Archive for July, 2008

Google worried?

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Two weeks ago a great thing happened to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Google decided to include actual number of people searching for each keyword combination in the search engine.

The keyword tool is used to find combination of words that can be used for advertising on the Google search engine or in the Google Ad network. Companies that pay for these keyword combinations get to display their text-ads next to the search results, and have to pay Google for people who click their ads.

Getting real search numbers is a relief and boon to all internet marketing people who struggle to understand what people are searching for. My first thought was “Great, now let’s see what people are interested in and where my program fits in!”. And for a few days it was fascinating to type in different keywords, find combinations with lots of competition, and even much more used combinations without any competition.

Then I started wondering, why did they do this?

The first answer is simple. They believe they will make more money by doing so. Maybe because new keyword combinations will become more interesting, or because of the news factor where people flock to the keyword tool and spend more money on marketing with keyword campaigns. But then again, why not do this years ago?

Another possibility is that interest in keyword advertising is falling (or not rising as fast as it used to), people are clicking less on advertisements or a combination of the two. So in a sense they could be getting desperate.

And then Google’s quarterly results were released, without Wall Street being too happy. Google hiring just 448 new employees the last quarter was the final confirmation.

I believe Google is worried, and if they are, so am I.

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Knowledge sharing network

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

One of the main focuses while creating PeerAware has always been to create a system that supports creating a knowledge sharing network. With the latest release a few such networks have emerged and every day I am getting more feedback from these. Among the requests I have received is the possibility to create question-answer-documents based on topics discussed in a workspace chat. I have a few ideas for how to implement such a system, and expect one of the next beta releases to include this.

The intention then is to make sure that topics discussed in a workspace chat can be converted to a document that can be found through a normal PeerAware search. Watch this space, there is a lot more to come!

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