Ask.com Favoring Organic?

The Search Engine race has been stagnent for a while. Yes, really, nobody has broken the mold of Google, instead they try to compete with Google at what Google does best.. search. And they lose.

However Google's home page is getting a bit dull, and there is no doubt they are paying a real loss of opportunity price for having such a clean search page. Nor can they test anything new on the page without a huge outcry... take their change of the Fav Icon for example. (UUUUGLY).

Ask.com has been trying to build on top of the Google model. The switched back to a clean search only home page some time ago. They have since then been testing small variances to this page. First by adding a single image add top left of the page. The ad was for Match.com.

Now, they are playing around with the results pages.

Today I found that the PPC ads were placed in second position, with an organic listing coming in at the top. I'm glad to see that Ask.com is mixing things up without going too far.

I'm sure my SEO friends are very happy to see this type of testing as it lends a great deal of value to their services.

Google Cancels Free Checkout Processing

We knew that at some point Google would end this program.

I think it was a fair and brilliant promotion to reward advertisers who used Google adwords to get free processing. I personally thank Google for saving my company many thousands of dollars in transaction fees.There is no doubt that countless businesses dumped PayPal and picked up Google checkout. Unfortunately, Google did not execute on the promotional strategy before they ended the offer. While giving the service away for free, they needed to upgrade Google Checkout into an enterprise grade service. Instead, it's still a weak beta type mini service, with no incentive to stay with them.

Google Checkout 2009 Fee Changes On May 5, 2009, Google Checkout's
transaction processing fees will be changing from 2.0% + $0.20 per transaction
to a new tiered pricing structure, where the rates will vary
depending on the amount of your monthly sales processed through Checkout.

At that time, we'll also be discontinuing the free transaction processing
promotion for AdWords advertisers. Any AdWords transaction processing credits
accrued during April 2009 will be applied towards transactions that occur on May
1-4, 2009.

I'm not knocking Google here, again I have saved many thousands of dollars with the free transactions. However, transaction processing was VERY slow, averaging almost 7 business days for payments to post. There is no ability to track invoices sent, or payments requested and you can't export/import directly into your accounting software, or integrate into an online financial service. When it was free, these issues were tolerable, now that they are full price, I will be changing very quickly.Bank of America for instance offers an amazing suite of business tools and data integration features to seamlessly share data with your accounting software for about the same price, easy transfer of funds into your investment, business or payroll accounts. Yes, I know, most of us don't like B of A, but the pricing is about the same with every feature a business owner would want to have.

How do you think this change plays out in the overall strategy of Google and how us, their customers view them?

Are they doing a rope a dope, offering a ton of free apps, and then after everyone has integrated them into their life and business, start charging for them?

Were we, including myself, all stupid enough to believe Google was different and would offer free apps forever ?