PalatnikFactor.com

Google is one of the world’s fastest growing companies in the world. It is the biggest powerhouse online, which is a planet of its own and dominating in the search market. They are hated by many, and loved by their loyalist.

The growth of Google is feared by many as the Economist reports, “Television networks, book publishers and newspaper owners feel that Google has grown by using their content without paying for it. Telecoms firms such as America's AT&T and Verizon are miffed that Google prospers, in their eyes, by free-riding on the bandwidth that they provide; and it is about to bid against them in a forthcoming auction for radio spectrum. Many small firms hate Google because they relied on exploiting its search formulas to win prime positions in its rankings, but dropped to the internet's equivalent of Hades after Google tweaked these algorithms.”

Who should really fear Google? Companies or the consumer? Millions, (maybe billions) of people create Google accounts and use its search engine storing private information on a daily basis. Many anti-trust issues have been brought to the table such as far as how long the engine can store personal data.

The Economist reports, “…These data begin with the logs of a user's searches (in effect, a record of his interests) and his responses to advertisements. Often they extend to the user's e-mail, calendar, contacts, documents, spreadsheets, photos and videos. They could soon include even the user's medical records and precise location (determined from his mobile phone).”

A very near future entails Google collecting financial information such as the banking industry began in its day. Google has one major challenge ahead and that is to develop trust with users and companies alike.

Google has one option to make this possible, and that is to make its plans and strategies more transparent to users. Everything with Google seems to be a blueprint we have to uncover.

[**Added Sphinn Comments- Let's Hear What You Think…]

The more people I meet in the industry, the more alike we all are in a way. Here are five things I find most of us online marketers (seo’s and sem’s) share. Not in order.

1)Informative but Secretive- we love to share information with one another and make it known that we are in the know. We love to be on top of our game in the industry but don’t share the EXACT formula of our success. Although many claim to tell you EXACTLY what they did to make ALL THIS MONEY, the WHOLE strategy isn’t really there…we all keep some things to ourselves.

2)IM is One of Our Best Friend- It seems the best way to communicate with each other besides e-mail is instant messenger. I guess since we’re online ALL DAY LONG, there isn’t a better way to communicate than IM and we like it, even if you think you don’t, you do. IM has become a standard in the industry as a form of communication, from the big dogs in companies all the way down.

3)We Are Our Best Promoters- Given our blogs, social media sites, etc. there is no one that promotes ourselves than us!

4)Opportunist- More so than other industry, even more so than other media, we are on the lookout for any opportunity from the offline world to apply to the online world. Things we see on TV, print media, etc.

5)Help Thy Neighbor- I’ve never seen an industry where so many people (most are self-employed) help each other out strategizing and offer their help/support in any way. I.E. – mastermind groups.

Not long ago, Google announced they are doing away with its PageRank feature in the toolbar. Loren as SearchEngineJournal wrote an article, “Goodbye Google PageRank”, which had 46 comments from people discussing if it was valuable or not.

As Google explains it, “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.”
As SEO’s, of course PageRank is relevant. Even if it’s not accurate, I believe it to be a relevant tool to measure a websites value as Google explains it. For a while now, while explaing to a client who has been paying for SEO efforts, most will touch on the pagerank as a key factor of website optimization.

Just going to a website, one of the first things I look at, maybe by habit now, is the sites pagerank. Matt Cutts said PR Updates are considered pretty much a non-event around google. PR is out of date and doesn’t really show the value of a website…and I guess we can all agree and even if we don’t agree, MATT CUTTS says so.
But from looking at most of the websites I go to, blogs, etc. the PR for most things just MAKE SENSE. Again, it might not be IMPORTANT but it just seems like a relevant tool that Google can really improve a bit on its functionality, explain it in full to understand instead of people trying to make out each number, and make it more of a useful and reliable tool.

Maybe individuals have not given value to the pagerank tool, but businesses have! Take the company Pay-Per-Post for example. In thier business model, the more pagerank you want the blogger to be blogging about your service/produce, the more you will pay for that post. Also, websites with high pagerank ask for more money for advertisement and links as a result of thier PAGERANK by making that a key source in thier sale.

