The announcement this week that Yahoo is to take on AdSense inventory came as a surprise to some. As an AdWords advertiser I believe it brings greater opportunities, and raises the quality and reach. As an advertiser, I welcome it.

Once again, Google's position is strengthened and, the apparent weakening of Microsoft's.

What do you think? Have your say in our thread on the topic.

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Last week's WebmasterWorld Weekly is here.

Here's this week's WebmasterWorld Weekly Roundup.

The FTC released new privacy guidelines for App developers to include do-not-track for mobile. Find out more about the guidelines in our thread.

Investments and interest in Twitter indicates it is nearing $10 billion valuation.






Path has settled with the FTC over charges it deceived consumers and improperly collected personal information. "This settlement with Path shows that no matter what new technologies emerge, the agency will continue to safeguard the privacy of Americans."







Do you run AdSense? Learn how to make Google AdSense work on mobile devices using responsive design. Responsive designed sites are a great way to present content across mobile to desktop.




Twitter said that hackers may have stolen details of 250,000 accounts usernames and passwords. The most serious aspect is what they are going to do with the stolen data.

We've had a number of discussions over Google's disavow tool since it was announced at Pubcon in Las Vegas by Matt Cutts. Much of the discussion has been about confusion over the use of the tool. This week, our thread titled, "Best Practices For Using The Google Disavow Tool Disclosed" is the way for webmasters to gain valuable knowledge.




More Twitter news when we heard that it had acquired Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company that was founded in 2008. There's sense in that as Twitter seems to be used more and more on TV shows to gauage opinion and to analyse reach and users' interests.

Those of you interested in Google's PageRank will be interested to hear reports of a toolbar PageRank update rolling out.






I heard that Channel Intelligence, Inc., has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google Inc. for $125 million in cash.

In Australia, Google has won a landmark AdWords appeal in over competitor names. The ACCC in 2007 accused Google of engaging in "misleading and deceptive" behavior when it displayed ads for a company called CarSales in search results related to Honda Australia. The five judges of Australia's High Court unanimously ruled Wednesday that Google did not violate trade laws by allowing companies to purchase AdWords related to competitors' names.

It's yet another piece of Twitter news this week when it launched new and updated Android, iOS and mobile Twitter search. Twitter says, "This is a major shift from how we have previously partitioned results by type (for instance, Tweet search vs. people search)."

Google made a major announcement about AdWords upgrades aimed at improving performance on mobile. Google said, "...we're upgrading AdWords, by rolling out enhanced campaigns. This is a first step to help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today's multi-device world."

As I mentioned earlier, Yahoo has confirmed it will run Google AdSense. Yahoo says, "...we're excited to announce that we recently signed a global, non-exclusive agreement with Google to display ads on various Yahoo! properties and certain co-branded sites using Google's AdSense for Content and Google's AdMob services."





Microsoft took another swing at Google's practices of adverts in Gmail with it's latest scroogled campaign. For me, I dislike the attack and would rather see Microsoft spending their $$ on innovating to compete with Google.




I heard that AOL is to close photosharing App, Hipster. It's announcements such as this which highlight the importance of having control over your own content.

Google this week added reporting notes to AdSense for ease of account tracking changes. I guess you could use it as a changelog.

There was a report that YouTube was in talks to invest $50 million in Vevo. As I understand it, we don't have any confirmation of this.

The E.U. is proposing that businesses should report hacking and net crimes. There's some sense in this, but I worry it'll be more legislation and bureaucracy.

On a lighter note, a German iTunes user was presented with the equivalent of a $13,000 gift card for downloading Apple's 25 billionth song. What a wonderful surprise that must have been.

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I hope you valued this week's roundup. If you've spotted some news that we haven't covered or discussed, drop me a stickymail.
Enjoy your week!

Cheers
Neil
@engine

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