Symetri Blog

It seems like Google is now testing a "click to call" program. In Greg Yardley's Blog he reports that Google is now showing phone icons next to some Adwords listings. No word if the test is limited to only the US or if advertisers are paying and being listed on a pay-per-call basis or if this is an add-on to paying by the click. Yardley's post also points to a Google Click-to-Call FAQ that offers a few more details about how the system works.

Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

The United States Library of Congress has announced the creation of the World Digital Library today, a project that's also just received its first $3 million in funding from Google.

The concept behind the WDL is to use public and private money to create a virtual library giving anyone access to the world's "rare and unique cultural materials," according to a joint press release about the project from the Library of Congress and Google. Google is only the first of what's hoped will be many donors.

The collection now contains more than 10 million items that can be searched or browsed as a whole or via often powerful specialized search interfaces available via each collection.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

David Naylor points out a pretty surprising security oversight with Google's new Sitemaps stats system. It basically allows anyone access to stats of other web sites, if those web sites don't report 404/File Not Found errors correctly.

In order to see stats for a site, you have to verify you own it by installing a special file on your server. Google randomly generates a filename to use, you install this file, then Google checks to see if it exists. If it does, you can view stats for that site.

The problem is, some web sites will respond that any page exists, even if it doesn't. Rather than sending out a 404 File Not Found error message, they'll dynamically generate the page with content anyway or they'll tell the user the file doesn't exist, but the server code sent to a browser says differently.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Google Base which has been available to some select people is now live (in Beta) for everyone. Google Base allows people to list anything they want. You can list resumés, recipes, news articles, real estate, etc.

The big news about Google Base is that it will help companies, news organizations, publishers, etc,, get content and links into the Google system, quickly. Currently there is material from CareerBuilder.com (help wanted ads) The NY Times, (real estate listings), Homescape Network, and volunteer listings from Idealist.

So go to Google Base and start poking around and even start listing things. By default, some existing item types are suggested: Course Schedules, Events & Activities, Jobs, News & Articles, People Profiles, Products, Reference Articles, Reviews, Services, Vehicles, Wanted Ads.



Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Google has renamed its Urchin web analytics unit to be Google Analytics, in a move that follows with similar rebranding such as Keyhole being renamed Google Earth and Google is turning Google Analytics into a free product.

The software based product remains fee-based. Google said that might change, but there were no immediate plans at the moment.

Google also said a number of new dashboards for different types of customers -- webmasters, advertisers and so on -- are being introduced to spotlight key metrics.

Worried Google will use your data or the data overall to better understand how much you are willing to pay for ads, based on conversions. Google said that's definitely not done, nor are there any plans to do that. Nor are there any plans to tap into the data as a means of improving regular search results or to identify "bad" sites, Google said.

Google acquired Urchin in March of this year and lowered pricing for it in May.


Category: Search Engine Marketing and Optimization