[added sphinn comments myself]

My last blog post was about the Next Internet Millionaire reality online series that has just launched by Joel Comm. I saw Joel speak at the Affiliate Summit here in Miami about contextual ads and had a good presentation about the different networks who offer ads for publishers to place on their websites, blogs, etc and what works best. I wish I had the notes I took than to write in this blog post but unfortunately, I don’t.

Joel has great presentations on his YouTube channel and I think it’s worth watching every second. He is really a great speaker and exciting to listen to. He touches on arbitrage a bit on his presentation but that’s a whole other story. Wonder if he got banned from Google…I THINK NOT. He wrote a New York Times Best-Seller, “The Adsense Code”.

Now, from someone who has made so much money from adsense, you really have to wonder what they do in order to generate all this money since a lot of us just place ads and never satisfied with CTR’s, etc…and be like, “what the heck is going on here?…why aren’t people clicking?”

Many who start made for adsense sites don’t test enough (that’s usually the problem with most online marketing campaigns) and quit. I remember the one thing Joel said and maybe it’s because he made so much money with Adsense but people are and will click on things they are familiar with and trust. We’ve seen Google adsense on websites for years now.

Trying several different contextual ads, I have to say Google is in fact the best converting ad but there is one problem which people like Shoemoney and Darren Rowse point out…you don’t always want to place the ad in the same exact place if you have returning visitors because they can develop “ad blindness,” where they totally become immune to the ad and stop noticing it.

So which adsense ads work the best? I think a good strategy is not only to test for yourself but look at Joel’s blog (a.k.a. Dr. Adsense) and one of his sites or more and check out which ad units he uses.

www.joelcomm.com
www.wordsearchfun.com

Joel Comm, one of internet’s most popular entrepreneurs within the industry has launched a reality show online, The Next Internet Millionaire. I had the chance to see Joel speak at the Affiliate Summit here in Miami this summer.

Joel has done some impressive things online such as start ClassicGames.com which was acquired by Yahoo! in 97’ and now is Yahoo! Games. Also, Joel wrote a NY Time Best-Seller book, The Adsense Code.

This is pretty exciting as it’s at least the first time a show online launches that I’ll be watching every time there is a new episode. There are 12 contestants competing for a grand prize of 25k cash.

The first episode is already out and I enjoyed it. The most interesting I found in the episode that I think we can ALL apply is SimpleOlogy, the simple science of getting what you want. The example put fourth was to make two points, map out your day, and make a point from start to finish. For every time you do something to meet your end goal in your day, you keep making that line straight. Every time you deviate from that point, you make the line skewed. The shortest way between two points is a straight line.

Thought of the day: In our complicated lives, we forget the simple things can make the biggest difference.

Watch the first episode HERE.

If you’re in the search marketing/online marketing business as an agency, consultant, etc…You probably encounter two different types of sale in a prospect: 1) The prospect that understands the importance of online marketing and its potential or 2) the prospect that thinks everything cost too much money and still believes traditional media will work better and wants exact figures of what you can provide costs, etc.

Little by little, #2 is becoming much more of a prospect than #1. Why? Experience. Everyone seems to have a friend that has started to market their business/service online and has some kind of success story. Of course, you can jump into the online advertising world, spend thousands of dollars and have NO SUCCESS whatsoever.

SearchEngineWatch reports that by 2011, online advertising will surpass newspaper advertising. “With a projected annual growth rate of than 21 per cent per year, online advertising is expected to reach $62bn in 2011, making it bigger than newspaper advertising, which is expected to total $60bn in 2011.The move to online advertising is not just a U.S. phenomenon. The shift in advertising spending away from traditional media to online and digital media is global."

Before you could offer your clients two things: SEO or SEM. There are so many ways to brand a company and expose products now that the possibilities are endless and could give a client a scope of options to choose from.

The stats above say a lot.