Google Changes Advertising Policy – Referrals to Stop from August End
There would be impending changes to Google’s Advertising Programs. The change is to happen in last week of August 2008 & beginning late August 2008 all Referral Advertising programs would be discontinued completely .
Publishers will no longer be required to promote Google Products or any of the Referral Ad programs. AdSense referrals feature will be retired for AdWords advertiser products as well.
Google would serve Adsense for content & DoubleClick Performics Affiliate.
Russian Search Engine Yandex – Google’s Largest Competitor in Europe
Yandex is the largest search engine database in Russia. Reports point that it could be the most popular search engine used in Russia with about 44% of the Russian search engine market share.
Much like Google has become a standard word in the English dictionary meaning "search", Russians are used to "Yandex" in a much similar matter.
In fact, comScore reports that Yandex is the Number 2 search engine in Europe. Adding to the competition to Google, Yandex will go for a Nasdaq listing in the fall of 2008.
Biggest Expansion to Internet in Forty Years – ICAAN Approves New Domain Names
ICAAN announced on 26th June 2008 in Paris, what could be the biggest revolution on the internet cyber world in 40 years! Now you can name your own domain names & you do not have to restrict to the existing 21 approved names like .com, .net, .org & country codes like .uk (UK), .us (USA), .in (India), .cn (China), .de (Germany) etc. (All the approved domain are listed below)
ICAAN would start approving the new top level domain (TLD) names from the first quarter of 2009. Added to that, top level domain names would also appear in many new languages, including Arabic.
However, estimates say, that depending on the top level domain name you choose, it could cost you as much as USD 100,000.
Wordpress Pro Ad Theme – Blog Theme Optimized for Advertisements
[Update: The Pro Ad Theme have been revised with a few additional improvements. You can read the details & download the Pro Ad Theme on the Wordpress Pro Ad Theme page.]
While writing the Wordpress Lifeline Series to help new bloggers with a step by step how to guide to start blogging & then make money from it, I realized that there were not many good free Wordpress Themes that were created & optimized for advertisements.
So I created the Free Wordpress Pro Ad Theme. I am still working on the cosmetic part of the theme & I shall be able to roll it out by Aug 2008.
The main feature of the Free Pro Ad Theme is that the layout & structure are optimized to earn money from both CPM ads as well as CPC & CPA ads as well as affiliate marketing.
Wordpress 2.6 Enhanced Security Features – Disable Default Remote Publishing
Wordpress 2.6 will have new security features. One of them is disabling the default APP and XMLRPC publishing.
According to the Wordpress enhancement note "In order to protect the majority of blogs which don’t use these protocols against any possible security vulnerabilities we should disable them by default."
This is similar to the idea that registration is disabled by default. As an FYI, this feature is already disabled in other blogging softwares like Typepad. But Wordpress will allow publishers to change the Remote Publishing option manually for individual blogs. Blogger, the blogging platform from Google still continues to support default remote publishing.
GoodSearch – Donate to Your Charity while you use Search Engine
I read an excellent article by Lisa Johnson of Minnesota Council on Foundations on an initiative to allow people browsing the Internet & using search engines, to donate to their charity.
When you use GoodSearch to look up information on the Internet, you could help donate 50% of the advertising money raised by search engines, to a charity of your choice. You do not need to sign up or spend a cent.
GoodSearch is powered by Yahoo! and the technology allows the searches to track and direct these search-generated proceeds to charities.
Google Ad Planner – Free Tool Connects Advertisers & Publishers
Google launched AdPlanner today. Its a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. It helps advertisers identify the publishers who serve in the keywords category & a preferred demography.
The tool allows you to aggregate statistical information as well as analyze them by drilling down into the data. Being from Google, AdPlanner can be easily integrated with MediaVisor , the analytical tool from Google’s subsidiary DoubleClick.
According to the release information, Google says that AdPlanner is designed for use by media planners. It can be used to collect data for selected websites / blogs under the media planner’s radar.
5 Top Design Misktakes – Most Common Mistakes in Designing Blogs & Websites
Designing websites & blogs is tricky. And designing your blogs on your own & avoiding the common design mistakes is very difficult if not impossible.
For 2 reasons : One, you have so much information to share, and so little place to put it so that they all appear in front of the reader at once. Two, there are so many softwares, tools & functionalities available to a designer, and most of them free, that you find it hard to choose one & eliminate 2 others.
In this post, I shall share my experience in creating very simple yet effective blogs & websites. Sure there are no golden rules but there are things that you should do to make your blogs & websites work effective for you with minimal problems.
Top 5 Reasons Why People Leave your Websites – How to Keep Your Visitors & Readers
Many times even when you have excellent content on your websites & blogs, there are constraints that discourage visitors from spending time on your site or even coming back repeatedly.
You may be losing valuable readers not because of your content but because of technical & cosmetic issues that you may not realize even exists.
It may be worth to take a look at the top 5 reasons why people could go away from your web page or not return to your website anymore. I have added a few suggestions & recommendations to each of these top 5 website problems that could help you retain your readers & make your visitors keep coming back.
