Not so long ago Google announced about the launch of a new algorithm that pessimized the resources with a too big number of advertising in the first scrolling window. Here and then many webmasters had a question, how many advertising is possible to place in the upper part of the site without negative consequences?
Originally Google informed that it will take into account how it’s easy for the user to find the necessary content on the site and whether the advertising disturbs it. Yesterday Matt Cutts, the head of the command of Google Web Spam during video meeting with webmasters told that a new algorithm takes into account correlation of the number of advertising and the rest of content in the first scrolling window and by now on the basis of it makes the conclusions about the usefulness of the site for the user. The number of ads, banners doesn’t matter, the thing is the space that they occupy. As an example, Mr. Cutts pasted 2 yellow stickers on the upper part of the paper list of the A4 format, told that if the advertising on the site takes so much place it’s much for Google.
Also Google announced about the update of the algorithm Panda: now it was renewed to the version 3.2. According to the representatives of the search engine, this update became one of 500 changes planned by Google for 2012 year.
AdSense made a development plan for 2012 year. For the basis were taken the users’ desires got in the result of the Google interrogation. In all 28 thousand people took part in the study who left more than 33 thousand comments about the advantages and shortages of AdSense.
In the result of the analysis of the received data were singled out 3 main directions of the development for the current year:
1. The rules of the AdSense program
The service users will get in the messages the detailed information about the breach and a full instruction what they need to do next. Furthermore in the messages AdSense will tell about the connection methods with the specialists according to the service rules and also about the necessary resources with the information about the program rules.
2. The technical support of AdSense
The improving of the support – is one of the priority tasks for the current year. The work on improving the content quality of Information centre will be continued, the testing of the system of the individual support will be started.
3. The delivery of AdSense
The delivery existing at the present moment will be improved. In emails with optimization advices more attention will be paid to the success histories, will be described the practical cases from different branches. Also at the users’ request in the delivery will be included the local news of AdSense for different countries.
The Yandex.Fotki service started to use the technology Face.com for identifying the faces on the users’ photos. Thanks to innovation the service could find the faces on its own on the image and identify them.
After pressing the button «Indicate people on the photo» the service may offer you a prompting with a user’s name on a photograph. It is done on the basis of the notes that you or other users did before. On the photo the signature will appear only after you confirm it yourself, this process doesn’t happen automatically.
If the user doesn’t want to be marked on the photos he may forbid it in the service tools. And any note on the photo could be always deleted.
The photographs on which the user is marked now will be represented while searching the user equally with the link to his profile.
Let’s remind, Facebook and Google also have the technology of recognizing the faces.
The vice-president of Google, Sebastian Thrun together with David Evans, the professor of the theory of computing machines, during 7 weeks will teach all interested persons to create their own search engines. The online-course CS 101: BUILDING A SEARCH ENGINE» will be held free.
«During 7 weeks of the course you could to build your own search engine with your search robots and the ranging algorithm of pages. You will understand the key concepts in computer science and will know how to write your own computer programs», – promise the program authors.
Running a training course is planned on February 20, 2012 year. Sebastian Thrun is planning to gather about 500 thousand listeners from around the world on this course. It’s possible to sign up for participation in training on the site of the online-university Udacity.
The average number of video viewings on YouTube amounts 4 billion per day, says Reuters. From May 2011 year the video downloads rate has increased by 25%. 8 months ago clips on YouTube are being watched 3 billion times per day.
Today the portal visitors download 60 hours per minute on it. And in May already this rate amounted only 48 hours.
Let’s add that, according to comScore, the Americans alone watched 43 billion video clips in December 2011 year. The world total number of video viewings on YouTube in 2011 year exceeded 1 trillion.
However in spite of all these numbers, the owner of video hosting Google still doesn’t rank YouTube among its profitable services. Only about 3 billion video viewings on YouTube are monetized per week and make profit for the internet giant.
Recently Google announced its intention to spend $100 million on the professional content for YouTube. At the same time the internet giant is engaged in the development of specialized video canals. In December 2011 year YouTube renewed the design. In the result of this change the users have gotten the opportunity to watch those canals that are really interesting for them. Besides, the new design of YouTube allows to promote video clips through the social network and other popular services.
Let’s remind that the internet giant acquired YouTube in 2006 year for $1,65 billion. During the past year the Google revenue from the display advertising placed including on YouTube amounted $5 billion. The internet giant hides the receipts from YouTube. According to the calculations of the investment bank Credit Suisse, last year video hosting brought Google from $700 million to $1 billion.
The main channels of earnings of Google on YouTube – are:
- advertising:
- video hosting broadcasting programs in online cinemas;
- providing the possibility for the companies to create their own branded channels.
A new report has appeared in Ya.Metrika – «Analysis of forms». The instrument analyzes the pages that contain fill-in forms and provides the data about the fact how many users have reached a page with a form, how many of them filled it in and how many of them sent these data.
Besides the instrument allows to monitor how much time the users need to fill in this form, what fields they miss and after which field decide to leave the page. Thanks to the new report it’ll be easier for webmasters to evaluate the quality of fill-in forms on their site, to improve them, and hereby to increase the conversion rates.
«Useful development. I’m sure that many clients like the very idea. But as any universal instrument, not everybody’s analyzer of forms works correctly. Even for many it works incorrectly. If there’s an opportunity to set up the functional for the client – it would be great! In the meanwhile, according to statistics, the majority of clients cannot trust the information from this instrument», – comments the innovation Irina Chernova, the head of the analytics department of the Internet advertising agency i-Media.
