By displaying banner ads on Image Search Google is hoping to earn additional 1-2 billion dollars, maybe even 3-4 billion. They have previously tested text ads in Image Search, but because they drove people away, Google dropped the idea.

Display ads will probably work better with image searches because they seem more natural to people looking for pictures.

So… If you thought banner advertising was dead, you might want to rethink that.

I have seen many ugly websites in my life and while this isn’t in the top ten I still wouldn’t let those guys judge my website nor organize a panel of judges to do this.

A little tip: If your website looks worse than this default WordPress template then you better think about hiring a new designer.

EMOTIONS by Mike - Clean, beautiful and the legs catch your attention.

book Olivier Danchin - Although as an search engine optimizer I non-flash websites… I love strange creatures and minimalistic designs.

Ton Yoo - Online Showcase - Beautiful design, simple navigation… what else do you want?

ColourMod - This website design uses many Web 2.0 bells and whistles. Maybe too many… but you can’t hate dark designs with reflections, can you?

Obu Web Technologies - Black, grey and red - my favorite color combination. Other aspects of the design are of course beautiful too. Also click on “You only have to do 3 things right”… just my point.

There you have it… I mean them. I’ll probably make this into a series of posts, so expect more.

It’s just unbelievable how many rip-off search engine optimizers there are in the world. I have seen so many companies that offer “SEO services”, meaning they stuff the meta keywords on all of the pages with the same list of words that aren’t very related to the services of the company. The rates are not as high as the above example, but for this work they should pay the client. The problem with Search Engine Optimization is that clients don’t know anything about it’s just hard to check whether they did anything at all.

Many SEO companies specialize on just delivering the good news. They don’t do almost any optimization, any link building… They maybe do something on a few pages. But the key of their “job” is to present pretty graphs and some kind of reports, that actually don’t say anything. And the clients won’t ask what do those numbers mean just in fear of appearing stupid. And if the clients do ask something, those so called SEO’s will either make them look stupid or give them another piece of useless information.

Some techniques unethical optimizers use what a “great job they did”:

1. Paid search engine listings. Many clients just don’t know that results on the right hand are ads. So the unethical SEO’s pay for those results, show them to the client and get paid. After this they drop the ad and the client has been ripped of. This scam works less and less, because more and more companies are aware of Adwords.
2. Pretty graphs with selective or fake info. Some SEO companies just show the good news (increased rankings for unimportant keywords) while leaving out the bad news (decreased rankings on keywords that really matter). Some just totally fabricate every piece of information.
3. The famous “You rank #1 for your name!”. This is the oldest trick there is. If someone is looking for your company’s website, they will find it, probably even if it isn’t optimized at all. Remember, it’s important to rank for keywords that are related to your products and services, not your company name.

Some clients will sense something fishy, but those are rare cases and they can’t know for sure. But I guess this problem isn’t only in this industry. It’s the same with website design, programming and doesn’t stop with the online world. The only way you can protect yourself is by doing the homework!