Google Right Side Sponsored Link Thumbnail Images

Today is the first time I noticed thumbnail images in the right side sponsored ads in google search results. Perhaps Google is taking some lessons away from Facebook’s success using the thumbnail + text for sidebar ad delivery.

Check out this example (click for fullsize)

Notice how many of the links on Google’s search results are now sponsored? They have taken 80% of the first page results for themselves.

BING should have an easier time growing market share if Google can annoy their surfers enough with the sponsored listings.

Facebook Tops Google Traffic For 3 Days in One Week

Facebook topped Google’s traffic again on New Year’s Eve, marking the 3rd time in a 7 day period the Social Networking giant exceeded Google’s US Visitor count according to Hitwise, an independent traffic monitoring firm.

Apparently people were constantly updating their status with their latest meal highlights and wishing holiday greetings to their 300 friends more often than they were searching for how to bake a ham, or find driving directions. Facebook kicking off 2010 as the number 1 site in the US seems appropriate after the huge year the company had in 2009.

Facebook Advertisers Are Not Cheering
There has been a noticable decrease in Facebook Advertising performance over the past several weeks. It seems like most of the additional traffic is not as productive as the standard daily user, I’d have bet the opposite. Stats have been delayed over the past 48 hours as they are updating or fixing the ad system. Over the past 24 hours, we saw only one ad approval cycle.

Google Serving Personalized Results For Everyone

Christoph Cemper gives a great overview of Google’s Decision to provide personalized results for all searches. Should SEOs be worried?

Learn why Google Analytics is now illegal in Germany. Find out how many of the world’s websites now use Google Analytics and get up to date on Google’s new DNS services.

Christoph says don’t freak out, but should you?

Google Goggles Search App for Android

Google impresses me with their vision for “Goggles”, the new search app for Android Mobile Phone users.

Instead of typing words for your search, “Goggles” allows you to take a picture using you cell phone, then it returns relevant search results.

Google can also provide information for nearby businesses and restaurants based on what it sees in the picture you take.

In the future, Google Goggles may allow you to take a mobile picture of a spider, then immediately return the name and information about the spider. This could be very cool to use with plants, animals, cars, etc.

The Google engineer in this video says that eventually it could even give you advice on which chess move to make, or other strategic advice!

Does Domain Registration Length Affect Search Rankings?

Domain registration length does seem to be a small factor when Google is trying to make up it’s mind where to rank your site in search results.

I’ve spent time reading snips of blogs, watching YouTube videos, and the only thing I can really determine is your might as well register the domain for 5 years and use a public registration. When you register a domain for a single year you generally renew the thing anyway.

It makes sense to me that Google might trust a domain a small bit more if it’s on a 5 year registration. Typically spammers will register a domain and burn it out (get blocked by blacklists, etc) within a few months, of course they use 1 year registrations…maybe not for long.

Contact me or drop a comment below if you have some hard facts on this, or can point me in a clearer direction.