This is an box for a short bio to be edited in the header.php file. Of course you can try to persuade people to Google Selling Performics »
When Google purchased DoubleClick, they also became the owners of Performics – Search Engine Optimization company. There was a lot of talk in the SEO/SEM community about that being a conflict of interest – a Search Engine company owning a Search Engine Optimization company.
Last week Google announced it will sell off the Performics portion of DoubleClick:
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. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.
Of course, looking back, it seemed obvious that Google would do that. It was the right thing to do and failure to do that would have shed a bad light on Google. Danny Sullivan was one who openly expressed the desire to see Google do that and is glad they did.
Couple the sale of Performics and the reported layoff of 300 of DoubleClick’s employees and that means about 500 people share the distinction of briefly being Google employees. That fact still looks nice on a résumé…
Google Owns Performics (By Extension) »
Now that the DoubleClick / Google marriage has been blessed by both the European Commission and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, SEOs and SEMs everywhere will be eager to see what Google will do with Performics. Performics is a Search Engine Marketing company owned by DoubleClick and so Google now owns a Search Engine Marketing company by the fact that they own DoubleClick.
And to think that Google had the nerve to penalize US just for selling a few text-links on our blog … wow.
Here is a quote from Performics’ web site that I thought summed it all up pretty well:
Together, DoubleClick Performics and DoubleClick offer clients an unparalleled range of marketing solutions and are uniquely positioned to compare effectiveness across marketing channels for valued clients.
I particularly liked the phrase “uniquely positioned“. THAT is somewhat understating it, I think. Imagine being able to pick up the phone and call Google to find out what to do to get a particular site ranking #1… Why would ANYONE hire any other SEM/SEO firm? After all, if you wanted your brand new site to shoot to the top of the SERPs, wouldn’t you STRONGLY consider the Search Engine Marketing company owned by the number one Search Engine? Of course you would. At the very least, the fact that Performics and Google are related has to carry a ton of clout, even if Google claims that they are not going to give special treatment to Performics’ clients.
Danny Sullivan posted about this today in a post that would have taken me about 5 months to complete – good job, Danny.
Pagerank Restored for Our Tech Blog »
At some point over the weekend, Google restored the Pagerank to our tech blog. I filled out a reconsideration request on Thursday (I think) and the PR was restored sometime over the weekend. So, that was pretty quick in my book.
I still do not agree with their whole approach to quashing paid links, but I won’t get into that again. My fingers hurt from all that typing anyway. But, if you are interested, here is a recap:
- Google de-indexing
- Google: “Do as I say, not as I do”
- Random thoughts on Google penalties
- Tech Blog pagerank MIA
Well, horray for us. I’m not a slave to Google pagerank. I just did not want to be de-listed (or de-indexed – whatever you call it).
Yahoo Improves Search Market Share in December »
With all that shopping going on in December, it should come as no surprise that Search Engine traffic was down slightly (-3.9%) across the board during the month. After all, who can find time to goof around on the Internet when they are too busy doing last minute shopping?
Despite that drop, Yahoo! search traffic was actually up. In fact, according to a comScore report, they were the big winner for the month with a 0.5% increase in use and, since they dipped 0.4% in November, that basically put them back where they were in October with a 22.9% overall market share. However, Google is still the big dog with 58.4% share of the Search market. That translates to more than 5.5 billion (yes, billion) searches per month using Google. That number does not include searches performed on YouTube and other Google owned properties, which tracked an additional 1.5 billion results in December alone.
As you can imagine, search traffic on shopping sites climbed quite a bit in December. For example, Amazon sites logged 215 million searches, which was a better than 20% increase over their numbers in November. eBay was up 3.9% and Craigslist was up 6.3%.
Social networking sites saw a decline in use in December. My guess would be the fact that people were actually networking the old fashioned way – fact-to-face at parties. That means they were not spending as much time searching on Facebook (-14.3%) and MySpace (-19.9%). Plus, in many cases, people are accessing those sites while they are at work and, since most workers are using up their vacation time before the end of the year, they were not logging in each day.
At any rate, the numbers should be back to normal starting this month, but Google is still going to be on top.
Check out our Flash graphic in the far right column for a visual 
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Google Lenoir NC Data Center »
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Last year on our tech blog, I posted about Google’s new $600 million data center in Lenoir, NC. The new datacenter supposed to bring about 200 jobs to an area of North Carolina that has traditionally relied on the furniture and textile industries to employ its residents. Here is an update on the progress.
The data center is located about a mile away from downtown Lenoir and currently, there are around 500 workers building the complex. This is great news for Lenoir because these workers are eating at local restaurants, shopping in local stores and staying in local hotels and all of that is a big boost to Lenoir’s economy, which has been impacted by slowdowns and layoffs by the area’s furniture industry employers.
As far as what Google is looking in the way of employees, they want a wide range of workers from entry-level technology assistants which will keep the hardware running 24/7/365 to Linux administrators and programmers to experienced data center managers. Google has very extensive list posted in the jobs section of their site. So if you live near Caldwell or Catawba County NC or if you would not mind relocating to the foothills of North Carolina, you should definitely check it out. My wife and I used to live in Statesville, which is about 30 minutes away from Lenoir, and I can honestly say that it is a great area in which to live.
Google has setup an email address whereby people can send suggestions on how they can make their Lenoir data center an even better impact on the community. Send your suggestions to lenoirproject@google.com.
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