Google Rollout GMail 2.0

Google are starting to roll out their new and improved new look GMail 2.0 to a few selected users. you may be one of those selected users. To find out, login to GMail and look for a "new version" link at the top of the page.

So what does GMail 2.0 do that the old GMail didn't? Well the main differences are a completely re-written Javascript backend to make GMail faster, and a whole new contacts manager to help you find those special people when you need to find them most.

The other new feature that i am especially liking is the filter. The old "more actions" drop down box now contains a "filter messages like these" option which will open a filter options box.


Does anyone else find it sad that GMail 1.x didn't make it out of beta? :'( *tear*

Problems With Adsense Stats Tracking

If you have noticed large discrepencies with your Google Adsense stats over the last week, You are not alone.

Many people have been reporting a large drop in CTR and impressions which seems to have started around the same time as the last Adsense Maintainance Outage. There have also been issues with overall impressions and clicks not adding up to impressions and clicks in channels.

Google Adsense have been contacted numerous times over this but as yet have remained tight lipped saying nothing more than "we are working on it".

PageRank Update Drops YouTube To PR3

Has your PageRank Dropped? Don't worry, Youtube dropped from PR8 to PR3 in this update. The recent change in the way Google calculate PageRank has hit the popular video site Youtube (owned by google) very hard.

Google were trying to limit the link juice obtained from buying text links and by reciprocol linking and have inadvertently caused youtube to drop from PR8 to PR3 in most datacenters, This drop is expected to slowly make it's way to all datacenters over the next couple of days.

The drop in youtubes PageRank demonstrates exactly how bad google are at determining what links are purchased and which are earned and how thier PR algo changes are going to effect sites that play by the rules.

Over the next week or so we should expect youtubes PageRank to be restored to PR8, But what about all of the other sites caught in the crossfire between the google PR algo and sites that buy text links? Will they have thier PR restored by selective handjobs? Or will they have to wait untill google are a bit more competent at spotting purchased links?

Google PageRank To Be Reset

During a recent meeting with a Google engineer it was revealed to me that during November Google plan to make changes to four elements of their search engine and AdSense program in an attempt to thwart the increase of blackhat SEO, PR fraud and invalid AdSense clicks.

PageRank to be reset to zero and replaced

The infamous PageRank (PR) is going to be no more. All toolbar PR data will be reset to zero and PR will never be coming back (this is why we have been waiting so long for the update). This is very bad news for anyone who sells text links in order to make money.

This will be done in time for a mid November release of the Google Toolbar version 4.2 which will be used to roll out "VR" (visitor rating). Google VR™ will use a digg like system with a voting button on the toolbar to collect visitor ratings of the page and the VR will be displayed via a blue bar similar to the PR bar.

The VR value will be based on a number of factors like the ratio between visitors and votes and where your visitors come from (i.e referred from a site or a search engine), It will also take in to account how many people return to your site over time. I was assured that measures will be in place to stop competition rigging your VR by giving you too many negative votes.

Two clicks for AdSense

With the increase of click fraud and invalid, unintentional clicks, Google are bringing in a system designed to prevent someone clicking on an advert unless they actually want to. The system they are implementing will mean when someone clicks on your AdSense ads a box will appear telling them that the link they just clicked is a PPC advert and it will ask them if they want to visit the sponsored link. if they click "yes" you get paid, If they click "No" you don't get paid. It is speculated that this will reduce all AdSense earnings by 75% across the board but will increase the CPC.

No more link: data on the operator search

The link operator on Google search has long been an inaccurate way of seeing how many backlinks you have (another important factor when selling text links), But we don't have to worry about that anymore because Google are removing all backlink data from the search engine and from Google webmaster tools and analytics.

rel="nofollow" replaced by rel="dofollow"

Not to long ago Google came out with the great idea of using a rel="nofollow" attribute for links. What this done was tell the Google bot what links you didn't want it to follow from your site. This was a great way of stopping comment spam on blogs. Unfortunately not many people used the rel="nofollow" attribute and it kind of died out. So in november Google are replacing it with a rel="dofollow" attribute which will tell the Google bot what links you DO want it to follow. It will simply ignore all links with no attribute or the rel="nofollow" attribute, it will only crawl rel="dofollow" links. All links you have earned up to this point are now worthless.

Adsense Pay By Western Union

We’re excited to tell you that we're offering a new payment method for some countries. If you're located in Argentina, Chile, China (Mainland), Colombia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, or Romania, you can now sign up for Western Union Quick Cash, a new form of payment that lets you receive your AdSense payments in cash using the worldwide Western Union money transfer service. Payments will be available for pickup at your local Western Union agent the day after they are issued, according to our normal payment schedule.

Adsense Down October 20th

This Saturday, October 20th, Adsense will be performing routine site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You won't be able to sign in to your account during this time period, but rest assured that your ads will still appear and your earnings will continue to be tracked in your account. Here's the start time converted for various cities around the world:

London -- 6 pm Saturday
Athens -- 8 pm Saturday
New Delhi -- 10:30 pm Saturday
Kuala Lumpur -- 1 am Sunday
Sydney -- 3 am Sunday

GMail For Mobile Phones

Accessing Gmail on my phone has become indispensable to me. So often, I need to do things like search through my archive to find the name of that coffee shop where I'm going to meet a friend, or to send a quick email when I don't have access to my laptop. Gmail for mobile helps make this all very easy and fast. I can access my whole archive, and send emails to anyone in my contacts list -- through an interface that's very familiar. We just released a new version with some updates that you can get by pointing your phone's browser to http://gmail.com/app. The new version works on most phones that are Java ME enabled. For BlackBerry devices, you can continue to download the previous version from the same site.

Content ID For Youtube

A few months ago, we announced the initial development of a highly complicated technology platform -- content identification tools for YouTube. Today, we are pleased to launch, in beta form, YouTube Video Identification.

Video Identification is the next step in a long list of content policies and tools that we have provided copyright owners so that they can more easily identify their content and manage how it is made available on YouTube.

More GMail Storage

When people ask me about my job, one of the common questions I get is, "Where does Gmail put all that mail?" I generally answer by pointing them to a web site like this one. While that's not exactly how it works, we do spend a lot of time working to make sure our users have all the space they need.

In April 2005, we started increasing Gmail storage as part of our "Infinity+1" storage plan. At that time, we realized we'd never reach infinity, but we promised to keep giving Gmail users more space as we were able. That said, a few of you are using Gmail so much that you're running out of space, so to make good on our promise, today we're announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage.

Adsense Video Units

AdSense isn't just for ads anymore; it's also a place to get video content for your site -- and earn extra revenue at the same time.

We're excited about the launch of video units -- a new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. To further blend the YouTube player into your site, you can also customize the color scheme and layout as well as choose from three different player sizes.