Yeah, I know, today isn’t Monday and I’ve missed the past few Google Mondays. Get over it, here’s your bonus edition. Its been in beta for about a year now, but Google has finally unveiled ad supported YouTube videos. The ads will sit atop the video like a banner ad and/or be a text overlay which will occupy the bottom 20% of the video. The ads can pay out on the basis of clicks or impressions.

Now any English-language AdSense publisher in the U.S. can sign on to his or her AdSense account and generate HTML code that can be used to embedded sponsored YouTube video into a Web page. As long as you also have a YouTube account.

Publishers, that’s you, have three ways to choose the type of video content that appears on their sites. They can select specific content providers; they can select specific content categories to display; and they choose to use automated targeting, which parses words on the Web page where the video will appear and serves video associated with identified keywords.

How can you lose by taking advantage of this new ad-stream. Adding video to your site makes it stand out a bit more and may make it more interesting.

You probably thought I forgot about this weeks Google Monday. To be honest, I almost did; but I still have about an hour left of Monday by my clock. This week, lets take a look at a new tool inside Google AdWords – Campaign Optimizer. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what this tool does based on its name; but if you are a rocket scientist, see last weeks Google Monday.

The Google AdWords Campaign Optimizer automagically reviews a current live campaign and gives you some tips to get a better conversion rate. To get to the tool: From the Campaign Management tab, click on “Tools” then “Campaign Optimizer”. To use the tool: Choose the campaign you want optimized and click the “Go” button. The following text is presented to let you know what to expect:

Campaign Optimizer: Getting Started

When you run the Campaign Optimizer for a campaign, we analyze your budget, keywords, and ads. If appropriate, we automatically create a customized proposal for your campaign. Learn moreNote: Depending on the size of your campaign (number of keywords, ad groups, and other factors) it can take you 5 to 20 minutes to review your proposal.

When you’re ready, click the “Get Started” button. You will soon be presented with recommendation to improve the campaign such as adding keywords (and the associated recommended bid), increasing bids for existing keywords, and changing text of your ads. You can approve any or none of these automatic recommendations. My warning to you. . . don’t freely increase your bid amounts just because this tool told you it would help. There are more than likely other ways to keep your current bid amount (or even lower it) by modifying the ads to make them more relevant. Once approved, the changes will be made to your campaign immediately.

This tool could be a great addition to your AdWords campaigns as long as you are careful and put some thought into the campaigns yourself. Don’t be lazy. Your own thoughts are required when generating a unique successful Google AdWords Campaign.

You’ve all heard by now that Google will pay $20 million to the first private group to land a roving robot on the lunar surface. For a team to win the $20 million grand prize, its vehicle must ramble at least a quarter-mile over the lunar surface and send video back to Earth. A $10 million second prize is reserved for the first spacecraft that can’t rove but still transmits data from moon to Earth. Yet another $10 million will go to super-rovers able to perform tasks such as roaming long distances or snapping pictures of equipment discarded by astronauts.

I don’t know about you but I find it difficult to believe that the $20 million dollar grand prize is enough to elicit the needed interest to achieve the goal. I seriously doubt that you could cover any costs associated with launching the craft into orbit for less than $20 million. I’m not sure what Google is trying to accomplish here, but motivating people to accept this challenge isn’t likely with this paltry $20 million dollar prize. Unless Google’s goal is to get some rich billionaire tycoon interested in winning this competition for the sake of bragging rights, they have missed the boat and will get NO entries.

If any of you have a rover that you would like to include in this competition, I’ve got a big ball of rubber bands that I will donate. Maybe we can make a slingshot big enough to launch it to the moon.  :razz:

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you know what a news/blog feed and feed reader is. Surprise surprise, Google has one of the most popular feed readers in the business; they call it Google Reader. I haven’t decided if that name is a lazy or genius marketing move. Anyway, Google has realized what they do best and applied it to their reader. Now it is super fast, super easy, and super accurate to get the search results you want in your feed subscriptions. Here’s a scenario for ya. Your favorite blog has a Google Monday post every Monday. You remember a post a few weeks ago about the Google PageRank Update Frequency. You can either go to BlissLogs and search the site; or since you are always in your reader, you can search from there. From there you can search through all your subscriptions, a particular folder, or a specific blog. As you can see from this screen shot, I have a folder in my Google Reader page for my blogs; by selecting that folder and searching for “Google Monday”, it is easy to find that great post.

Yes, I know, I’m way behind in reading all the blogs that I subscribe to. I am slowly getting caught up with all those posts.

If you’ve never been to New York, or many other locations for that matter, now is your chance to virtually visit (thanks to Google). Google maps now gives you “Street View” of many popular locations. I’ve been to Manhattan a couple times, so it’s kinda cool for me to take a look at the spots that I’ve already visited to refresh my memory. I haven’t figured out if you can take these street views inside a building yet, but if anyone can, I’m sure Google will find a way.

If you haven’t toyed with the street view of Google Maps, I urge you to take a gander at what they have accomplished. First, go to Google Maps. Then enter an address, I just entered “Times Square, NY, NY” to get to the heart of Times Square. Click on “Search maps”. At the top of the map, look for the “Street View” button and click it. Then click on the map at the desired location and a little Adobe window opens showing you a real image of the location. Me being a sports fan am naturally going to look up ESPNZone. That is where many ESPN shows are broadcast.

Google, the master of information has provided another cool tool for anyone to use for free. Check it out and tell me where you visited on Google maps.

