There are around 7 billion people on the face of this planet, and although not all of them speak English or have access to a computer, thinking about that huge number makes the concept of search engine optimization sound like a hopeless shot in the dark.  Be glad, then, that Google’s trying to help in yet another way by unveiling the Search-based Keyword Tool.

Don’t expect miracles, because the thing is in beta.  Google’s also not going so far as to compromise anyone’s privacy (”Hey, seller of folk medicine, Fred Mercer at 123 Fake Street searched for VD”).  But the new tool is interesting.

It works by “leveraging search query data relevant to your website’s content,” according to a post on the Inside AdWords blog.  “In other words, this new tool gives you keywords that are highly relevant to your site but are not part of your AdWords campaigns.  This helps you take advantage of missed opportunities.”

The post even notes, “The tool is also useful if you don’t currently advertise on AdWords.  For example, a shoe store could discover which footwear styles users are searching for, or a digital camera blog could decide which cameras to review by looking at which camera models attract the most queries.”

So get to work, and if you’re still thinking about that shot in the dark scenario, at least feel confident that you’ve been given a nightlight.

Suppose you took the time to really build up your site, and then no one ever saw the fruit of all of your efforts.  Kinda sucky, huh?  So Google’s going to allow site owners to make special requests for the process that should improve internal site searches.

On-Demand Indexing for Google Site Search has been unveiled.  A post on the Official Google Blog explains, “On-Demand Indexing is like a turbocharger for Google Site Search, ensuring that your newest pages appear in search results on your website fast.”

It continues, “Whether you’re promoting a new line of products, sharing breaking news or reports, or updating your site in time for the holiday season, On-Demand Indexing puts businesses in control with an ‘Index Now’ button, giving them the flexibility to quickly update search results whenever they have new content to update or add.”

Now looks to be a great time to try out Google Site Search in the event you’ve never used it before, then, and current users should be more than happy about the update.  Just keep in mind that On-Demand Indexing has no effect on search results provided by Google.com, so you shouldn’t get your hopes up in that respect.

The holidays are almost here, and it’s time to start considering the hard questions.  For example, will you watch “A Christmas Carol” or “A Christmas Story”?  “A Charlie Brown Christmas” or “Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean”?  All of the above?  Or on another subject entirely, how will you make your products stand out?

Yeah, so that wasn’t the world’s greatest segue, but your humble writer’s been on a bit of a movie binge and felt like sharing.  Also, that second subject needs discussing, and even if choosing between Christmas videos boils down to personal taste, Google’s Jessica Ng shared some clear tips where product promotion’s concerned.

Most of the advice holds true whether you’re worried about Google Product Search or not, so first, be clear about tax and shipping information.  Then, consider providing unique product identifiers (UPC codes, model numbers, etc.) so that search engines and/or people can know exactly what they’re looking at.

Ng next suggests that you “use effective titles” and “write accurate descriptions.”  Finally, “remember to submit your data feeds regularly — up to once a day — to ensure that your product information is current for shoppers.”

Increasing the sales of any products you carry will help guarantee that your holidays are happy ones, and maybe even that you have more time to relax on the couch instead of hunt for deals.

By the time many people are ready to ask for help, they’re in no mood to fanny about; what’s needed is a correct answer in an easy-to-understand format.  And so AdSense users should be happy to hear that a new AdSense Help Forum aims to facilitate granting their wish.

“As of today, we’ve closed up shop and moved the English Forum next door to the AdSense Help Center,” announces a post on the Inside AdSense blog.  “We’ve been jealous of the Help Center for a while now.  Its innovative interface, clear categories, and snazzy search powered by CSE left us feeling like the odd man out.”

The post then continues, “Now we’ve almost got it all.  We have the look and feel of the Help Center with the same CSE to search across the Forum, the Help Center, and the blog.  We have the same categories as the Help Center, so you can easily transition from one category to the another [sic].”  And a whole bunch of new features are on hand to make things more interesting.

Forums are typically great places to pick up tips, and we all know how popular AdSense is.  Since initial reactions to this development have been rather positive, here’s hoping you find the new Help Forum useful.

Nothing’s certain yet, but we’re inclined to say: so much for the idea of Yahoo getting ahead in this respect.  You see, less than a month after the company announced that it was working on Yahoo Web Analytics, Google Analytics has been made the subject of a number of upgrades.

Google claims to have been working off a user-generated wish list, and the results are rather interesting.  Advanced segmentation is one feature that’s been added, so people can now “isolate and analyze subsets” of their traffic.  Custom reports and motion charts represent two more features, and should work quite well together.

Then we get to the new account management dashboard, which promises to make all of this easy to access and use.  And although a staggered rollout may be taking place, everything mentioned up to this point should be live within a few weeks if it’s not already.

Two last things are in private beta.  The data export API promises to let everyone with a little developer leaning to make new programs and applications.  Soon enough, an integration with AdSense will take place, too.

Yahoo’s not-yet-released product is in danger of being left in the dust.  However, users of Google Analytics should be pretty pleased.

The economy is in a very iffy position.  Unpleasant records have been broken left and right over the past few weeks, and some people are preparing for a bad 2009 and 2010.  So here’s a bit of good news: most folks agree that the sky’s the limit in terms of money Google’s willing to give you.

