Google Bugs May Contribute to Lower AdSense Income

When we're all facing a huge downturn in the economy you would expect that Google would get all of their properties communicating properly to make sure they're maximizing every dollar possible both for themselves and their publishers.

Sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

I just tested a handful of my own properties and some of other people's in both Google Translate and Google Cache to see what kind of ads are being displayed, and mostly it was a shocking and abysmal failure.

Most sites I ran through the Google Translator either went completely off target or displayed ads about translator services. Some did display the proper ads but it didn't matter because they were being displayed to me in ENGLISH, not in the translated language that I requested, which was either FRENCH or SPANISH.

What good are ads in English when I'm at the console (or some foreign kiosk) asking for the page to be shown in another language, wouldn't it be prudent to assume I wanted to see the ad content in the same language?

This wouldn't be such an issue except I run a site of worldwide interest and get hundreds, sometimes thousands, of translation requests per day and if the ads don't work there's little value of letting them use the translator.

FAIL.

Next, I went back to check and see if pages in Google cache, which have had problems for many years getting the AdSense ads correct, were still having a problem. Some of the sites displayed appropriate ads but others were still displaying off the wall ads totally unrelated to the site.

FAIL.

So there you have it, lots of lost revenue opportunity just laying around waiting for Google to fix some very basic bugs that would possibly generate revenue for everyone and give us a needed boost in this downturn economy.

The Google Translator also inserted some Google text where my ad banner rotator lives so they just flat out nuked my banner ad system which is additional money lost.

FAIL

What say you Google, any plans to fix these simple issues that impede our earnings when our pages are at the mercy of your own services such as translate and cache?

There's money being left on the table, MY MONEY, and I don't like it.

Fix it please.

Translate YOUR site, view YOUR site in cache, what do you see?

Are your ads being shown on target or worthless gibberish?

Let's find out how wide spread this problem is, if it's beyond my limited testing.

Google Squared Goes Live In Google Labs

Google Squared

In a nutshell

Google Squared is a search tool that helps you quickly build a collection of facts from the Web for any topic you specify.

• Facts about your topic are organized as a table of items and attributes (we call them "Squares" for fun).
• Customize these Squares to see just the items and attributes you're interested in.
• See the websites that served as sources for the information in your Square.
• Save and share Squares with others.

For example, say you're curious about which roller coasters are the fastest, tallest, and longest in the world. Until now, you would have had to comb through dozens of webpages to compile the information you're looking for. With Google Squared, all you have to do is type [ roller coasters ] into the search box at http://www.google.com/squared and click Square it to see an automatically generated table of roller coasters and their attributes.

Google Squared is still in an experimental phase at this point, so you might encounter some hiccups while using it.

Customize rows and columns in your Square

It's easy to customize Squares to your information needs, in case Google Squared didn't display the exact items and attributes you have in mind. Here's how:

• If a particular item listed on the left doesn't belong in your Square, click the x next to the item name to delete it. For example, "Six Flags" wouldn't really belong in a Square about roller coasters.

  

• Common attributes for items in your Square are listed as columns. Like out-of-place items, delete the attributes that you don't care about.
• Want to expand your initial Square? Use the add rows and add columns search boxes to see suggestions for other items and attributes that you can add to your Square. You can also add specific attributes and items that you have in mind.

  

  Once you click Add, the Square will automatically create the new row or column with the label you entered and fetch information for it. If you find that Google Squared is misinterpreting the label you entered, try entering a more specific label to get the information you want.

  Instead of adding items one by one, use the search box and the Add to this Square button at the top of the page to append new search results, e.g. [ Disneyland roller coasters ], to the bottom of your existing Square.

Google Squared can learn from edits and corrections you make to your Square to gradually improve its quality for all users. So although your Square most likely won't be perfect from the get-go, it's worth it to take the time to clean and correct it.

Double-check the information in your Square

It's always a good idea to double-check information you find on the Web. Google Squared scours the Web to determine the best attribute values for each item in the Square. But different websites may give different values for a particular attribute (such as price points) or, in some cases, show conflicting information. It's also possible that Google Squared found various ways to interpret your attribute label.

Move your mouse over a cell to see the web source (in green) for the value that's displayed. Click the cell to see other possible values for the attribute and item in question. You can use the number of sources listed for a particular value to judge whether the value is trustworthy. To see the specific websites that cited that value, click the all x sources link.

If you think an alternative value listed is more accurate, simply select that value. The Square will automatically update to display your chosen value instead.

Last but not least, if you're not satisfied with the values shown, click Search for more values to see regular Google search results for the item and the attribute in question. Alternatively, you can click the text of the cell to type in a new value directly.

See an example

Save and share your Squares

Do you know other roller coaster fanatics? Save your edited Square and share it with your friends.

