Google introduces Author Stats reports to Google Webmaster Tools- Google introduced a new report in Google Webmaster Tools called Author Stats, which is designed to provide insight into how often your content is showing up on the Google SERP.  If your content is associated with your Google profile, you’ll be able to see impression and click data. The reports are available in the “labs” section in Webmaster Tools.

Google to build data center in Singapore- Google has started construction on its $120 million data center in Singapore. The project represents part of Google’s ambitious investment in the Asian market and in Singapore, the company’s Asia-Pacific headquarters. The facility will be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. Julian Persaud, Managing Director, Google Southeast Asia, stated in his announcement, “Users like speed, faster is better than slow on the web, if you think about it, you’re only a click away from another service so bringing services to users in a speedy fashion and a reliable fashion is really critically important. And if you look at Southeast Asia in particular, it’s one of the fastest growing regions in the world for users coming online so it’s important that we keep up with users and think ahead and make sure we can deliver those services quickly.”

Google releases Google Zeitgeist- Google released it 11^th annual Google Zeitgeist video, comprised of the most popular searches of the year. This year’s video featured Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, the tsunami in Japan and Osama Bin Laden’s death, among others. The video also heavily featured Google+’s user-centric features. Check it out:

Search tops social media for local business information- The internet is the top resource for people looking for information about local businesses, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Foundation. The study, based on a telephone survey of over 1,000 US adults, revealed that 51 percent of people use the internet to find information about local bars and restaurants. 47 percent use the internet to find information for local businesses. Of the internet outlets used, search engines trumped social media with 38 percent vs. 3 percent for restaurant searches and 36 percent vs. 1 percent for local business searches.

Google’s biggest advertisers: IAC, Amazon.com, AT&T- A new report from Kantar Media for AdAge reveals IAC/Interactive Corp spent $174 million on Google PPC ads in the first three quarters of 2011, making it this year’s biggest Google ad spender. Coming in behind IAC were Amazon.com at $118.5 million, AT&T at $115.6 million, Expedia at $92 million and Priceline at $67.6.

Google Wallet receives its first batch of security criticisms- viaForensics discovered serious security problems with Google’s recently released mobile payment app Google Wallet. ViaForensics’ investigation revealed two key risks — Google Wallet stores data in the app and it does not encrypt most of this stored data.  The problem with storing data in the app itself is that if you were to loss your device, someone else could easily access it. What’s more, while Google Wallet does encrypt credit card information and CVV numbers, it does not encrypt credit card balances, card limits, expiration dates, transaction dates, locations and names on cards.

Facebook rolls out Timeline- Facebook announced yesterday that its long-anticipated Timeline profile page is now live. The service was originally unveiled at Facebook’s f8 conference back in September. Facebook is giving users a week-long grace period to test out the new format, before replacing all user profiles with Timeline. Facebook has also launched a mobile version of Timeline for Google Android.

Google releases Site Speed report- Google released a new set of metrics this week for the Site Speed report in Google Analytics, aimed at helping site owners improve the speed of their site. New available data includes:

• Avg. Page Load Time- the time needed to load a page
• Avg. Redirection Time – the time spent in redirection before fetching this page. If there are no redirects, the value for this metric is expected to be 0.
• Avg. Domain Lookup Time – the average amount of time spent in DNS lookup for this page.
• Avg. Server Connection Time – the time needed for the user to connect to your server.
• Avg. Server Response Time – the time for your server to respond to a user request, including the network time from the user’s location to your server.
• Avg. Page Download Time – the time to download your page. 

YouTube launches YouTube for Schools- YouTube announced the release of its new YouTube for School service on Monday. YouTube for Schools enables network administrators and educators to keep studies focused on YouTube EDU videos and away from non-educational content.

YouTube acquires RightsFlow- Amidst serious conversations over piracy, copyright and the internet in Washington, YouTube announced its acquisition of RightsFlow this week, a New York-based company that helps artists, writers, record labels, distributors and online music services manage music rights.

Word’s out: Facebook’s loaded- Someone leaked Facebook’s private financial information to Gawker this week. In short, the numbers expose what a lot of us already assumed— Facebook is filthy rich. As of September 2011 Facebook had $3.5 billion in cash, $5.6 billion in assets, revenue of $2.5 billion and $714 in net income. “The big picture is this: Facebook’s income is blowing up, and the company will likely come close to earning a full billion dollars in profit this year, more than double what it reportedly made a year ago and quadruple what it is believed to have made two years ago,” Ryan Tate writes on Gawker. “There have been news reports elsewhere on prior Facebook financial periods; our numbers from the latest quarter show the money keeps pouring in.”

