Google Warns Goojje

Google has warned a Chinese search website to stop using their logo that bears a close resemblance to their own. The home page of the website in question (Goojje) is adorned with a Google-styled logo along with the very familiar paw print logo of Baidu Inc. Goojje provides search and social networking services. Goojje has already stopped using its original URL, www.goojje.com and all the visitors typing in the address are now getting automatically redirected to dierqi.com, though the content appears to be the same.

Google Adds TV Campaign Analytics

Google announced that it was adding TV campaign analytics to AdWords. If you're using the Google TV Ads system you can now get metrics on the performance of those campaigns via Google Analytics.

Here are the metrics that you can obtain on TV Ads:

* Impressions delivered
* Number of ad plays
* Cost
* CPM

My understanding is also that you get to see the ad duration too -- or whether people watched the entire ad. And if you act now . . . Google says it "will cover the cost of creating your TV ad through our Ad Creation Marketplace, up to $2000."

Google TV Ads encroaches on SpotRunner turf and allows contextual targeting, dayparting and demographic targeting. Sophisticated advertisers can also seek to coordinate or integrate their TV Ad creative with their online/search campaigns more readily this way.

Disney World 3D Now Playing In Google Earth

Disney had made a 3D version of its Florida theme park for Google Earth.

Disney has reportedly gone to great lengths to make this an especially rich 3D experience. You have to have the latest version of Earth and then you navigate to Disney World and click on the golden Mickey Mouse ears.

Source: [http://searchengineland.com/080605-134621.php]

Google To Expand Headquarters At NASA Site

Internet search leader Google announced plans Wednesday to greatly expand its Mountain View, California headquarters onto a portion of the adjacent National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center, beginning in 2013. Up to 1.2 million square feet of research and development buildings and offices will be built under the 40-year agreement with NASA, a campus-style expansion that would be large enough to accommodate up to 5,000 workers. Google has roughly 20,0000 employees worldwide, with 8,000 working at its so-called Googleplex headquarters slated for expansion.

Google Lease May Extend To 90 Years

The expansion, which is expected to take place in three stages finishing in 2022, will see Mountain View's largest employer build company housing and facilities for such employee amenities as dining, exercise, child care and parking on presently unimproved Ames Research Center land, Google said Wednesday in an announcement. Conference facilities were also slated to be built as part of the expansion, and Google said that some improvements would be made available to NASA workers, such as parking and recreation facilities.

Google real estate and workplace services vice president David Radcliffe viewed the agreement, which would extend to as many as 90 years if five 10-year term extensions were exercised, as an example of Google's commitment to the area, despite the company's rapidly growing business outside the United States. "This long-term lease agreement is a key component of Google's strategy for continued growth in Silicon Valley," Radcliffe said in Wednesday's announcement. "We believe this collaboration between Google, NASA and the city of Mountain View is emblematic of the mutually beneficial partnerships that can be created between the public and private sectors," Radcliffe added.

Under the terms of the agreement Google can choose to extend the initial four decade lease for three 10-year periods, with the option to extend the lease two additional decade-long terms after that.

Expanding On Past Google Joint Projects With NASA

Land appraisals leading up to the agreement determined that the fair market value of the land Google will develop were used to arrive at the initial yearly base rent of $3.66 million Google will pay, although the deal allows for periodic rent adjustments.

In expanding the Googleplex, which presently consists of dozens of mostly single-story and low-rise office buildings, Google will be extending a relationship with NASA that dates back to September 2005, when the two organizations announced an agreement to team up on certain research and development projects.

"With this new campus, we will establish a new era of expanded collaboration with Google that will further enhance our Silicon Valley connections," said NASA Ames director S. Pete Worden. "This major expansion of NASA Research Park supports NASA's mission to lead the nation in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research," Worden added Wednesday.

Once the expansion is complete, Google said its existing office space of some 2 million square feet would be increased to 3 million, according to Radcliffe.

Ames Facility Use Has Drawn Local Criticism

Some local residents have criticized certain aspects of NASA's cooperation with Google, such as last year's $1.3 million per year agreement that gave the search firm's top executives - co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and chief executive Eric Schmidt - the right to land their fleet of planes at NASA's Moffett Field, which is typically closed to private air traffic.

When that agreement was made public last year, Lenny Siegel, then director of a local non-profit group called the Pacific Studies Center, questioned the motives behind the landing rights deal. "If they are doing science missions, that's OK," Siegel said at the time. "If they are doing it just because they are rich and popular, it is not OK," Siegel added.

Siegel, now an employee of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, was more accepting of Google's latest agreement with NASA, which will see more on-site housing for Google workers. "That's the kind of thing people in the community wanted to see: mixed-use and high-tech," Siegel is quoted as saying in a San Jose Mercury News report.

Google To Expand Headquarters At NASA Site

For the past several years NASA has been seeking tenants to rent unused portions of its Ames facility, which it has described as "a world-class, shared-use educational and research-and-development campus," to help with the costs of maintaining the one-time air station, and it said Wednesday that the proceeds from agreement with Google would be used for maintenance, capital revitalization, and upgrades to the property at Ames. When Google begins development there it will join other organizations ranging from universities to start-ups which are presently tenants in other sections of the center.

Joint projects developed from Google's relationship with NASA have included a "NASA" layer within Google Earth, a popular mapping application which the company recently made available through the Web in addition to its installed software version, along with high-resolution images of the moon for its Google Moon program.

Google and NASA have also worked together in a project called Planetary Content, which was formed to make it easier for scientists and researchers to publish planetary information online, and a program to help improve early response to large natural disasters.

Source : http://www.searchengineworld.com/google/3457798.htm

Google Logo: First Laser Logo

Google has a special logo up on the home page today, a laser logo.


The logo links to a search results for first laser, which shows image results at the top, followed by search results from University of Chicago, Wikipedia and then Propeller.com. Why does Google have a laser logo up today? Theodore Maiman, 48 years ago - demonstrated the first laser on May 16, 1960.

Theodor Maiman died just last year on May 5, 2007. He demonstrated the laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080516-084405.php]

Google Feeling Green: Testing Green Color Scheme

iCrossing reported noticing that Google is showing a green user interface within the Google Directory search results and also, in some occasions, for main Google web search results.

