Ask.com supports the open-format Sitemaps protocol. Once you have prepared the sitemap, add the sitemap auto-discovery directive to robots.txt as follows:

SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

The sitemap location should be the full sitemap URL. Alternatively, you can also submit your sitemap through the ping URL:

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

Please note that sitemap submissions do not guarantee the indexing of URLs. To learn more about the protocol, please visit the Sitemaps web site at http://www.sitemaps.org.

Source: about.ask.com

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the expansion of the size and the scope of its Google Print Ads™ advertising initiative. The program started in November 2006 with a test that included 50 newspapers and a small group of advertisers. Since then the program has grown to more than 225 newspapers representing 32 of the top 35 DMAs and a combined circulation of almost 30 million. Participating newspaper publishers include E.W. Scripps, Freedom Communications, Hearst Newspapers, GateHouse Media, Gannett, MediaNews Group, The New York Times, The Seattle Times Company, Tribune Publishing, and Washington Post among others. In addition, Google Print Ads is now available to hundreds of thousands of United States-based advertisers who currently have a Google AdWords™ account.

Google Print Ads enables agencies and advertisers of all sizes to easily plan and buy traditional newspaper media in both national and local newspapers within a single, web-enabled interface. The platform enables marketers to reach new audiences in ways that are relevant for newspaper readers and cost-efficient for advertisers and publishers. And newspaper publishers can increase their bottom line by adding new customers from Google’s network of advertisers, many of whom are new to newspaper advertising. Newspaper publishers will continue to work directly with their loyal base of advertising customers.

"We are always looking to extend our editorial products to new advertisers while also driving additional revenue to our business," said Todd Haskell, vice president of business development, advertising, The New York Times. "Google Print Ads has brought in new advertisers who were either too small to consider advertising in a national newspaper or who hadn’t tried print advertising because their business was largely online. And Google Print Ads gives us the flexibility and control to set our own pricing, so there is never a conflict."

"Over the past months, we have worked closely with our newspaper partners to design our Print Ads program to meet their needs and the needs of marketers," said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer. "Newspapers are an important source of information and a powerful communication tool. With Google Print Ads we will bring more advertisers to newspapers which will ultimately benefit readers, publishers and advertisers."

Google Print Ads

Google Print Ads (http://www.google.com/adwords/printads) is an extension of AdWords that is designed to bring new efficiency and accountability to the buying and selling of print media. Advertisers and agencies access Google Print Ads through the AdWords interface and interactively plan a targeted media buy-in up to hundreds of newspapers across the United States. Once they have identified target newspapers, they enter a bid for the available ad space and upload a creative. Newspaper publishers then view the bids, and either approve or reject them, with an option to provide direct feedback to the advertisers. Detailed reports and electronic tear-sheets provide accountability, and Google automates billing and payments for further transactional efficiency. By creating this dynamic and transparent two-way buying and selling process, Google Print Ads gives flexibility and control to both the publisher and the advertiser.

"Our website is an effective way to acquire new customers. By adding newspaper advertising to our online initiatives, overall impressions on purchased keywords increased 20% over the five day period immediately following the print run," said Simon McIver, director of marketing acquisition at Covad. "I am a big convert. Google Print Ads allows us to use newspaper advertising tactically to improve the return on our marketing dollars."

Google AdSense helps newspapers online
Google also announced today that it has renewed its agreement with Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive to deliver search results, search and contextually targeted advertising to Washingtonpost.com readers. Google’s AdSense™ service (http://www.google.com/adsense) allows newspaper publishers to easily and effectively monetize their websites by connecting them to Google’s network of hundreds of thousands of advertisers. With text, display and video formats, advertisers can communicate with potential customers in rich and dynamic ways and specifically target newspaper websites through the AdSense site targeting feature.

For more information on Google Print Ads please go to http://www.google.com/adwords/printads

Have you ever opened up your Google Reader account or personalized Google Hompage and spotted a feed that you didn't remember subscribing to? If you have then it might have been due to a security issue with the way Google handles RSS subscription requests.

Clicking on the subscribe using Google button on most blogs takes you to a page saying "Google offers two different ways to keep up-to-date with your favorite sites" with the option to click on either "Add to Google homepage" or "Add to Google Reader".

The problem is that unscrupulous websites can copy the links to Add to Google homepage or Add to Google Reader and open them up in an IFRAME for every visitor, meaning that anybody who visits their website while signed in to a Google account will suddenly have subscribed to the RSS feed on both Google Reader and the Google homepage automatically.

All a site needs to do is add the following code to their pages, replacing the blogstorm feed with their own feed, and they get a bunch of new readers.

<iframe width="1" height="1" border="0" scrolling="0"
src="http://www.google.com/ig/setp?et=GCZWwdGf&
source=ign_&url=http://
www.google.com/ig&n_25=url%3Dhttp://
feeds.feedburner.com/blogstorm%26val%3D3"></iframe>

<iframe width="1" height="1" border="0" scrolling="0"
src="http://www.google.com/ig/addtoreader?et=
4x_zc136&source=ign_&feedurl=
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogstorm&
feedtitle=BlogStorm&url=http://www.google
.com/ig/add%3Ffeedurl%3Dhttp://feeds.feed
burner.com/blogstorm"></iframe>

It is worth noting that none of the other RSS readers I tested had this vulnerability.

Demo
If you want to see the security issue in action, and are signed into your Google account, click this link (http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/auto-subscribe.html). Please be aware that this will auto subscribe you to the BlogStorm RSS feed so if you don't want to know about internet marketing and general web design related topics you might want to be careful.

Why would somebody want to do this?

Now most of you are saying "Why would a blogger want to get readers in this way?"

Well, there are two answers. The first is simple: blogs like to show off a large number of Feedburner subscribers so if you have no morals, a low quality blog and want lots of subscribers, this is the way to get them.

The second is a bit more sneaky. Imagine you are doing some affiliate marketing, what is the most valuable piece of real estate on the web? Where would huge corporations pay millions per day to get an advert? The answer is right below the search box on the Google homepage.

With this exploit thousands of people could suddenly see your best offers plastered right underneath the Google search box that they use hundreds of times per week. Some people will just assume Google put them there, many will trust Google's recommendation and buy the products.

I wonder how long this will take to get fixed?


By: Patrick Altoft - Source: blogstorm.co.uk

A camera-toting tipster saw what appeared to be a giant armada of Chevy Cobalt cars in the Google parking lot, getting ready to take pictures of the entire world (or thereabouts) with special 360° cameras. The tipster says he followed a Google camera van as it cruised back to its Mountain View, California, lair yesterday after that van finished a session of picture taking for Google's Streetview navigation site. Exactly what did he see?

It was an entire fleet of at least 30 brand-new Chevy Cobalt cars parked behind the building, most without license plates yet. As you can see in the pictures above, each had a metal device attached to its top, which looks suspiciously like a vertical extension for mounting Google's Streetview 360° camera.

Our telltale tipster tells us he thinks Google is "preparing their invasion of US cities with an armada of C.C.C.Cs (Chevy Cobalt Camera Cars). I guess Cobalts are cheap but they certainly will be conspicuous. Maybe that's what they want."

It looks like an auspicious addition to the camera car fleet, but it's going to take more than thirty Chevy Cobalts to take a portrait of the entire Earth, or even of the Silicon Valley. However, with Google's zillions, just about anything's possible. It's got its eye on you; the end is near.

Source: gizmodo.com