I make it a habit to use my mom’s eMachines computer a little bit each week. It’s not that I don’t have several of my own. I like to see what sorts of scum and spyware have made their way onto her machine in a week’s time (I remove what I find, of course). She’s your average computer/Internet user and will do just about anything she’s told to do by a website or piece of software.

While playing with her computer this weekend I came across something that I initially thought was spyware of some kind.

Any time you type in a domain without the “www” in front of it, you’re redirected to a Google-branded page literally overflowing with sponsored results. The page tells you that “whateverdomain.com” is not available and then offers some suggestions (wrapped in ads, of course). Even typing in “google.com” directs you to the search results page.

All I can say to that is… what the hell??!

Google.com is not only a perfectly acceptable way to enter a domain name, but it’s also accepted by every major web browser out there. To get the behavior I saw, either eMachines or Google would have to circumvent the web browser’s normal way of handling URLs without “www”.

I also noticed that if any aspect of a site returns a 404 error - even an ad - you’ll be jerked off the site you’re on and directed to one of these search pages. I was browsing YouTube on the computer and all was going well. One of the pages I went to suddenly redirected me to the Google-braned search page.

And the URL that it said couldn’t be found belonged to one advertisement on the YouTube page. The content itself was fine. But because that ad returned a 404 error, I was taken to an almost spammy search results page.

Not only does this configuration mess with the user’s Internet experience, but it also costs advertisers a fortune. How? It’s very simple.

Let’s say I own arbitrarysite.com. I’ve bought ads using AdWords that direct folks to my site for a variety of searches. Some eMachines user types in “arbitrarysite.com” and, instead of being taken to my site for free, they’re directed to a search results page. Sure enough… right on top of the sponsored listings is an ad for my site. The user clicks it and it suddenly costs me money (and makes eMachines/Google money) to get what would have been a free visit.

The whole thing reminded me of a similiar experience Dell users previously reported. Search Engine Land even snagged some screenshots showing just how many sponsored listings these search results pages have. The pages you’re redirected to on eMachines computers are very similar… you’re just directed to them MUCH more frequently.

I understand that in some cases a search results page might be of benefit to a user who’s not typing in valid URLs.

But “google.com”? Come on, eMachines and Google! That’s just ludicrous. And you just know both companies are probably making a killing from all the clicks those ads are getting.

I find it hard to believe that Google can continue to preach the “don’t be evil” mantra while allowing their partners to pull this kind of stunt. If they really cared about the user experience, they’d put an end to partnerships like this that completely irritate users for the purpose of making a quick buck or two.

Excuse me, sir… would you happen to know the date? Why yes… yes I would! It’s Link Love Friday!

Why not start things off with a little spintastic rambling from Google. In response to claims that Google employees don’t use the company’s Docs & Spreadsheets application, The Official Google Docs & Spreadsheets Blog published a touching story about how the tool has made everyone at Google’s life much easier. Apparently some big-mouthed Googler told a journalist that Mountain View was very much a Microsoft Office company… and that Docs & Spreadsheets was mainly used to share those MS Office creations. Now Google says that it’s employees have created over 370,000 and create 3,000 new ones a day. The company employs about 13,000 people around the world. And you’re telling me that “everyone” at Google uses Docs & Spreadsheets every day? That means, in total, each employee has created less than 30 documents… and less than 25% of them create a new document on any given day. I wonder how many Word documents they create each day…

Speaking of Google, The Economist is apparently afraid of Big G… and so is everyone else. There’s nothing in the article that hasn’t been said a million times in the past. Yes… they know everything about your search habits. Yes… they know what websites you’re reading, where you’re going on vacation, and when you plan to see your shrink next. I’m sure they even sit around with pizza and have email-reading parties (that’s sarcasm, by the way). I’ve had my own “Google’s big and scary” moments in the past. But I’d like to know when people plan to do something about that fear… instead of just talk about it? If half of the people who claim to be scared of Google actually stopped using it we’d see an impact. Wait. What’s that? You mean the other search engines do the same thing? Darn. That ruins the whole conspiracy theory.