The most shocking green interface is when you look compare the typical blue bar to a green bar, when Google is showing yellow ads. Here are screen captures I posted at the Search Engine Roundtable, comparing the two looks:

The Green User Interface:


The Standard Blue User Interface:


I have never seen green used in this fashion at Google web search. But as iCrossing points out, Google has gone green in an extreme way at the Google Directory. For example a search on ipods at the Google Directory shows a green background behind the search ads, as opposed to a yellow background. Here is a comparison of the new green background, in contrast to the standard yellow background:

The Green Ads:


The Yellow Ads:

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080516-085336.php]

Google Adds Real Estate Pull-Down Filter To Maps

Google has offered the capacity to search real estate listings for a long time. For example, when entering queries such as "homes for sale in San Francisco," a "one box" result used to show pull-down menus for "location" and "listing type." Activating these boxes would then lead into a specialized "Google Base" screen that allowed for further refinement. I found those screens as recently as earlier this week but today couldn't duplicate them. However, earlier this week Google explosed a "real estate" filter, among others, on Maps.






Google, in the text view, also offers some refinements: by price, bedrooms and bathrooms. These appear to be successive, meaning that they build upon one another.


The data are apparently coming via Google Base through a range of sources. But they're not comprehensive, which is important in the real estate context. However, if Google were to do deals with the various sources of MLS data around the US, it could build a fairly comprehensive listings database. That might make it more competitive with vertical search engines and real estate sites such as Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo Real Estate, Move.com and so on. By comparison to most of those sites, Google's real estate search and overall experience in this category is rather "skeletal" at the moment.

When entrepreneurs are pitching a new startup idea or prototype to venture capital the perfunctory question often arises: "Why wouldn't Google do this?" In the vertical context it's typically the case that Google won't go to the lengths of others to build a specific vertical experience (there are some exceptions). The imperative for Google is to scale its applications globally -- and that is often at odds with developing rich content and community around a particular subject area.

It is possible, however, with several tweaks and improvements, that real estate search on Google could get much better and become much more competitive over time.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080516-094922.php]

Google Now #1 Web Destination, Beats Yahoo

For the longest time, Yahoo was the U.S.’s most-visited website and Google was the most popular search engine. That has, however, changed. Google is now both the country’s top-visited website as well as the most popular search engine. Losing the title surely is a disappointment to Yahoo, who are currently trying to turn around their company and deflect take-overs.

According to a recent comScore ranking, Google has surpassed Yahoo in terms of its unique monthly visitors for the first time during april 2008. Google’s lead, however, is small at about 466,000 visitors out of roughly 141 million each. May 2008’s stats will be interesting to take a look at next month, to see whether Yahoo can come back and close the gap and regain their crown, or whether Google can continue the trend and widen the gap.

Google’s unique audience in April was 141.1 million, which is an 18% increase over the same month in 2007. Yahoo grew 7% to 140.6 million, and Microsoft, as expected, pulled in at third with 121 million.

As far as pageviews goes, Yahoo still has the most. This means that either visitors tend to return more often, or look at more pages of the site. Google had just 28.7 billion pageviews compared to Yahoo’s 33.6 billion.

Via [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-now-1-web-destination-beats-yahoo/6905/]

Yahoo Glue Pages Launches In India

Yahoo has launched Glue Pages Beta in Yahoo India. Glue Pages are specialized pages that contain an enhanced visual search result page, for select search queries. The search results that trigger the special "Glue Pages" run across searches in health, sports, entertainment, travel, technology, and finance categories.



The Glue Pages combine classic search results on the left hand column with more visual information related to your query in the middle and right section of the page. The results contain images, videos, articles and more. For example a search on diabetes returns standard search results on the left, in the middle we have WebMD results, followed by HowStuffWorks.com results, then results from Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Answers, Yahoo News, and even Google Blog Search. Gopal Krishna, Head of Audience, Yahoo! India said:

Searching on Glue Pages Beta will result in an experience that promises more than just web links. Users will receive more relevant, visually appealing search results from across the Web in one topical page. The new Glue Pages Beta feature for Yahoo! India Search supports our strategy to make Yahoo! the starting point on the Internet and demonstrates our commitment to provide a compelling online search experience.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080508-023038.php]

More Than Half Of Yahoo's Paid Search Clicks Come From Partners

Efficient Frontier is out with new research looking at how the major search engines get search traffic outside their own search engines, including the remarkable stat that less than half of Yahoo's paid search clicks happen on its own search sites. "Search syndication" is when a major search engine provides search results beyond its own core services. For example, Google quite famously provides the search listings that AOL uses. Ask.com, while it generates its own editorial listings, also gets some of Google's paid ads through a syndication deal. And many sites across the web use Google's AdSense For Search program to get both paid and unpaid results.

Efficient looked at paid search clicks that it buys on behalf of a number of large advertisers to determine what percentage of those clicks were happening on the major search engines themselves as opposed to partners.

Yahoo was found to have the highest number of partners generating clicks -- 1,196 of them beyond Yahoo Search itself. These partners generated 55% of all of Yahoo's paid search clicks. Yahoo itself generated 45%.

Though Yahoo generated fewer clicks on its own, those clicks on its own site converted better. Of all Yahoo search clicks (on its own site or through partners), 58% of the converting clicks came from Yahoo itself.

How does this show Yahoo converts better than its partners? The idea from Efficient seems to be that if partner and "own site" clicks convert the same, then the percentage should be the same. In other words, if Yahoo's own clicks make up 45% of total paid clicks, then you should also see 45% of total converting clicks coming from Yahoo itself. Instead, you get 58% of converting clicks from Yahoo. That suggests Yahoo ads convert better than those coming from its partners.

That's probably right, but it would have been better if the exact conversion rate for partner sites and Yahoo's own sites were given. Then the figures could be compared directly.

Google has many partners, too -- but at 431, far less than Yahoo. Google also generates the majority of its own search traffic, 59% -- partners make up 41%. Of all paid clicks, 75% of those generating conversions came from Google's own site.

That's good and bad for Google. Good that it's less dependent on partners. Good that traffic on its own site seems to convert so well. But bad that partner sites seem to convert more poorly than Yahoo's sites. But bear in mind, without exact conversion rates being provided, this might not be entirely accurate.

As for Microsoft, it has only 5 partners -- and those are other sites within MSN. I wouldn't consider these partners myself, and it suggest that at least a small number of those "partners" counted for Yahoo and Google are actually sites they own. But still, we're mainly talking about what percentage of paid clicks come off the "main" search site. For Microsoft, that's 99%. And not surprisingly, the percentage of paid search clicks that convert from Microsoft's core search engine is 100%. Those partners just don't matter.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080513-083548.php]

Google Incorporates Geodata In API, Partners With ESRI, Yahoo Introduces "Internet Location Platform"

Google's John Hanke keynoted the Where 2.0 conference this morning and discussed the development and evolution of the "geoweb." But he also announced that KML files (now a public standard) and GeoRSS data (I believe) being indexed by Google are now going to be available to third parties via the Google API. That means things like Panaramio and geotagged YouTube videos, among other datasets, will be available through the API. Google also announced a partnership with geospatial software platform and provider ESRI. ESRI will also be a kind of additional gateway for thousands of live datafeeds that can be equally tapped by third parties to do mapping mashups and other applications. The key here is that data is coming from feeds, which are more accurate and complete than conventional search indexing.

