Google’s Pretty Shrewd

Google’s starting to remind me of the megalomaniac Brain, from Pinky and the Brain. They’re recently made a new push into the advertising game with their AdSense program:

Google AdSense is for web publishers who want to make more revenue from advertising on their site while maintaining editorial quality. AdSense delivers text-based Google AdWords ads that are relevant to what your readers see on your pages — and Google pays you.

So that program allows little guys, like me, to earn a few nickels by placing some unobtrusive ads on their sites. (This program was attractive enough for me to try it out. I figure that maybe I can cover the cost of my web server hosting.) But some of the implications of Google’s program are what really interests me. I’ve posted before about the companies that are gunning for Google. Well, it appears that Google is fighting back just as hard. Google has become well known for its pay-per-click text ads along side their search results. Well now that they are serving ads for all these other (small) sites through AdSense, they’ll be serving ads for people using other search engines as well. (The big guys, who get over 20 million hits/month can use a different Google program to serve ads.)

For example, I’ve recently noticed an increase in the number of hits to my sites from Yahoo! Search. Yahoo is making a serious run at Google. Even though they currently rely on Google for their results, they’ll likely switch over to Inktomi soon. I also noticed that Yahoo! has added a little search box to the top of their Mail, Address Book, Calendar, and Notepad pages. But here’s where it gets interesting – the people that hit my site from Yahoo! will see ads by Google on my site. (My ads are only on the pages for individual posts, which is where the search engines usually send people.)

In addition to that, Google has added a pop-up blocker to their Google Toolbar. So that’s a way for them to stop some competing (and annoying) ads, while directing more traffic their way. Like the AdSense program, Google is making it attractive for the end-user to use their products. Interesting times.