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Daily Search Forum Recap: January 26, 2010

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Search Forum Recap

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Paying AdSense Publishers Less & Less

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 2:59pm CET by rustybrick

Often when Google releases earnings, AdSense publishers try to extract how much share Google is paying them of the earnings. Ad you know, a publisher places an ad from Google on their site, the advertiser pays Google and then Google pays a share of that to the publishers. Looking at Google's earnings, you can somewhat figure out how much share publishers make. Always, keep in mind, certain publishers likely get special arrangements.

Labnol posted the latest look at this share, showing that in the first quarter of 2009, Google paid an even 75% to the publishers. However, in the fourth quarter of 2009, that share dropped to 72.06%.

Here is a graph I made showing the decline in 2009:

Here is the data:

	Q1 ‘09	Q2 ‘09	Q3 ‘09	Q4 ‘09
Google AdSense Earnings (in billion)	$1.64	$1.68	$1.80	$2.04
Google Payments to AdSense Publishers (in billion)	$1.23	$1.24	$1.33	$1.47
Percent Given to Publishers	75.00%	73.81%	73.89%	72.06%

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Google A Month Early On Kuwait's National Day

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 2:37pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Other Google Topics

Google had a Doodle slip up this morning, as first reported by Michel. Google posted the National Day logo on Google Kuwait this morning. It was live for over five hours before anyone reported it. The issue is, it was posted a month prior to the official National Day of Kuwait, which takes place February 26th.

Here is the logo:

Google took down the logo about 15 minutes after TechCrunch posted the story.

There were a couple Google Web Search Help threads complaining about Google posting this logo on the wrong day.

Speaking of Google logos, there are some complaints about the Google Australia doodle at Google Web Search Help as well.

In any event, can anyone speculate what Google Kuwait's National Day logo will be this year? :)

Forum discussion Google Web Search Help.

Google Treats Punycode Domains As Unicode (Japanese Domains)

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 2:27pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Optimization

A Google Webmaster Help thread has discussion around Japanese domains and how Google may treat them. Honestly, I know very little about this topic, so I hope I do justice to this thread.

Example of Punycode domains versus Unicode:

Unicode - http://アアアアア.com
Punycode - http://xn--cckg5dfdwc.com

Google said, for "domain names in Punycode are equivalent to their Unicode versions." There may be an issue with PageRank being displayed in the Punycode version in the Google Toolbar, but Google assures us that there is PageRank, the equivalent to the Unicode version. JohnMu said in the thread that he would "pass that on to check out" why it isn't working properly in the toolbar.

So which should you use? Google said, they generally use the "Punycode versions since this is more likely to work across all browsers."

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

New Google AdWords API Client Libraries Available

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 2:19pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google AdWords

Over the past week, Google has released new client libraries for the AdWords API. The new libraries are available in Java, PHP, Python, .NET, and Ruby. They contain bug fixes, unit tests, and enhancements.

Here are links to the new libraries:

If you run into any issues or have questions, you can submit them over here.

Forum discussion at AdWords API Forum.

Some Google News RSS Subscriptions Not Validating?

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 2:10pm CET by rustybrick

Tags: Google Search Engine

The Google News Help forums has a couple of reports that Google News RSS feed is not working properly. Some are complaining they cannot subscribe to Google News searches and some are complaining they are not validating properly.

I know that my tests seem to work just fine and I am able to subscribe to Google News searches via Google Reader. However, when I plug in those RSS URLs into FeedValidator.org, the feeds are not valid, according to them. Here is a sample showing the errors of the Google News rss searches.

There is no word from Google on this as of yet. We know Google News had issues with RSS feeds in the past.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

SEO News » Search Engine Roundtable » January 26, 2010

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