Hanke didn't speak at length about the details but what it appears to mean as a practical matter is that huge amounts of data will now be available to others to incorporate into existing sites and applications and/or to build new sites and applications around.

Update: I just spoke with John Hanke directly. What he said is that all the third party data from ESRI will be converted into KML files so they can be easily rendered in Virtual Earth, Google Maps/Earth or on any site that can take these files. You will be able to search all the data as well to quickly discover what's available. This will effectively mean huge amounts of additional data will be easily accessible and available to work with on mashups, mobile sites, etc. (for free).

I neglected to include Yahoo's announcement, also coming out of the Where show, of its new Internet Location Platform. Here's more explanation from the Yahoo Local & Maps Blog.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080513-141609.php]

Google Joins Venture for Mobile WiMAX Next-Gen Wireless Internet Access

Google has teamed up with a number of partners investing in a new venture to develop and deliver high-speed WiMAX internet access for mobile devices. The venture, which is being led by Sprint, also includes including Clearwire, Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner, and Intel, amongst others. Thus far, deploying a nationwide Mobile WiMAX network has proven to be quite a difficult task. With new partners involved, however, it is hoped that the task will be easier to complete. Sprint and Clearwire have entered into an agreement to combine their next-gen wireless broadband businesses to form a new wireless communications called Clearwire. The new jointly created Clearwire will build on their existing customer bse of 400,000 wireless broad band subscribers and Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX network build-out in certain markets this year.

Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks have collectively agreed to invest $3.2 billion into the new comany. The investment is based on a target price of $20.00 per share of Clearwire’s common stock. Sprint will own the largest stake in the company, at 51%. Existing Clearwire shareholders will have 27%, and the investors group will own 22% of the shares.

Contributing money to the deal, however, is not where the partnership ends. Each of the partners have also agreed to certain terms and involvement in deploying the WiMAX network.

Google will partner with Clearwire in the development of internet services, advertising services, and applications for mobile WiMAX devices. They will also be the search provider and preferred provider of other applications for Clearwire’s retail product. Google has also entered into an agreement with Sprint, whereby they will become the default provider of web and local search, which will also be enabled with location information for Sprint. Sprint will also be pre-loading several Google services, including Google Maps for Mobile, Gmail, and YouTube, on select mobile devices.

Intell will be working with various manufacturers to embed WiMAX chips into Intel-based mobile internet devices and Intel Centrino 2 -based laptops. They will also market Clearwire’s services in association with their notebook PC brand.

Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks will enter into 3G wholesale agreements with Sprint, and will become bundled providers of Sprint’s wireless voice and data services. They will also enter into wholesale agreements with Clearwire to become 4G providers of the company’s mobile WiMAX service.

Google and Intel also have options to enter into 3G and 4G wholesale agreements with Clearwire and Sprint, however neither currently has any plans to do so. But that option remains open for the future, should either decide it to be worth pursuing. Actually, thinking about it, this could explain a recent Google purchase of the domain googlebroadband.com.

Via [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-joins-venture-for-mobile-wimax-next-gen-wireless-internet-access/6854/]

CEO Tells Wall St. Why He Invests in SEO

Nothing's tougher than facing Wall St. analysts when the economy's sliding into a recession. Tom Evans, CEO of Bankrate, Inc., faced one of the toughest quarters in the company's history in Q3 2007. During the earnings call, he explained how and why Bankrate survived the early days of the subprime crisis. Tom Evans, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bankrate, Inc.

I am quite sure that the last quarter was without a doubt the most difficult quarter for our advertisers that they have seen in a long time. There is obviously a lot of noise about the softness in the housing and mortgage industry, negative news about subprime loans, and concerns about bank liquidity. However, I think our business seemed to have weathered it pretty well.

Traffic for the quarter was up 14 percent versus a year ago, and 6 percent ahead of the second quarter 2007. We were pleased at the strength of the traffic, given that it was such a crazy quarter.

When the subprime crisis broke, analysts and search industry pundits wondered whether paid search marketing had somehow contributed to the rapid growth of approved subprime loans. Soon it became clear though that paid search, if anything, had helped banks screen unqualified leads.

Most major banking institutions and mortgage lenders close the marketing loop for online leads. Banks can not only pre-qualify leads, they can score them. That means unqualified applicants can be filtered before entering the bank's database.

Bankrate depends not only on paid search marketing to generate leads, but natural search traffic as well.

Evans noted during the earnings call that organic direct traffic accounted for 75 percent of Bankrate's total traffic for the quarter. Of the total, partner traffic accounted for 11 percent and paid search made up the remaining 14 percent.

So what did Evans tell analysts he planned to do in the face of a recession? He said, "We continue to increase our search engine spending."

That makes sense, given the quality of paid search leads and the relatively low cost per acquisition (CPA) of search engine marketing leads. In recessionary times, people turn to the Internet more often for research. What they expect to find is quality content that helps them solve problems. But should that content reside only on the Bankrate.com Web site?

Evans said, "As we have said many times before, the growth in organic traffic points to the strength of our core business and reinforces the value of our content, the value of having our data and our brand exposed on as many Web sites and in as many newspapers as possible."

What role then does natural search traffic play in an integrated marketing plan? How important is it for companies to spend time and resources on search engine optimization? In a recession, can SEO contribute to higher margins?

Again, Evans trumpeted the value of organic search:

We believe that organic traffic is less susceptible to competitive market dynamics, and is reflected in driving higher margins to our bottom line. Organic traffic continues to grow at double digits, and free traffic is always a good thing. We also see a positive trend reflected in the number of unique visitors to the site. August, with over 6.1 million uniques, was our highest month ever. And uniques for every single month this year have been higher than the same month last year.

While many hard-working SEOs may argue whether the traffic was "free," all would agree on its value to top-line revenue and bottom-line profits.

Wall St. analysts, though, are no longer impressed solely by a CEO dropping SEO into a conference call. The best analysts ask probing questions and test the breadth and depth of a CEO's search engine optimization strategy.

Fortunately, Tom Evans gets it.

Canaccord Analyst, Colin Gillis, asked a tough question: "So Tom, what elements of the site redesign are being added to improve SEO performance or perhaps drive more links to Bankrate?"

