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Kate Kaye at Clickz has done some in-depth analysis of the online ad spending of Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. The Illinois Senator has spent $3.47 million this year in online advertising.

Of that, $2.8 million went to Google while Yahoo received $180,000. Smaller amounts also went to Facebook, CNN.com, Gothamist, and Politico.

Google, of course, dominates the online advertising market, so it’s a smart play by anyone to spend with them. But Google just happens to be number 13 on OpenSecrets.org list of top donors. The list compiles monies donated by corporate political action committees and individuals (who must report who they work for when contributing).

Related Reading:
Presidential Candidates Need Some Help with their Reputations
Clinton, McCain, Obama: Drilling Down on Local in Campaign ‘08

Google has created a logo on its homepage to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mt Everest, the world’s highest mountain..

Sir Edmund Hilary, a New Zealand native, died in January. His ascent of Mt. Everest, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was the first to reach the peak.

The only problem?

The logo is only visible on the Australian and New Zealand Google homepages:

* Google.co.au

* Google.co.nz

Google celebrates special events and anniversaries by changing its logo, much as the Empire State Building changes its lighting scheme to celebrate holidays.

Microsoft announced it will give cash back to people who use Live Search and subsequently click-through and make a purchase. In today’s Building Brand Equity column, “Microsoft Search CashBack: Stealing from Google?,” Erik Qualman notes that the Live Search CashBack program just might steal that cash (in the form of market share) back from Google.

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Figured the title would get Matt’s attention. Okay Matt I need some help. I have been hired by an adult entertainment site to build their presence online - get better rankings etc.

I need to build their inbound links and want to make sure I am not wasting my time and their money. So before I started I did a search for your comments on directory submissions, paid links (well everyone knows that opinion), reciprocal links, bad neighborhoods (of the IP kind - not the seedy parts of towns where my client’s businesses are located) and your example site review post.

So I began to think that I may not be able to do much for them. In general adult content has a bad rap in our industry - the job no one wants to take on for fear of the association - but it is also the industry that has been ‘gaming’ the system for the longest and thus most neighborhoods have been marked bad.

What’s a guy to do Matt?

Directory listings seem to be one way. But how do we really know which ones are still considered any good and are the adult areas of some of the bigger directories taken with a TON of salt?

Could Google set up a Monitored By Google program? Why not give a Good Search Keeping Seal of Approval? Since directories should be an important part of deeper search results, if there was a system or established list maybe the work on one end could help in other areas of the fight against spam.

I know I am going to hear: “Google does not want to classify good and bad” or some variation of that, but we are being told to use no follow - so maybe other rules and system checks could help this.

Given the basis of the Google algorithm is link based and your job is to fight back the constant spamming, some sort of system could help people.

Interestingly, as I did my searches I did find a lot of people using your name to promote themselves, the one by submit edge is particularly good. They are 2 and 3 for Matt Cutts Directory Submissions and offer to get you in to hundreds of directories for a fee. Despite their SEO efforts I am thinking they may not be a good investment.

There are millions of directories, hell I started dozens back in the day. But if you are going to push your way up the rankings you need links.

I want to do it the right way, so am reaching out to you Matt for some advice. I could do a hoax press release about some gossipy fake story - hey include a porn star and a search industry leader (Danny smart move introducing me to your wife now I can’t use you) and I will get a lot of links.

I have read your advice to use common sense when looking at directories but unless I am building the ultimate “good directory list” it is an endless job and one that is still subjective.

Hell, I am sure the people below still do not share the views they once stated:

Rand may not still think:

What does suck, imo, is that Google doesn’t want to recognize more legitimate sources of paid links - I’m not talking about link brokers, but about sponsored links on particular sites or in directories, etc.

The belief that a link should not be counted as a vote if someone paid for it is a very dangerous idea. Imagine the link structure of the web without the influence of paid or monetarily influenced links. It would be a very, very different environment and I wonder if Google really believes it would be a better one. It’s particularly egregious since their business model is serving links to paid sponsors, but they don’t want folks doing it on their blogs or sites unless they add “nofollow” and remove some of the value of that link… Seems highly hypocritical to me.

Jill Whallen:

Come to think of it, it’s just not fair that Google doesn’t want to count my link farm links as links. Google sucks and so does Matt Cutts.

Okay that one was a joke - don’t shoot me Jill.

Time has changed what w do. Would love some insight into where directories stand now as a link building tool.

In the escalating war over the planet Earth between Google and Microsoft, Google has opened up Google Earth for development.

Today at the Google I/O developers conference, Google launched the Google Earth API and browser plug-in. The Google Earth API enables web developers to Web pages into 3D map apps.

