This is kinda an experiment post for the phrase "GOOG," which is Google's new ticker symbol.

Google started accepting bids in their dutch auction IPO today. Some of the financial sites have added them and are awaiting the IPO. When searching Google for "GOOG" there is not much competition yet.

Incidentally somebody owns the www.goog.com website and there is nothing but a "welcome to GOOG" statement there.

I bet a top ranking for the term GOOG would bring in a ton of traffic in the next month. My absolutely random GOOG opening price guess: $94.37. ;)

[udpate: when I first checked this page it was #53 for GOOG, it was up to #8 for GOOG after the first day of promotion. :) I have not spent any money promoting this GOOG page, but have pointed a few forum sig file links at it. If you want to help please link to this page using GOOG in your link text.

I have a few more free promotional ideas in mind ;) ]

Several updates below...

Yahoo!'s Overture & Google Settle Patent Dispute

In the wake of a Google IPO this is a fairly quiet press release.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Google will take a license to U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361 and several related patents, held by Yahoo!'s wholly-owned subsidiary, Overture, and Yahoo! dismissed its patent lawsuit against Google. The two parties have also resolved a dispute regarding shares issuable to Yahoo! pursuant to a warrant to purchase Google shares in connection with a 2000 services agreement.

In connection with the settlement of the warrant dispute, the patent lawsuit, and in payment for the license, Google issued shares of its Class A common stock to Yahoo!. Press Release

More Info on GOOG IPO News...

The offering price is now expected to be between $85 and $95 per share. Google expects to sell 14,142,135 shares of Class A common stock in the offering as originally filed. The selling shareholders are reducing the shares they expect to sell to approximately 5.5 million shares in view of this new price range. This is a reduction of approximately 6.1 million shares. In addition, the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase approximately 2.9 million additional shares of Class A common stock at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments.

Google and the underwriters requested that the Securities and Exchange
Commission declare the registration statement effective on Wednesday,
August 18, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time).

I am sticking with my absolutely random GOOG opening price guess: $94.37. ;)

Google IPO Share Price Set at $85

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Google (GOOG) on Wednesday set the price for its just-reduced 19.6 million share IPO at $85 a share, for proceeds of $1.66 billion in one of the Internet sector's biggest IPOs ever. The company had earlier cut its price range to $85 to $95 a share from $108 to $135 and the total offering from 25.7 million shares. source: CBS MarketWatch

GOOG Opening Price

100 via eTrade (for some reason Yahoo! was showing 140 though)

...check it out here (quotes have a 20 minute delay)

What is Google AdWord Generator?
Jeff Alderson of Xybercode recently created a new Google AdWords tool.

His tool helps you create Google AdWords ads from a prepopulated set of successful marketing phrases. Google AdWord Generator takes a list of over 5,000 sales terms in 65 categories and creates various AdWords ads on the fly.
Not all of the ads are going to be a perfect fit for what you are trying to do, but by glancing at a few dozen variations (they show 8 variations at a time and take less than a second to generate another 8 ads) you may be able to find a few great ad ideas.

Importance of Ad Copy
Many people do not realize that a large part of the sales cycle occurs before people even click on your ads.

People see what they want to see and taste what they want to taste. If you give people a stronger presell they are more likely to convert. By changing my ad copy on one of my AdWords ads I saw my conversion rate go from 1.5 to 3.5%. John Caples once saw an ad pull 19.5 times better than another.

Is Google AdWord Generator worth $97?
If you are serious about Google AdWords and internet marketing then $97 means next to nothing.

Google AdWord Generator alone will not make you rich, but if it helps you create just a few quality ads then this software will pay for itself in no time at all.

Who is Google AdWord Generator Best For?
You still need to find the right products and do keyword targeting, but Google AdWord Generator is a good fit for:

• People who struggle to write ad creatives.

• Affiliate marketers who market tons of different products and need to make ads quick.
• People who are writing ads for large ecommerce sites and need to write tons of ads.
• This software could likely even help experienced ad copywriters think of more good ad creatives quicker.

Google AdWord Generator Bonuses
I think the sales copy is a bit overdone and some of the bonuses are more about getting you to buy more stuff versus giving you good quality bonuses. I recommend not buying the stuff for sale within the bonus products.

On a whole the Google AdWord Generator is a useful product which will surely pay for itself over time.

Other Copywriting Tips
Right now I am reading Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples and would recommend reading it to anyone in marketing.

If You Buy Google AdWord Generator...
Realize that there is a learning cycle to the Google AdWords game and not everyone will make money right away.

If you are new to Google AdWords you will want to read a report filled with tips on how to use AdWords. A few months back I created a free one ready for your download (I update it regularly). Additionally I would recommend the reports wrote by Andrew Goodman and Perry Marshall.

The Google AdWord Generator comes with a 120 day money back guarantee.

Google share price to go for $108 to $135. Brin and Page each plan to sell enough stock to likely have over $100,000,000 in cash each.

Google has set up their IPO page where you can acquire a bidder ID number.

https://www.ipo.google.com/

Ask Jeeves also just signed on with Google through 2007.

Some Automated Bots are off the mark. When I linked into my page about Traffic Power & Cold Call SEO Google decided to reject the ad because I did not state my affiliate status? Clearly this was the action of an automated bot or a person who did not look at the page...I know that sometimes they do review pages because one time on my other site they sent me an email about a page for speaking of the AdSense ads which "were off to the side." Clearly though this is not an affiliate ad...

Campaign: 'Campaign #16,' Ad Group: 'Traffic Power'
----------------------------------------------

AD TEXT:

Cold Call SEO is Bad
Were you recently cold called by
someone selling SEO services?
SEObook.com/cold-call-seo-facts

Action taken: Suspended - Pending Revision
Issue(s): Identify Affiliate Status

Google has made a change to it's algorithm which is making it much harder (or more expensive) to outright manipulate it's search results. I believe the discussion started by SEO Guy over at SEO Chat. From there he posted it on the Search Engine Roundtable weblog. The idea has since been talked about at most of the major SEO forums.

Garret French of WebProWorld wrote a synopsis article quoting some of the more common theories.

John Scott had a talk with a fellow who used to work with Krishna Bharat (Google engineer who worked on Hilltop) at another company (not Google).

"The probation does not apply to new sites. It applies to links. When the algorithm was deployed certain older links were grandfathered in. After that, links will be (are being) given partial credit, and be essentially on "probation".

It applies to links, not sites. And the age of the link is not the only factor. The IP range of the links and other considerations are made, and the person who I discussed this with said that Krishna Bharat is at Google primary to develop and implement this new algorithm. It is supposed to radically change the way links are evaluated...

Disclaimer: This is my opinion and that's all it is."

This will allow new sites to still quickly gain PageRank as displayed, but ranking for competitive terms via quick link purchase is becoming exponentially more expensive.