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 18, 2007:

Google Print Ads Now Used by 225 Newspapers [AdAge]

Google is really pushing the Print Ads option in AdWords. As Matt mentioned last week, AdWords users are being offered up to $1000 in credit for creating Print Ads ($500 for creating the ad + $500 for using Google’s network of ad creation specialists). The move from online advertising to print is being embraced by both Google and Yahoo!, who has its own consortium of 260 newspapers. Both companies claim to cover at least half of the readership in the United States - so between the two, your newspaper is probably sporting ads from one of the search engines. On a related note, Print Ads were officially rolled out to all AdWords advertisers today.

Message Center: Let us communicate with you about your site [Google Webmaster Central Blog]

In a nutshell, this messenger center addition lets Google notify you about specific issues they run into on your site. Included in the post is an example message alerting a website owner to the fact that Google has removed pages from their site for including hidden text. So instead of having to guess as to why your site and/or pages from your site are gone, the message center is supposed to let you know. But am I the only one that gets the impression that all of us shouldn’t expect to start getting messages: “Right now the number of sites we’re contacting is small, but we hope to expand this program over time.” Hmmm. Why roll out a service and then tell people not to expect to see anything from it? The messenger center can be found along the right side of the Webmaster Tool’s Dashboard.

Why Small Businesses Need SEO to be Successful [Search Engine Journal]

The point Sujan Patel makes here is certainly true: SEO can be a great way to generate leads for little or no money. Yep… it’s true… SEO doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars. It takes hard work. It takes time. But it doesn’t have to cost a cent. The other point I’d like to add is this: in the SERPs, all businesses are potentially equal. Your small, family-owned chicken farm can rank right next to Tyson. Your t-shirt printing company can land right next to Abercrombie. It won’t happen on its own and it won’t happen overnight. But it’s entirely possible for small businesses to level the playing field on the SERPs. You just have to make the effort to actually do it.

The work week is half over? Already? Wow! Have a great Wednesday night, folks… and we’ll see you back here tomorrow morning!