Google points to the rise of the Geoweb, a collection of user-generated content (UGCe.g. photos, videos) associated with a location.

The Google Maps API, with over 150,000 developer sites, and the Google Earth client, with over 400 million downloads, promise to help users visualize this Geoweb of content.

Key features from the Google Earth team:

• Embed Google Earth inside any web page with only a few lines of code.

• Use the JavaScript API to enable rich Earth-based web applications.

• Manipulate KML and the 3D environment: create polygons, lines, placemarks, and more.

• Convert your existing Google Maps API site to 3D with as little as one line of code.

• View the thousands of existing 3D buildings, or add your own 3D models.

• Switch to Google Sky mode for high-res imagery of stars, planets, and galaxies.

Google has yet to launch a desktop telescope to keep pace with Microsoft but opening up the API should yield some innovative applications.

A Belgian newspaper group has filed a suit asking for $77.5 million in damages from Google. The group, Copiepresse, claims Google has violated copyright law by publishing their pages on Google News and caching pages from their websites.

Copiepresse first brought a suit in 2006 and The Court of First Instance in Brussels sided with the newspaper group. Google has appealed, but removed the pages from its News and main search sites.

But Google began indexing the pages on its main site again, which drove Copiepresse to bring its latest suit. Google maintains that its search products are legal.

What do you think of Copiepresse’s lawsuits? Think they should just slap a robots.txt file on their site? Tell us how it is in the comments.

Advertisers love competition because (arguably) costs will be driven down. In the single search environment that already exists in many countries around the world, search advertising costs are set by one entity. In today’s Searching for Meaning column, “Forget Competition, the Search Wars are Over,” Kevin Ryan wonders if maybe we shouldn’t count the other (non-Google) search engines out just yet.

The Google Website Optimizer blog has an interesting case study about a landing page test. The test was done for a stair remodeling and new home construction business. Best practices dictate that the original page with a model of a customer service rep should have done better. But it did not.

Instead, the page performed better after removing the image and a sidebar, both of which impeded the view of a beautiful set of stairs. How much did it improve? Online conversions increased by a whopping 144% and average order size increased 18%.

What do you think about this case study? Do you test best practices? Let us know in the comments!

Related Reading:
Tim Ash
Emotional Motivators in Landing Page Optimization
Google Adwords Launches Landing Page Load Time on Keyword Analysis Page
Pimp My Site: Tweaking High Traffic Landing Pages

Google has released the results from a study on query suggestions for mobile search. The study tested search queries for phones with a numeric keypad. Typically, a 15 character query requires approximately 30 key presses to perform, according to the study.

But when query suggestions are added to the mix, workload and key presses declined while enjoyment increased. However, the suggestions did NOT decrease the amount of time spent querying a search.

Google has already implemented query suggestions for the iPhone.

Related Reading:
YouTube Adds Query Suggestions for Search
Yahoo Unveils Upgrades to Mobile Search Platform
Firefox To Add Search Suggestions To Search Toolbar

Viacom President and CEO Philippe Daumann joined Kevin Johnson, President of Microsoft, onstage last Wednesday at the Microsoft advance ‘08 client sumnmit to discuss the Future of Search. They didn’t discuss copyright infringement or Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube. Perhaps they should have.

Google, YouTube’s owner, claims the $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit questioning YouTube’s ability to keep copyrighted material off YouTube.com threatens the free exchange of information on the Internet.

Google’s lawyers filed papers on Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in response to Viacom’s lawsuit alleging that the Internet has led to “an explosion of copyright infringement” by YouTube and others.

Viacom filed its lawsuit last year, asking for damages for the unauthorized viewing of programming from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks, including such hits as “The Colbert Show” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

In papers submitted to a judge late Friday, Google claimed YouTube “goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works.”

By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Google said Viacom “threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.”

Google said YouTube was faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying the federal law was intended to protect companies like YouTube as long as they responded properly to content owners’ claims of infringement.

On that count, Viacom says Google has failed miserably.

The Associated Press reports that in a rewritten lawsuit filed last month, Viacom said YouTube consistently allows unauthorized copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its Web site and viewed tens of thousands of times.

Viacom said it had identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of copyrighted programming — including “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “South Park” and “MTV Unplugged” episodes and the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” — that had been viewed “an astounding 1.5 billion times.”

The company said its count of unauthorized clips represents only a fraction of the content on YouTube that violates its copyrights.

It said Google and YouTube had done “little or nothing” to stop infringement.

“To the contrary, the availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants’ business plan,” Viacom said.