dnScoop is really cool! They pull together all the information about a website and estimate a value. They've also got widgets where you can paste your estimated value to your website or blog. KBCafe they value at $269,660. Nice! Rmail they value over $2,000,000 (I think I hit a bug). Oops! I think I broke it. I ran it again and this time it values Rmail at nearly $2,980,402. Wow!

My Site is worth $269,660 How much is your site worth?

My Site is worth $2,980,402 How much is your site worth?

My Site is worth $1,854 How much is your site worth?

My Site is worth $1,030,494 How much is your site worth?

http://www.dnscoop.com/

Thanks to Scott Kingery for the link.

Todd Cochrane is upset that Google raised his minimum bids for keywords that nobody else is bidding on.

When I set the keywords up most of the terms had no advertisers for the keywords, and tonight when I went back and checked most of those same keywords do not have anyone bidding on them currently. Yet Google wants me to pay in some instances as much as a 10 fold increase in the base click through rate for the ad.

http://www.geeknewscentral.com/archives/006978.html

The problem is likely that the ads are not performing well. When ads underperform (don't get clicked often), then Google raises the minimum click-rate.

A weekend later and the DoubleClick acquisition remains a top story in the blogosphere. Too many ideas are flying. Here's a summary.

• The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft thinks the deal will be anti-competitive and wants a government review.
• Richard Koman says Does GougleClick violate antitrust? Well, it's clearly anti-competitive but I think he was title hunting on this one. Although the deal has antitrust implications, it clearly does not violate any existing antitrust legislation.
• Rafat Ali points to a bunch of article on the anti-competitive nature of the deal and positial regulatory scrutiny.
• Nathan Weinberg asked if Google Crossed the Line? What line? Nathan also mentions that was recently taken private for $1.1B, sold off divisions for $540M. Google paid six times the remainder.
• Mary Jo Foley thinks that Microsoft was bluffing on its bid for DoubleClick in order to artificially inflate the price.
• Andy Beal brings down the house suggesting Yahoo! and AT&T don't like it either.

Beyond the anti-competive backlash, many are trying to analyze why Google did it.

• Many like Om Malik suggest that Google is after the graphical ad market.

IMHO, Google is after the traditional advertiser. Remember that most AdWords advertisers are low end advertisers. DoubleClick advertisers, on the other hand, are high end advertisers. This could be a great marriage.

Also, check out this cool DoubleGoo graphic.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trotz/458211591/

Update: Microsoft statement on acquisition.

Google is getting into advertising on the radio. Another clear signal that Google wants to move beyond the Internet. You might diversification, but I suspect they want to bring more traditional advertisers into their AdWords program.

Google and Clear Channel Communications announced a long-term agreement Sunday that will allow the Internet search leader to place advertising for its online customers on more than 675 Clear Channel radio stations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070416/ap_on_hi_te/google_clear_channel

Matt Cutts has posted instructions on reporting paid links to Goolgle. This effectively render PayPerPost and TextLinkAds broken. Now, I'm not pretending to be a lawyer, but this is extraordinarily anti-competitive. I suspect Google is gonna have to hire some lawyers and listen to more "Google is Evil" banter.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/

Talk-sports hasn't made a dent into the top 100,000. Now I understand that Alexas isn't perfect, but now I'm doubting if it's at all useful.

Wow! I assume that Google will own everything within a few years. Maybe even oxygen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/technology/14DoubleClick.html?ref=technology

I got an email from Text-Link-Ads telling me I am pre-approved for use. I've been meaning to check-them-out, as I've heard good things. Must get butt in gear.

http://www.text-link-ads.com/

Google, Yahoo, ASK and MSN have created a standardize method of discovery sitemaps. Simple enter a Sitemap directive in your robots.txt file. You can enter this directive anywhere in the file, but I've chosen to add mine under all bots.

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.kbcafe.com/sitemap.xml

• You can see my robots.txt file here.
  http://www.kbcafe.com/robots.txt
• Read more of the sitemaps protocol here.
  http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#submit_robots

Google appears to be having a bad day.

DotNetSpider.com has some useful AdSense API samples.

http://www.dotnetspider.com/adsenseapi/

Google has upgraded their AdSense ad layouts. The new layout a visual improvement over the old layout. Jason Schramm think the new layout evil. I think they are beautiful.

Finding domain names for your next pet website is getting more and more difficult. But this week, I found an excellent available domain search engine called DomainsBot via Marcus Vorwaller. I found VacationRace.com and started it last week. I'm likely going to move the RVDad blog to that domain.

http://www.domainsbot.com/