Just when you thought I couldn’t talk about Google any more, the company announced today that it was planning to start reducing the amount of duplicated news stories found in Google News. Instead of posting links to 5,469 versions of the same Associated Press story on 5,469 different websites, Google will attempt to display the original source (if that source hosts its own content). The company hopes that this will allow more commentary and different perspectives on each story float to the top of the pool. Oh… and about those wire services that don’t host their own stories… don’t worry. Google is going to host them. Get out! You didn’t know Google was hosting service?! Neither did I! In all seriousness, though, I’m actually pretty excited about this change. It should make weeding through the hordes news stories much easier.

Ok… I lied. I have one more Google-ish thing. But it’s not directly Google related. It has to do with Matt Cutts. And nofollow. Ah yes… the dreaded nofollow. According to Cutts, nofollow not only tells Google to not pass PageRank, but it also drops the link it’s attached to from Google’s radar… to the point where Google doesn’t even use nofollowed links for discovery purposes. He then goes on to say that he thinks saying webmasters “should” be using nofollow is a bit strong. Instead, he basically says ‘eh… it’s there… take it or leave it… we don’t care’ (that’s paraphrased, obviously).

The big search companies weren’t the only ones prettifying their offerings this week, either. Both SEOBook and SEOmoz updated their free search engine optimization tool pages. SEOBook offers what you could almost call a directory of in-house and external SEO tools organized into a couple of categories. SEOmoz offers a suite of free tools to perform some basic SEO tasks. Premium members get more… but they pay for premium membership. Since I don’t pay for SEO tools, I haven’t the foggiest idea what’s behind Door #moz… but I’ve heard it’s pretty decent stuff.

Speaking of tools, Search Engine Journal pointed me to a site that’s supposed to tell you what percentage of a website is listed in the Google Supplemental Index. But wait… didn’t Google get rid of the Supplemental Index? No… not exactly. If you remember correctly, they simply dropped the supplemental label applied to search results. The index is alive and kicking and folks have been trying to figure out how to get a peak at their supplementals since the label was dropped. Unfortunately… Matt and I both gave this tool a run and we agree - it’s not remotely accurate. Matt’s exact words were “not even close”. And I don’t guess we’re alone. Several comments left over at SEJ would seem to suggest that others are finding it pretty inaccurate too. Sorry “Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator” guys… try again.

That’s all she wrote for the work week. Those of us in The States will enjoy a long weekend in observance of Labor Day. The rest of the world… well… you’ll be working on Monday. Sorry.

Have a great weekend!

Search marketing interfaces across the globe can rest easier with their newly designed interfaces. Ok… maybe that’s a bit dramatic. But both Yahoo! and Google have announced changes to their competing search marketing platforms.

Yahoo! is now sending out notifications when ad quality scores drop. Every 30 days your existing quality scores will be compared the previous 30 day period’s. If they’ve dropped… you’ll get an email. You can also check the Account Summary tab in Panama’s admin to see these scores whenever you want.

If you need some help coming up with the perfect ad copy, Yahoo! has also made the copy of competing advertising available for you to look at. I think that feature has been around for a little while… but they say it’s easier to use now.

Finally, Panama now gives you the option to save up to 45 customized reports per user. If you think you’ll be running the same reports over and over again, this handy feature will let you save the reports you want to run again… and look at them anytime in the future without having to reconfigure anything.

The changes at Google are more about putting on a pretty face. Google has updated the AdWords Report Center interface to look more like Google Analytics. In fact… it looks just like Analytics. In addition, the main reports page has been simplified to make finding information much easier.

It’s no big secret in the business world that’s not always what you know that lands you a job. Sometimes (probably more often than we’d like) it’s who you know that matters. But unless you’ve got connections at your dream company, getting to know someone with influence isn’t always easy.

Yahoo! thinks it might have the solution to the problem with a new social network called Kickstart.

Don’t get your hopes up just yet - Kickstart is still in research/development mode. But the product is currently being tested in a very limited capacity while Yahoo! gathers information and feedback from the early testers.

Kickstart works by attempting to connect college students to their favorite potential employers. The kicker (no pun intended) is that Kickstart makes these connections through alumni of the student’s school who also work at the company in question.

