Mission E-Commerce

Any tech savvy business owner with a business website should be concerned about their website’s Search Engine Optimization and how their customers are finding their services online.  The following article discusses exact ways that your customers are finding you online.  As Microsoft changes from the company’s past views on concepts such as relevancy, this changes the customers that find your E-commerce or brick and mortar website.  Is this change for the best or for the worst?  It is up to you to decide for your own business.

By Pamela Parker

Microsoft has announced changes that tighten up its adCenter Relevancy and Quality policy for ads served to the U.S. and Canada.

Changes are set to take place tomorrow, August 31, though the company says it won’t begin enforcing the changes until the next week or two, giving advertisers a chance to make changes, if needed, to comply.

The company has expanded how it defined relevancy, noting that users should find your landing page a “satisfactory destination” based on the keyword they used. Specifically, keywords should relate to the range of products, services or content on the landing page. Alternatively, keywords should directly relate to the “general content, purpose and theme of your site.”

Additionally, the company has strengthened its rules for landing pages and sites, indicating that the pages shouldn’t be primarily focused on displaying advertising or redirecting to other businesses without providing significant value. Landing pages and sites also shouldn’t require users to enter personally identifiable information (PII) unnecessarily, delay access to desired pages, or employ certain types of marketing tactics. Sites may also not redirect visitors unexpectedly to unrelated domains.

Microsoft said it would also exclude Marketplace sites that deceive users as to the origin of their content or try to trick people into sharing PII.

Click here to learn more.

In what amounted to a “State of Google Plus” talk today, Google’s Bradley Horowitz said “we need to improve,” hinted at some features that may be in Google’s pipeline and called Facebook’s new sharing controls “familiar.”

Horowitz, the VP of Product for Google Plus, spoke to Tim O’Reilly during an hour-long, live webcast conversation that served to preview the upcoming Strata Summit. A recording appears to still be viewable on the conference website.

His comments came just a couple hours after Facebook announced a series of new privacy controls that many immediately said are reminiscent of Google+. And Horowitz said basically the same thing when asked about Facebook’s announcement:

“I think it’s good for users, which is exciting for us. What they did was … familiar, and good for users.”

Some of Facebook’s new features are similar to Google+, such as the ability to more easily control the privacy/sharing of individual updates and pieces of content and the ability to view your own profile as others see it.

But the webcast conversation was really about Google+ and some of its early ups and downs. Here’s a recap of some of the topics that Horowitz addressed:

Identity & Real Names

Horowitz and O’Reilly had a fairly long exchange on the issue of identity and, more specifically, Google’s insistence that Google+ users have real names. It’s a policy that has impacted several groups of users — from individuals to brands and beyond. Horowitz admitted that he and Google VP Vic Gundotra have taken a lot of heat on this issue, but they’re not ignorant to why anonymity matters.

“I understand pseudonymity and anonymity. Those are use cases that we don’t need be educated about; I understand the important of this for the internet culture.”

He went on to say that Google has gotten it wrong in some specific cases involving users that appeared to have non-real, generic names. “We need to improve” that process, he admitted. And he went further, saying that Google is working on a way to allow anonymity inside Google+:

“There’s no moral opposition to that happening. We want to let them in in a way that’s great for the whole community. It’s a high priority.”

Brands & Enterprise Users

Horowitz also spoke about Google’s policy that currently bars brands/companies from using Google+:

“We’ve kicked out tens of thousands of brands that have wanted to get into the service. Would I love to have Starbucks? I’d love to. [But] we want the experience to be good for the brands, the people that want to follow them and the people that don’t.”

He also admitted that Google has frustrated “millions” of its own paying customers — the people and companies that are using Google Apps. “That’s a huge patch of of users and they’re the last people we want to frustrate.”

Horowitz said Google is working to solve the frustrations of those groups.

“The reason is that we have covenants and expectations with the administrators about how the data is stored, whether it will be public or private — we want to get those right, so the product is consistent with the promises we’ve made.”