Evans replied, "Well, one of the things that we have always been very conscious of is, and we sort of have an inside metric, we don't play any games to try to trick the search engines and to try to improve the rankings, via tricks or games."

For SEOs who think standards aren't important to CEOs, they're sadly mistaken. CEOs care about their brand and whether the company follows Google and other search engine webmaster guidelines.

Evans noted, "I think the reason we do so well in SEO is we have an enormous amount of content. We have an enormous amount of tools and calculators, and I think we have done a good job from SEO with, we have got literally millions of links into the site and out of the site, and I think that it really helps."

He couldn't be more right. Here's a CEO who got down into the weeds of SEO and learned what works and what doesn't:

You know 170,000 rate tables that are all dynamically generated. I mean, we are just a site that does well from an organic traffic standpoint because of the depth and breadth of the content and the quality of the content. The quality of the clicks and things like that, so we'll continue to enhance that.

We are always adding more from an editorial standpoint. We are going to be launching lots of new calculators in the next three months and concurrent with the redesign. So we are going to be doing a lot of things. But we rank pretty high organically in a lot of different areas.

So is that all there is? SEO has worked wonders on the site. Now is it time to sit back and rest on the company's laurels? Not at all. Nor will SEO spam, tricks, or gaming take Bankrate higher in the rankings as the company diversifies its offerings.

"As we beef up other areas like credit card, like college finance, like insurance, that will help us in those areas," said Evans. "So we think we have got a pretty good focus right now. We think we have got a pretty good position. There is always room to improve, but it is not by any magic tricks or any game plan that we are going to improve."

Via [http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3629390]

Google News: Fact & Fiction Edition

The Google News blog has an excellent post on the truths and myths of how Google News works. Here is the short version: * Images don't help your articles rank higher (there is a but...)
* Google News currently can't fetch revisions to articles
* Timing your articles for specific releases won't help it rank better in Google News
* You need text in your articles, Google can't include a picture with no text in the news index
* Google Webmaster Tools has a section for News content, so you can see Google News specific errors
* Google Sitemaps do not help with boosting the ranking of an article in Google News
* A site redesign, specifically new site and url architecture, may impact your performance and indexing by Google News
* Google AdSense has no impact on your Google News ranking

If I had to add my own, based on reading the SEO forums on a daily basis, I would add that the only way to get included in Google News is to be reviewed by a human and be manually included in the Google News index. Good SEO won't get you included in Google News, no matter how many links you have - you still need a manual review. You can request such a review using this form.

The major takeaways I had from this post are two things:

(1) Google News is working on a way to check your articles for updates. So sometime in the future, if you make changes to a story, Google will be aware of those updates. This is something most publishers want from Google News.

(2) Good images can be featured in Google News and if you click on the image, as opposed to the story hyperlink, the story hosting the image will be the destination URL. So although images won't help you rank your story headline higher, the image may be feature next to other stories and can increase your traffic from Google News.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080403-083445.php]

Real Estate Search Engine Zillow Opens "Mortgage Marketplace"

Zillow doesn't see itself as a real estate "vertical." Instead it regards itself as a media company that creates advertising opportunities around what is arguably the most significant "life events" purchase: buying a home.

In that spirit the company is developing numerous interesting marketing vehicles aimed at consumers in all phases of home buying (and in the future home remodeling). One critical piece of that equation is getting a home loan or an equity line of credit. Zillow doesn't see itself as a real estate "vertical." Instead it regards itself as a media company that creates advertising opportunities around what is arguably the most significant "life events" purchase: buying a home.

In that spirit the company is developing numerous interesting marketing vehicles aimed at consumers in all phases of home buying (and in the future home remodeling). One critical piece of that equation is getting a home loan or an equity line of credit. Enter the new Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.

Basically the site is a lead-gen tool for lenders, but without any fees. Lead-gen isn't the business model; lenders can use the site for free. Zillow makes money on ads that will be served to consumers visiting the various pages of the Mortgage Marketplace. If the site is successful with the new offering it will put pressure on conventional lead-gen sites for lenders such as LendingTree, among others.

One thing that's very interesting about what Zillow is doing is that it's going to allow borrowers to rate lenders so that consumers can make determinations about whether to do business with them accordingly. This is a unique feature of the site in my understanding and may spur others to do the same. That should flush out some of the "bait and switch" tactics that exist in the home loans market.

Consumers, (would-be borrowers) apply online to receive loan offers from multiple lenders. They have to provide a good deal of information, including an estimated credit score. But borrowers are allowed to remain anonymous and don't offer their SSNs. This prevents aggressive lenders from hounding consumers with calls, which happens in other mortgage lead-gen scenarios.

Participating lenders are verified by Zillow and loan "offers" are submitted to borrowers in something like a reverse auction. Lenders can see the other offers submitted to an individual borrower and try to "one up" the best offer on the table. Consumers can then choose which lenders to contact.

In my call with Zillow I got into an arcane discussion about consumer perceptions, contracts and potential liability for Zillow. The company has thought through nearly 100 percent of the legal issues associated with brokering these potential deals. Indeed, no "transaction" takes place through the site. Ultimately lender and borrower have to strike a deal independently with the information exchanged through Zillow as the foundation of that potential deal.

I was told also that mortgage brokers and lenders were already very heavy users of the Zillow site and that the company sought to create a mortgage product that would benefit those lenders and consumers simultaneously and improve upon lead-gen products already in the market.

Zillow said that it already had "hundreds of lenders registered and confirmed at launch even without product details," indicating a high degree of demand -- somewhat surprisingly -- in a down market.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080403-092734.php]

Recent Google Updates Have SEOs Scrambling

Like a celebrity sitting down with Barbara Walters, Google News has decided to clear up rumors surrounding how articles are included and ranked. In a post on the official Google News blog, software engineer Andy Golding addressed some assumptions floating around about how articles are indexed. Like a celebrity sitting down with Barbara Walters, Google News has decided to clear up rumors surrounding how articles are included and ranked. In a post on the official Google News blog, software engineer Andy Golding addressed some assumptions floating around about how articles are indexed.

