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Quality Of The iPhone 4.0 Screen

Yeah, people are arguing about whether it really is a “retina display.” IE, can your eye see individual pixels on the new iPhone’s screen?

I say hell with that. The screen is the best one I’ve seen — by far.

iPhone 4.0

Twitter Looking To Tweet Its Way Into The World Of Search

 Twitter is always making news.

Google Opens A Smidgen On Search Quality

Competitive concerns and abusive webmasters prevent Google from delving deeper into the secrets behind its search.

Did Google Use Poor Timing for Updates?

The Guardian newspaper have today written an article titled Is Google a Grinch or a good guy?, which asks many UK SEO’s (myself included) for their views on the recent Google paid link debate.

PubCon – Unjust Link Buying Worries

So Worried that You Forgot to Compete

While on the link buying panel at WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon a few people were pushing that you might need to consider how Google will view your current link buys 5 years down the road, and that they may hurt you then for what you do now. Upon hearing that I said something like "less than 5 years ago I bought spammy links and if I did not I probably wouldn’t be speaking here right now". That got a cheer from the crowd. Who wants to be worried about what Google thinks or does 5 years from now? That is no way to innovate or take marketshare from current market leaders.

Online Shoppers Want Quality Recommendations

Online retailers that recommend products that consumers are not interested in perform worse than those that make no recommendations, according to the 2007 ChoiceStream Personalization Survey.

Are Paid Links Subverting Search Quality?
Search engines, especially Google, say don’t do ‘em. But some search marketers say paid links work. Are paid links subverting search quality? Or are they simply a fact of life, here to stay?

Moderator: Chris Boggs, Manager, Search Engine Optimization, eMergent Marketing/BRULANT, Inc.

Speakers: William Leake, Founder and CEO, Apogee Search, Eric Ward, CEO, EricWard.com, Brian Boland, Director-adCenter, Microsoft Corporation.

The Danger of Aggressive Ad Placement
When I did a recent Q&A thread one of the recurring themes with sites that were struggling was AdSense ads positioned above their content.

Many websites are never given the chance to grow because they monetize too aggressively and look to spammy to enjoy the benefits of organic growth and community building.

Google and BizRate.com Break Up

Google Checkout Makes Shopping Sites Undesirable

As Google Checkout ramps up, many thin arbitrage / shopping aggregator sites are going to see a significant love loss from Google. In September Andrew Goodman wrote a piece on how paid search and organic search quality criteria may play off each other, after coming across a post on Inside AdWords where Google stated that some types of sites are likely to merit a low quality score:

AdWords Quality Score Keyword Analysis Service
Inside AdWords introduces the Quality Score Keyword Analysis Service which will help advertisers provide more information about the Quality Score for their keywords.

Google Helps With Keyword Analysis

The vagaries of keyword Quality Scores for AdWords have caused advertisers to ask for more information from Google.

Social Media Marketing Strategies
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A WebProNews reporting team covered the SMX Social Media in New York City this week and delivered lots of unique video interviews and session reports.

YouTube Now On Google Earth
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Google Earth has added a new feature that allows YouTube videos to be embedded at geographical locations. Users can now view videos of famous tourist attractions or other places they may want to visit.

Yahoo Enhances Ad Traffic Quality

A new option for Yahoo’s advertisers allows them to have better control of where their ads appear on Yahoo’s Publishing Network.

Equal Time – The Pro-Arbitrage Position

Followup to my recent article on Google AdWords’ website quality policies. Although the majority of rank and file advertisers I chatted with favor Google’s stances against, for example, "arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads," not all go along with the Google take on things.

We Need a Detailed Picture of Click Quality

Making recent headlines has been a heated debate between a click fraud auditing vendor, Tom Cuthbert of Click Forensics, and Shuman Ghosemajumder, head of click quality at Google.

Microsoft Tweaks adCenter Quality Ranking

In an acknowledgment of how relevance in search advertising has been so successful, Microsoft moved to give higher quality ranked ads a better shot at appearing.

More Stress On AdWords Landing Page Guidelines
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Google is laying a lot of stress on landing page guidelines. For this, AdWords has new list of FAQs.

The Inside AdWords blog has a post called, "Websites that may merit a low landing page quality score" which mentions the kinds of websites that will be penalized with low landing page quality scores:

SES – Search Engines on Click Fraud
In this session, search engines discuss how they deal with click fraud concerns.

SES – TopRank Day 1 Wrap Up
If you see these smiling faces at SES, be sure to say hello!

SES – Ads in a Quality Score World

Day 1 of SES San Jose is in the books. It was a busy one for me. I managed to moderate a fast-paced session on Search Landscape, speak on Ad Quality, and took in a new session on Ad exchanges.

The Ads in a Quality Score World panel was moderated by Danny Sullivan. In this session I tend to amuse myself by watching carefully for subtle wordings, especially in statements by Googlers.

SES: Ad Campaigns And Quality Scores

An ad that suffers from a low quality score doesn’t do anyone much good, so speakers at SES San Jose 2007 addressed the matter in a session titled “Ads In A Quality Score World.”