The Ringtones of Danny Sullivan
If you don’t listen to the Daily Searchcast by Danny Sullivan, then you should. What is it?
From the site:
A 30 minute recap of the day’s news about search engines and search marketing, featuring search expert and analyst Danny Sullivan summarizing stories and sharing off-the-cuff remarks about what happened and what may come. Tune-in and keep informed on the latest from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Windows Live Search, AOL, Ask.com and other search engines.
I listen to it on the way to work every day if I can, and it makes sitting in the traffic feel productive. So you definitely have to subscribe. And, because I KNOW you’ll love it, go Digg It!
Anyway, in the episode dated April 18th 2007, Danny spoke about the supposed coming of the Google Phone which you can read about here: Gphone? The Google Phone Timeline
He also let us know what he thinks the Google Phone Ringtone would sound like, as well as ringtones for Yahoo and Microsoft. I thought they were hilarious, so I decided to use this fantastic post on using Windows Movie Maker to create ringtones to extract these ringtones for your use (or plain old amusement).
So, without further ado, here are the ringtones courtesy of Danny Sullivan and the Daily Searchcast, available in both MP3 and WMA (for those of us with Windows Mobile Phones):
Google-Ringtone-1.mp3
Google-Ringtone-1.wma
Google-Ringtone-2.mp3
Google-Ringtone-2.wma
Google-Ringtone-3.mp3
Google-Ringtone-3.wma
Yahoo-Ringtone.mp3
Yahoo-Ringtone.wma
Microsoft-Ringtone.mp3
Microsoft-Ringtone.wma
Google Web History could be better
Google has announced the launch of “Web History”. Anybody who reads Graywolf’s blog will know that this isn’t entirely new, and if you use this, you’re not a wearer of tinfoil hats. Using your search history helps Google give you customised results. But wait, there’s more!
Here’s an excerpt from the Official Google Blog’s announcement:
Today, we’re pleased to announce the launch of Web History, a new feature for Google Account users that makes it easy to view and search across the pages you’ve visited. If you remember seeing something online, you’ll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History. Web History lets you look back in time, revisit the sites you’ve browsed, and search over the full text of pages you’ve seen. It’s your slice of the web, at your fingertips.
How does Web History work? All you need is a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled. The Toolbar, as part of your browser, helps us associate the pages you visit with your Google Account.
The key thing to notice is that, with the Google Toolbar installed, Google will monitor every webpage you visit, storing those URLs for you. We all know that Google could use this information to help “better their results”, but this is not the point right now.
I’m just counting the hours until Graywolf puts up a post about how bad this is. 
What would make enabling this a clincher for me? (Please see the update at the bottom)
How about being able to set up a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) specifically for this that would automatically add your search history to the CSE. Then, if you need to find that little piece of info on some page you viewed in the last month, you can search for it. It wouldn’t be like using the default “Web History” dashboard, as this just seems to list the pages you’ve viewed, not the contents of those pages (obviously). So being able to search JUST the sites you’ve visited (even better, just the pages) would be ideal.
Personally, I don’t think it can be that hard to do, as there’s already an RSS feed listing the pages you’ve viewed.
UPDATE:
Before we go on, let me tell you the moral of the following story: Don’t just read the “press release”, read the Product Page as well.
Ok, here’s another excerpt from the actual “Web History” welcome page:
Search the full text of pages you’ve visited. Web History allows you to search across the web pages, images, videos and news stories you’ve viewed.
So, it looks like they do this already. Google obviously hires PHDs for a reason. 
AdSense Optimization Report and MFAs
If you’ve logged into your AdSense account recently, you may have noticed a new section called “Recent Messages” on your “Reports -> Overview” screen. It should look like this:
This is what my optimization report says this month:
April 2007 Optimization Report
Dear Publisher,
Here is your optimization report for the month of April. After an automatic review of your sites, we think you might be able to improve your monetization using the following tips:
You may be filtering ads that monetize well on your site.
How can I fix this? Dismiss this tip.We hope these tips are helpful, and encourage you to experiment using different layouts and formats–no two sites monetize the same way!
Sincerely,
Google Adsense
This is in relation to the URLs I have in my Competitive Ad Filter.