Here are the Myths:

* Having an image next to your article improves your ranking
* Timing the publication of your article improves your article ranking
* There's no way to see why my articles weren't included in Google News
* Publishing a sitemap helps my rankings
* If I put AdSense on my site, my article rankings will improve


And now the Truths:

* Redesigning my site may affect my coverage in Google News
* Articles that are just images or video won't be included
* Updating an article after posting it will create problems with Google News

Things to keep in mind:

* Google News only visits each URL once. If you make updates, it won't be reflected in Google News results. This could change in the future, however.
* If you try to game the system with duplicate content or constantly rewriting stories, you might get flagged in the system as spam.
* Use Webmaster Tools to help analyze your coverage
* A sitemap helps Google News find your content, but not rank it

Via [http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080403-095920]

Google Gets Out of the SEO Business

Google is getting itself out of a somewhat sticky situation by deciding to

sell Performics Search Marketing, which it acquired as part of the DoubleClick deal. It will retain the affiliate marketing portion of the DoubleClick Performics business.

Since Google announced its intention to acquire DoubleClick last year, Google had faced criticism of the potential conflict of interest that would be created by Google owning a search marketing firm. After all, why wouldn't customers assume, even if it weren't the case, that a Google-owned agency would have inside information?

According to Tom Phillips, director of the DoubleClick integration at Google:

It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.

So that only leaves one major search engine who's also in the SEO business: Microsoft, which acquired Avenue A | Razorfish and its SEO business with the aQuantive acquisition.

In the meantime, the New York Times is reporting that Google will lay off 300 at DoubleClick. This comes as no surprise, since CEO Eric Schmidt hinted at cuts when the acquisition closed last month.

Via [http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080402-204611]

Google Selling Performics -- Thanks, Google!

Last month, I did an open letter to Google wishing they'd quickly sell off Performics, to avoid the conflict of having a search marketing firm that works to improve results on Google's own search engine. Well, thank you Google! They've acted far more quickly than I would have hoped for, announcing today that the company will be splitting Performics into two separate companies (affiliate marketing and search marketing) and selling the search marketing business off. Now to see if Microsoft will do the right thing and make a similar move with Avenue A/Razorfish, as I covered in my open letter and in my Ad Age column this month. Below, Google's statement on the move:

Since we closed the acquisition of DoubleClick on March 11, we’ve been immersed in integration planning for each of our products and business units. Recently we completed this process for the DoubleClick Performics businesses, and have decided to split them into two separately-run business units: Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing.

It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.

We plan to integrate the affiliate marketing business into existing Google operations, providing enhanced value and reach for our affiliate advertisers, and additional tools and monetization opportunities for our publishers. Together, we believe that we can continue to grow this business and deliver on the high expectations from partners.

Where it’s applicable in Europe, these plans and their implications for employees are subject to consultation with staff and employee representatives. During this transition, we will ensure that all affiliate and search marketing customers receive the same high level of service they have always experienced.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080402-172222.php]

Megachart & Analysis: Google Management Changes, 2000-2008

With two high-ranking Google executives leaving the Big G within a month's time, I thought it would be interesting to go back through Google's executive management page over the years and see how it reflects changes among the higher-ups. Below, there are a series of tables and commentary that hopefully let you understand the shifting currents at-a-glance.

Some notes. First, I think who gets listed on this page -- and the order in which they are listed -- is important. This has to be a perk for some execs -- that they'll get to show up and be profiled on that page. In addition, the order is not always alphabetical. With the exception of the big three -- CEO Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin -- I think who shows up first when it's a non-alphabetical listing can be significant. There can be some exceptions to this, and I'll note them as part of the charts. Let's dive in.

The charts below reflect the exact order people were listed on the executive management pages, for the dates shown at the top of each charge. There may have been other changes between dates, of course. Maybe eventually I'll go back and redo this to reflect all significant changes to the pages. I might have missed some key updates.

Each row in the chart shows where an executive was listed, in a white background. If you hit a gray background while reading across, then that person moved somehow. They might have gone up or down on the page, and I show this with a notation. I also note if someone was given a title change (usually a promotion). Keep in mind that sometimes titles at Google don't reflect that much. Matt Cutts, for example, remains (I think) a senior software engineer. In another company (or if he were a different type of person), he'd probably be called "vice president, search quality." Still, seeing how titles change among the top execs is still useful to note.

Be sure to read the summaries below each chart. Sometimes people will drop in positions, but that doesn't mean they necessarily have dropped in "pecking order." Indeed, speculating that there is a pecking order to some of these pages is just that, speculation.

Finally, if you see orange, that's when someone actually left Google. Why orange? Hey, red looked too bad, and I'm color-challenged. Like I need Garanimals for adults, OK?

Google Management: 2000 to 2002

Jan. 20, 2000	March 31, 2001	Feb. 7, 2002
		Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO (NEW)
Larry Page, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer	Larry Page, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer	Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products (TITLE CHANGE)
Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President	Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President	Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology (TITLE CHANGE)
	Omid Kordestani, Vice President of Business Development & Sales	Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Business Development & Sales (TITLE CHANGE)
		Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales
		Joan Braddi, Vice President, Search Services
	Wayne Rosing, Vice President of Engineering (NEW)	Wayne Rosing, Vice President of Engineering
Urs Hölzle, Vice President of Engineering	DROPS: 3 TO 8	Urs Hölzle, Google Fellow
		Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology
		Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President, Corporate Marketing (TITLE CHANGE)
Omid Kordestani, Vice President of Business Development & Sales	RISES: 4 TO 3
Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President, Corporate Communications	Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President, Corporate Communications	DROPS: 5 TO 10
Tim Armstrong, Vice President, National Sales	DROPS: 6 TO 7
	Joan Braddi, Vice President, Search Services (TITLE CHANGE)	SEE ABOVE, STAYS AT 6
Joan Braddi, Vice President, Licensing Sales	RISES: 7 TO 6
	Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales (TITLE CHANGE)	RISES: 7 TO 5
	Urs Hölzle, Google Fellow (TITLE CHANGE)	SEE ABOVE, STAYS AT 8
Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology	Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology	SEE ABOVE, STAYS AT 9
8 Execs	9 Execs	10 Execs

In 2000, only eight executives get spotlighted on the page. After Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the remaining six aren't in alphabetical order. My assumption is that Urs Hölzle got third billing because he was over at engineering. At Google, engineering rules, as will be seen later on.

Omid Kordestani came next. I'd say that was a nod to the man who became Google's early breadwinner. Cindy McCaffrey, the woman who guided Google toward its public relations greatness, came fifth. After that, my assumption is that both Tim Armstrong and Joan Braddi were deemed important enough to deserve management page credit with an alphabetical listing between them used as a tie-breaker.

Of course, all four VPs I've mentioned oversaw different areas. Could it be that they were listed alphabetically by those areas (Business Development, Corporate Communications, National Sales, & Licensing Sales)? Not with National Sales coming before Licensing Sales. Perhaps seniority was involved.

