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Valleywag reports yesterday on a new patent application filed by Google that details plans to build a “Water-based Datacenter”.

Features outlined include;

• Power generation using the ocean currents
• Ocean water used to aid cooling of the servers
• Use of wind energy to generate further power

Valleywag also points out the opportunities that having their data floating in international waters would present to Google from tax and legal points of view. A very interesting patent application indeed - it’s this type of “outside the box” thinking that keeps Google ahead of the pack.

A new deal between Google and NBC Universal should give a big boost to Google’s foray into TV Ad serving that has been in beta testing for some time now.  The multi-year deal, as reported on SearchEngineWatch blog, involves a portion of the Ads served on some of NBC’s cable television networks, however NBC maintains control over what is actually shown.

The multi-year deal will provide both a boost in ad inventory, and a boost in legitimacy in the eyes of many advertisers. Google will initially sell ads on six NBCU cable networks: Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller. More networks may be brought on as the partnership develops. NBCU also owns Bravo, USA, and several owned-and-operated local stations. It also owns the Telemundo Spanish-language network.

There will also be a focus on research and experiments in terms of how to best deliver the ads and measure success rates, etc as the tools are further developed. Some more info can be found on  SearchEngineWatch blog.

It comes as no suprise that since Yahoo has made a few announcements about its plans on mixing TV and Internet, Google also it seems has been working hard on a similar project. Google wants to take its massive search marketing model and transport it to the television, replacing mouse clicks with remote control clicks. To be able to tell what time and program a television viewer switches over from an ad is possible with the latest in digital television technology.

Whilst this does sound good in theory, once again its not just a matter of implementing the network and away Google goes. AdWeek reports:

“I don’t think Google is going to own TV advertising,” said Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite, an advertising bid management system. “They can in search because everyone goes to Google.com to do a search. They’re not going to own TV networks. They’re going to be a technology middleman.”

“It seems that the television establishment, both the buyers and sellers, are likely to want to buy it person to person,” said David Graves, an analyst with Forrester Research. “Changing the way TV is bought and sold is a not-insignificant task.”

If Google plans on pushing its weight around on the television advertising world, a tried and tested medium for decades, they might not get the welcome that they are desiring or expecting.

In July 2005, Google introduced minimum bids for keywords based on their Quality Score. And since then there have been further improvements; the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors in Google’s Quality Score.

In the coming weeks, Google is set to unleash further improvements to Quality Score based on feedback from advertisers:

Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query

Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’

‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account

What does each of these changes mean to your PPC campaign?
(more…)

As reported on Google’s official Mobile Blog, the company has started trialing ads for the mobile version of YouTube.

You may have noticed that we started running a test of display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan. This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube — it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.

Google has been trying desperately to uncover a successful revenue model for YouTube since purchasing the company back in October 2006.  Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has been quoted in the press as saying finding the right form of advertising on YouTube is the “holy grail”, and this represents another step in the quest to tap the potential of YouTube’s billions of monthly page views.

Google has hinted that it will soon be increasing its DoubleClick integration; technology it had paid billions for.

 Among the planned additions are frequency capping, frequency reporting, and view-through conversion measurement capabilities. None of the enhancements is available yet, and none will be for “a few months,” according to a Google spokesperson. Still, it’s clear the firm aims to ensure advertisers, publishers, and company observers that it’s working at incorporating DoubleClick into its ad operation.

More details of when the features will be provided will be available in the coming months. Google expects all of the additional features to boost ad quality. For more information, check out ClickZ

A small group of ex-Google employees have started a search engine company with hopes of conquering the “big three”: Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. The founders of the company (Anna Patterson and Tom Costello) were integral members of Google, working on the algorithm, the heart of the Google.

Their new search engine, Cuil (pronounced “Cool”), promises to deliver  more relevant results, and with a larger search index. There have been plenty of other search engines who have attempted to break into the market, however Cuil believe their pedigree, combined with indexing more sites will give them an edge. Not all analysts agree with the methodology however, as Danny Sullivan has these thoughts:

…unimpressed by Cuil’s claim that its index includes more Web pages, noting that that could mean users are “overwhelmed by a whole bunch of junk”

For more information on the new company, check out the New York Times article.

Some friends in America have noticed that Google has recently been testing a new search layout that allows users of the search engine to modify how the results appear on their screen. Options include the ability to see longer text excerpts, dates, places and even images. There’s even the choice to limit Google search results to fresh pages only (created in the last month) without using the “Advanced Search Page”.

If or when this change will occur is still unknown, along if it will be applied to Google Australia and across other countries. It’s also interesting to note that the Sponsored Links are no where to be seen. You can read more about this development at Digital Inspiration.

Google has added a new feature to their keyword suggestion tool where advertisers can now find out roughly how many users a searching for a key term. This is a significant update because it gives advertisers hard data to work with when managing their search engine marketing campaigns.

 This is a good move for Google, considering Yahoo had recently ceased the Overture keyword suggestion tool.

For more info on the keyword suggestion tool, check out Google’s extensive guide.

An obscenity trial currently underway in Florida is highlighting the impact that search engines are having on the offline world. The defence team are using results gathered from Google to show the browsing trends of the community.

 Whether the data is admissible in court or not is yet to be determined, however the salient fact is that the data collected by the major search engines is providing a more detailed shapshot of our lives.

“That’s why a lot of people are nervous about Google or Yahoo having all this data,” [Chris Hansen, lawyer] said.

For more information, see the New York Times Article
The far-reaching impact of cases like this come into play when looking at the Microsoft takeover attempts of Yahoo.  Civil Libertarians are worried that the fewer the number of companies holding onto the data, the less secure the private viewing histories would be.