Google is testing new fonts for some publishers in its AdSense ads. The image at right shows Microsoft’s Comic Sans font, which accompanies Microsoft Office (or Windows). I didn’t alter the JavaScript for the ad, but I came to the ad from a Google Search, so I suspect that was where Google noted in my environment variables that I have Office and Windows loaded.

I checked Webmasterworld and found that I was not alone. Others have noted fonts such as Times New Roman and Georgia, but I was not able to replicate such fonts by reloading the page. I don’t use the Comic Sans font anywhere and I agree that it makes a professional page look amateurish - I belong to a nonprofit organisation where another volunteer keeps using it in conference flyers.

Nevertheless, many AdSense publishers have blended these ads into their pages so well that a visitor might accidentally click an ad that looks like a menu selection. By changing the font at random, Google can reduce this possibility. While it may seem that Google is reducing its income from such accidental clicks, the advertiser will appreciate getting a higher conversion rate because the clicks will come from people who intended to click the ad.

“AdSense Advisor” in another Webmasterworld thread confirmed that this is a test and they are monitoring the results. I hope that Google retains the random fonts but omits Comic Sans from the repertoire.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Google Trends has been with us for a couple of years and it remains (for me) an interesting curiosity to be revisited from time to time. After all, it is still in the Google Labs and has enough disclaimers surrounding the validity of its data that it might as well be Alexa. I have access to actual traffic data for some large sites and I know that Google’s data is as flawed as any other third party’s can be. All the same, for many people, such a resource is better than none. As long as you don’t use traffic numbers but only look at the trend, you will be fine.

On Saturday (US Friday), Google Labs released Google Trends for Websites, which enables us to compare the traffic to one or more domain names, separated with a comma. You also get geographical breakdowns such as countries and states, a list of similar sites, and related keyphrases. Not surprisingly, you can’t get data for any Google-owned properties such as Google.com (click the image on the right), Orkut, etc, but you can for Google’s competitors.  Some people are irked by this, but you can always look for such data at Alexa, Comscore, Hitwise, etc.

Barry Schwartz over at SearchEngineLand is happy to see Google Trends for Websites. He relates Matt Cutts’ experience of looking for a file sharing service similar to yousendit.com. He was able to discover other companies such as sendthisfile.com, mailbigfile.com, etc.

Buggy

I noticed that such a search doesn’t work when looking at data from Australia, as the results were quite off-topic. For a larger country such as the UK, the results are barely useful, as they included just mailbigfile.com. Even for the United States, most of the sites were off-topic. You should sign in to see and export additional Trends data. At the bottom of the page you will notice an option to export the data as a CSV file.

Popularity: 17% [?]

When you are trying to optimise your Google AdWords campaign so that your ads rank high for less money, you usually are sharpening your ad copy, improving your landing page, playing with the bid and so on. If you worked at Google Maps, you wouldn’t need to work so hard.

At least in Australia if you search for <placename> <word>, e.g. Toorak dentist, Werribee cafe, Narre Warren restaurant, the first (almost always) AdWords result is an ad for Google Maps.

You can see this in the image on the right. Another interesting discovery are the two Menulog ads - one is the gTLD .com and the other is the ccTLD .com.au. Nice technique to remember if you need to display more than one ad. Just buy a few ccTLDs, since the algo won’t know if the various domain names in different “countries” are the same entity.

My next search was for a cafe in my old stomping ground, San Mateo, CA. Both Google and MenuLog were confused (click image on the left). I wasn’t logged in, but both remembered my previous search. Google Search showed the right results, but AdWords didn’t want me to leave these shores, choosing to show me an ad for Toorak cafes, and Menulog.com.au hedged its bets by showing me an ad for Armadale cafes, and Menulog.com showed me Toorak cafes. OK, these are broad match ads for the word “cafe”, but why show an irrelevant city in the wrong country? Since Google isn’t paying for its top-ranking ads, I think it could have shown a PSA or none at all.

Yes, cafes are in a tough category for AdWords. Either you phrase match <placename> <cafe> for thousands of placenames (not practical) or load a whole bunch of negative keywords (not practical) — I’d rather not see this prime position taken up by Google Maps ads at all. You can see these ads for many location searches, such as dentists, restaurants, etc.

eBay can’t handle the place name Narre Warren, a Melbourne suburb. Search for Narre -Warren (that’s a negative Warren) and eBay will exhort you to buy a Barre, whatever that is. MyLocal gets too familiar — look for Narre Warren cafe and it will tell you to go to Narre Restaurant. Local search doesn’t seem easy for some companies. TrueLocal still wants me to go to the solitary cafe in Redfern. Menulog wants me to go to Barre, WA - apparently there is a cafe/restaurant of this name in Perth.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Bravo to Google for processing my friend’s reconsideration request in less than four days!

I blogged last week that a quality WordPress site had been hacked and stuffed with spammy links and it went out of the Google index a day or two later. My friend filed a reinclusion request and three days later it was back in the SERPs and showed PageRank.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Recently I blogged that Google is an SEO agency because its purchase of DoubleClick also included the latter’s SEO service, Performics.

Tom Phillips, Director, DoubleClick Integration has announced in the official Google blog that Performics Search Marketing will be sold. He said,

It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party.

What? The company that hijacked the term “search engine marketing” (SEM) and coyly restricted its meaning to what the rest of us know as “pay-per-click” (PPC) advertising is getting out of SEM?

Actually, no. There is no need to dump your GOOG stock. I think Tom meant “search marketing” the first time, as he said in the next breath. He was, of course, referring to Performics - its SEO arm. I don’t think anyone is surprised that Google couldn’t be in the PPC business and the SEO business. At least the Performics staff have a sporting chance of having a job when someone buys this arm, unlike the 300 DoubleClickers who are being laid off. Perhaps they can still have Google on their resumes.

Added: Link to Matt Cutts’ post about this.

Popularity: 23% [?]

I was sucked in. :oops: I have edited my post because a friend alerted me that this domain is registered to someone in Malaysia. I can now expect a lot of spam from there. Fortunately it didn’t try to get me to log in with a Google Account. Beware.

Popularity: 18% [?]