Facebook’s numbers did not overwhelm everyone, though. Nicholas Carlson from Business Insider complains that “the number look a little light.” “Facebook is not blowing away the numbers that leaked at the beginning of 2011. That in itself feels like a disappointment. The company is NOT going through a surprising run of growth.  It’s also worth pointing out that Facebook still continues to trail the pace set by Google during its first seven years as a company.”

What we’re reading:

• Watchdog group targets Facebook privacy settlement- The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group devoted to securing privacy rights on the internet, has launched another campaign against Facebook’s privacy policy. This campaign, called Fix FB Privacy Fail, is a reaction to the privacy settlement the FTC and Facebook reached last month, and a preemptive push against Facebook’s Timeline profile released this week.
• Blacklisting Provisions Remain in Stop Online Piracy Act- Despite heavy criticism from internet engineers and technology companies, including a Google+ post from Sergey Brin, the House Judiciary Committee resisted pressure to take out controversial elements of the Stop Online Piracy Act.
• Facebook Is Said to Ready Its First Foray Into Mobile Ads by End of March- Facebook is expected to launch mobile advertising by March 2012. The new service is rumored to use Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ads in the mobile News Feed.
• Your Life on Facebook, in Total Recall- The New York Times’ Jenna Wortham shares her thoughts on the potential benefits and drawbacks of Facebook’s new Timeline profile.
• Zynga IPO could challenge Google’s high score- The creator of Farmville is expected to go public today with one of the biggest tech launches since Google. 

Cyber Monday exceeds e-commerce spending records- Cyber Monday 2011 marked the heaviest U.S. e-commerce spending day in history, with sales increasing 22 percent Y/Y to $1.25 billion according to comScore. “Cyber Monday was yet another historic day for e-commerce, with online spending reaching a record $1.25 billion,” explained comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a statement. “It was just the second billion dollar spending day on record, following on the heels of Cyber Monday 2010. While last year saw Cyber Monday rank as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the first time ever, it will be interesting to watch the next couple of weeks to see if any future individual days in 2011 manage to leapfrog this year’s highest day-to-date.”

Google introduces Indoor Maps- Google launched a new addition to its Google Maps 6.0 for Android service on Tuesday—indoor mapping. Together with airports and businesses across the country, the new mobile Maps will enable users to view the entire layout of a building, move between levels and locate businesses, bathrooms and ATMs. Current partners include Mall of America, The Home Depot, IKEA, San Francisco International Airport, Chicago O’Hare airport and others. Google has also launched a beta tool that enables businesses to upload their floor plan into Google Maps’ database. To get a sense of the product, check out Google’s IKEA demo video.

Google talks one-day delivery service- According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is in talks with retailers and shippers to provide consumers with a low cost, one-day delivery service on web orders. The service would compliment Google’s broader efforts better to connect retailers and shoppers, particularly on a local, mobile search based level, which represents a strong growth market for Google. “Local digital advertising revenue will be $23 billion this year, just 17 percent of total local ad revenue, but the portion will grow to 25 percent by 2015, according to BIA/Kelsey, a local media research firm,” notes Claire Cain Miller and Nick Bilton in the New York Times. “Local advertising contributes heavily to Google’s biggest businesses; local search ad revenue, now $6 billion annually, is growing 10 percent year over year, and more than half of mobile ads are local.”

Google revamps YouTube interface- Google’s YouTube launched its most comprehensive site overhaul to date this week, placing more emphasis on YouTube Channels, subscriptions and user control. YouTube now offers better sharing and customizable options. With these changes, YouTube also seeks to appeal to larger content creators. YouTube’s new layout is now live.

• For more on how these changes reflect the direction Google is taking with media and TV at large, check out Mike Issac’s article “YouTube Revamp Foreshadows Google’s Vision of Media” on Wired.com.

Adobe acquires Efficient Frontier- Adobe Systems announced its acquisition of the digital marketing company Efficient Frontier on Wednesday. The details of the deal were not disclosed. “With the explosion in global Internet advertising, our customers need to know where, when and how to spend their digital marketing dollars to get the greatest return,” explained Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business, in a press release. “The addition of Efficient Frontier will give our Digital Marketing Suite customers a leading platform for turning ad spend into business impact.” 

