YBO Interactive Blog

Here is a really funny clip made by comedy.com.
The fact that this video clip is hosted on YouTube proves that the people in Google still got some sense of humor left.

Google reported in the official google blog that they are on their way out of China.

This is unbelievable.  The amount of traffic Google is going to loose as a result of this move is enormous.  The revenue they will loose as a result of this move is still unknown, but I guess that out of the $5.94 billion they made in Q32009 a few hundred millions came from China. I’m not sure that investors will like it, however I’m sure that companies that provide services that allow internet users to use Google from China will be very happy with this news.

My mom just called, saying something is wrong with her computer. After a very short investigation I understood that it’s not the computer that is not working, but it is Google that seem to be broken.

After I checked Google myself I smiled

Today, Oct 7th, 57 years ago, the Bar-code was invented.

Like many other occasions, Google changed their logo to respect this day.

So if you find a strange Google logo, don’t worry. They are probably trying to say something…

(The answer is Yes.)

I have just looked at the Google Q2 2009 Results and thought about some questions people been asked me like ” Is Adwords really worth it?” “Isn’t that a waste of money?” “Isn’t that full of fraud?”

The answer is this: During Q2 2009 Google-owned sites (Google.com, Gmail, Youtube etc.) generated revenues of $3.65 billion. Does that answer the question? Three and a half billion dollars think that it is worth it. If it wouldn’t be worth it, do you think that Google would have made so much money?

I will write another post soon about why I think Adwords is a must tool for every business.  Can’t do it today. Got to run. Lot’s of work!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Madams and Monsieurs:

I have officially became a Google Amabassador!

(applause)

Unfortunately although I’m an ambassador, I still can not get you a Visa to visit the GooglePlex, and I have nothing to do with Google’s foreign affairs…

However, there is one good thing you can get from my embassy: Google gave me a pack of 200 NIS vouchers for Google Adwords. So if you are new to Google Adwords, and thought about trying it, whether if you are a YBO Interactive customer, or not, I’ll be happy to get you one of those vouchers, just to try Google Adwords and see how powerfull this tool is.

This is how these vouchers look like:

Let me know if you need one.

How stable is Google?

Every now and then, we get the news that Gmail is down. I have personally felt only some of those outages, but the news is full of those stories.

And now, if you want to know exactly how stable Google is, here is the official answer.

Google has a site that shows the status of all Google apps in real time, with a few weeks history.

I have never seen a tier one company that is so open with this info. Usually companies keep their stability issues for themselves, hiding their downtime, hoping that nobody noticed.

Again, as said more than once, here is another proof that Google is different.

Isn’t that a lousy picture? well, that’s the best I could do with my phone…

It was a very nice day at Google, I’ll write a few posts about what I’ve heard, it was quite interesting to hear what the Google guys think about what we do every day.

I also got quite a few $50 Adwords Coupons for my customers, so if you need one, feel free to contact me and I’ll send you the code. It was funny to hear that in Poland and Turkey the guys that got the coupons from Google sold them on ebay on the same day… so mines aren’t for sale, just giveaways

I have to say that when I looked at the Ben&Jerry’s freezer in the GooglePlex, I thought about that VISA commercial when Keren Mor says “Why do I deserve all that Good?…” It sure looks like it is fun to work there…

SearchEngineJournal has a story about this guy that gave the keys to his business to Google. Well, not exactly the keys, but he used a Gmail account for all his business emails, and had used the same account for his customers Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools and his own Google Adsense.
And then one day he woke up and found out that Google disabled his Gmail account.

From that moment on, not only his Adsense income stopped and he couldn’t access any email he kept in his Gmail Inbox, but all the emails sent to him by his customers were routed to a voided account.
I can’t even think how to start handling such a crisis. What do you do first? Well, I have a few ideas but that’s for a different post.
The question I’m asking is what the hell where you thinking about when you gave Google the keys to your business? (Are you out of your mind?)

If you still want to use a Google account for your business there are a few things you should do:
1. Make sure you backup your account on a regular basis.

2. Get your own domain and use Google Apps. This way in case of emergency you can change your MX Records back you to your original hosting whiting a few hours.

3. Never use your personal account for your Google Adwords.

4. Never use your personal account for your Google Analytics.

5. Never Ever use your personal account for your Google Adsense.

Don’t let them catch you unprepared.

Google had recently launch a few extremely innovative features, some of them put a big smile on my face. I love creativity, and I love innovation. Google seem to be really good at both.One of those features is the Are you sure it is a good idea to send emails when you’re drunk gmail option, which asks you some math questions in case you are sending emails very late at night.

Another one is the forgotten attachment detector, that checks if there is really an attachment attached to your email in case your message includes any text regarding an attached file.

For the last example for today, check my latest securiteam post, where I wrote about the way Google Chrome handles https certificates that expired. 

These kind of developments remind me every day that the people that make Google are simply brilliant. It is not just another interenet company. This one is something else. 

I was playing with Google’s Keyword Tool quite a lot lately, and found something really strange.

There are a few keywords that seem to have exactly 1,000,000 searches per month. The thing is, it just doesn’t make sense that both “optimization“, “internet marketing” and also “seo” are searched exactly the same number of times.

Look at the results below:

These are the results for “Internet Marketing”

These are the results for “seo”

And that’s for “optimization”

Does this make any sense at all?

Is Google playing games without telling us about it?

Did you find more million searches keywords like these?