Craig Silverstein in "last" place? I'd call that more "pride of place," similar to when you've got an important actor who gets the last credit. He's also the only director level position on the list. And I could be overthinking all of this.

In 2001, Wayne Rosing came on to head engineering, apparently replacing Urs Hölzle, who shifted over into being named "Google Fellow." But Omid Kordestani bumped the VP of engineering slot out of third billing, likely a reflection of how important he was to actually building Google a business income.

Joan Braddi and Tim Armstrong did a flipflop in terms of how they were listed. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something thought to be fair, flipping two execs seen as co-equal in the billing, to make things fair.

Am I reading too much into the order? Perhaps -- but alphabetically by name isn't used, nor is alphabetically by the area each VP governed used. And if it were seniority, then McCaffrey would have been over Rosing.

In 2002, the big change was Eric Schmidt coming on as CEO. That moved everyone down a notch. Larry Page became "President, Products" and Sergey Brin, "President, Technology." Kordestani got promoted to Senior Vice President and kept his spot after the big three.

The three VPs other than Cindy McCaffrey might have been shifted to be listed in alphabetical order by last name -- so movement here might signify nothing. Then the non-VPs, Hölzle and Silverstein, are listed.

So why's VP McCaffrey at the end? Look, Cindy was important. Very much so. That drop had nothing to do with any decreased importance, in my view. To me, it would have been much more an honor of last billing sometimes being more noticed.

Google Management: 2003 to 2004

Feb. 7, 2002	Feb. 7, 2003	April 2, 2004
Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO	Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO	Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO
	Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology	Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology
	Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products	Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products
	George Reyes, Chief Financial Officer (NEW)	George Reyes, Chief Financial Officer
	Wayne Rosing, Vice President of Engineering	Wayne Rosing, Vice President of Engineering
Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products	DROPS: 2 TO 3
Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology	RISES: 3 TO 2
Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Business Development & Sales (TITLE CHANGE)	Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations (TITLE CHANGE; DROPS: 4 TO 6)	Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations
		Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President, Corporate Marketing
	David C. Drummond, Vice President, Corporate Development (NEW)	DROPS: 7 TO 9
	Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management (NEW)	Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management
		David C. Drummond, Vice President, Corporate Development
		Shona Brown, Vice President, Business Operations (NEW)
Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales	Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales (DROPS: 5 TO 9)	DROPPED FROM PAGE
Joan Braddi, Vice President, Search Services	Joan Braddi, Vice President, Licensing Sales (TITLE CHANGE; DROPS 6 TO 10)	DROPPED FROM PAGE
Wayne Rosing, Vice President of Engineering	RISES: 7 TO 5
Urs Hölzle, Google Fellow	Urs Hölzle, Google Fellow	DROPPED FROM PAGE
Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology	Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology	DROPPED FROM PAGE
Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President, Corporate Marketing	Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President, Corporate Marketing	RISES: 13 TO 7
10 Execs	13 Execs	10 Execs

For consistency with the earlier chart, I've continued on from 2002, which was already covered above.

In 2003, three new key executives were added. George Reyes was named Chief Financial Officer and took over the number four spot previously held by Omid Kordestani, who slipped down slightly past engineering VP Wayne Rosing. David Drummond, Vice President, Corporate Development, was added and jumped above existing execs like Tim Armstrong and Joan Braddi. The same was true for new exec Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management. Larry Page, long either in the top spot or second spot, swapped places with Sergey Brin. I doubt it meant anything more than the two deciding they should rotate from time-to-time.

In 2004, there was spring cleaning. Long-standing execs Armstrong, Braddi, Hölzle, & Silverstein were dropped from the page. They were still at Google, but they no longer got listed as top management. Shona Brown, Vice President, Business Operations, came in as the only new exec to make the page. She took over Cindy McCaffrey's spot at the end of the list. In doing so, that last spot no longer felt like a place to spotlight an exec but rather that the list was showing a pecking order of who was rated most important.

Google Management: 2005 to 2006

April 2, 2004	March 3, 2005	Jan. 1, 2006
Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO	Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO	Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO
		Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products
		Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology
Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology	Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology	DROPS: 2 TO 3
Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products	Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products	RISES: 3 TO 2
George Reyes, Chief Financial Officer	George Reyes, Chief Financial Officer	George Reyes, Chief Financial Officer
		Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development (TITLE CHANGE)
		Alan Eustace, Vice President, Engineering (NEW)
		Jeff Huber, Vice President, Engineering (NEW)
		W. M. Coughran, Jr., Vice President, Engineering (NEW)
Wayne Rosing, Vice President of Engineering	Wayne Rosing, Senior Vice President of Engineering (TITLE CHANGE)	LEFT GOOGLE IN MAY 2005
Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations	Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations	RISES: 6 TO 5
Cindy McCaffrey, Vice President, Corporate Marketing	LEFT GOOGLE IN DEC. 2004
Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management	Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management	Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management
David C. Drummond, Vice President, Corporate Development	David C. Drummond, Vice President, Corporate Development	David C. Drummond, Vice President, Corporate Development
Shona Brown, Vice President, Business Operations	Shona Brown, Vice President, Business Operations	Shona Brown, Vice President, Business Operations
		Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Global Communications and Public Affairs (NEW)
		Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales (RETURNS TO PAGE)
		Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience (NEW)
		Salar Kamangar, Vice President, Product Management (NEW)
		Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President, Global Online Sales and Operations (NEW)
		Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Vice President, Asia-Pacific and Latin America Operations (NEW)
		Nikesh Arora, Vice President, European Operations (NEW)
		Norio Murakami, Vice President and General Manager, Google Japan (NEW)
		Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist (NEW)
		Miriam Rivera, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel (NEW)
10 Execs	9 Execs	21 Execs

Again, for consistency when moving between charts, I've repeated the previous year. Moving along...

In 2005, there was only one major change -- Cindy McCaffrey was off the chart. She'd left Google by then (in December 2004), the first high-ranking exec to take her well-deserved winnings and move on.

In 2006, there was another absence. Wayne Rosing became the second high-ranking exec to depart, having left in May 2005 (and see here) to focus on his passion for astronomy. But the real change was the addition of many new execs to the page. Elliot Schrage took over from Cindy McCaffrey, so his addition was no surprise. Same too for the three separate VPs of engineering that came in to fill Wayne Rosing's spot.

But many pre-IPO Google employees gained new recognition, such as Sheryl Sandberg, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, and Marissa Mayer. Meanwhile, Omid Kordestani moved back higher in the seeming pecking order and Tim Armstrong finally returned to the page. Joan Braddi, who he'd long been twinned with on the page, did not, despite still being at Google then (and today).

