Although the cost of online publishing is lower than ever, several things are not to be overlooked.

Take web hosting. There maybe lack of evidence that the reliability and availability of web hosting service has an impact on search engine ranking, but still there are many reasons why we should not cut cost on this.

A forum user posted a real experience like below:

Server Down for 2 days can affect rankings?

About 2-3 of weeks or so ago our server was down for about two days… We were ranked #1 and top 10 on a bunch of relevant keywords. Our PR went up in the past month or so from a 4 to a 5 on a couple of pages on our site. This Monday I noticed we dropped of the radar on most rankings but 2 or 3 main ones where we dropped from #1 to #4 and #10… Could the server being down have caused all these?

You might be surprised that from the thread at least three users confirmed the same thing had happened to them at least once.

To be specific, the original poster reported lost ranking in Google, but others have also experienced the same thing in MSN Search.

My advice is that if you are serious about online business, get a stable web hosting service. Go shop around. You might find the best you can get with the bucks you have in your budget.

If the lost in search engine ranking is not enough to whip yourself into buying the best service you can get, consider the lost of visitors and revenue every time the server’s down.

I have proven it again and again. Consider web hosting cost as an investment. Before long, the cost will be covered and you save yourself from the headache and other technical issues, which in turn save you time in doing other more important things.

[Digital Point]

Steve Mitgang, Senior Vice President of the Yahoo! Search Marketing for ad products and platforms, had announced the launch of YSM blog last week. As Yahoo! introduces the new marketing platform to the public, he thinks it is also a perfect time to jump feet-first into the blogosphere.

Yahoo’s new advertising platform, codename Panama, was and still is receiving a lot of buzz lately. Yahoo is converting over the first group of advertisers to the system and soon the majority of advertisers by the end of the year.

Currently the system is available by invitation for U.S. advertisers.

Here are a few changes that will be available in short term:

• A new control panel. Completely redesigned control panel.
• Really fast ad activation. Yahoo claims that your ads should now go live within minutes.
• Easy ad testing. You’ll be able to test multiple versions of an ad to find the message that works best.
• Accurate geo-targeting. Target your customers broadly or narrowly on a geographic basis, and customize your ads to control costs.
• Campaign budgeting, forecasting and scheduling. You’ll be able to create, budget and schedule your individual advertising campaigns for greater control over your advertising strategy and spending.
• See-through visibility. The new interface will help you understand how well your ads are performing relative to your competitors’.

There were only two posts in the blog right now, but if you are using Yahoo! Panama advertising platform, you definitely want to monitor this blog.

Yahoo! search index update

Yahoo! Search blog is reporting another weather report. They are rolling out an index update the first time of the fall season. There will be some changes in ranking along with shuffling of pages that are included in the index.

New AdWords tools and enhancements

Google has released a few small features for advertisers, namely the ‘last thirty days’ date range for reports, graphs for weekly and hourly reports and ad format filters for the site tool. With the last features, now advertisers can search for sites by ad types such as text ads, image ads or video ads.

Google calls for Website Optimizer beta testers

Google is now looking for beta testers for their new Website Optimizer. It is a new tool that will help advertisers optimize landing page and content for better conversion.

As said in the blog, using Website Optimizer to experiment with your landing page does not have any impact on your Quality Score, so long as you maintain the existing default landing page for the Ad Group. Once you make a change to your site based on the results, however, the Quality Score might change as with any other changes to your landing page.

AdWords Editor 2.0 is now available publicly. If you are still using an old version of the software, you will be prompted for an update the next time you run the application.

Version 2.0 includes some exciting new features:

• Replace text. The replace text feature makes it easy to find and replace text from a headline, description line, or URL in one step.
• Find duplicate keywords. Search your account for multiple instances of the same keyword, then edit or delete the duplicates as needed.
• Advanced Maximum CPC changes. As your keyword lists grow, you may find yourself spending a lot of time editing Max CPC bids. The Advanced Maximum CPC changes tool helps you adjust bids by a specified percent or dollar amount, raise bids to the minimum CPC for all your inactive keywords, and more.
• Keyword Grouper. Want to know one of the most important tips for success with AdWords? Create tightly knit Ad Groups with keywords and ad text that are based on a common theme. To help you do just that, AdWords Editor offers the Keyword Grouper. The Keyword Grouper takes an existing list of keywords and divides them into smaller Ad Groups based on common themes. You can then create related ad text for the new Ad Groups or have the choice of using existing ad text from within your account.

[AdWords Editor, Via]

False and deceptive pay-per-click AdWords ads

Benjamin Edelman presents and critiques pay-per-click ads that don’t deliver what they promise. They are not only unethical but also sometimes illegal and are against the content policy of Google AdWords.

Toward the end of the text, Edelman suggests that Google expands its policy to prevent these scams; closely monitor the trigger words such as free and watch for violations. He have developed a system that allows interested users to submit ads they consider misleading in order to track and present more dubious ads.

AdWords maintenance 14 October 2006

On Saturday, October 14th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. Advertisers won’t be able to log into your accounts during this time, but campaigns will continue to run as usual.