Google’s Margin On AdSense Clicks: 21%
Google announced their third quarter results yesterday. (more on the subject on Techmeme) From the information in the press release everyone can count the margin they are making from AdSense, their advertising platform for external sites (such as this one).
Adsense revenue for Q3 was $1.45 billion. From this amount, Google paid to AdSense partners $1.33Billion. Thus their (average) margin for AdSense is 20.83%, which is slightly higher than the Q2 margin 20.48%.
The increase in the margin comes from either: 1) they charge more from advertisers or 2) pay less to the AdSense partners. Which is it? As my Adsense revenue is marginal, I cannot tell fro myself. Do you have any further information on this? Please comment below.
Google minus Google v2 launched
Google minus Google, a search engine that lets you Search with Google without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube has become an unexpected hit. After the launch on Monday thousands of people from all over the world have used the tool and it has been a topic in numerous blog posts and discussions on Friendfeed.
After the launch, several people have suggested that I should have used Google Custom Search (cse) to do the job. After some hard detective work I have swithed to CSE. Detective work - you ask? Yes, the reason for my initial solution to just use the basic Google search engine and remove the google sites in the query (using “-site:google.com etc”) was not technical. I needed to gather all the domains Google owns before I could use cse.** The list of Google domains in the exclude list of Google minus Google contains more than 2500 domain names. And it needed some work to compile. I’m sure I have missed something, though.
Enjoy the new and more useful version two of Google minus Google.
** For you techies out there: cse doesn’t allow wildcard usage in the top level domain (like google.*), but it can be used in the normal query.
Google Minus Google: Google Search Results Without Content From Google
Inspired by an article in NYT about Google becoming a media company, I decided that something had to be done. So I created a way to Search with Google without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube.
The result is Google minus Google.
UPDATE: Google minus Google has gotten a huge start: 3000 visitors in the first day! The visitors came mainly through a few Finnish IT news sites: Digitoday, that interviewed me this morning, IT-Viikko and Tietoviikko. I’ve also updated the filters to include some Google domains: Jaiku, Gmail and Blogspot
UPDATE 2: Version 2 of the launched. Now built with Google Custom Search Engine.
UPDATE 3: Miguel Helft continued the original story in the New York Times blog with an article about Google minus Google. He had received a statement from Google: “For years, users have been able to customize their experience via the advanced search feature within web search, and we welcome all efforts that help deliver useful information and expand user choice.” So I guess I’m of the hook for now.
Twitter Ready for Main-Stream Competition?
Twitter is a great service. The microblogging platform is already the fastest media when it comes to technology and Silicon Valley related news. Twitter is proving to be more and more useful all the time.
It’s a shame Jaiku wasn’t able to keep its front runner position after being bought by Google. Jaiku is the very reason why Twitter hasn’t gotten picked up here in Finland at all, but Worldwide Twitter has close to 900k users (according to TwitDir) and has evolved to become the better service. Read more…
List of Google Killers: Search Engines of the Future
I’ve compiled a list of search engines that will change the way search engines work. I’ve only listed general-purpose sites, not niche or vertical search engines focusing in a specific type of information. I’m not really claiming these services will replace Google as the number one search engine any time soon, but they will at least have an effect on the way Google and the other large search engines will develop their core function.
List of the search engines of the future:
Read more…
2008: Problems for Google, Facebook
Forecasting the future is never easy, but the writers of Read/WriteWeb have looked into their crystal balls. It seems that this year will be hard for Google and Facebook. But what will be the biggest thing on the web in 2008? It seems that even they don’t know about it yet.
My predictions are summarized in the following sentence: Asian Open Mobile Twitter Widgets go mainstream.
Some interesting predictions in the original post’s comments as well. Virtual Knitting will be huge!
Starting a Blog: Tools
All startup companies need one and if you are thinking about setting up a blog or want to develop any site further, here are some of the tools I’ve been using while starting this blog and have found useful so far.
Blogging platform
I looked into a few blogging solutions and Wordpress seemed the best one for me. I wanted a simple install that can be hosted anywhere, but I also wanted flexibility and possibility to modify the look and features endlessly without superior technical knowledge. So far I’ve been happy with Wordpress and I’m going to post my thoughts on it in a longer post sortly.
What does Google see? Read more…
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