noticed some defamatory posts about me from an obscure chat room I was involved in 5 years ago. I'm being accused of posting there now as someone else. I have contacted the webmaster of the relevant site but he refuses to delete the offending posts. Any idea how to adjust my 1st page Google index to push these ugly things out of the way?

Thanks David

Kalena's Answer:

Dear David

That's not too difficult. If the information is offensive and/or defamatory, you can always threaten the Webmaster with legal action unless they remove it from their site.

If the Webmaster does not believe the information warrants removing and you have no legal options (e.g. the information is protected by freedom of speech or similar), you will just have to optimize some pages on your site for your own name and/or build some links from popular sites to your site using your name in the link text to ensure you rank higher than the offensive content. If you have an unusual surname, this should be easily achieved.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Q and A: Why are my Google searches defaulting to German?

Dear Kalena...

Sometime ago, my google searches have been returning results as if my geographical location is in a German(?) speaking country. I don't know what happened or how to correct it. Pls. advise.

Thank you,
Ruben


Kalena's Answer:

Dear Ruben

Google tries to customize search results to a searcher's personal preferences or regional location. You don't say where you are located, but I assume it is NOT in a German speaking country. When you enter a search query, Google will try to determine your location by IP address, search query content and/or search URL used e.g. google.com.au or google.com etc.

It might be that your ISP is assigning you an IP address that suggests to Google you are based in Germany. Make sure you go to www.google.com to conduct your searches and if it redirects you to another version of Google, click on the small link on the bottom right that says "Go to Google.com".

Have you (or someone using your computer) used Google Advanced search or Toolbar search recently? This may have changed your default search preferences. Try re-setting those by going to the Advanced Search page. Try dumping your browser's cache and temporary Internet files too. It might be a caching issue.

If none of this works, it might be some type of spyware that has invaded your system. Best get a reliable spyware removal tool such as AdAware or Spyware Doctor.

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Gmail Paper Fools Some

Google launched a brand new service yesterday. Or did they? Gmail Paper was pitched as Google's new service for net-phobic individuals who prefer to keep hard copy versions of all their emails. The service offered to print hard copies of any and all emails stored in your Gmail account and deliver them via post to your door, all for free. Here's some blurbs from the promotional page:
"The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica..."

"Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier."
The April Fool's gag cleverly played on the current high profile of global warming and environmental issues by promoting a service that was obviously detrimental to both.

When I first read about Gmail Paper from within my Gmail account, I was quite alarmed and it took about 30 seconds for the joke to kick in. But judging by this Google search for "Gmail Paper", a lot of people were fooled into thinking it was a real service.

Cute Google, very cute. In other April Fools news, Matt Cutts' blog may have been hacked.

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Google To Make Search Data Anonymous

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land has reported that Google intends to “anonymize” the search data it collects after a period of 18 – 24 months. This move is intended to protect the privacy of its users. Until now Google has kept user search data indefinitely, making it possible for anyone who has access to the logs to track queries back to users.

Danny Sullivan in his article Google Anonymizes Search Records To Protect Privacy explains that when we visit any web site, the web server records certain information about our visit. Below is a simplified version of what Google records if we enter the search terms 'laptop broadband':

67.42.6.24 – 13/Mar/2007 00:44:15 – http://www.google.com/search?g=laptop+broadband – DQG4AADOkAAAAB_kWnOFCUZ15

There are four main segments:

IP Address – An IP Address is like an internet telephone number, and can be used in a similar way to trace a call back to the person who made it. The address can also tell what sort of connection was used and what location the request was made from.

Date & Time – Date and time request was made.

Query Terms – This is termed referrer information and describes the search terms entered.

Cookie – This is a unique code that is assigned to a particular computer by Google. This allows Google to record requests from each computer even if the location of that computer changes.

Google’s plan is to change the IP address and cookies, thus making it extremely difficult to trace a query back to a particular computer or user. Google is still working out the finer points, so stay tuned for more information!





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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Another new "Ads by Google" format

Remember earlier this week I spotted a new "Ads by Google" format for AdSense ads? Well today I spotted another one. Check it to the left. This one has the Google's "G" symbol next to the traditional "ads by goooooooooogle" text by-line.

Anyone else seeing it? Or seeing other versions?

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Friday, February 16, 2007

Google testing new "Ads By Google" format

While updating some web pages tonight, I noticed that Google seem to be testing some new AdSense formats for their "Ads by Google" by-line so I took a screenshot (see the example on the right). Lucky I did because I haven't see the new format again since I grabbed it.

It appears they are testing an image integrating the Google logo to replace the plain text previously used. I knew they were rolling out new Google Checkout badges for AdSense, but I've never seen the new "Ads by Google" format before. Have I just missed them until now?

Anyone else seeing it? Is this a new thing?

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