F.T.C. settles privacy issue with Facebook- The FTC reached a settlement regarding privacy issues with Facebook on Tuesday, which subjects Facebook to mandatory privacy audits for the next 20 years and forces the company to receive “affirmative express consent” before changing a user’s privacy settings. Shortly after the ruling, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, posted a blog post, admitting that the company had made “a bunch of mistakes.” The settlement did not require a direct admission of guilt. For more on the ruling, Facebook’s reaction and the response from the online user privacy advocacy world, check out Somini Sengupta’s article in the New York Times.

This week’s blogs:

• Search quality highlights: new monthly series on algorithm changes- Keep up to date with all of Google’s algorithm updates from the past month.
• Facebook May Be Forced to Go Public Amid Market Gloom-  Steven M. Davidoff explains why Facebook may be forced by market pressures to file its IPO sooner rather than later.
• The FTC-Facebook Settlement-  Marvin Ammori, from Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, discusses the history of the FTC’s privacy issues with Facebook and the implications of its recent settlement.

Below we have embedded a screenshot walkthrough of the new YouTube analytics and below that we’ll go over some of the main points of interest.

For me the single most important section of the new analytics is the Audience Retention (slides 14 & 15) stats available for your videos. With insight into how your audience viewed your content, you can craft better, more engaging videos that speak directly to the interests and preferences of your audience. In the example we used the viewers’ attention dropped around the 2:00 mark, before slightly increasing and then dropping off sharply towards end of the video. This reveals a lot about what our audience enjoyed about our video and what bored them (minute 2). Equipped with this information we can refine our video style, find where to cut out excess content, speed up the pacing or even change the order of how information is presented to make it more appealing to our audience.

Individual video stats don’t stop there. Every report that is available for your channel can also be run for individual videos (provided they have been live long enough to generate data). This makes the new YouTube Analytics a great way to learn about your video content and help you become a better content producer.

The new Analytics platform is quite broad when compared to the previous version and its nuances could fill several posts. We’re going to save us both some time and supply you with an overview of the new YouTube Analytics platform and a quick guide to help you quickly find the data you’re looking for.

New YouTube Analytics Highlights 

New Overview (slides 4 & 5): Insanely helpful snapshot of your account supplied right away without having to do any digging.

Views Report (slides 7 & 8): With stats broken down into a line chart you can pinpoint successful (or disastrous) content at a glance. Sharp spikes in views may not always be good. Videos might be getting a lot of negative attention, which can spiral into a much larger crisis (the MotrinMoms ordeal started with a video), so watch this graph and investigate why the spikes occurred.

Playback Locations (slide 11): Previously unavailable, this locations page lets you know how content is being consumed. Optimize future video content according to how and where videos are being viewed the most.

Traffic Sources (slides 12 & 13): Knowing how people find your videos is important. Now you can couple query data with location data to gain even more insight into how viewers find your video content. We learned in the Playback Locations of our example that the bulk of our video views came from the YouTube watch page, which means that the majority of people are viewing the video directly and not via the YouTube channel. From there we move to Traffic Sources and see that YouTube search is ranked number 1. This reveals that people are finding our content via searching, which means we are creating content that people are looking for and that we should continue to generate similar content.

Likes and Dislikes (slides 18 & 19): Previously this was a pain in the @$$ to compile all on your own and wasn’t really worth the time. Now it’s easy to see whether your videos are getting good or bad views. Leveraging the views report to construct a timeline for spikes, we can narrow down the data and compare likes and dislikes to see if the attention your content received was positive or negative. (Although, if the response was negative enough to trigger a crisis, you will likely be aware of the problem before you read this report.)

Shares (slides 24 – 26): As YouTube is overhauling their entire service in look and feel some of the best additions they’ve made so far, in my opinion, are the sharing options (screen shot on slide 26). Letting you know where your content is going after people see it on YouTube can help identify secondary audiences for your content and places to start looking for engagement and feedback opportunities.

New YouTube Analytics Guide

Views Reports

• Views (Slides 7 & 8): Total views for the selected date range and region.
• Demographics (slides 9 & 10): The male and female split of your audience for the selected date range.
• Male =Changes all data to reflect only those identified as male.
• Female =Changes all data to reflect only those identified as female.

• Playback Locations (slide 11): The total number of views from all playback locations for the selected date range and region.
• Traffic Sources (slides 12 & 13): The locations from which your videos are being viewed. Contains information for on and off the YouTube platform.
• Views from YouTube = Views resulting from links within YouTube for the selected date range and region.
• Views outside of YouTube = Views resulting from links external to YouTube for the selected date range and region.
• Mobile apps & direct traffic = Views of unknown referrer on mobile apps and direct traffic on the YouTube watch and channel pages for the selected date range and region. Possible origins of direct traffic include email and instant messaging clients or copying and pasting a URL into the browser.

