Google invited a few journalists to the Googleplex on Tuesday to meet with Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management for the company’s advertising programs. She didn’t make any big announcements (much to the chagrin of fellow attendees), but she talked about the industry and reminded us that …

Posted by Brian Kennish, Support Engineer, Ad* APIsWe’re planning to refresh the Sandbox again tomorrow at 3 p.m. PDT. As a result, it’ll be unavailable for several hours and all associated data cleared. You can regenerate your client accounts afterwards by sending any valid request to the Sandbox without a clientEmail header block.

Earlier this week, we explored the political assault on Google bubbling up from an unlikely mix of companies and consumer groups–and noted none of its top executives had paid any recent personal visits to Capitol Hill in support of their company’s practices. Well, we may have spoken too …

The Campaign Access bug we reported earlier today was fixed at approximately 5pm PST.We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you, and thank you for your patience.– Jon Diorio, Product Marketing

It’s pretty common for large companies to get tax breaks and other incentives to expand their operations in U.S. cities and states. Apparently, things aren’t going so well for Google in North Carolina though. First, there was the charge that the search giant tried to silence North Carolina politicians …

Matt Cutts at WordCamp 2007(Credit: Laughing Squid)
I got to enjoy Matt Cutts live and in person on Saturday speaking to the WordPress bloggers and fans at WordCamp 2007. Matt was in top form, witty as ever. The session was blogged by numerous folks. The sessions were all recorded, …

Google has acquired ImageAmerica, a company that builds high-resolution cameras and uses them to take aerial photographs.
(Credit: Google) The search engine giant announced the move Friday on its LatLong blog about Google Earth and its other mapping efforts. It didn’t disclose terms of the deal. “We’re excited …

Flash has long been a stumbling block in getting found in the search engines. Googlebot just doesn’t cope well with content and links embedded within Flash. And if the following email that I received from a Google engineer last year is any indication, Google isn’t likely to make …

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the old 700MHz wireless spectrum is up for auction by the federal government. And under the veil of touting an “open” platform, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the company will participate in the Federal Communications Commission auction for the bandwidth–with a …

Google wants to put its money where its mouth is…to the tune of at least $4.6 billion. The search giant said Friday that it’s willing to participate in the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming wireless spectrum 700MHz band auction and pay the minimum reserve of $4.6 …

Over the last year, all of the big three tech companies (Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo) have created their own online mashup editors. Both Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s are publicly available, but Google’s is in a small private beta. Today I’m taking a look at the pros and …

just in Google’s second quarter revenue rose 58 percent from a year ago and profits rose 28 percent on continued strong search advertising sales, but the profit was lower than Wall Street had expected. Net income for the second quarter was $925 million, or $2.93 a share, up …

The overall industry average click fraud rate–which represents the number of clicks on online pay-per-click ads that are not legitimate–has jumped, according to a new report from search engine marketing firm Click Forensics. The overall click fraud rate was 15.8 percent for the second quarter, up from 14.1 …

Google appears to be creating a fleet of Chevy Cobalts specially equipped with cameras to shoot street views for Google Maps, according to Gizmodo (post includes photos of the gray compacts). Given Google’s policy of paying employees $5,000 toward the price of a Toyota Prius, this is kind …

WASHINGTON–It was supposed to be a tame gathering of economists evaluating the marketplace implications of Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of ad-tech firm DoubleClick, but a think tank event here on Wednesday briefly threatened to devolve into yet another Google vs. Microsoft row. It began calmly enough, with …

Google’s Print Ads program, which lets companies use its Web-based interface to buy ad space in U.S. newspapers, must be going well. The search company is opening the service up to all of its U.S.-based AdWords marketers. Google launched Print Ads in November as part of …

Google has hired the publisher of Rolling Stone magazine to be its sales director in New York, according to Adage.com. Tim Castelli has been publisher of Rolling Stone since April 2006. Before that he was associate publisher at Maxim magazine. He follows in the footsteps of former Time magazine …

GROVELAND, Calif.–I suppose I should read what my colleague Elinor Mills writes a little more closely. If I had, I would already have known about a ridiculously useful new feature of Google Maps that lets you see a new route between two destinations simply by dragging an existing route …

Google is set to launch on Tuesday a fee-based hosted site search service targeting small and medium-size organizations that will undoubtedly stir up more talk about Google aiming for Microsoft’s enterprise business. The new Google Custom Search Business Edition offers a way for companies to add a search capability …

Google has changed its Web cookie privacy policy to address a common complaint by privacy advocates that information about Web surfers’ activities is retained too long by the search giant. Cookies are small files stored on a computer so that it can be recognized when it revisits Web sites, enabling …

Google is reportedly working on a new mobile service that will let people search for and buy ringtones and games. The Wall Street Journal cites “people familiar with the matter” in reporting the Google project. Google has been working with content providers for months to index their catalogs, but technical …

Vince Kuraitis has dissected a multitude of postings and literature produced by Google’s vice president, Adam Bosworth, and here’s his theory on the search giant’s health initiative. Kuraitis, principal and founder of healthcare consultants Better Health Technologies, predicted Monday at the fourth annual Healthcare Unbound conference that …

