And under the category of not news, Google announced today that is unveiling Universal Search but for the sake of convenience, let’s just call it AGATT. (ALL GOOGLE ALL THE TIME.)

Work with me here. Do a search for red roses on Google, not google images. Theses are the results and my, aren’t those just about the prettiest durn red posies you ever seen? Click on those results and you go to another Google property, not to the web site from which the flowers image orginated.

Do a search for car crash and there it is, as it’s been for months now, a YouTube result and now with pictures!!!

My boss and I had an interesting conversation yesterday around — I’m sure this will come as a surprise to everyone — Google.

Specifically around the amount of information Google gathers. I’ve been down this road before, I think it’s too much.

Andrew Goodman had an interesting article at SearchEngineLand.com: Your Paid Search Performance Is Relative detailing metrics and conversions all relative to paid search. Of course performance is measured all along the way.

All of this finessing should see a better spend, but the hope is a better spend will lend itself to a bigger budget, not only for you, but for your competitor as well. And up and up rates go.

problogger had a group writing project this week and the following 5 reasons are why we enjoyed it.

1. It made us think - The task was to post a top five list, but the real challenge was to create a top five list we hoped would engage comment and conversation and be pertinent to our business tract.

2. It helped prove the level of user engagement - With 893 entries the level of commitment was inspiring and a proof of concept in making blogs work as buzz generation tools.

3. The Link Love - Nuff said.

What I like most about the possible Yahoo/MSN merger is that it will raise the profile of Ask.com which, to my mind has possibly the best interface of them all.

Saw the new Google search results page design and decidely do not like it. It seems forced and is redundant in ways.

Haven’t seen it? Google Blogoscoped has it covered.

Have a good one.

~The (SEP) Guy

On the heel’s of Rupert Murdoch’s surprise bid for Dow Jones, or more appropriately, the stalwart Wall Street Journal, comes whispers that Google may actually be interested in making a play for the property as well.

Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand thinks there’s not much substance to the rumour but why wouldn’t Google eventually make a content play?

It’s a step removed from search to be sure, but it’s not a step removed from advertising which is where Google’s makes it’s money, profits and margins. Google gets high margin business.

The wisdom of crowds is, every so often, not so much with the wisdom. In fact, the mob community mentality can do a lot of damage, whether by exerting its collective brute force, or by standing by and collectively doing nothing.

Digg co-founder Kevin Rose discovered that the hard way yesterday when the crowd mentality overwhelmed Digg, essentially taking it hostage.

The wisdom of crowds is a funny thing. A few weeks ago, the search community got together to make Stephen Colbert the Greatest Living American and now the Digg community has turned on its own to the point where the co-founder has essentially thrown up his hands.

After yesterday’s post, my boss a friend and I had a discussion about what it all meant.

His take is that while the IAB is predicting significant slowing in online advertising in the coming year, this is just a pause so everyone can take a moment to stop and catch their collective online advertising breath.

It plays out like this, states he: The mindshare for Internet usage is give or take 25% of time and as such, the online advertising budget should be approximately 25% of the total advertising/marketing mix, not the scant 8% it currently is.

According to The Globe & Mail and Keith McArthur, online advertising in Canada surpassed the one billion dollar mark in Canada in 2006, and is expected to rise a further 32% this year. It also represents an 80% increase over 2005.

This is apparently about 8% of the total advertising spend in Canada, but those numbers will be confirmed in coming weeks/months.

So how does it play out?

According to the article, the lion’s share at 36% is display advertising; with search advertising at 35%; classified at 27% and email advertising at 2%.

MSNBC and the David C. Churbuck article Google and the Rebirth of Banner Ads provided not only some interesting insight into the Google Doubleclick deal, but also this little nugget way, way, way, way down the article, and it’s a long article so perhaps if reading it, you might have zoned out. It is after all Friday.

On the heels of the Google Doubleclick story, and the Google Clear Channel story and the Yahoo print story and the ebay TV story and the Spotrunner tv story and the…

Well, you get my point.

Onilne advertising is only beginning to heat up. And while traditional advertisers have their eyeballs askance and their eyebrows furrowed at the antics of the upstarts, the upstart as looking at traditional advertising models with disruptive technologies in mind and rate cards in sight.

Red Herring announce today in its YouTube Lining Up Summer Ads article that pre-roll and post roll ads will become a part of the YouTube experience this summer.