Google Hits Back Against Scammers

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Google’s changes lately have been quite thorough.  They’ve made changes for AdWords, they’re changing the way the search engine itself operates, and now they’re coming out to take a stand against online scams.

In particular, the schemes for how to “work-at-home” to use Google and make a ton of money are starting to get shut down by Google.  Google is starting to file lawsuits against these companies to bring them down.

For most people, these are familiar schemes – you see them in banner ads, with text like “Use Google to make 1000s of Dollars!”.  They generally operate by having a kit you send out for and then have you set up for automatic billing once a month (and many people don’t realize there’s automatic billing).

CNN has a bit more detail in this story.  I did find it rather amusing that under this story in their sponsored links, one of the ads said “I’m glad I lost my job! Jobless Dad makes $6493/month working online from home. Read how he…”

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Google’s Real-Time Search – a Video

Just a quick update for the news on Google’s real-time search results.  They released a video to show exactly how it works.  And it looks pretty good!  Like it won’t interfere too much with other results, but will give people updated information on what they want.

Here’s the video:

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Google Goggles – Search By Photo

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Okay, this is just cool.  I found this a little bit ago, and the concept is pretty solid.  I’ve always wanted something similar to this to be able to do searches on certain things that I couldn’t really vocalize into text, and this looks like it might do the trick.

It only appears to work for the Android phone (for now), and who knows how effective it really is – but if it’s all that Google says it’s supposed to be, this will be awesome.

They have a nice video demonstration.  Check it out!  Google Goggles.  (Or if you don’t want to bother clicking, see it below.)

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Personalized Google Results, Whether Logged In or Not

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I posted an entry a little while back about how Google keeps track of your searches and personalizes your search results based on what you search on and the pages you click on.

Well, it now appears Google has stepped it up a level and will now personalize your results whether or not you’re logged in.  This is something that will have an impact in particular on many SEOs.  However, if you do good marketing (and not just the technical side of it), this shouldn’t change things too much.  Check out this CNET article for the bulk of the info.

For those of you who don’t want Google to track you, you do have a few options.  One is an opt-out option inside of Google that you can go in and activate, the other is to use some kind of plug-in to deactivate cookies.  My personal favorite is the Web Developer plug-in by Chris Pederick.  But it’s not the end of the world – you still do have options.

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Google Now Has Live Search Results

Google is in the process of launching their latest search engine update/upgrade.  With it comes a real-time update capability.  You will actually see relevant information feeding into your search results as you watch.

This is expected to roll out over the next few days, so keep an eye out for differences in the Google results.  If you want to see all the information about this update, check out the article Danny Sullivan wrote about it on Search Engine Land.

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Getting Banned From Google AdWords

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It’s been mentioned previously that AdWords has been going through some serious changes.  Well, it appears that they are also stepping up in their quality check on their advertisers.  Google has taken action by banning some of their advertisers that don’t meet up to standards – permanently.

This is quite major news for several advertisers.  These bans are hitting hard, and the first major revision on AdWords users and who Google will accept was done yesterday, December 3rd.  The Search Engine Roundtable has more information and a good copy of the ban letter that they published today.

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DNS Support From Google

Google is about keeping things fast.  And when there are things on the web slowing them down, they want to just keep it up and going.  If it isn’t being taken care of, then it looks like they’ll step in and do it themselves.

In this case, it’s DNS – the domain name system servers are apparently not fast enough for them, so they’re setting up their own.  Barry Schwartz has more details over at Search Engine Land, on what Google’s plans are for this.

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How to Ask Google Questions

Matt Cutts put up a new post on the Matt Cutts blog early this morning.  Apparently Google has a new page that will allow you to ask questions, take votes, and then have Matt himself answer them on video.  It’s an addition to the Google Moderator pages.

This is great to see, and I’m very interested to see what Matt has to say about a lot of the questions that have already been posted.  Should be interesting.

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What Happened To Google AdWords Customer Support?

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Google does, in fact, have a customer support line: 866-2GOOGLE.  However, this line is intended primarily for AdWords, and encourages all other questions to be handled online (somehow that doesn’t surprise me).

One thing that happened sometime earlier this year is that Google stopped personally supporting most AdWords accounts.  So if you call in, indicate you are calling about AdWords help, and put in your account number – chances are you’ll get a message that will tell you they no longer offer personal support, to go online to find your answers in the AdWords online support.

However – if you have certain elements meeting a particular criteria in your account, you can still get personal support.  From what I’ve been able to find out from Google, this criteria is based primarily on ad expenditure.  That is to say – Google takes care of their big spenders, the advertisers who in turn take care of Google.  By giving them a ton of money.

This is not the happiest of news for all AdWords users, but hopefully it does clear things up.  As far as I can tell, if you have an AdWords Client Center account set up (have Google AdWords Qualification, etc.), they will also offer support.  I do not know if this is purely because you have that type of an account or because you are in charge of so many clients that spend a combined amount above their “trigger” figure.  I personally am able to get through to customer service, for one of these reasons or the other.

To sum it up – if you want Google support for AdWords, your best bet (unless you’re spending thousands a month or have a Client Center account) is to just go to their support center online, the AdWords Help Center.  They do have a lot of information there that covers most topics, so for the most part this is a great resource.  Although, admittedly, not as nice (for some people) as being able to just ask someone to help you out in real-time.  But you can ask through their contact forms online, if you can’t find your solution in their help center.

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How Do Breadcrumbs and SEO Mix?

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You may have noticed on Google lately that some of the listings are starting to show slightly different details on the results.  They’re putting breadcrumbs in, to help people see exactly what categories those results fit into.  How can you tell?  Instead of showing the blatant web site address, they’re putting greater than signs (“>”) between categories in that space.  That way, you know what site the page belongs to, but you don’t know the specific address, you know the categories the subpage that has shown belongs to.

This is one way Google has adjusted their algorithm to help users navigate the search engine results pages, but how else can you use breadcrumbs, in your own site?  One of my favorite internet marketers Ann Smarty has a detailed explanation on Search Engine Journal.  The key is to make sure you use them to help the user, not to help the search engines (a good rule to follow in general).

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