• Audience Retention (slides 14 & 15): How long your videos are keeping the attention of your viewers?
• Absolute = The views of every moment of the video as a percentage of the number of views of the beginning of the video. Rewinding and re-watching a particular moment will push the graph upwards (perhaps even above 100%), while fast-forwarding or abandoning the video will push the graph downwards.
• Relative = Shows your video’s ability to retain viewers during playback relative to all YouTube videos of similar length. The higher the graph at any given moment, the proportionately more viewers kept watching your video over the preceding seconds of playback versus other videos at that same moment in their playbacks. Rewinding and re-watching a particular moment will push the graph upwards, while fast-forwarding or abandoning the video will push the graph downwards.

Engagement Reports

• Subscribers (slide 17): The net, gains and losses of subscribers to your channel for the selected date range and region.
• Subscribers net change = The change in total subscribers calculated by subtracting subscribers lost from subscribers gained for the selected date range and region.
• Subscribers gained = The total number of times users subscribed to this channel for the selected date range and region.
• Subscribers lost = The total number of times users unsubscribed to this channel for the selected date range and region.

• Likes and Dislikes (slides 18 & 19): The combined rating of your videos and a breakdown of the likes and dislikes your content is receiving.
• Likes = Only displays data for the likes.
• Dislikes = Only displays data for the dislikes.

• Favorites (slides 2 & 3): The daily change of favorites for the data range selected.
• Favorites added = The daily addition of favorites in the date range selected.
• Favorites removed = The daily removal of favorites in the date range selected.

• Comments (slides 22 & 23): Comments left on videos for the date range selected.
• Shares (slides 24 – 26): The amount of shares for the date range selected.
• Sharing Service = Breakdown of what sharing service was used to share the videos from YouTube.

Common Buttons

• Map = switches the view to a shaded-in world map
• Video = shows data arranged by individual videos
• Geography =  shows data arranged by geographic location
• Date = shows data broken down by individual days

What do you think of the new platform changes? Do you find them to be helpful or irrelevant? Have you had a chance to poke around in them yet? In the comments below, let us know what you think about the changes and tips or tricks you might have discovered already.

Sound a little like Big Brother? The good news is Google offers full customization and a permanent opt-out feature of interest ads. They also offer transparency into their ads, labeling most ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network as well as YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more info about how Google is serving the ads and the info used to show you ads. In addition, Google makes the point that all personal information is protected and not collected or shared with any third parties.

The interest-based marketing tool, available under the ‘Audiences’ tab in AdWords, allows advertisers to target users according to their browsing behavior vs. targeting ads to specific topic pages.  This tool has the potential to improve campaign performance and ROI for advertisers on the Display Network by targeting an interested audience, which is often a challenge on the Display Network. For instance, serving up a mortgage ad to a user who is on a health & beauty site, but has previously visited real estate sites adds another opportunity to capture an interested audience aside from Topic, Keyword, and Managed Placement targeted ads, which can limit your ads to displaying only to users visiting sites related to that category.

Some benefits of interest campaigns include: increasing brand awareness and traffic, extending the reach of existing Display campaigns, and having the ability to customize ads based on specific interests.

If you are curious about the interests and demographic Google associates with your cookie and how they determine which ads to show you, or would like to add/remove categories so the ads are more to your liking, or completely opt out, you can do so here: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/.

New Google algorithm update targets content “freshness”- On Thursday Google announced new changes to its search algorithm, focused on making search results “fresher.” The changes are expected to affect 35% of all searches, making it one of the biggest changes to Google’s search algorithm to date. (Google’s Panda Update affected roughly 12% of results.) Building off their Caffeine structure, Google’s latest changes will enable Google to serve fresher results at a faster rate. As Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, explained in a blog post announcing the change:

“We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.”

Of course Google isn’t only concerned with content “freshness.” “Different searches have different freshness needs,” explains Singhal. “This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

• Check out Claire Cain Miller’s article “Google Changes Search Algorithm, Trying to Make Results More Timely” on the NYTimes Tech Blog for an insightful explanation on how growing competition from Facebook and Twitter is putting pressure on Google to improve the timeliness of its search results.
• And before you start manically refreshing your site’s content, make sure to read Grant Simmons’ article “Does Your Web Content Have an “Expired by” Date?” Grant points out that what’s most important is generating quality content that adds value to your user’s experience.

