Michael Gracie

I have seem a lot of websites and services playing the ad hedging game. Some buy high priced ad words, and sell them for even higher prices as part of more “comprehensive” offerings, while others simply purchase certain keywords directing to their sites, and then pepper their style sheets with enough high priced keywords to ensure some very lucrative clicks. But I really wish I had seen this latest news coming, so I could gloat over my prescience, and ramble on about arbitrage possibilities in world’s latest commodity market (web ads that is).
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The blogging community has been under heat for its favorable position in search results. The talk has been to segregate blogs from other results, and some search engines have already taken this approach. Bloggers have cried foul, saying such a practice will kill their traffic. All the while, the major search engines have huddled together, promoting initiatives such as rel=”no follow” in hopes to stem the tide of comment and trackback spam, while the bloggers push back, saying the search engines should fix their own problems.

Each side has its valid points. Unfortunately, the latest “scam” involving them all is going to leave black eyes on all parties, and I suspect the little guys (the bloggers, that is), are going to take the brunt of the blame if mainstream journalists have their way with the spin.

Yes, I am talking about the Wordpress “scandal.”
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Eweek recently presented an article entitled Boggled by Google: Wall Street Way Off Mark. I say forget the analysts, and good for Google. Keep’em guessing boys, while you continue to beat the pants off even your own internal estimates. The game that is generally played between analysts and the companies they follow is getting turned on its head here. Google has a complex business model; one that a white-shoed analyst with a fresh Harvard MBA is going to have tough time picking apart (that is, unless he or she also has a PhD in mathematics from MIT).
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