In addition to today’s Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for July 9, 2007:

Patent Applications on Estimating, Rating, and Using Quality Scores for Google Ads [SEO by the Sea]

Bill Slawski has uncovered several Google-filed patents that provide some details on what Google looks at when determining whether or not to display an ad. In other words… they detail AdWords Quality Score. Slawski says the patent lists 44 factors that play a role in scoring the ads. What’s interesting to me is the implications this has on PageRank and the primary Google index. Some of these factors - or variations of them - almost have to be included in the algorithms that rank sites in Google. If nothing else… this illustrates just how intricate these algorithms can get. (Via Search Engine Roundtable)

New Research Reveals Consumers Delay 34+ Hours Between the Click and the Purchase [MarketingSherpa]

New research indicates that, on average, consumers wait a little more than 34 hours from the time they first click on a site to the point where they make a purchase. As Anne Holland, MarketingSherpa president, points out, much of this delay probably has to do with comparison shopping. Customers are doing more research and looking for more peer reviews than they did a few years ago, as well. So I can’t say I’m surprised that such a delay exists. What I am surprised by is the number of website owners who think that first contact is the only time conversions happen. As this research shows… that’s no longer the case. Build your landing pages (and your entire site) to lead customers toward conversion. But don’t forget the branding! Over a day and a half later, when they’re ready to purchase, customers might come back… if you give them reasons to.

JotSpot joining Google Apps revolution [ZDNet: Between the Lines]

Google Apps is getting a new addition in the form of wiki and group website creation service JotSpot. If you’ll remember, Google acquired JotSpot last fall and, according to ZDNet, has spent the time since moving the service over to Google’s infrastructure. This addition, combined with the up-coming presentation application being added to Docs & Spreadsheets, brings Google one step closer to a full-featured online productivity offering. Expect more sparks from clashing Microsoft and Google swords in the months and years ahead… (Via InsideGoogle)

Blog It & Google Will Come, Quickly [Search Engine Roundtable]

It’s no secret that Google has been looking at ways to “freshen” its index with more recent information. Bloggers are starting to notice - some content is appearing in the main Google index within hours of being posted. This doesn’t surprise me at all. If you want fresh content, it doesn’t get much more recent than the blogosphere. And if you’ve got a service that aggregates and indexes the blogosphere, why not incorporate its data into the main Google index. I’d be curious to see some of the searches folks are noticing super-fast ranking on in a few days or even weeks. Would the rank remain more or less the same? Is Google boosting fresh results quickly and sorting them into more permanent positions later? My guess is that they are.

June Search Market Share: Big Surprise from MSN [Compete]

Compete is posting some pretty impressive numbers for MSN/Live.com for the month of June. According to their data, Microsoft’s search efforts saw a 67% increase in use during June to capture over 13% of the market for the month. In addition, MSN/Live.com is now the other search engine other than Google to be up year-over-year. These numbers aren’t that big of a surprise to me. The question is whether Microsoft can keep users once the gimmicks wear off. I’m going to wait until all of the metric reporting bodies have published their numbers for June before I declare Live.com a big winner for the month. Compete’s numbers have a tendency to vary quite a bit from other reports (I’m not sure which are more accurate, either… so I just average them all).

When you’re ready to take a quick break from the hardcore news coverage, stats, and market share reports, have a look at some of the Google Easter Eggs in this post at Phil Bradley’s blog. Some of them will look familiar. But a couple were new to me… and they’re all good for a chuckle or two.