How to become a Google assessor? What claims are laid to them and what job do these specialists? On the portal of Search Engine Land was published the interview with one of the assessors in which he told about a specific character of his job. Here is briefly the main content:
- The assessors are hired after they will be tested. At the second stage the jobseeker is offered to evaluate more than 140 different search results. In order to do a task the assessor should give not less than 90% of right answers.
- Every ranging task is made by several assessors. If they disagree how to evaluate this or that site the process of discussion begins. When the assessors simply cannot come to a common conclusion the moderators join the discussion who make the final decision.
- The assessors watch through not only organic results of the Google search. They can evaluate paid search, News, Maps and other sections of the universal search.
- Besides the assessors are may be given tasks to evaluate the design and layout of specific web-pages. One of the main factors to which attention should be paid is what the balance between content and advertising on the page is.
- The tasks could be any, in no way taking into account the skills and interests of the assessor.
- It is possible to get acquainted with the full interview in the original on the Search Engine Land and with the Russian variant on the portal SeoPro.
Google learned to recognize the users’ inquiries in the form of punctuation marks and started to offer quite relevant results in the responses, told the west recourse Google Operating System.
If drive in the search box, for example, [?], the search engine will offer to watch the request results [Question mark]. The majority of the presented results as was to be expected is in the English language.
A new function is available for all users of the search engine. Google recognizes the majority of punctuation marks and other symbols: [.], [,], [:], [;], [#], [%] and so on. But the marks [*] and [€] still remain a mystery for the search engine. Also it’s worth noting that Google will answer the user’s request only if in the search box is entered one symbol.
Taking into account that punctuation marks are a part of language that people actively use including while turning to the search systems, it is a reasonable decision to use them while sites ranging. I cannot say that it will cardinally change something but as one of the planned actions is quite in order. I think Yandex will also soon tweak a little bit its algorithms in this direction, – thinks Anatoly Skalsky, the department manager of the search advertising of the Internet advertising agency i-Media.
Yandex still takes the request in the form of punctuation mark as the syntactical mistake.
The research company ComScore cleared up that while showing media advertising on average about 31% of demonstrations don’t reach the users. For some sites this rate amounts 91%. In the best cases (for advertisers) the advertising won’t be seen only by 7% of the users.
The reasons that the shows are lost are the wrong placement of the advertising banner. For example, if the advertising is placed below the main viewing area and needs scrolling and site itself has a bad content then the users will rare scroll the page to the end.
At the same time Google has recently announced that would pessimize the sites where the advertising in the upper part of the page prevent the user to find the desired content.
Whether the advertising is placed on the page too high there’s probability that the user will scroll the page down earlier than the banner has time to be loaded.
The other problem of losing of shows is the wrong geotargeting setting. On average from 4% to 15% of shows are lost because of untargeted audience.
And one more important mistake of advertisers becomes the shows near the wrong content that negatively tell on the brand image, informed comScore.
We note that in the study were analyzed 12 national brands, 3 thousands banner placements on 381 thousand domains that gave 1,7 billion advertising shows.
The marketers of the U.S. will spend practically a half of their advertising budget on the context in 2012 year, prognoses eMarketer.
According to the advertising platform provider Marin Software, last year the advertisers got the largest in comparison with the previous years the return on investment in contextual ads. The CTR rates in the U.S. during the fourth quarter 2011 year in Google has grown by 48% in comparison with the analogical period of 2010 year, in Yahoo! and Bing – by 44%.
The reason of the decrease of the CTR rate from the 3rd to the 4th quarter of 2011 year, most probably, is the mass influx of the advertisers in connection with the holiday season. The rate increase of the cost per click (CPC) during the same period is probably conditioned by the same reason of the competition increase on the market.
Although as notes the analytics of eMarketer, year by year Google makes the cost per click in the 4th quarter more lower while Yahoo! and Bing on the contrary increase the prices every year. For clearness:
- CPC in Google in the 4th quarter of 2010 year amounted to $1,11, and in the analogical period of 2011 year – $1,02;
- CPC in Yahoo! and Bing in the 4th quarter of 2010 year amounted $0,78, and in the analogical period of 2011 year – $0,85.
The analytical company Covario marked the CTR increase for Google in the historical perspective. From 2007 to the 1st quarter of 2011 year clickabiliby on this search engine increased from 2,4% and 2,9%.
Yahoo! also has demonstrated the positive result of the rates during the last five years: 1,0% in 2007 year – 1,8% in the first quarter of 2011 year. But the CTR rates in Yandex and Bing in the beginning of this year were lower than in 2007. In particular the clickability on the russian search engine in 2007 year amounted 1,2%, and in the first quarter of 2011 year – 1,0%.
eMarketer also notes that practically in all branches of industry of the U.S. the cost per click decreased from 4th quarter 2010 year to 4th quarter 2011 year. The greatest fall of CPC of the contextual advertising is observed in the fields of education and finance – by $0,50 and $0,27 accordingly.
The only sphere where the cost per click year after year becomes higher and higher remains B2B.
According to Marin Software, 6% of the total number of the clicks on the context and 4% of the total number of the advertising view in the 4th quarter of 2011 year was made from smartphones. The tablet share falls on 4% of clicks and 3% of views.
eMarketer prognoses the increase of the number of smartphone and tablets owners in the U.S. by 2014 year to 133 million and 89,5 million people accordingly. The U.S. Internet Audience as expected by then reaches 251,2 million people.