SEO UPDATES

Google, currently the most popular search system, is today rolling out its new advertising program. The L.A. Times reports that Google intends to capitalize on the $9.6 billion online ads generated last year with its new program:

Advertisers will be able to search Google’s database for websites relating to specific subjects, then bid on how much they’re willing to pay to place either text or display ads on each site. The program builds on a limited test of graphical ads launched on partners’ websites late last year.

For some, such as TheStreet.com’s Kevin Kelleher, Google’s move signals a return to a past marketing model–at least, in appearance. This is because

The plans would further detach many of the ads Google sells from its search engine, expanding the company’s role of broker to advertisers seeking to place ads on third-party Web sites.

Google, in other words, is looking more and more like an advertising company than, as they oft described themselves, an information dispenser. In doing so, they are stepping up their challenge of Yahoo!’s, AOL’s, and MSN’s plans to dominate the online advertising space. Yet Google may endanger their own lead as a search system by changing Internet users’ perception of the company. Today, Google is highly respected for the simplicity of its product(s) and for seemingly adhering to the philosophy they have promulgated, “Don’t be evil.” By focusing on advertising, however, Google may be viewed as more concerned with the bottom dollar than the quality of its information-dispensing products. Google may not quite be evil yet, but with their expanding forays into new adverising programs they’re certainly less angelic than they’ve heretofore presented themselves.