Google Management: 2006 to 2008

Jan. 1, 2006	Feb. 2, 2007	April 2, 2008
	Executive Management Group (EMG)
Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO	Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO	Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO
Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products	Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products	Larry Page, Co-founder & President, Products
Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology	Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology	Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology
		Laszlo Bock Vice President, People Operations
George Reyes, Chief Financial Officer	(MOVES TO EMG; SEE BELOW)
	Shona Brown, Senior Vice President, Business Operations (TITLE CHANGE)	Shona Brown, Senior Vice President, Business Operations
	W. M. Coughran, Jr., Vice President, Engineering	W. M. Coughran, Jr., Vice President, Engineering
	David C. Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development (TITLE CHANGE)	David C. Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer (TITLE CHANGE)
	Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Engineering & Research (TITLE CHANGE)	Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Engineering & Reseach
	Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Google Fellow (TITLE CHANGE; RETURNS TO PAGE)	Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Google Fellow
	Jeff Huber, Vice President, Engineering	Jeff Huber, Senior Vice President, Engineering (TITLE CHANGE)
Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development (TITLE CHANGE)	Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development (MOVES TO EMG)	Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development
	George Reyes, Chief Financial Officer	George Reyes, Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer (TITLE CHANGE; ANNOUNCED RESIGNATION IN AUGUST 2007; STAYS UNTIL REPLACED)
	Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management (TITLE CHANGE)	Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management
	Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Global Communications & Public Affairs	Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Global Communications & Public Affairs
Alan Eustace, Vice President, Engineering (NEW)	MOVES TO EMG; GETS SENIOR VP TITLE
Jeff Huber, Vice President, Engineering (NEW)	MOVES TO EMG
W. M. Coughran, Jr., Vice President, Engineering (NEW)	MOVES TO EMG
Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management	MOVES TO EMG; GETS SENIOR VP TITLE
David C. Drummond, Vice President, Corporate Development	MOVES TO EMG; GETS SENIOR VP TITLE
Shona Brown, Vice President, Business Operations	MOVES TO EMG; GETS SENIOR VP TITLE
Elliot Schrage, Vice President, Global Communications and Public Affairs (NEW)	MOVES TO EMG
	Google Management Group (GMG)
Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales (RETURNS TO PAGE)	Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales (MOVES TO GMG)	MOVES TO SALES EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Nikesh Arora, Vice President, European Operations	MOVES TO SALES EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Laszlo Bock Vice President, People Operations (NEW)	MOVES TO GMC, SEE ABOVE
	Adam Bosworth Vice President (NEW)	LEFT GOOGLE SEPTEMBER 2007
	Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Vice President, Asia-Pacific and Latin America Operations	MOVES TO SALES EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist	MOVES TO ENGINEERING EXECS, SEE BELOW
	David Eun Vice President, Content Partnerships (NEW)	MOVES TO SALES EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Dave Girouard Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise (NEW)	MOVES TO SALES EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Salar Kamangar, Vice President, Product Management	MOVES TO PRODUCTS EXECS, SEE BELOW
	David Lawee Vice President, Marketing (NEW)	MOVES TO LEGAL EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Kai-Fu Lee Vice President, Engineering, Product, and Public Affairs & President, Greater China (NEW)	MOVES TO SALES EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Udi Manber Vice President, Engineering (NEW)	MOVES TO ENGINEERING EXECS, SEE BELOW
Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience (NEW)	Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience (MOVES TO GMG)	MOVES TO PRODUCTS EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Douglas Merrill Vice President, Engineering (NEW)	MOVES TO ENGINEERING EXECS, SEE BELOW
	Norio Murakami, Vice President and General Manager, Google Japan (MOVES TO GMG)	MOVES TO SALES EXECS, SEE BELOW
	David Radcliffe Vice President, Real Estate (NEW)	MOVES TO FINANCE EXECS, SEE BELOW
Salar Kamangar, Vice President, Product Management (NEW)	MOVES TO GMG; SEE ABOVE
Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President, Global Online Sales and Operations (NEW)	Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President, Global Online Sales and Operations (MOVES TO GMG)	LEFT GOOGLE MARCH 2008
	Kent Walker Vice President & General Counsel (NEW)	MOVES TO LEGAL EXECS, SEE BELOW
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Vice President, Asia-Pacific and Latin America Operations (NEW)	MOVES TO GMG; SEE ABOVE
Nikesh Arora, Vice President, European Operations (NEW)	MOVES TO GMG; SEE ABOVE
Norio Murakami, Vice President and General Manager, Google Japan (NEW)	MOVES TO GMG; SEE ABOVE
Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist (NEW)	MOVES TO GMG; SEE ABOVE
	Susan Wojcicki Vice President, Product Management (NEW)	MOVES TO PRODUCTS EXECS, SEE BELOW
Miriam Rivera, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel (NEW)	DROPPED FROM PAGE; LIKELY LEFT IN 2006
		Engineering Execs
		Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist
		Stuart Feldman, Vice President, Engineering (NEW)
		Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering (NEW)
		Udi Manber Vice President, Engineering
		Nelson Mattos, Vice President, Engineering, EMEA (NEW)
		Douglas Merrill Vice President, Engineering LEFT GOOGLE APRIL 2008
		Shiva Shivakumar, Vice President and Distinguished Entrepreneur (NEW)
		Alfred Spector, VP of Research and Special Initiatives (NEW)
		Benjamin Sloss Treynor, Vice President, Engineering (NEW)
		Jeff Dean, Google Fellow (NEW)
		Sanjay Ghemawat, Google Fellow (NEW)
		Amit Singhal, Google Fellow (NEW)
		Products Execs
		Salar Kamangar, Vice President, Product Management
		Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience
		Mario Queiroz, Vice President, Product Management, EMEA & Latin America (NEW)
		Lorraine Twohill, Vice President, Marketing, EMEA (NEW)
		Susan Wojcicki Vice President, Product Management
		Sales Execs
		Daniel Alegre, Vice President, Latin America and APLA Business Development (NEW)
		Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America, & Vice President, Google Inc. (TITLE CHANGE)
		Nikesh Arora, President, EMEA Operations & Vice President, Google Inc. (TITLE CHANGE)
		Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, President, Asia Pacific and Latin America Operations (TITLE CHANGE)
		David Eun Vice President, Content Partnerships
		David Fischer, Vice President, Online Sales & Operations (NEW, REPLACES SHERYL SANDBERG)
		Dave Girouard Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise
		John Herlihy, Vice President, Onlinel Sales & Operations, EMEA
		Kai-Fu Lee, Vice President, Google Inc.; President, Greater China (TITLE CHANGE)
		Dr. John Liu, Vice President, Sales, Greater China (NEW)
		Norio Murakami, President & General Manager, Google Japan & Vice President, Google Inc. (TITLE CHANGE)
		Penry Price, VP, Advertising Sales, North America (NEW)
		Dennis Woodside, Vice President, UK, Benelux and Ireland (NEW)
		Legal Execs
		Kent Walker Vice President & General Counsel
		David Lawee Vice President, Corporate Development (TITLE CHANGE)
		Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development (NEW)
		Finance Execs
		Brent Callinicos, Vice President & Treasurer (NEW)
		Francois Delepine, Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis (NEW)
		Mark Fuchs, Vice President of Finance and Chief Accountant (NEW)
		Julio Pekarovic, Vice President, Global Sales Finance (NEW)
		David Radcliffe, Vice President, Real Estate
		Business Operations Execs
		Francoise Brougher, Vice President, Business Operations (NEW)
21 Execs	31 Execs	54 Execs