A quick recap
The competitive ad filter allows you to enter URLs for sites that you don’t want advertising on your site. For example, let’s say you run a site that talks about golf, and you notice that you’re starting to get a lot of ads from a “VW Golf” car advertiser (unlikely, but possible). This isn’t really relevant to your site, so you’d like to block this advertiser from your site. To do this, you’d log into your AdSense account, click on “AdSense Setup” and then “Competitive Ad Filter”. At the bottom under “AdSense for Content“, you would enter the URL for the advertiser that you want to block in the “AdSense for Content filters” box. For example, if you notice that the “VW Golf” advertiser’s URL is www.vw.com, you could enter “vw.com” into the box, and it will block all ads that point to this site…
Decreasing Profit
But, remember that it’s not only you that makes money when a visitor clicks on an ad. Google is taking a nice slice of that pie as well. So, it’s in their best interest to show the ads that will generate the highest income. So, blocking a specific advertiser might mean that Google will have to display a lower-paying AdSense ad on your site.
Blocking MFA sites
Ok, fair enough. I might be blocking ads that will have a higher CPC than the ads I currently have showing. The problem is, on the sites where I’m showing AdSense, I’m not really blocking competitors, but rather blocking sites that I don’t want visitors going to, such as MFA sites.
MFA stands for “Made For AdSense“, and these are sites that generally don’t supply any information, but show a LOT of AdSense ads, in the hope that the visitor will click an ad to find more info… And, most of the MFA sites that I’m blocking are using a technique called “AdSense Arbitrage” which is where they will pay perhaps 3c a click to get the visitor to their site, and receive (hopefully) 10c or higher when a visitor clicks an ad on their site. You can find a bit more info on this subject here: “AdSense Arbitrage: Tips, Tricks & Secrets”
The Dilemma
Now, because Google is suggesting that I might be able to increase my profit by unblocking some of these sites without telling me which ones, I have to decide whether to send my visitors to MFA sites. I would decide not to unblock them, except that, according to this thread on WebMasterWorld, people think they are seeing that Google is punishing them for having a lot of “blocked” sites.
It could just be that the genuine advertisers are using all their skills to optimize their ads, and thereby be allowed to bid a LOT lower for their ads. With Google’s “Landing Page Quality Algorithm“, or “Quality Score“, advertisers with quality content on their landing page (and site) will be able to pay a lower cost per click. So publishers (like me) will have to suffer a little to ensure that their visitors who click on the ads will be taken to quality sites.
Is this a price you’re willing to pay?
Read MoreGoogle losing sex appeal
Do you remember watching movies in the good old days (about 1 year ago)? Those were the days where the characters on the screen would turn to Google to search for anything, and find it? And you would get a warm fuzzy feeling because you knew about Google, but your mother didn’t…
Well, it looks to me as if those days are gone. Google is no longer the sexy co-star in movies these days.
I watched “Because I said so” with Diane Keaton the other night and Diane’s character needed to find a dating website. Up came THE UGLIEST looking search engine I have ever seen and it definitely was NOT Google.
And that’s not the only time. 2 days later I watched the TV series “Dexter”, and he did a search using a search engine I’ve never seen. It had a cleaner interface, but it still wasn’t Google.
I wonder if we’re going to stop seeing the Apple logo on all the laptops in movies now?
Read MoreNashua Broadband – Duplicate Content Escapees
If you do any reading at all about search engines and website design/hosting, etc., then you MUST have noticed that almost EVERYBODY is talking about duplicate content issues.
If you need to know anything about it though, go read this post from SEOmoz: “The Illustrated Guide to Duplicate Content in the Search Engines“. It will probably very soon be the most linked to blog post about Duplicate Content. But that’s just Rand’s style.
Anyway, the reason for all this babbling is the following SERP: “nashua broadband”
Scroll down past the first 10 or so results, and keep scrolling… Now, I’m not a real expert on Google results, and I’m not 100% sure if this would qualify as “duplicate content”, but to me, even though all the domain names are different, each page is EXACTLY the same. At the very least it should show the dodgy results as being supplemental.
I would say that the prime reason for the “Duplicate Content Filter” is to present the best possible search results to the end-user. I don’t think they’ve done a very good job here.
But hey, what do I know.
