Online Marketing News Archive

We like Google.
We spend quite a bit of time defending Google to our clients and explaining how embracing Google’s quest for relevant search results is the most effective form of search engine marketing in the long term.
Every now and then we do, however, come across examples of the greed that many people despise Google for … Read full article>

Some online retailers and other website owners have expressed their concern over a new Google search tool which is intended to help web users search within sites.
This new search tool is displayed in the search results pages for a number of well known retailers and publishers. By using the tool, Google users perform a keyword … Read full article>

As the morning news today claimed that most students in the UK are guilty of plagiarism and copy and paste huge chunks of material found on the internet, a UK professor has criticised the effect that Google is having on students, calling the search engine ‘white bread for the mind’
Tara Brabazon of the University of Brighton believes that the … Read full article>

The planned acquisition of online ad firm DoubleClick by search engine giant Google is likely to be delayed, depending on whether or not the European Commission decides upon a full investigation of the deal.
The EC’s competition watchdog has until the end of October to make a decision over an investigation, which would delay the deal … Read full article>

There was an interesting article on Forbes last week, which featured Google’s Senior Product Manager Shuman Ghosemajumder talking about the issue.
Google has previously faced legal action from advertisers over the issue, and many third party reports suggest that the click fraud problem is growing. For instance, monitoring firm ClickForensics estimated in July that the overall … Read full article>

Google has been accused of misleading web users by failing to distinguish between organic search results and sponsored links generated by the search engine.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has taken the company to court in Sydney over the issue, saying Google misleads those thought that the ranking of its search results were not … Read full article>

After temporarily removing all its paid search advertising from the search engine, eBay has returned to advertising via Google, though it has reduced its spend from previous levels.
The two firms had fallen out after Google had scheduled a Google Checkout party on the fringes of eBay’s own event in Boston last week. This was seen … Read full article>

Reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Post are suggesting that Microsoft and Yahoo are talking about a possible merger, in an effort to compete more effectively with Google.
If the reports are to be believed, Microsoft seems to be the driving force behind the move, spurred on by losing out to Google in … Read full article>

Google’s $3.1bn acquisition of online ad firm DoubleClick has led to concern in several quarters, with online rivals concerned that Google will be too dominant in the online ad market.
Now, a US consumer group is attempting to challenge the deal because of concerns over the privacy of internet users.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has … Read full article>

Google has announced that it will start to show quality scores against all keywords in Adwords campaigns.
The concept of ‘quality score’ is one that has, to date, set Google Adwords apart from other PPC advertising platforms. Whereas most PPC channels reward the highest bidders with the top slots, Google has for some years ranked PPC … Read full article>