So let’s say you’re curerntly attending IMMU (that’s Internet Marketing Monitor University). You’d really like a job at Apple… but you don’t know anyone there to get your foot in the door with. Using Kickstart, you could potentially link up with IMMU alumni who are currently working at Apple.

I guess the idea is that the college becomes the common bond that ties folks together. But Kickstart also works like a traditional social network in that it shows you friends that both the college student and alumni have in common as well as hobbies, interests, etc. Combined together that could potentially be a match made in heaven… that could land you a dream job.

Yahoo! says there’s no guarantee that the service will ever see the mass public light of day. The company has tried several times to get a strong foothold in the social networking scene. But so far nothing has worked out.

Could Kickstart be the… well… kickstart… that Yahoo! needs?

I found an interesting discussion going on over at ZDNet in regard to information saved through Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets application. According to ZDNet blogger Joshua Greenbaum, Google has “insidiously” thrown a clause into Docs & Spreadsheets terms of service that give the company the right to use any content uploaded to the service.

The clause in question reads:

… you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services…

Greenbaum, who admits he’s not a lawyer, invites readers to check out the TOS for themselves and form their own opinions. And several people have done just that:

As we state in our terms of service, we don’t claim ownership or control over your content in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, whether you’re using it as an individual or through Google Apps. Read in its entirety, the sentence from our terms of service excerpted in the blog ensures that, for documents you expressly choose to share with others, we have the proper license to display those documents to the selected users and format documents properly for different displays. To be clear, Google will not use your documents beyond the scope that you and you alone control. Your fantasy football spreadsheets are not going to end up shared with the world unless you want them to be. - Writely founder (which became Docs & Spreadsheets)

—

There’s a lot of ambiguity in the overall TOS so while others are right to pull other pieces out and you’re right to point to the ownership question, it’s highly confusing whichever way you cut it.

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This whole post is based on what you (incorrectly) perceive to be a sentence structure that says that “public” applies to the apps, not the content? Give me a break. I think you could run that sentence by a hundred people, and not more than one or two would interpret the way you did.

This is made even more clear by the previous two sentences in the TOS:

“Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.”

As Greenbaum points out, when combined, the TOS seem to suggest that, while Google acknowledges that they have no ownership of the content submitted to their services, they do have a right to use that content for various purposes.

One of the criticisms lobbed at many a Google service is the company’s liberal indexing and scanning technology. When it was first announced that Gmail would display advertising contextually based on the content of user’s email messages, a huge outcry went up from privacy advocates. Since then Google hasn’t be quite as vocal about how it uses content uploaded to individual services.

What do you think? Is Google granting itself the right to use your documents and spreadsheets simply by using their service? ZDNet readers and authors have gone as far as to examine the grammatical implications of the wording of the terms of service… but there’s no clear consensus amongst the group.

I’m a little on the fence about this. I can see how the wording could be construed to support what Greenbaum is suggesting. When read together, the entire paragraph from the TOS does seem to suggest that Google isn’t claiming ownership of your content, but DOES claim rights to use it. But at the same time, I’m just not sure that was the intent. As several other users have pointed out, Google could simply be covering it’s own butt when it comes to sharing content flagged by users for public consumption.

Say, for example, that you upload a file and mark it “public”. Anyone and everyone could potentially see that document as long as it remained public. If you later decided that you didn’t want that document to be made public and tried to sue Google, they’d be able to whip out their TOS and point to the clause in question.

I remain undecided as to Google’s intent. What do you think? Do you think the TOS are a sneaky attempt to get their hands on as much content as possible? Are they simply worded in a confusing way? Or are folks way off with this one?

One thing I do know for sure: if you’re concerned about your data… don’t put it on the Internet, plain and simple.

(Via Slashdot )

Update:  Fellow C|Net blogger (and lawyer) Matt Asay has also weighed in on the discussion and is just as troubled by the wording as Greenbaum.  But Valleywag says he got it all wrong.

