In their latest blog entry, the people from Google Webmaster Central announce that they are now officially leaving beta phase.

They are also opening their blog for comments in a mission for improved communication with webmasters.

Several AdSense publishers from the United States have reported that they received two so call 1099 forms from Google. Concern was expressed that this might cause misunderstandings with the IRS by implying double income. A recent post on Webmasterworld.com now clarifies this issue.

Posted by “AdsenseAdvisor” and reads:

Hi everyone,

I’ve consulted to our payments specialists and they’re aware that some publishers received duplicate 1099 forms. The banking team is investigating the situation, and wanted to assure you that your earnings won’t be reported to the IRS twice.

If you find an error in your tax form (wrong name, wrong tax ID, etc.), please don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll be happy to correct it. The duplicate form issue, however, is being resolved, so there’s no need for you to write in. If there are any further issues, the team will be sure to contact you.

Sorry for the stress,
-ASA

Have fun,

Marc (who does not live in the US and has no idea what a 1099 is, but felt like passing on the info)

I’ve been using Mozilla Thunderbird for a very long time now and the main reason for me to stick with it was the built-in spam filter which always did a very good job. But one thing always bothered me: As soon as the computer is under a little stress, Thunderbird will stop identifying spam correctly or forgets to move the mails to the junk folder while actually identifying it correctly. By stress I don’t necessarily mean long and cpu intense tasks, but simple things like opening Firefox or watching a movie. It happened about 5 times a day and I was soon annoyed by my Thunderbird 1.5, however, I took it like a man, because it still filtered and moved about 150-200 international spam emails per day. That’s a pretty good percentage and it would be even better, if it would just move those other 5 into the designated folder after tagging them correctly as spam.

Ultimately, still irritated by this inconsistent behaviour, I recently updated my Thunderbird client to the current beta version Thunderbird 2 Beta 2 hoping for a fix since technically it seems like a rather simple thing to correct. The new Thunderbird now looks nice and new and some features have been added - stuff I wasn’t really looking for, I’m a humble person ;-)

After about a week of testing I have to say that it has gotten a lot worse. Using my old training data, Thundebird now misses about three times the amount of spam emails. While the old version only failed to move spam to the correct folder (displaying the new mail message) most of the time, the new version really has a problem identifying obvious spam emails - no matter what the cpu load says. It’s annoying and disappointing, as far as that can be said for free software.

Now I’m thinking about migrating to Office Outlook, I’ve heard positive opinions about its junk filters, but I don’t think that it’s trainable bayesian. Maybe I’ll give that a try or I’ll go back to Thunderbird 1.5 and live with its erratic behaviour. Years ago, when the world was still a better place, I used to have Outlook Express in combination with the K9 anti spam gateway and it was great up to a certain volume of spam mail or training data. Outlook Express was nice because it’s a simple and fast application and if you’re not too naive, it doesn’t need to be a security risk to your computer. However, it’s old and I don’t believe it’s still being officially supported by Microsoft.

I’ll just keep on searching.

I am kind of surprised that Google sees the need to further clarify the concept of their referral program. But apparently there must’ve been some misunderstandings with the newly introduced “drawing attention” rule that only applies to referral units (Firefox and Google Pack) and not to regular AdSense ads. In their latest blog entry they take the reader by the hand and explain the whole thing again, but this time with an example. Must be one of those american things where everything is a legitimate and reasonable assumption until explicitly clarified and exlcuded (aka “Do not put hamster in microwave”). Kidding, of course ;-)

In short:

[…] Google is willing to pay up to $2 for each new user who downloads and installs Google Pack. If you encourage people to download and install Pack on your site and the conversion rate goes up, we’re happy to pay the additional cost, because it directly translates to more Pack users for us. […] This isn’t the case for most AdSense for content […] Encouraging clicks on these ads not only drives lower quality traffic to an advertiser’s site but provides poor data for an advertiser to make an appropriate bid on the click. This results in a poor experience for visitors and advertisers, which isn’t good for you as a publisher. […]

read it all

Have fun!

