After reading a post by Randfish on the SEOmoz Blog about Google showing an icon beside the ads of merchants who offer Google Checkout to their website visitors, I decided to conduct a couple of searches to see if we can see this in Canada.

When Google was beta testing Click to Call and showing a phone beside certain ads, we could not see this when doing a search in Canada.

Apparently we are not seeing the Google Checkout icon either, but in the process of looking for it I discovered that AdWords is showing geographical locations under some ads. The geo-location so far is city or province and is only showing on Canadian ads (I am searching using Google.ca but have not limited my choices to Canada only).

See the screenshot below, for a search on “affordable furniture” without quotes.

Social Networking has been all the rage for a while now and it has been proven to help with SEO.

I have been struggling with the most efficient ways to manage a multitude of information that I often want to share:

• pictures
• RSS Feeds
• Bookmarks
• General Online Resources

I currently use a directory of Internet Marketing Resources, a blog, Flickr and Netvibes.

The limitations that I find are that I am not part of a network on Del.icio.us and therefore am not sharing my bookmarks with others. Perhaps I should find a way to incorporate this into the DriveTraffic website? Does Del.icio.us make the Internet Marketing Resources redundant?

Is there a newsreader that would allow me to share my feeds with you in much the same way that Del.icio.us does?

How about commenting here and letting us know your opinion?

Google has recently indicated that they would like to see a privacy policy on the landing pages of websites that are running AdWords campaigns. Surely one could extend this conclusion to organic search as well :-)

I did some digging and found some sample privacy policies for you:

• The BBB online offers a Sample Privacy Notice
• AllBusiness.com also offers a Sample Privacy Policy for $25
• W3C’s Make Your Web Site P3P Compliant is a bit Greek to me but it may just be helpful for you :-)

We all know that you should create customized landing pages for your various PPC campaigns.

Google (a while back) implemented a quality score but just recently incorporated landing page quality into the algorithm which provides this quality score. Sites with poor landing pages will be forced to pay more per click than another site with a “quality” landing page.

What is a quality landing page? Google AdWords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines offers a few pointers such as:

• Provide relevant and substantial content
• Treat a user’s personal information responsibly
• Develop an easily navigable site

Google does go into a bit more detail on each of these pointers, but there are various other conversations going on around the internet that elaborate on landing page quality as well including Analyzing the Google AdWords Landing Page Algorithm at Search Engine Watch.

One of the more interesting items I have taken out this is the privacy policy, which I will discuss in a separate post :-)

Organic Spam is a new term that has been crossing my plate frequently. Think of it as search engine spam, in the organic or non paid portion of the search engine results.

I had recently heard about a company that was able to thousands of domain names into Google within I”ll say a couple of weeks of purchasing the domain names. When I was following the story, that particular company had had their URLs removed.

I don’t know if it is the same company but a search for “recipe zucchini fingers” brought up a couple of sites that were definitely organic spam. The first giveaway was the URL (8359.cooking.wzj–m3z.org, 12121.food.qza–w25.org, 4810.cooking.wzj–m3z.org)…just out of curiousity I clicked on one of the URLs and sure enough, a page of sponsored links.

While it is irritating as a searcher to come across a site like this, crappy web sites have long been part of the mix of sites that come in the top results for any query. As an SEO Consultant, I have mixed thoughts - 1. Such sites do interfere with a clients ability to be well ranked for a particular query. 2. However, such a site is not a competitor as they do not have relevant information on their website - merely links to other sites.

One part of me has to say “good for you” and realize that owners of such sites are likely making a mint from people clicking on the sponsored links - I for one did not pad anybody’s pocketbook today :-)