Yahoo! has announced yet another reorganization of its business in the continuing saga that is slowly becoming a complete revamp of the company’s management. As reported by The New York Times, paidContent, and others, Sue Decker - who became president of the company after ex-CEO Terry Semel’s departure - is said to be largely responsible for the changes:

• Gregory Coleman, the company’s “top sales executive”, is out
• A new division, called Global Partner Solutions (GPS) has been created to house a number of properties and services - Global Sales, the Online Channel, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Corporate Partnerships, and HotJobs
• Local Markets and Commerce will move into the Yahoo! Network Division

Yahoo! hopes the move will make it easier for the company to manage all of its partnerships and advertising deals under the common GPS division. Sales, advertising, and other activities that include working with partners will fall under the new division to be headed by Hilary Schneider - who the New York Times calls a “fast-rising protégé” of Sue Decker.

Reorganizations, departing management, and corporate shake-ups have become common practice at Yahoo. Since an internal memo that came to be known as “The Peanut Butter Manifesto” was leaked to the public, the company has gone through numerous changes to overhaul its business. The memo, penned by senior vice president Brad Garlinghouse, said that Yahoo! was “spread too thin” (think peanut butter) and needed a complete top-to-bottom revamp if it wanted to stay competitive.

In the memo, Decker says that she and Jerry Yang, co-founder and CEO of the company, have been “taking a close look” at the company. Back in July Yang said he would be spending the next “100 days or so” looking over the company to build a new strategic plan that would guide Yahoo! into the future. While there’s no doubt that Yang was a player in this decision, no specific information was given to suggest that yesterday’ reorganization was part of that plan.

I guess we’re still waiting to see what comes of that.

In addition to today’s Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for August 29, 2007:

Search Radar Adds Suggestions to Search Results [Read/WriteWeb]

If all of the built in suggestions that search engines are offering these days aren’t enough, a small browser plugin called Search Radar might be what you’re looking for. But I doubt it. I’ve been using it all day and it doesn’t really offer anything that the search engines themselves aren’t doing. The suggestions appear above sponsored results in both Google and Yahoo. In fact, if you have sponsored results blocked or filtered out, Search Radar won’t show up (in Google, at least). Like I said… I can’t tell much of a difference between Search Radar’s suggestions and the ones offered directly from Google and Yahoo. But it can’t hurt to give it a try and see for yourself.

Pages Dropping Out of the Google.com Search Index [Search Engine Roundtable]

WebmasterWorld members are wondering if something is up at Google. Dozens of site owners are reporting fewer indexed pages (by way of the site: command). I’ve noticed the same thing myself. My personal site has not only lost pages, but has been shifting around in rankings much more than usual. I’ve also noticed a drop in results using Google Blog Search as well. Whereas all of my personal site’s pages used to show up in Google Blog Search, more than a few have recently disappeared. Is something officially up? Or is this a glitch of some kind? What do you think?

Yahoo on Using Exceptional Changes in Snapshots of the Web to Ban, Penalize, or Flag Websites [SEO by the Sea]

Yahoo! has filed a patent that talks about using big changes in a website as a way to flag them as possibly trying to “artificially inflate” search rank. In a nutshell, Yahoo!’s idea is to use a previous “snapshot” of a site as a guide to determine when big changes have been made. If, for example, Yahoo! stops by on Monday, they’ll take a snapshot of your site. When they come back next week, Yahoo! will use the snapshot taken on Monday to determine what’s changed. If you’ve added 2000 pages since then, your site could get flagged as potentially trying to game the search engine. Any number of things could then happen: Yahoo! could drop the page from ranking… drop the rank of referenced pages… or flag the page for human inspection. As pointed out at SEO by the Sea, most of us have assumed this kind of thing was going on already. I guess we don’t have to assume any more ;)

George Reyes To Retire As Google CFO [Google Press Release]

Google’s top financial officer is stepping down. No replacement has been named yet but Reyes has agreed to stay on to help in the search for his replacement. So if you need a new job managing billions and billions of dollars… drop your resume off at Google. Just make sure you’ve got a degree from Stanford, first.

New YouTube API Released into the Wild! [YouTube API Blog]

The old YouTube API is out and the new one is in. So what’s different? The new API is based on the Google data protocol that most of the company’s APIs use. Lots of new features and abilities have been added with the updated API, including the ability to pull video responses, full comment lists, related videos as well as greatly improved filtering and sorting. If you’ve been waiting for better APIs to tap into YouTube, now’s your chance!

Have a great Wednesday night folks!