An appeals court in Pennsylvania has affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit was filed by Gordon Roy Parker, a writer who claimed the search giant infringed on his copyright by archiving a Usenet posting of his and providing excerpts from his Web site …

Terence Evans this week became the first judge in the United States to cite a YouTube video in a written opinion. Evans, a President Clinton nominee who sits on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was writing about a case involving a trademark dispute over “Stealth” baseball bats.
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Today, Google is opening up its educational tier of Google Apps to nonprofit organizations within the United States. Registered 501c3 nonprofits will be able to use and deploy the educational version of Google Apps, which gives organizations unlimited users, free phone support, API integration, and e-mail migration (to transfer existing …

A new ranking methodology at Nielsen/NetRatings gives AOL a boost while disadvantaging Google. Nielsen/NetRatings this week made a change to its metrics for ranking the most popular Web sites. It will now focus on the amount of time people spend on a site instead of just the unique …

Google Maps is launching a new feature on Wednesday that enables people to create customized maps with content from multiple mashup Web sites. For instance, I made my own map of San Francisco with events search from Zvents (Salsa on Monday at the Jewish Community Center, for example), Google Real …

Google and Postini? Makes sense to me. Postini adds vertical integration for Google’s outsourced Gmail business. Large companies won’t outsource e-mail without security while mid-market companies want turnkey bundled solutions. Now Google has all of the pieces in hand. The e-mail marriage is obvious but there’s more …

Bloggers are reporting that Google and Yahoo are working on new social networks now that their existing services (Orkut and 360, respectively) have failed to gain traction, except in Brazil in Orkut’s case. Google sponsored a project last year at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute that was …

I just got off the conference call on Google’s $625 million cash acquisition of security firm Postini, which executives said is expected to close in the third quarter. Basically, the move will enable Google to flesh out its Google Apps hosted applications, which include e-mail, calendar, instant messaging, Docs &#…

The Financial Times is reporting that Yahoo and Microsoft will update their privacy polices within the next few weeks and publicly reveal how long they plan to keep data on consumer Web searches. The action was prompted by the work of a group called the Article 29 Working Party, which …

Last weekend a corporate Google blog raised a stink by blasting Michael Moore’s new documentary, Sicko, and offering to help the health care industry defend itself with Google ads. The blog posting generated much justified criticism in the blogosphere, and within a few days the blog writer wrote another blog entry …

A researcher for the Federation of American Scientists said Tuesday he’s spotted what appears to be China’s new nuclear submarine using Google Earth’s publicly available satellite imagery.Google Earth shows what appears to be China’s new nuclear submarine(Credit: Federation of American Scientists) The Quickbird satellite …

Google is both appealing a ruling against it in a copyright case in Belgium and negotiating with the group that sued it, according to The Wall Street Journal. Google and Copiepresse, a trade group that represents French- and German-language Belgian publishers, will ask the court at an appeals hearing on …

Google this week filed a brief to the federal judge overseeing Microsoft’s long-running antitrust case, again trying to make its case that it should be allowed to participate in the matter as a “friend of the court.” The filing, which was not unexpected, comes after Microsoft filed its opposition …

FeedBurner has announced that both its Stats PRO and MyBrand services will be free from now on. This news is coming a little over a month after Google acquired FeedBurner at the end of May. I will admit that I was a little skeptical when Google bought FeedBurner as to …

Google has just announced the much-rumored acquisition of communications service GrandCentral. TechCrunch broke the news about the acquisition last week and is now reporting the deal is rumored to be somewhere in the range of $50 million. Details about final price and terms are confidential. This is Google’s latest …

In one of those oops moments that has already generated significant backlash and could end up in a guide on “marketing don’ts,” a Google blogger has pissed on Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko and has offered to help the poor, unfairly criticized health care industry to fight back. …

A new study from JupiterResearch indicates that social sites do little to influence sales but can help with branding. Specifically, social and community sites influence only about 12% of online shoppers to buy more than planned.
About 53% of online shoppers go directly to a retail website to buy while 3% go to blogs first. That means that if you want to use user generated content to sell your products, you had best find a way to incorporate it

Want to see and hear me discuss the week’s hottest internet marketing news? Better yet, want to ask a question or start a topic of discussion?
Tune in this Thursday at 2pm EST for the next episode of Marketing Pilgrim Live!
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Wow, it’s July already! Here’s what’s interesting in today’s feeds… Google’s getting sued for their AdSense for Domains program. (via)
The Washington Post looks at cleaning up your Google reputation.
Business Week explains how public companies use reputation management to help their stock price.
Robert Scoble is writing for Fast Company.
GetItInWriting.biz shares their experience with getting posts on Digg and

We don’t often depart from normal marketing news coverage, but over at SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin has put together some great advice for any blogger hoping to match the 1 million backlinks they’ve built.
Although I’ve worked with Rand, it’s as an outside observer that I’ve been able to pinpoint the majority of SEOmoz’s success, and I’m glad that Rand’s covered this in his post. SEOmoz is one of

A few days ago, if someone had asked me whether gaming makes a person more business-savvy, I would have been inclined to laugh and say, “No way.” However, a study released this week by computer giant IBM and enterprise software company Seriosity, Inc., might prove that the old phrase “life is just a game” is more accurate than previously thought. The study (.pdf file) indicates that the skills learned through playing onli