Google revamps Location Targeting- Google unveiled several changes to its location-targeting tool in AdWords, aimed at making location targeting on paid ads easier and more accurate. By linking Location Targeting in AdWords to Google Maps, Google hopes to provide advertisers with “more information about locations, make relevant location suggestions, and improve the level of accuracy of our location targeting.” Here are the key changes to location targeting:

• Easily discover locations- Start typing your location into your Campaign Settings tab and Google will start suggesting other locations that are (1) similar to your city, (2) locations that encompass your location (e.g., state, county) or (3) related locations that may be near your location, that have a similar name or are enclosed in an area with a similar name.

• Location on maps- Now you can view and edit your location on Google maps.

• More detail on locations- “We now offer reach numbers to help you estimate the audience within your selected target. These reach numbers are based on the number of users seen on Google properties and may differ significantly from census numbers. Reach should be used only as general guidance to help you determine the relative number of users in a location target compared to other locations. For example, you can see from the screenshot below that targeting the Dallas metro area could result in three times the reach of the city of Dallas.”

Generation App: new demographics on smartphone users- Nielsen released its third quarter survey of mobile users, revealing 62% of the 43% of US mobile users who own smartphones are between 25-34 years old. The smartphone penetration rate is roughly 54% for owners between 18-24 years old and 35-44 years old. Android remains the most popular smartphone operating system with 43% of the market vs. 28% of Apple iPhone users.

Facebook expected to grab 72% of social advertising in 2012- New data from eMarketer’s report “Worldwide Social Network Ad Revenues: A $10 Billion Market by 2013” suggests that social media ad revenues will exceed $8 billion in 2012. “As more companies build out their marketing presence in social networks, they are also increasing their focus on spending ad dollars there,” stated Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst and the report’s author. The report also predicts that Facebook will be the largest benefactor of increased social media ad spending. As Williamson explains, “Social networks have cemented their place in advertising, not just marketing. With $7 of every $10 in social network advertising flowing to the company, Facebook is taking not only a greater share than ever of social network ad spending, but also an increasing proportion of total online ad spending. Although its ad offerings and metrics aren’t perfect, marketers still feel they need to be there to reach their target audience.”

New Ad Placements on search- Google announced on Wednesday that some of its paid search ads that previously appeared to the side of the organic results will start appearing below them. The aim, as always, is to provide users with the best SERP experience possible. As Google’s Jerry Dischler, Director, Search Ads Product Management, explains “In many cases, we have found that displaying ads below search results fits better into the user’s flow as they scan the page from top to bottom. On average, this placement performed better than side ads in terms of click-through rate in our tests.”

This Week’s Must Reads 

The Great Tech War of 2012- Last week Farhard Manjoo authored an article in Fast Company on the growing competition between tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook. The article itself is incredibly interesting, as Manjoo has such a precise understanding of where digital media is heading and the role Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook are playing in the progression of that technology.  But I would also suggest listening to Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air interview with Manjoo this week on the waging war between today’s tech giants. It’s worth a listen.

Your Facebook Comments, Coming Soon to a Google Search Near You- Scott Gilbertson from Wired online investigates Google’s new plans to index Facebook comments and present them on the SERP. Gilbertson predicts mixed reactions from users and webmasters alike.

Google’s Ron Gorodetzky: Making YouTube more social- LATimes’ Nathan Olivarez-Giles takes a closer look at how Google’s Ron Gorodetzky, co-founder of Digg, plans on incorporating YouTube into Google Plus. (Also check out Olivarez-Giles’ article “Google+ gets new YouTube and Chrome integration”)

Google expands Google Offers- Google is transforming its Offers service with a new partnership with 14 separate daily deal providers. With its new relationships, Google Offers will function as a deals aggregator, delivering users daily offer emails with a mix of offers from its 14 new partners. Google’s new partners include Dealfind, DoodleDeals, Gilt City, GolfNow, HomeRun, Juice in the City, kgbdeals, Mamapedia, Plum District, PopSugar Shop, ReachDeals, Active.com Schwaggle, TIPPR and zozi.

According to a post on Google’s official blog, the goal of the new Offers is to make it easier for users to find an extensive range of daily deals in one place. “We’re making improvements to Google Offers that help address this challenge.” Nitin Mangtani, a group product manager for Google Offers, explains in a blog post.  First, we’re delivering more amazing deals from a bunch of new categories including outdoor adventure sports, luxury experiences, family-friendly events, classes and more. We’re also introducing a personalization quiz to help you find just the deal you want, all in one place.”