As with the other charts, I've repeated the last year of the previous one, 2006, so that comparisons can continue.

In 2007, we see a major change. Google execs were divided into two groups. First there's the Executive Management Group, of EMG. These are the most senior executives. There's no pecking order in how they are listed after the top trio of Schmidt-Page-Brin. Everyone else is listed alphabetically by last name, regardless of job title. All elevated to the EMG had been previously listed on the management page before. Several gained promotion to senior vice president level (Brown, Drummond, Eustace, Hölzle, & Rosenberg). Hölzle is notable for being the only one to return to the executive page after an absence. He was on the original executive page way back in 2000 as a VP; he changed to being a Google Fellow in 2001 and was dropped in 2004. His return reflected gaining SVP in addition to his Google Fellow title.

Other executives are listed under the "Google Management Group" heading. These include all the new additions from 2005 (such as Mayer, Kamangar, Sandberg, among others). In addition, many new execs get added, such as Susan Wojcicki and Douglas Merrill, among others. Only one person goes, Miriam Rivera, formerly listed as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. I don't recall any news coming out about her leaving Google. But she definitely left at some point, currently serving on the Stanford University Board Of Trustees.

In 2008, another big shake-up. The executive page listed over 50 people, more than ever before.

The EMG section remained largely the same. The only addition was Laszlo Bock, Vice President, People Operations, jumping into it. David Drummond got a title change, picking up Chief Legal Officer to add to his SVP title. Jeff Huber gained an SVP title, as did CFO George Reyes. Reyes, of course, also announced he was resigning in August 2007. More than half-a-year later, he continues to serve and seek a replacement. Forbes looked at that challenge back in December.

The Google Management Group section added in 2007 did not survive. Instead, all the execs there other than three departures I'll come to were added to one of several groups: Engineering, Product, Sales, Legal, Finance, & Business Operations. Within each group, people were listed alphabetically by name, regardless of title.

I said earlier that engineers sat on top of the Google pecking order. Anyone familiar with Google culture will tell you this, and the order of the groups reflects it. Engineering comes first. That just alphabetical? Sure, Product and Sales would come next, but then Legal & Business Operations ruins that pattern.

Within the group are names long on the page, such as Vint Cerf. But many new names were added, such as engineering VP Stuart Feldman and Shiva Shivakumar, who is also Google's only Distinguished Entrepreneur. Still listed today but soon to go missing is Douglas Merrill, confirmed to be leaving and expected to head to EMI. Missing from the group is Adam Bosworth, who left in September 2007.

In the Product group are (again) familiar names (Kamangar, Mayer, Wojcicki) along with two new ones (Mario Queiroz, Vice President, Product Management, EMEA & Latin America, and Lorraine Twohill, Vice President, Marketing, EMEA).

Sales is the biggest group (13 people) outside the EMG itself (14 people), just edging out Engineering (12) and Products (5). Lots of new additions to the page show up. Notable is David Fischer, Vice President, Online Sales & Operations, filling the spot vacated by Sheryl Sandberg in March 2008, though Fischer doesn't get the "Global" moniker that Sandberg's title carried. Also notable are some additions for areas outside the US, such as Daniel Alegre, Vice President, Latin America and APLA Business Development.

We also see the first "President" titles showing up beyond those that the two founders carry. Indeed, while I previously said that at Google, engineers rule -- on a title basis, it's the sales side that would seem to outrank. Tim Armstrong, Nikesh Arora, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, and Norio Murakami all carry a president's title, joining Kai-Fu Lee, who already had one. That's six sales-side presidents to only one on the engineering side (Sergey Brin) and one on the product side (Larry Page). Of course, most of these sales presidents oversee areas outside the US (China, Japan, Europe & Middle East; Asia & Latin America), and there might be regulatory or other reasons why it's helpful to have someone at least carry a president's title.

In the Legal group, one new exec is added (Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development) and David Lawee stays on the executive page but seems to make a lateral move, becoming VP of corporate development. Previously, he was VP of marketing. Oddly, this means that Google seems to be without a VP of marketing, at the moment.

In the Finance group, four new execs get named in addition to David Radcliffe, Vice President, Real Estate, who was previously on the page. And Francoise Brougher, Vice President, Business Operations, becomes the sole person listed in the Business Operations Group.

Departures, In Summary

So with all the talk of a brain drain, how's it looking in terms of executives on the Google management page that have gone? Year-by-year:

• 2000: 0 departures
• 2001: 0 departures
• 2002: 0 departures
• 2003: 0 departures
• 2004: 1 departure (Cindy McCaffrey; this was also Google's IPO year)
• 2005: 1 departure (Wayne Rosing)
• 2006: 1 departure (Mariam Rivera -- may have left in 2007)
• 2007: 1 departure (Adam Bosworth; George Reyes announced departure; Louis Monier also left and may have been listed on the page at a time point I didn't check)
• 2008: 2 departures (Sandberg & Merrill)
• Total To Date: 6 departures

That's it -- only six named execs to depart (though there might be a few more, if they were named on pages between the time points I picked). Frankly, that seems a great retention record to me, four years after the company went public, when plenty of the execs are pre-IPO and wealthy. But as I said in my post today about Merrill's departure, I'm sure Google will continue to see execs go because they want to show they can succeed on their own, out from under Google's shadow.

Eventually, Google might also suffer Yahoo's problem, that post-IPO execs leave not just for the challenge but because they potentially can make IPO money by working for actual start-ups, rather than a former start-up that simply can't deliver the same perks (payoff, lack of bureaucracy).

By the way, be sure to check out this cool Google organization map that's being maintained at the Cogmap wiki.

Via [http://searchengineland.com/080402-170216.php]