Small Business Information

In the United States Hitwise has found that traffic to Google Checkout is dwindling by quite a substanial amount - 34% down for the week ending December 8 compared with the same time last year. (That report is here)

Yet in the United Kingdom traffic to Google Checkout is slightly above the traffic levels that are headed PayPal’s way. So if you’re an online merchant which billing option should you choose?

Here is a quote taken from a comment in the Hitwise report on traffic to PayPal and Google Checkout in the UK

“… they told me that as a dog breeder, I am in violation of their policies on acceptable products. It took Google checkout a year to figure that out. I went back to Paypal several weeks ago and have not looked back. Google checkout customer service stinks.”

You can read the Hitwise post and all of the comments here.

If you’re like us then getting to the top of Google’s search engine results pages is very important. If you’re not in the top four listings for any important word or term that you might be targeting then you’re not anywhere has been a driving force for us for many years.

That’s why we weren’t all that impressed when Universal Search came along. It reduced the number of spots on the front page and sometimes it even took away the top spot and gave it to a map or a picture. That’s fine if you happen to own the link behind those maps or pictures but it just seemed to make life more difficult for the rest of us.

But now perhaps an image can change everything for the searcher and so they can work in our favour.

‘unavailable_after’ is a new Meta tag that Google is said to be releasing soon. It seems that it should be included on pages that have limited life and it tells Googlebot not to crawl the page once the offer made on the page has expired.

Even though the offer may have expired I can see reasons why you may not wish to include this tag.

This bit of news falls into the ‘better late than never’ I guess. It seems that Google pushed through update last weekend that has affected a number of people.

One keyword phrase that we’re interested in has certainly had a bit of a shake up and we’ve been affected but we’re not particularly worried and nor should you be if you’ve been affected too. Just be patient and in two weeks, or even less, you could see the SERPs revert to what they were.

Of course if it makes you feel better then by all means panic and run around in ever decreasing circles

There was a time when the Australian Competition and Consumer Comission had a lot of teeth and it wasn’t afraid to use them but for the last few years it’s been fairly quiet and some even considered it to be a bit of a joke.

But now it seems to have developed some of it’s old mongrel spirit and it’s back in court and this time it’s dragging Google in before the judges. It has alleged that Google has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct through its sponsored links and you can read the full story here.

I can’t wait to see what Google’s spin doctor-in-chief makes of this one and what all the little Cuttlets will have to say.

… and also get seen by all the other search engines too.

If you’re reading this then you already understand that although you think your small business’ website is the best thing since sliced bread the search engines might be seeing things quite differently.

So you’re left wondering what you should be doing to get Google and the others to see your site in a more kindly light.

Well, there are some lessons to be learned from one of the biggest retailers on the Net and you can read more about it at Amazon.com: The SEO-Smartest Retailer on the Web?

That’s something that I often wonder about. In so many ways it’s very dependant on small businesses and medium sized businesses and yet it seems to lack the ability to interact with those businesses on any level. It even appears to understand why it needs to interact with us.

Here is an interesting story about the way Google dealt with one Adsense advertiser. The interest isn’t so much in what it did to win back this advertiser’s business but what it hasn’t done for other businesses of a similar size that are also having problems.

This comment from the article left me wondering.

“Google can’t meet one-on-one with every unhappy client.”

Why can’t they?

It would certainly go a long way to changing the perception that Google is arrogant and indifferent to the needs of their customers.

The news has been out for a week or so now that Google is about to launch a test run of cost-per-action advertising. For affiliate marketers that’s an interesting development but not one that my partner and I will be able to participate in.

While several of our sites have a large amount of American traffic Google is restricting the participants in the test to those who have business addresses in the United States.

Not every affiliate marketer who does reside, or have a business address, in the United States may want to participate once they’ve read the terms. Many merchants who run cost-per-action programmes pay a percentage of each sale to the affiliate who sent the purchaser to the merchant’s site but Google will not be paying any percentages.

Instead Google will be paying a flat rate for each sale. That would be enough to make us think twice about joining the programme.