Just announced yesterday, it is now no longer to be found in the webmaster tools. Well, it was great as long as it lasted ;-)

No, seriously, it’s gone again. But from what I’ve read, the new feature received a warm welcome by many and that may have triggered a backlink mania that could have overloaded that particular service. Let’s hope it’ll be back soon.

Update: Apparently the reason for Google pulling the feature was a security hole allowing to see other sites’ backlinks aswell. Google knows about it now and will probably put the tool back online soon.

Update: They’re back!

I just got the new De-Phazz newsletter with the tour dates for the upcoming album Days of Twang which will be released on 23. march. I hope this will be just as great a gig as last april, when they were touring with their album Natural Fake. If you happen to be in one of the German cities in spring and your like jazz and acid jazz get some tickets.

Di., 24. April Heidelberg, Karlstorbahnhof
Mi., 25. April Hamburg, Große Freiheit
Fr., 27. April Dresden, Kleiner Schlachthof
Sa., 28. April Köln, E-Werk
So., 29. April Darmstadt, Centralstation
Mo., 30. April München, Muffathalle
So., 06. Mai Karlsruhe, Tollhaus
Di., 15. Mai Essen, Weststadthalle
Do., 17. Mai Bremen, Modernes
Fr., 18. Mai Berlin, Postbahnhof

I’ll definately be going to the gig in Hamburg.

Oh, if you like Barbara Lahr, her new album will be in stores by Feb. 9th.

And since they also linked to it and this clip just never gets old:

Google has added a new utility to the Google Webmaster Tools! You can now see all inbound links your site and to all pages. It’s a lot more precise than the good old link: search operator as you can see the exact number of inbound links for each page of your site. You can also search for specific pages and display their links. This also works for your internal links, so if you ever wondered how often you reference yourself… ;-)

This is what they say in the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog:

You asked, and we listened: We’ve extended our support for querying links to your site to much beyond the link: operator you might have used in the past. Now you can use webmaster tools to view a much larger sample of links to pages on your site that we found on the web. Unlike the link: operator, this data is much more comprehensive and can be classified, filtered, and downloaded. All you need to do is verify site ownership to see this information.

(read on in the detailed post and see more screenshots)

Although it comes with a search engine typical delay, a lot of accurate data can be retrieved with this new webmaster toy. Go check it out!

I’d like to recommend a Firefox extension to my fellow web developers. It’s called CSSViewer and I’ve used it for quite a while now.

When activated, CSSViewer snaps to your cursor and displays a box listing several CSS properties that apply to the website element which is hovered. There are similar tools available that help web developers work their CSS, but I like this one very much in terms of usability, it’s very straightforward and only does what it’s supposed to do. However, using a combination of such tools will be most effective, like in my case, I use CSSViewer and the popular Web Developer Toolbar which allows editing of CSS stylesheets with real time preview and gives further information about the nesting of elements.

This extension proved especially useful on several occasions when editing given (generated) code as for example in CMS applications or blogs and when identifying display problems. Maybe it will help you, too!

Our Google friends have just posted and confirmed the new payment model for Adsense/AdWords referrals. This is what they say

Last year we asked you for your feedback on referrals, and one of the issues we heard quite frequently was that it was too difficult to generate revenue with AdSense and AdWords referrals. To address this, we’ve just introduced a new pricing structure for both programs, which will be as follows:

AdSense Referrals:

• When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.
• When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.
• If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).

AdWords Referrals:

• When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.
• When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.
• If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).

These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.

Look at those bonus amounts one can theoretically earn! This will make a lot of publishers with Adsense related or webmaster related content happy, since they are the ones most likely to get their hands on that bonus 2,600$. Isn’t it nice that they also include old referrals?

Freshly posted in the official Google Analytics blog, Jeff Gills confirms the afore mentioned delay. This is what he says

Google Analytics users,
There is a temporary reporting delay within your Google Analytics accounts due to system maintenance. You are still able to log in to accounts and please note that no data will be lost - data will continue to be collected and processed during this time.

We expect Google Analytics account data to be fully updated and displayed within your reports before the end of the day. We apologize for any inconvenience this delay in reporting has caused.

Thank you for using Google Analytics.

Gotta love Google for their quick and transparent communication with their users, considering that most of their services are free to use.