SEO Blog

Google has taken a lot of flack for their new search engine in China. Check out what they have to say about it in their blog, here.

An official hearing has been set regarding Google’s refusal to hand over search records to the US government. District Judge James Ware set the date for February, 27th.

Last week, Google made big news by ignoring the US Department of Justice’s subpoena for search engine records. The government demanded the records under the Child Online Protection Act. Although Yahoo! and Microsoft complied with the request, Google refused to hand over the data, claiming it violated user privacy.

The hearing will take place in San Jose, California.

For more on the ongoing saga:

http://blog.metamend.com/?p=138

http://blog.metamend.com/?p=141

http://blog.metamend.com/?p=143

Jennifer Slegg from Jensense is reporting that Google AdSense is beta testing rich media ads (invite only test), which signals a shift from traditional text and graphical adverts. The rich media ads will include interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads.

According to Slegg, the new ads will be site targeted, instead of contextual. How the ads are to be employed remains a secret.

From the Jensense blog: “Floating ads are ads that either stay on top as the page is scrolled, or ones that “float in” from the side of the page to the center of the page. Expanding ads are those that require user interaction to expand, either with a mouseover or a click. Interstitials are perhaps the most interesting addition to this rich media beta, because they are a format that people love to hate, and that are often more annoying than pop-ups…If AdSense offered rich media to all publishers, it could really hurt competitor companies offering similar rich media ad formats because of the vast number of publishers that AdSense has.”