Google introduces “bid for calls”- Google announced on Tuesday a new service called “bid for calls.” The new service relies on Google Voice, i.e., Call Metrics, and allows marketers to bid separately on calls. Instead of pay-per-click, it’s pay-per-call. Depending on the success of the service, “PPCall” metrics may become a ranking factor and affect Quality Score. Learn more about PPCall from Google Ads.

Facebook unveils Arctic data center- Facebook unveiled its first international data bank this week. The bank will be located in Lulea in northern Sweden roughly 60 miles from the Arctic Circle. The location’s frigid temperatures will help keep Facebook’s massive “server farms” cool. Facebook will also be able to draw on alternative sources of energy from a dam near the plant’s planned location. The plant should make Facebook’s service quicker and more reliable within the EU.

Google Maps to charge map developers- According to the Google Geo Developers Blog, the days of free loading on Google Maps are coming to an end. Starting in 2012 Google Maps will charge $4/1,000 map loads on sites that exceed 25,000 map loads/day. If you think this may affect your site, Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API, offers an extensive explanation of the new pricing here.

Google+ traffic up last month- According to Hitwise, Google+ US usage was up in October. Total visits climbed to 30 percent during October, with 6 million visits per week. Total page views also rose 37 percent to an average of 15 million. Time spent increased 5 percent. Despite the promising stats, Google+ still struggles to capture a significant share of social networking traffic. For more on Hitwise’s data, check out Juan Carlos Perez’s article on PCWorld.

This Week’s Must Reads:

YouTube Close to Announcing Video ‘Channels’- The Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati writes about Google’s upcoming announcement that YouTube will begin producing its original content with well-known personalities. Google is rumored to be investing $100 million in the production of original content, in hopes of making YouTube into a “next-generation cable provider overseeing dozens of free online “channels” with professional-grade shows.”

More Than Motorola: Google’s Other Acquisitions This Year- Matt Rosoff from The Atlantic takes a closer look at the 57 acquisitions Google made in the first 9 months of 2011 for a combined price tag of more than $1.4 billion.

Facebook-Led Consortium Plans to Remake Big Computing- Quentin Hardy from the New York Times discusses Facebook’s new effort to create enormous low-cost computing centers around the world in collaboration with other leading tech companies.

9 Reasons Your Display Ads Aren’t Showing- Ami Grant discusses Google’s recently launched Content Ads Diagnostic Tool (CADT), designed to provide marketers with better insight into why or why not their ads were placed across the Google Display Network.

Google reports strong earnings, exceeding expectations- Google presented its Q3 earnings on Thursday, surpassing analysts’ expectations with a net income increase of 26 percent. Google’s Q3 2011 revenue of $9.72 billion represents a 33 percent increase Y/Y.  Google’s biggest winner for the quarter was unquestionably mobile. CEO Larry Page told investors during the earnings call yesterday that Google expects to earn $2.5 billion this year in mobile ad sales—a massive increase from $1 billion in 2010. Here are a few highlights from Google Q3 earnings report:

• Revenues – Google reported revenues of $9.72 billion in the third quarter of 2011, representing a 33% increase over third quarter 2010 revenues of $7.29 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC.
• Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $6.74 billion, or 69% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2011. This represents a 39% increase over third quarter 2010 revenues of $4.83 billion.
• Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.60 billion, or 27% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2011. This represents a 18% increase from third quarter 2010 network revenues of $2.20 billion.
• International Revenues – Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $5.3 billion, representing 55% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2011, compared to 54% in the second quarter of 2011 and 52% in the third quarter of 2010.
• Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 28% over the third quarter of 2010 and increased approximately 13% over the second quarter of 2011.
• Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 5% over the third quarter of 2010 and decreased approximately 5% over the second quarter of 2011.

IRS to audit Google for offshore subsidiaries- Bloomberg reported that the IRS has launched an investigation into whether or not Google avoided federal income taxes by hiding profits in offshore subsidiaries. Specifically, the IRS has inquired into Google’s offshore deals, including its 2006 acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion.

+1 button to appear on display ads- Google announced on Monday that +1 buttons would start appearing on display ads immediately. Google hopes that integrating personal recommendations and display ads will impact the way consumers view and interact with display advertising. As Dan Friedman, from the Inside AdWords Team, explains, “A display ad becomes much more powerful when people can see which of their friends and contacts have chosen to endorse it.”

