Attention, advertisers! Google has opened the sign up for Audio Ads so that starting from now Google Advertising Network includes radio capacities also. The date of launching the official version of Google Audio Ads is not set yet though the test mode is reported to be carried out by the end of the year.

The delivery of ads to the radio is made with 4 steps:

Step 1) Station inventory management system and studio log.

Step 2) Google links electronically with stations to search for inventory that fits advertiser criteria.

Step 3) Inventory is paired with advertiser requests.

Step 4) Google delivers automated order to radio station and reserves inventory.

This new advertising method seem to provide advertising agencies and advertisers with fast and effective access to the great amount of radio stations and provide them with real-time information as well as customized advertising options.

It is obvious that the further Internet technology goes the less privacy could be kept by the users. What do you think the level of privacy left for searchers is now and what will it be in the future?

Google ranking and quality score mechanisms are already based on data collected from user queries and behavior online. What could be the other steps of destroying your privacy for the sake of more tailored and helpful search results?

As my imagination suggests – Google could resort to the following personal data to collect:

• each site a user visits and time spent on it before returning to search results;
• each search a user performs;
• sites a user owns, controls or updates
• accounts a user creates in Google services like Gmail, Bloogger, AdWords(AdSense), Picasa, etc.
• emails and messages sent/received via Gmail and Google Talk
• documents created on Google Docs, Google Calendar
• sites and feeds a user subscribes to at his Google Personalized Homepage
• everything one does on his personal computer (after installing Google Desktop)

I wonder is there any verge Google and other Internet giants will stop on or will they continue accumulating personal information up to the moment they know what I’m eating for breakfast?

If you still are doubting if to use meta description tag in the site structure or not from now it is confirmed that Google do use meta description tag. It was revealed in Google Groups discussion by Vanessa Fox – Google representative. Her answer to the other member’s question concerning Google indexing issues is the following:

Looking at your site in the search results, it appears that your pages would be well served by meta description tags. For most queries, the generated snippet is based on where the query terms are found on the page, and in those cases, your results are fine. But for some more generic queries, where a logical snippet isn’t found in the text, the generated snippet seems to be coming from the first bits of text from the page — in this case, boilerplate navigation that is the same for every page.

So generally speaking, making use of meta description tag not only adds your page uniqueness but makes it’s snippet work for you.

When did you perform a search for local services last time? Yesterday? An hour ago? Local Search is growing swiftly and is reported to double for paid search to almost $1 billion this year - compared to $418 million of year 2005.

According to the latest survey conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings’ among the 2800 consumers 70% have searched for locally situated business and services using the Internet and 46% of them did so in the last 3 month.

Considering that 90% of respondents have found local search to be effective for finding services or business in a particular area, costs spent on local search advertising are obviously giving Advertisers great returns on their investment. Kate Kaye at ClickZ also has a great article on the Local Media vs. Search Engine battle that is waging.

Borrell Associates report, “2006 Local Search Advertising” also predicts dramatic growth in local search spending; their estimates reach $4 billion by the year 2010.

In my opinion, local paid search is worth spending your advertising dollars on and definitely should be considered when planning the overall advertising budget and strategy.

Whether it’s white hat, black hat, paid links or just straight up spam, Matt Cutts is the man with the answers when it comes to search engine optimization and marketing. WebProNews caught up with Matt at last week’s PubCon in Las Vegas, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of SEO/SEM and Google’s move toward becoming a comprehensive social media portal and also offered further insight on his specific objectives when attending events such as PubCon.

Matt also reminisces about the evolution of SEM in recent years, noting that the emphasis has shifted from traditional marketing approaches and has gravitated toward a more social and contextual medium. As this trend continues, the less desirable techniques of affiliate spam and paid links are going by the wayside, while marketers with the best and most original ideas are seeing higher conversion rates as a result of their search engine marketing campaigns

Looks like Live.com (New MSN Search) is banning sites that use ’spammy’ technologies, like participating in link-exchange programs or using the services of link farms. An email from The Live Search Team was published in a Search Engine Watch forum that confirms the accusation:

Your site is acquiring links through posting to or exchanging links with sites unrelated to your site content. Techniques which attempt to acquire unrelated spam links in order to increase ranking are considered spam and your site has been excluded from our index as results. Please contact us once you’ve removed these links and we will reevaluate.

Live Search

I’m not sure if those ultra strict measures are fair, and in respect to sites honestly exchanging links I feel a just penalty shuold be a ranking decrease. Penalizing the site for the behavior is enough to punish them - banning them is another issue. However, considering that spammy techniques used in link farming dramatically affect the search results as a whole; some still feel Live.com’s measures could be fair.

An easy and fast way of submitting websites to search engines was announced yesterday on PubCon conference. From now 3 major search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN support Sitemaps 0.90 format. They expect it would result in search results quality and freshness improvement and better representation of sites in search indices.

Sitemap protocols make it convenient to submit and update all site URLs, notify search engines of changes or new pages. The sitemap can be submitted to any site that has adopted the protocol and though for now it’s Google, Yahoo and MSN, other search engines are also invited to use this system.

All and detailed information about Sitemaps could be found on a new Sitemaps.org site. But in general I should say that if you already have a Google sitemap you shouldn’t change anything as it is supported by Yahoo and MSN from now. The format was not changed just now the sitemap submission option is available in Yahoo and MSN also.