I almost missed Google Monday. Funny how days run together when you aren’t working. Today, I’d like to discuss the stated Google PageRank update frequency or lack there of a “stated” schedule. Many bloggers have posted lately on how the latest PageRank update was supposed to happen within the past few weeks. However, Google has never announced a schedule as to when updates would happen, so all those posts were purely hypothetical. Truth is, Google updates PageRank whenever the heck they feel like it. It may be every month, every 2, 3, or 4 months, or they may change their ranking name and algorithm at any point. Actually, we are still 10 days away from breaking the record as to gaps between Google PageRank updates. Do you see a pattern to the latest updates?

1. 4/25/2007
2. 1/25/2007
3. 1/10/2007
4. 9/28/2006
5. 4/13/2006

You can see a more complete list here. Based on this list, you can probably expect the update any day, but remember not to expect an update on any particular schedule.

Time again for another installment of Google Monday. Have you heard of Google’s latest ad-serving tests? Probably not, but you can’t say that after reading this post. Google, not being one to sit on their laurels, is looking to evolve their ad serving technology. Some of those new or updated features are:

Shorter expiration dates for the cookies

While not revolutionary, it does show they are thinking of new ways to improve the privacy for us users. Shorter cookie lifetimes will ensure that your search preferences don’t remain on your pc for an extended period of time.

Anonymize search server logs after 18 months

Another way to improve our privacy, Google will remove our IP address and cookie ID numbers after 18 months. So the next time the US government forces Google to turn over search logs, all trackable info will be removed after that time.

“crumbled” cookies

The data typically associated with one unique identifying number or “cookie ID” will be broken up among multiple different cookies and diffuse the ad history of individual users.

Providing better forms of notice within ads

This helps users understand who is serving the ads they see, and what data is being collected.

Ad Feedback

Users will have the ability to give feedback on ads they like or don’t like.

All of this new ad functionality is still in test and may be for a while. None of these new ad features are guaranteed to make it to production, as Google deduces that a lack of use means lack of interest and reserves the right to remove any of this functionality at any time.  They also don’t expect to be the only company implementing these ideas. Expect the other major players to follow the innovative ideas of Google.

My kids stopped saying googoo and gaagaa years ago so why should my blog? The GooGoo for Google Monday series will now be known simply as “Google Monday”.

About a month ago, I gave you 50 steps to a successful blog. Some of those steps were realistic and some were meant to give a touch of humor. Of those steps, step 11 had the most out clicks by far. Step 11 simply states to submit your site to the Google Webmaster Tools. This tells me that many people didn’t know about these tools and I just can’t let that continue, as they contain much more than a place to submit your sitemap. Webmaster Central is broken down to 6 main sections.

Site status wizard

Find out if your site is indexed by Google. Simply enter you URL to find out if it has been indexed and to show the last time the Googlebot last successfully accessed your site. This is good info to have for the brand spankin’ new blog to know when Google has found them. And for the seasoned blogger that has seen a sharp decline in organic traffic from Google; this can be a great tool to give you a hint as to why.

Webmaster tools (including Sitemaps)

There is simply too much in this section to explain every little bit. But for a quick list of some of its tools:

• analysis of your robots.txt file
• list all errors encountered by the Googlebot
• a page analysis (including phrases that link to your site and keywords in your site)
• Query stats (Which shows what searches results in traffic to your site)
• URL Removals (when you absolutely positively have to get your content out of the Google index immediately)
• Preferred Domain (Help Google index your site by choosing a default domain. For example, I prefer http://www. blisslogs.com as opposed to http://blisslogs.com even though both URL’s will get you to the same page.  By submitting your default domain, Google will redirect it all the way you want it.)
• This list goes on.  Maybe I should devote an entire post to each tool.

Submit your content to Google

Learn about submitting content for Google properties such as Google Base and Google Book Search as well as submitting your URL to Google’s index.

Google’s blog for webmasters

Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index.  Lots of information on anything new in the Webmaster Central. This is where new features will be explained as well as guidelines for webmasters everywhere.

Google’s discussion group for webmasters

A great place for we webmasters to give feedback to the mighty Google.  Who knows, with this official forum, maybe they’ll listen.

Webmaster help center

Nobody likes to read help files, but this is a good place to start before jumping into the discussion group. Do yourself a favor, check out these help files; they give you tips on all aspects of website ownership.

Time for another episode of Google Monday, this time with a trends feel to it. In order to make your blog what readers want you should write about what people are searching for.  Makes sense, right?  One of the easiest ways to do that is to visit Google Trends on a daily basis.  Google Trends gives you a quick snapshot of what the popular searches are for that day.  For example, one of todays most popular searches is for “Bill Walsh“.  He was the mastermind behind the offense that 90% of todays football teams use, and also lost his battle with leukemia today.  Google Trends does more than that, if you submit a search term, Trends will tell you the search frequency and pattern over the last year for that term.  This information can be used to plan upcoming posts.

Try this in your spare time:  Pick a few search terms to enter into Trends and pick one that has a clear pattern of search frequency.  I would give you examples now however, Google Trends appears to be down for maintenance right now so this example is hypothetical.  Say you check the trends for “quarterly financials”.  This term probably gets more searches every three months during a particular time of those months.  You can use this information to pack your blog full of posts that include those keywords around that time.

Find a search term that suits your blog niche and some informational trends on that term to help your blog attract those organic readers.  Good Luck with your Trends usage.  Be sure to let me know how you use Google Trends.