40% of tablet and smartphone users multi-task while watch TV- A new report from Nielsen reveals that roughly 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners in America simultaneously use their devices and watch TV. Email was the most common activity for both men and women, followed by social media for women and checking sports scores for men. Nielsen also notes at the end of their report that despite splitting their attention between two screens, “19 percent of smartphone and tablet owners searched for product information and 13 percent searched for coupons or deals while the television was on.”

Stanford study reveals leaky websites- A new report from Jonathan Robert Mayer and Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School concludes that personal information is regularly leaked across the web without user consent or knowledge. Specifically the report reveals that where you travel online—in computer jargon your ‘clickstream’—, which we assume to be private and anonymous, can actually be traced back to identifiable parts of your personal information such as your name, email address, etc. As Mayer explains, “Click the local Home Depot ad and your email address gets handed to a dozen companies monitoring you. Your web browsing, past, present, and future, is now associated with your identity.” The report found leaks in 185 leading web sites, including Home Depot, Photobucket and the Wall Street Journal.

Google+ welcomes real-time search and improved hashtags- Google’s Vic Gundotra introduced two new features to Google+ yesterday: real-time search and improved hashtag support. The features should make it easier for users to follow and engage with live events on Google+.

What we’re reading:

“YouTube Makes the Case That It Helps Build Brands”- Claire Cain Miller highlights the unique role YouTube seeks to play in brand marketing. By combining social engagement, global reach and advanced targeting, Lucas Watson, YouTube’s vice president of online video global sales, seeks to convert YouTube into a viable online media channel—for both off- and online advertisers.

Why You Can’t Compare Google+ User Figures To Facebook & Twitter- Danny Sullivan explores why you can’t compare Google+ user figures, which recently reached 40 million, with Facebook’s or Twitter’s.

“Big Data in the Dirt (and the Cloud)”- Quentin Hardy takes a closer look at Climate Corporation, a company founded in 2006 by two former Google employees, which leverages data published by the National Weather Service to make predictions on the effect of weather on crops across the country.

Old URL:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

New URL:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

Microsoft to win EC approval for Skype acquisition- Microsoft is expected to win approval from the European Commission for its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. The deal has been under scrutiny internationally because of anti-competition concerns.

Google’s management doesn’t use Google+- According to data gathered by the tech blogger Michael Degusta of TheUnderstatement, only three members of Google’s twelve-person management team have posted on Google+ since it launched three months ago. What’s more, the management team has only posted 29 times collectively.

YouTube launches political site- In anticipation of the upcoming 2012 presidential elections, YouTube has launched a special site dedicated to political news. The site seeks to provide users with a breadth of information across the political spectrum. According to Ramya Raghavan, YouTube news and politics manager, “We wanted to paint a really holistic view for what politics looks like on YouTube. We’re seeing that citizens have an enormous appetite for getting political information online.”

Android continues to gain traction in US smartphone market- Google’s Android operating system continues to gain ground in the US smartphone market. According to a new report from comScore, Android gained 5.6 points between June and August 2011. Android operated phones currently represent 43.7 percent of the smartphone market.

Google Gives Landing Page Quality More Weight- Google has announced that it will roll out a new algorithm that increases the importance of landing page quality in AdWords Quality Score.  According to Jonathan Alferness, Director of Product Management for Google’s Quality Team, “What we’ve seen is that there are ads available in the auction that are as good a quality as the top ads. But the landing pages — the merchant sites, the advertiser landing pages — are of much higher quality than the ads that we see at the top of our auction.”

Google downgraded on threat from Facebook- Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus brokerage and investment banking firm, downgraded Google from “buy” to “hold” this week because of the increasing threat from Facebook and other social media sites. “The Internet’s center of gravity is shifting from Google to Facebook,” explained Rohan, “Search is an effective and efficient marketing channel, particularly for direct response advertisers. Advertisers have fully embraced search, as it represents over half of U.S. online advertising … But as social and mobile media emerges, there is reduced advertiser enthusiasm to spend more on Google. Further, our checks indicate that the growth of search advertising has decelerated recently in some areas.”

We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.

SearchMetrics has released its list of this update’s biggest winners and losers, which is compiled based on testing visibility for a wide-range of keywords. It should be noted that these rankings do not necessarily reflect traffic changes experienced by the sites, although SearchMetrics’ Panda winner/losers lists have been fairly accurate thus far.