Squares can be saved if you're signed into your Google Account while using Google Squared. Simply click Save on the upper-right corner of the page. (Don't have a Google Account? Learn more) The next time you return to Google Squared, click the Saved Squares menu to retrieve your Square. To delete a saved Square, click the x that appears when you move your mouse over the Square's name in the menu.

To share your Square, copy the URL in the address bar for the Square you've created and send it to your friends. If the Square has been saved to your Google Account, your friend will see a copy of your customized Square. (In fact, anyone who accesses that specific URL will see your Square, so exercise caution when you're sharing the URL.) Otherwise, people will see the default Square created by Google Squared, without any customizations.

Google Squared is a new way of organizing information on the Web to make it more useful and structured. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can improve the tool. Send us your feedback and questions at labs+squared@google.com

Google Webmater Tool New Look and Feel

Hi All, Google launch New look and Feel of Google Webmaster Tool with better UI with existing features. I hope you all like this.

Google Is Top Tracker of Surfers in Study

When asked about online privacy, most people say they want more information about how they are being tracked and more control over how their personal information is used. Those consumer expectations are rarely in line with the data collection practices of Internet companies, which often collect information about their users not only on their own sites, but also when those users visit other sites across the Web.

Those are some of the central findings of a new privacy study conducted by a group of graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, which was released late Monday. The students at the School of Information — Joshua Gomez, Travis Pinnick and Ashkan Soltani — studied consumer expectations by looking at sources like complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission and data collected by the state of California and a privacy group. They analyzed company practices using Ghostery, a browser plug-in that detects cookies, Web beacons and other types of trackers that allow third parties to gather information about Web site visitors, often without their knowledge.

Google showed up as the most conspicuous tracker on third-party sites. Google Analytics, a free product that allows online publishers to gather statistics about visitors to their sites, was used on 81 of the top 100 sites. Cookies from the advertising company DoubleClick, which is owned by Google, were present on 70 of those sites. When combining trackers from those two services, Google had a presence on 92 of the top 100 sites. Others weren’t far behind. Cookies from Atlas, Microsoft’s DoubleClick rival, appeared on 60 sites, and trackers from two other analytics companies, Quantcast and Omniture, showed up on 54 sites.

The findings roughly line up with those in other studies of third-party tracking on the Web. Researchers from AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, for instance, looked at a much larger sample of 1,200 popular Web sites and found Google trackers on 61 percent of them. Omniture’s tracker was on 34 percent and Microsoft’s on 24 percent.

What is striking in the Berkeley students’ report is that in a sample of nearly 400,000 Web domains, Google’s presence remained high, at 88 percent, while those of other companies declined sharply. The second most frequent tracker in that sample was from an analytics company called StatCounter, which appeared on only 7 percent of domains. Assuming the data is accurate, it is a testimony to the widespread popularity of Google’s services like Analytics, DoubleClick and AdSense, the company’s contextual advertising network, which is used by a large percentage of Web sites small and large.

“I don’t know that anyone has identified the scope and depth of the coverage that Google has across the Web in terms of tracking,” Mr. Soltani said. “Our data shows that even if you are not going to Google, if you are browsing the Web they are collecting data about you.”

The implications of the study, however, are not exactly clear. “We are not claiming that Google aggregates information from each of these trackers into a central database, though it does possess the capability to do so,” the researchers wrote.

But Google disputes even that. For instance, it said that the cookies used by its analytics service are different on each Web site, so they do not allow the company to track a user from site to site. “It doesn’t enable any cross-site tracking,” said Mike Yang, managing counsel at Google. Mr. Yang also said Google’s contracts with customers do not allow it to merge data from various services like DoubleClick and AdSense, or to link that data to personal information that Google collects when users sign up for its other services.

What’s more, the data from the Berkeley study, which reports the presence of trackers by domain, can overstate the amount of tracking that is taking place. Many large domains like MySpace can include multiple sites with thousands of pages, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of pages. The presence of a tracker on one site or page doesn’t mean users are tracked across the entire domain.

Still, the numbers are eye-catching. And as important as the numbers themselves is what the study says about the disconnect between how Americans conceive of privacy, company practices and the government’s approach to regulation of those practices, said Chris Hoofnagle, director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology’s information privacy programs, who helped advise the students.

“Consumers were complaining to the F.T.C. about a lack of control over personal information,” Mr. Hoofnagle said. “That is very different from how the F.T.C. has framed the issue,” he said, noting that under the Bush administration, the agency frowned on privacy practices only if they caused harm to consumers.

Mr. Hoofnagle added: “We have a new F.T.C. now. They may scrap the ‘harm’ approach and look at some other method for balancing rights and responsibilities.”

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/google-is-top-tracker-of-surfers-in-study/?hp