As I reported back in late-March, there has been a new crop of phishing scams now targeting both Google and Yahoo advertisers.

Google finally officially responded this week by posting “How to avoid getting hooked” on their official Google Blog as well as emailing apparently all Adwords advertisers with an email which refers people to this article as well as notification that there have been reports of phishing attempts that falsely appear to be from the standard Adwords email address.  Google reminds advertisers that Google’s AdWords team would never send an unsolicited message asking for advertiser’s password or other sensitive information by email or through a link sent via email.   They also ask that advertiser’s report any phishing email to them completing their Report Phishing Form.

Google’s post goes on to include tips on how to avoid phishing- whether you are a Google advertiser or not, I highly recommend you follow these steps to protect yourself from any phishing attempts.

Another cool service from Google.  Free 411 services from any phone!

Just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (that’s 1-800-4664-411) to find business numbers and addresses or even get a list businesses in a particular category.  Extra bonus features- get connected for free or have Google text message the contact information to your cell phone for later use! 

I think this is a pretty handy service particularly since alot of phone companies like to charge a buck or more to get this information.

Of course, it is automated, so if you are looking for a business with an unconventional name-ohh, say “YNot Web”- it can’t figure out how to find it since it is using algorithms based on phonetics.  Oh, and you need to pay attention to the returned listings because sometimes it does say them in a funny way.  “YNot Web” (why-not-web) comes out “e-nut-web”.

Nielsen released their search engine usage statistics for December 2006 and I thought I’d share the results.  Nielsen//Net Ratings gathers data from over one million Internet users in the United States with Nielsen tracking software installed on their home and work computers that records every site visited. Measuring three unique metrics, these statistics provide a view of actual search engine usage.

According to Nielson//NetRatings, an estimated 3 billion searches were performed at Google Search in the U.S. during the month of December 2006, representing nearly 51% of all search queries performed in the U.S. during that month.  This is up from 49.5% of searches for the month of November.

Rounding out the Top 10 are:
Yahoo: 23.6%
MSN/Windows Live Search: 8.4%
AOL: 6.1%,
MyWay: 2.4%,
Ask.com: 2.1%
Earthlink Search: 0.5%
Dogpile.com: 0.5%
Comcast Search: 0.5%
NexTag Search: 0.4%

Keep in mind that this statistic specifies the number of queries conducted– NOT the number of unique visitors to the site.  However, Google now ranks #2 for unique audience, surpassing Yahoo in the list of Top 10 Parent Companies in percent reach with nearly 95 million unique visitors on the home panel and 47 million on the work panel using the Google suite of sites and tools.  Yahoo fell to just under 94 million visitors (home panel) between November and December.  Still dominating the internet in terms of audience is Microsoft, with over 103.5 million unique home visitors and 51 million office workers (a whopping 88% reach in the workplace) in December 2006.  A notable addition to the Top 10 on the work panel is Wikipedia, with a 33.5% reach.

You can find more monthly data at Nielson//NetRatings.

Google provides yet another set of valuable educational resources at its Conversion University. On this site (marketed mostly to Google Analytics users), you will find loads of articles about creating a website that converts visitors into customers and helps retain your existing customers.

My favorite article found here was “Monetizing Non-Ecommerce Sites.” No, its not yet another article about how you can Get Rich with Adsense–it is an editorial on how you can measure the value of a non-Ecommerce site, such as a website that promotes a service-oriented business. Not only will the ideas presented help the average business-owner understand the important connection between their website and sales, but it also emphasizes the importance of tracking for determining your ROI (Return on Investment).

If you need a website that includes more conversion techniques, YNot Web can help. We also provide our own article section on Conversions, for those who want to investigate and test out ideas on their own.

If you haven’t checked out Google Answers, you should try it out. Google Answers has more than 500 carefully screened Researchers to answer your question for as little as $2.50 and usually within 24 hours. So if you need some research done on a specific question, its a great resource. It is also a great resource for seeing answers that OTHER people paid for, as all questions and answers are publicly displayed. One last idea for using Google Answers– using it to see what information people are looking for in respect to your industry or niche. Knowing what people are looking for is an important step to determining what services and products are in demand.
Check it out: http://answers.google.com

Update 12/3/2006:  Google Answers is being retired by Google.  They are keeping their database of questions available, but no new questions are being accepted.

Google’s latest update is causing a stir in the webmaster circles. Many web developers have reported that all of their web pages except for their index page have been moved to something called the supplemental index.

“What is the Supplemental Index?”

Google’s Supplemental Index is an alternate index that is normally only used when Google index cannot find relevant results in their standard index. Being in the Supplemental Index generally means that your web pages won’t be found for most searches.

You can check to see if a web page is in the Supplemental Index by performing a Google search for site:mydomain.com (replace mydomain.com with your own domain name). If you see “supplemental result” next to the results then those pages are supplemental.

“How Can Google Do this to me?”

It appears that this is just a bug in the transition to the new Google data centers. Since one of the main reasons for the Big Daddy update is that Google wanted to solve problems with redirects and canonical URLs, they may be isolating web pages in order to test new algorithms on these types of URLs.

“Will This Affect Me?”

If you have spam free web pages with good content and a good number of incoming links, the Big Daddy update should have a positive effect on your Google rankings. However, if you use spam techniques to try to improve your rankings, you may find your web sites suffering at the hands of Big Daddy.

Google has a new major update started that will affect the ranking of many web pages in Google’s index. This update is reported to be?much bigger -?so big that Google has given the update the name “Big Daddy”.

What is the Big Daddy Update?

Google uses?multiple data centers in various parts of the world to respond to search queries. These decentralized servers balance the workload of indexing web sites.

The upcoming Big Daddy update?changes?this network infrastructure so Google can?handle potential spam problems; index different content types such as images, JavaScripts or Flash files; and allow them to develop more advanced algorithms and a larger index.

According to Google engineers, Big Daddy will be live in February or March.? As more reports come in, I’ll post information about how this may affect web site rankings.