Here are the biggest losers:

• A few surprising, well-known hits this time: NBC’s The Today Show, The Next Web,  Technorati.
• Again, press release distribution sites made the list: PR Newswire and Business Wire.

Here are the biggest winners:

• Google sites YouTube, Android.com and its partner AOL.com all made the winners list, which is sure to spike controversy.
• Big media outlets : Washington Post, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, US Weekly and Perez Hilton.

Of course, as with all of Google Panda Updates, it’s unclear what degree of reaction is appropriate. Particularly here because we don’t know what types of sites or content Google targeted with this update and how many sites were actually affected.

For more information on the history of Google’s Panda Updates, check out our blog post SEO After Panda, and for a more comprehensive look at how the Panda Update has impact how marketers can demonstrate relevance and authority in online content, download our white paper After the Panda Update: How Google Rewards Original, Relevant Online Content.

• Extra processing power- increased data collection, more custom variables and downloadable, unsampled reports
• Advanced analysis- attribution modeling tools that allow you to test different models for assigning credit to conversions
• Service and support- experts to guide customized installation, and dedicated account management on call – all backed by 24/7 support
• Guarantees- service level agreements for data collection, processing and reporting

The service is rumored to cost $150,000 annually.

Real-Time Google Analytics- Google announced the beta launch of Google Analytics Real-Time on Thursday, a new set of reports that will enable users to see what’s happening on their site in real time. With the new reports users will be able to better measure social media impact and track campaign measurement in Google Analytics. Real-Time reports will soon become widely available in the new version of Google Analytics in the Dashboards tab.

YouTube launches Google AdWords for video- YouTube launched a beta version of Google AdWords for video on Wednesday. The new platform is built on top of Google’s AdWords auction technology and will allow users to place and manage ads on YouTube and the Google Display Network. Be sure to check out Laurie Sullivan’s article on MediaPost for a more detailed description of YouTube’s new ad auction platform.

Google Standout- At the Online News Association conference in Boston last Friday, Google News introduced a new content tag that will better enable its algorithms to identify and rank “standout” content. Web editors will be able to add a piece of code to a story’s header with a rel=”standout” relationship tag to pieces Google calls, “critical types of coverage: exceptional original reporting, deep investigative work, scoops and exclusives, and various special projects that quite clearly stand out.” Google may then display that article with a ‘Featured’ label on the Google News homepage or News Search results. Publishers are encouraged to limit the use of the Standout tag on their own content to seven times in each calendar week. For more information on Google’s Standout Tag, check out Tim Carmondy’s article on Wired.com.

Facebook’s new features spark further privacy concerns- Facebook’s latest set of new features, including Timeline and Ticker, have sparked concerns from the online privacy activist group the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The organization has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the new services as well as Facebook’s tracking of users after they have logged off the social networking site. According to a letter filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center with the FTC on Thursday, “Facebook’s frictionless sharing and post-log-out tracking harms consumers throughout the United States by invading their privacy and allowing for disclosure and use of information in ways and for purposes other than those to which users have consent and relied upon.”

The EPIC’s complaint comes after federal lawmakers raised concerns with the FTC on Wednesday regarding Facebook’s tracking of users without their permission. Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.) co-authored a letter to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz Wednesday stating, “When users log out of Facebook, they are under the expectation that Facebook is no longer monitoring their activities. We believe this impression should be the reality.”

Must read articles:

• Playing With Fire: Amazon Launches $200 Tablet, Slashes Kindle Prices- Steven Levy reviews Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ presentation at a New York City Press event this week, as well as Amazon’s new 7-inch tablet device Fire and its new slimmer Kindle available for only $79.
• With Silk, Does Amazon Want a Slice of Google’s Pie?- Jenna Wortham takes a closer look at Amazon’s Fire, posing the question, “Is there something pointed (at Google) in Amazon’s branding?”
• Google Zeitgeist, Like TED, Focuses on Big Picture- Kevin Lee discusses the trends addressed at Google’s Zeitgeist conference and how they may impact SEM.  
• Google Zeitgeist: Larry Page on Search, Google+, Motorola & More- Miranda Miller discusses the highlights from Larry Page and Eric Schmidt’s presentations at Google’s Zeitgeist conference this week.
• The Onion Prompts Capitol Police Investigation: Did Twitter Satire Go Too Far?- The International Business Times covers a Twitter joke gone wrong by the news satire publication The Onion.
• Twitter used to study happiness patterns- USAToday reports on research conducted by Sociologists at Cornell University that leveraged Twitter tweets from 2.4 million people in 84 countries to study our collective mood.