ByTheProgrammer » Google

Google says : no more Adsense referrals program

Frédérick Dubois — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:24:25 +0000

According the the Google Adsense Blog :

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August.

Even though it’s sad news for many people, I really do understand the “focus” problem they had. We have to deal with this reality everyday and it causes many headaches…

Bye bye referrals! Now let’s hope the adsense team will be able to use all this extra focus to offer us an even better service!

Google Analytics on Hold

Frédérick Dubois — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:27:52 +0000

For those of you webmasters who are using Google Analytics to monitor your website’s stats and who are wondering why nobody came to visit them today, note that the stats service is currently on hold. Neither your stats or your visitors are lost!
There is a temporary reporting delay within Google Analytics accounts. For most accounts, reporting is current through this past Saturday night. Please note that no data will be lost – data will continue to be collected and processed during this time.

Google Analytics Blog »

Dell.ca’s New Adwords Campaign

Frédérick Dubois — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:18:03 +0000

Here is a Google Adword I’ve just found on the blog…

I really don’t know if it’s a bug or a very brilliant ad, for I’m sure it’s clicked a lot!

Interesting Article About Google’s Search Engine

Frédérick Dubois — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:49:53 +0000

I’ve just read a very interesting article about Google on the NY Times website entitled Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine, have a look!

Read the article »

Use of GMarkerManager disappointing on Internet Explorer IE6

Frédérick Dubois — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:21:31 +0000

Google added recently the GMarkerManager class to the Google Maps API. This class is used to manage visibility of hundreds of markers on a map, based on the map’s current viewport and zoom level.

We are actually working on a new version of the Map search for ByTheOwner and I was very optimistic about this new api class. It is very cool and easy to use, but I unfortunately reached it’s limits pretty fast. I was able to display my provinces and regions markers “A1″. The cities then came up with a little more difficulty. But the 4000 homes for sale markers were too much. Under Mozilla Firefox it wasn’t that bad but IE really didn’t like it.

At this point, I am using the MarkerManager class combined with a php clustering. Once you zoom enough to be in the properties or cities level, I add markers only with coordinates around the viewport. An ajax call reloads the markers when the user pans or zooms enough.

Google Maps API documentation for GMarkerManager »

What’s the difference between GMarkerManager and MarkerManager ?

GMarkerManager is native in the Google Maps API. MarkerManager, on the other hand, needs a javascript inclusion.

Google opened up the GMarkerManager code for external developpers to implement new function in the maps api. New functions like clearAllMarkers are available in the open source version.
http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2007/03/new-open-source-utility-library-for.html

Frédérick Dubois, ByTheOwner.com
Web development and programming

Get a quick view of a website’s presence in Google’s index

Frédérick Dubois — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:08:16 +0000

Here is a little trick to use if you’d like to know more about a website’s indexation on Google.

The “link:” option

This option allows the webmasters to see rapidly what are the websites, known by googlebot, that are linking to a particular website.

The “site:” option

The site option, is used like this : “site:bytheowner.com“. This search returns all the pages indexed by GoogleBot of the website entered after site:. You can also enter keywords at the beginning like the following examples to search for something on a specific website.

If you’d like to read more about this function, visit Google’s Blog at :
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/using-site-command.html

Frédérick Dubois, ByTheOwner.com
Web development and programming

Viacom sues Google $1 billion for YouTube video content

Frédérick Dubois — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:48:28 +0000

Viacom, owner of MTV and Comedy Central, complains that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Google said that it and YouTube had yet to see the lawsuit but added they feel “confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree.”

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion last year.