Google and AOL announced a continuation of their multi-year deal. Google will continue to feed results to the AOL search tool and other AOL properties such as Netscape and Compuserve as well as continuing to power web search results for AOL sites in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, Australia and Canada. Google will also continue to provide paid listings through AdWords to sites in the US, Japan and Canada. AOL Europe will continue to receive paid listings from Overture. AOL is betting that they will retain users by sticking with Google, the web’s most popular search brand rather than lose viewers to Google itself.

In the feature article of this week’s StepForth newsletter, we speculate that Google, as we know it, is ill and perhaps beyond repair. If that is the case, the new methods of search engine optimization will need to be revised as older methods are revisited. Here is a few quick tips to look at when considering SEO friendly design. Read more…

Commission Junction is one of the largest distributors of banner ads, web rings and other mass-marketing tools in the lucrative affiliate marketing sector. Now, with the advent of Contextual Advertising, rumour has it Commission Junction is looking to move into the personalized delivery of advertising field. With both Google and Overture delivering contextual advertising across a huge number of websites, what happens to the market if a massive player like Commission Junction moves into the game?

In a wise move, Google has outflanked its main competitor Overture by signing a deal with TerraLycos to display AdWords on several of TerraLycos’s US Internet properties such as Tripod, Angelfire, HotWired, Lycos.com, Matchmaker, and Raging Bull. TerraLycos joins other Internet heavyweights, iVillage, Weather.com and Switchboard as carriers of the AdSense program that allows websites to display AdWords advertisements on their sites. Thousands of smaller webmasters and media outlets also display AdWords ads through the AdSense program. TerraLycos (US) saw over 31 million visitors last year throughout its network of portals and sites.

For the past six months we have been telling clients that something very strange is happening with Google. From the way they have measured back links to the amount of SPAM that has appeared in the Top10, Google has not performed to its previous standard of excellence for almost a year. Now, with the intensity of public scrutiny surrounding Google heating up, folks are beginning to talk about Google’s problems as well as IPO rumours and its near monopolistic hold on the business of search. Read more…