Barry Schwartz explains, “A WebmasterWorld thread has recent discussion around the AdSense Glass Earnings Ceiling theory.  If you read the thread, some swear by Google instituting a cap of some kind, while others said they never experiences such a cap.  The seniority of members who believe in the cap are mixed also, so who really knows?”

Well - maybe - the participants of a survey.  Although the results weren’t as clear as they might have been, a full 57 percent of respondents (or 39 people) feel there isn’t a ceiling.  About 28 percent (or 19 people) believe there is, and 15 percent (10 people) think ceilings exist but only affect some publishers.

Feel free to weigh in with your own opinions, since businesses of different sizes and in different industries are bound to have non-identical perspectives.  Still, the results of the survey should provide everyone with a great incentive to continue optimizing their campaigns, and this will hold true even if the economy recovers.

Yahoo’s stock price fell under $13 per share today, and it’s been over five years since the company last saw these levels.  So, faced with what’s starting to look like a do or die situation, Yahoo’s trying to aim things towards the first result by announcing Yahoo Web Analytics.

Yahoo Web Analytics will try to match the success of Google Analytics, which has won its parent corporation all sorts of fans.  Or Yahoo may have its sights set even higher, since an official FAQ page claims that it will one-up most analytics tools by offering real-time and raw data along with a superior interface.

The page also explains, “Yahoo! Web Analytics helps you identify the ads, campaigns, keywords and referrals that contribute the most to your bottom line.  It helps you understand what pages, content and products perform better than others, thereby helping you better design your site.  And . . . Yahoo! Web Analytics can help you to market your site better, increase visitor engagement, convert more visitors into customers, and transform existing customers into die-hard fans.”

Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before most of us get to put this to the test; Yahoo Web Analytics is being rolled out in a rather slow fashion.  But Dennis R. Mortensen, Yahoo’s director of data insights, writes that becoming an advertiser is one sure way of getting your hands on the thing.

If you’re not that determined to see it early, just know that a Google Analytics competitor should eventually become available.  For the sake of your site, you should check it out, and for the sake of your financial portfolio, you may want to rethink some investments afterward.

We’ve talked before about using sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote blogs and businesses.  For anyone who’s using YouTube - or is thinking about heading in that direction - there’s a special new monitoring tool called Hot Spots.

Hot Spots aims to show content creators how well their videos are doing in comparison to the competition.  As is somewhat typical of Google’s tools, Hot Spots doesn’t share specific numbers, but you should be able to get a decent idea of what’s working and what’s not at most points in time.

An entry on the YouTube Blog explains, “The Hot Spots tab in Insight plays your video alongside a graph that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at different moments within the video.  We determine ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spots by comparing your video’s abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards.”

And then the entry explains some more, continuing, “So what does that mean?  Well, when the graph goes up, your video is hot: few viewers are leaving, and people may be rewinding on the control bar to see that sequence again.  When the graph goes down, your content’s gone cold: viewers are moving to another part of the video or leaving the video entirely.”

Using this information, marketers should be able to figure out what parts of their message are most interesting to their audience.  From there, they can either retool their video-making strategy or perhaps just release some “best of” compilations.

Yahoo has unveiled a new product, and although there are less interesting possibilities, this thing could either revolutionize our industry or end CEO Jerry Yang’s career.  Yang, you see, is putting Yahoo APT up there with radio, television, and the Internet.

APT is an advertising platform, and its main selling points are said to be speed, simplicity, and control.  Tests involving Media News Group went well, and the members of Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium will next get their hands on it before any wide release takes place.

Now, for the ramifications.  If APT ends up flopping, Yang’s probably a goner.  Too much has gone wrong at Yahoo for shareholders to ignore another major mishap.

If, on the other hand, APT lives up to its billing, Yahoo might well replace Google as the search and advertising leader.  The comparison between APT and radio, TV, and the Internet is pretty hard to ignore, after all.  Most search engine optimization efforts would need some retooling as a result.

Still, we’ve got a while yet before either outcome looms too large.  APT should make it into the wild sometime next year, and with any luck, a few more concrete details about its performance will escape ahead of schedule.

About two months ago, SearchIgnite released a study saying that the Google-Yahoo search ad partnership could result in keyword prices being increased by 22 percent.  Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, has now responded with a five-point version of “that ain’t so.”

Varian begins, “[T]he report fails to acknowledge that ad prices are not set by Yahoo! or Google, but by advertisers themselves, through the auction process.  Since advertisers set prices themselves via an auction, the prices must ultimately reflect advertiser values.  That process will remain completely unchanged by our agreement.”

Then he goes after the idea that Yahoo will be able to compare its own ad prices to Google’s.  “In fact, under our agreement Yahoo! won’t be able to see the current auction prices for Google ads, just as Google won’t be able to see Yahoo’s prices,” Varian writes.

The economist’s third reason is less concrete, but he says that Yahoo will turn to Google’s ads more as a last resort than a default choice.  He notes a focus on CPCs when ROI should instead get everyone’s attention.  And lastly, Varian gets into some questions about SearchIgnite’s methodology.

The arguments might have been more effective had they been put forward two months ago; some people have gotten pretty worked up in the meantime.  Still, if you find them convincing, it should be nice to hear that keyword prices won’t be heading through the roof.