Often publishers ask us why Google News didn’t include one of their articles, or skipped the image associated with an article. In the search for answers, we’ve noticed that there’s a lot of confusion about how we include and rank articles. We’d like to share some of the facts, and debunk the myths.

The quick-read version:

Having an image next to your article improves your ranking MYTH

Updating an article after posting it will create problems with Google News TRUE

Timing the publication of your article improves your article ranking MYTH

Articles that are just images or video won’t be included TRUE

There’s no way to see why my articles weren’t included in Google News MYTH

Publishing a sitemap helps my rankings MYTH

Redesigning my site may affect my coverage in Google News TRUE

If I put AdSense on my site, my article rankings will improve MYTH

More: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/psstsecrets-of-google-news-exposed.html

comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released January 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, revealing that YouTube.com accounted for one-third of the 9.8 billion videos viewed online in the U.S. during the month. The total number of videos viewed in January was down slightly from the more than 10.1 billion viewed during a record-breaking December 2007.

Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property in January with nearly 3.4 billion videos viewed (34.3 percent share of videos), gaining 1.7 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for more than 96 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 584 million (6 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 315 million (3.2 percent) and Microsoft Sites with 199 million (2 percent).

More: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2110

Google has always had a love-hate relationship with advertising. Its power and wealth come from the $16 billion a year of advertising that it sells. Yet on its most important pages, the results from its Web search engine, it has limited ads to nothing more garish than a dozen words of text.

That is about to change. On Thursday, Google started testing video ads on some pages of search results. And it is developing ad formats with images, interactive maps and other more elaborate features.

More: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/google-tests-video-ads-on-search-results-pages/

Google may have to wait another year to overtake ITV1 as the UK’s biggest single advertising income generator, despite announcing UK revenues of $2.53bn (£1.3bn) for 2007.

The web giant had been widely tipped to overtake ITV1 in terms of ad revenue during 2007 and may still achieve that when ITV unveils its full-year figures next month.

One key point to consider:

A US regulatory filing lists Google’s UK revenues as $2.53bn for 2007, though around 30% of these advertising revenues will be passed on to affiliate publishers.

That means $759m – around £389m – was paid out to Google’s UK-focused ad affiliates last year.

Or to put it another way, around £12.50 for each person in the UK.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/19/digitalmedia

What’s in it for Google? Well, for one thing, it’s cheap. Sell off the New England properties and the real cost is $3 billion. That’s not much money to buy one of the premier brands of the information age. It also comes with some excellent real estate, which further reduces the risk. And happily enough, it will probably get cheaper in the coming months. So the price is definitely right.

Second, Google is embarking on an ambitious mobile platform. It is buying wireless spectrum and will soon introduce Google Mobile. In so doing, it is entering into an arena where the established players have hired (almost) every lobbyist and (almost) every law firm with expertise in telecommunications in Washington, DC and in virtually every state capital. Owning the New York Times would level that playing field in one fell swoop.

This would also fit in with John Battelle’s idea that Google is making a play for the second click.

And while it’s not in the same league as Google, let’s not forget that the NYT Company acquired About.com in March 2005, which (according to their own info) is ‘a top 10 content site‘.

And speaking of content, Google would also be buying the highly respected New York Times Syndicate and News Service, giving it tremendous reach outside of the US.

More: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2008/01/might_google_buy_the_new_york.html

Alternative views, keyword suggestions, keyboard shortcuts, left-hand search navigation, right-hand contextual search navigation…anyone remember how Google started out?

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From: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/01/remove-your-content-from-google.html

Okay, so Google is the global leader:

Around the world, Internet users are conducting about 1.4 million searches every minute — most of them through Google Inc., a new comScore study estimates.

 But there can be dramatic regional differences:

Baidu.com Inc. is strong enough in China and NHN Corp. in South Korea to crack the global top five in comScore Inc.’s inaugural report on worldwide search patterns.

More global tidbits:

Yahoo Inc. was second worldwide with 8.5 billion, followed by Baidu at 3.3 billion, Microsoft Corp. at 2.2 billion and NHN at 2 billion.

And back in Europe:

Europe and Latin America tend to have more searches conducted per person. Ivins said Internet penetration in those markets grew as search technology was already developed, unlike in the United States where human-powered directories were initially strong.