Hints About The Future Of Google+

Throughout the conversation, there were several hints about new features and services that might be added to Google+ in the future. As you’d expect, Horowitz didn’t share a ton of specifics or a timeframe for any of this, but here’s a list of some of the things mentioned today:

APIs: Horowitz reiterated Google’s intention to open up more APIs so that Google+ can become a platform in much the same way that Facebook and other social networks have. “We’ll do that over time and probably in stages – we’ll release read APis before write APIs,” he said. That would allow, for example, users to manage their Google+ stream via third-party clients in much the same way that many do with Twitter, Facebook, and so forth.

Twitter integration: Horowitz was open to the idea of Google+ users being able to send updates/content to other services. O’Reilly specifically asked about Twitter integration. “Users should own their data and if I want my data to land in another service, conceptually that should be possible. We’ll get there,” Horowitz said.

Hangouts: Horowitz seemed to suggest that Google is interested in allowing hangouts to extend beyond the current 10-person limit. He also spoke fondly of a user-generated idea for debate-style hangouts, in which individuals have timed speaking slots.

Threaded comments: These are “probably a good idea,” Horowitz said.

He wrapped up the conversation with a pretty grand statement about Google’s plans for Google+, saying there will be “new, unexpected features that will be really significant in changing the center of gravity of the product, and will change how people think of the service entirely.”

That’s a pretty heavy prediction, but it’s reminiscent of what Eric Schmidt said last month about plans to have Google+ power all Google products. For more background on many of the topics mentioned above, be sure to read the “related entries” listed below.

Click here to learn more.

Ripoff Report is completely gone from Google’s index and Google says it’s been done at Ripoff Report’s own request. But, the question now is whether that request was made on purpose or an accident.

Update: As our postscript below explains, Ripoff Report is now back in Google’s index.

As the image above shows, a site:ripoffreport.com search brings up Google’s standard “Your search did not match any documents” message. We learned about this via Jeff Quipp’s tweet this afternoon, but Sean Hakes seems to be the first to notice.

A Google spokesperson says the site is not banned, but was removed after Google received a request to do so via Google Webmaster Tools:

The owner of this site delegated access in our webmaster console to multiple email accounts, and one of those email accounts submitted a url removal request for the site. We’ve emailed the site owner to check whether the site removal was an intended action, or whether the removal was a mistake.

We’ve also reached out to Ripoff Report for comment, but have not received a reply.

Back in March 2010, Google simplified its verification system for adding multiple users to a Webmaster Tools account. Google’s own blog post even contained a warning about delegating ownership to new users:

…remember that anyone you delegate ownership to will have exactly the same access you have. They can delegate to more people, submit URL Removal requests and manage Sitelinks in Webmaster Tools, etc. Only delegate ownership to people you trust!

Bing continues to show about 500,000 pages indexed from Ripoff Report.

Postscript, 10:00 pm PST: An attorney representing Ripoff Report contacted us via email tonight with this response to our article:

Ripoff Report did not intentionally request Google to delist the website, and we are still investigating what occured.

We also updated the text above to clarify how we learned about the situation and who was first to report it.

And finally, as Karun Verma reports in the comments below, Ripoff Report is back in Google’s index now.

Click here to learn more.

Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond has lashed out at rivals Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and unnamed others for waging what he says is “a hostile, organized campaign against Android,” using “bogus patents.”

Drummond asserts that Google’s rivals have joined together in an “anti-competitive” cabal of sorts that uses patent law almost as a pretext to attempt to “strangle” Android. (The phrase “anti-competitive” is self-consciously used four times in his post.) Drummond contends that Google’s rivals are threatened by or unable to compete with Android’s momentum (citing Android’s 550,000 daily activations) and have resorted to this nefarious strategy to make Android more expensive for hardware makers and consumers.

Making Android More Expensive

Raising the cost hardware manufacturers must pay for Android is explicitly what Microsoft is trying to do with its patent-licensing demands (vs. HTC and Samsung). Steve Ballmer has said so very directly. Microsoft is also seeking to generate revenue from Android, which it is starting to do.

Oracle is certainly seeking licensing revenue but probably not trying to inflate the cost of Android. And Apple is probably trying to do neither. It’s more likely that Apple genuinely believes its IP has been infringed.

Apple has repeatedly said that Android handset makers have ripped-off the iPhone’s design and other key features. Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung, the top Android OEM, argues that the Korean company “slavishly copied” the iPhone and iPad’s designs:

Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products…