In addition to today’s Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for June 07, 2007:

Your account at-a-glance using the Account Snapshot page [Inside AdWords]

A new page being rolled out to all AdWords users lets you get a quick overview of your account all in one place. As part of the new page, Google is also rolling out the ability to set up SMS alerts for important “account events”. Email and online alerts are also available.

Google Exec Skirts CPA Advertising Evil [Insider Chatter]

When Google announced that it was beta testing “text link ad” style advertisements, more than a few eyebrows were raised in response. Why? Because Google has always made a big deal about clearly labeled advertisements. These text link ads offer no such label. Donna Bogatin - now blogging independently of ZDNet - asked Kim Malone, head of Google AdSense online sales and operations, why the search company was changing it’s attitude in this respect. Malone’s response can hardly be called “a response” and offered absolutely no insight on the matter. My thinking is that Google realized how many advertisers would be interested in this type of “sponsored link”… and decided to cash in despite the fact that it flew in the face of their previous business practices. But then… it’s not the first time they’ve done that.

How to Use FeedBurner’s FeedFlare In Your RSS Feed [The Lonely Marketer]

One of the “problems” that arises from having an RSS feed is the loss of interactivity with your site. There are different ways to recover some of that lost interaction - including feed “flare”. FeedBurner’s FeedFlare is one of the main reasons I use the service. But let’s be honest: FB’s user interface isn’t necessarily the most user-friendly admin around. Patrick walks you through exactly how and what to add to your RSS feed to get the most interactive bang for your buck. I especially like his suggestion to add the number of comments a post has to RSS feed. He’s exactly right - a post with existing comments is more likely to prompt a reader to click through to the site and join the conversation! Using his suggestions can also help you avoid going too far with feed flare.

Google Fighting Phishing Websites [SEO by the Sea]

Bill Slawski discovered a Google patent filing this morning that describes a system for fighting phishing sites in a new and potentially effective way. Instead of warning pop-ups or changes to tiny, overlooked icons in the browser, Google is proposing the application of an overlay to phishing sites that would disable their links (and text entry forms). The patent talks about a couple of ways the overlay could be applied - rendering screenshots instead of actual pages or superimposed images - and makes it clear that this technology would be integrated into web browsers. If implemented properly this could potentially be a great way to prevent people from getting phished. But as with any system of this kind… false positives are always a problem.

Goodnight all… we’ll be back tomorrow morning!