According to reports, Time Warner's board of directors is hunkering down Thursday for discussions on the future of AOL, and is expected to choose between partnering with Microsoft's MSN division or Google. However, a final decision is not expected for a few weeks, says the Financial Times.
AOL currently utilizes Google for its Web search service, bringing a moderate percentage of revenue to the world's biggest search engine. But MSN has reportedly come to the table trying to unseat Google in order to grow its own share of the search market, which it has struggled to do organically.

Rumors have also circled that a deal with either search provider could be more comprehensive, including a sale of the AOL.com Web portal or even a financial investment in the company. However, recent moves and statements by both AOL and Time Warner indicate a sale of any sort is highly unlikely.

more ...

More than eight out of ten holiday shoppers (83 percent) said they would shop for holiday gifts online, and a similar number, 80 percent, said they are likely to purchase gifts online from small businesses, according to a new survey commissioned by Yahoo! Small Business and conducted by Harris Interactive. With leading marketing research firms - including Jupiterresearch - predicting a significant increase in online shopping this holiday season, Yahoo! Small Business says its survey results are further evidence of strong support among consumers for e-commerce with small businesses.

Yahoo representatives did not respond to further questions about online holiday trends.


more ...

Ever since Google launched its contextual network, marketers have wanted to bid for those placements separately from the ones that appear on search results pages. Now, they've finally got their wish.

Google last week quietly rolled out what it's calling "content bids," letting advertisers "set one price when their ads run on search sites and a separate price when their ads run on content sites," according to a recently-added AdWords FAQ item.

"If you find that you receive better business leads or a higher ROI from ads on content sites than on search sites (or vice versa), you can now bid more for one kind of site and less for the other," the FAQ says. "Content bids let you set the prices that are best for your own business."

Several search engine marketers noticed the new feature had appeared in recent days. Google confirmed it was testing this offering, but wouldn't elaborate.

Advertisers have reported mixed results on their AdSense campaigns since the network launched in 2003. The consensus has been that the contextual placements increase traffic but offer a lower ROI than pure search listings.

more ...

According to the Google Analytics "sign up" page, they have temporarily disallowed people from signing up. They also removed the "Add new profile" link from inside analytics which previously allowed a single account to track up to 40 different Web sites. With 234,725 Analytics accounts created (and probably over 200,000 additional profiles), Google has went from tracking zero to almost half a million in about a week.

This is a huge amount of data to process. Anybody who has tried WebTrends knows the processing power Google will need to get all these accounts caught up. Unfortunately, this delay users have been experiencing since it's launch is giving this product a bad reputation.

Google Says:

"Google Analytics has experienced extremely strong demand, and as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. In the meantime, please submit your name and email address and we will notify you as soon as we are ready to add new accounts. Thank you for your patience."

There are a lot of disgruntled Analytics users who are growing more dissatisfied each day. Once Google has the capacity it needs to process this heaping pile of data, this service will likely be a success rather than a failure.

more ...

Google has filed a patent for user targeted, or attention targeted, search results which will change the ranking of Google's organic results per each individual user based upon that user's search behavior, location, sites visited, and even 'typing behavior'.

Google has also applied for a similar behavioral targeting patent for its advertising network, but this seems to be a first from Google with plans to integrate user profiling into natural search ranking.

Such profiles are created by Google and gathered from previous queries, web navigation behavior via tracked links and possibly sites visited which serve Google ads, computers with Google Applications installed such as Desktop Search, Google Wi-fi Connection or Sidebar, and personal information which Google identifies which may be “implicitly or explicitly provided by the user.”

This new ranking system, which is a spin off of PageRank and the current Google ranking algorithm, could be referred to as Profile Rank. What is the difference between this new ranking system and Google Personalized Search? Personalized Search was beta tested by Google users who have opted in to Google profile building while the new Profile Rank is based upon user profiles built by tracking a users web habits in and outside of Google Search, even if the user has not opted in to be served personalized results or is a registered Google Account member : Wide Spread Personalization to all users.

In the patent application Google explains that when a search engine generates search results in response to a search query, a listed site which satisfies the query is assigned a query score, QueryScore, in accordance with the search query. This query score is then modulated by the site’s PageRank, to generate a generic score, GenericScore, that is expressed as : GenericScore=QueryScore*PageRank.

When you're the champ, everybody takes a shot-and sometimes it's a shot below the belt (the belt being the equator). Yahoo! Australia and New Zealand gives a bloke a second option if, for some strange reason, they want search for Google on Yahoo!

Of course, it begs the question, why would anybody search for [google] on Yahoo!'s search engine in the first place? But that's neither here nor there, as Search Engine Journal's Loren Baker and Google insider Matt Cutts point out. Testing reveals that, sure enough (for Southerners, that's "show-nuff"), an Aussie Yahoo! search brings back a second chance search box at the top of the results reading "Try the new Yahoo! Search." As for MSN, AOL? All seems status quo. And Ask Jeeves? The search box for [google] disappears and a promo for Yahooligans is in its place. "Maybe Yahoo sees searches for Google as a serious competitve area and searches for Ask Jeeves as a minor threat (get it? minor? kids? ba dum dum ching! wacka wacka wacka!)," writes Baker.

more ...