So, eBay ended their “boycott” advertising on Google on Friday after hours in a move that many were discussing would be followed by a major announcement today … which didn’t happen. And what was the reaction? “They will make the announcement tomorrow” one “expert” said in a conference call today.

Please.

If it happens it happens. Personally, I feel too much time and energy is spent trying to figure out what is going to happen next while not taking care of present business. And that is true with this story, and here is what I feel you can learn from this:

eBay said that in their 10-day boycott of Google they were able to make more efficient buys and reallocate their spending in areas that made more sense. The best part, according to eBay, is that sales didn’t take a hit and neither did traffic.

Okay, let me see if I follow this correctly.

1) eBay says that they saved money on their advertising;
2) eBay says that they advertised in other areas;
3) Sales did not go down
4) Traffic did not go down

So, why is eBay advertising on Google again? Didn’t they just solve their problem? Why would they spend MORE money to get the same result? Yeah, I don’t get it either. Oh yeah, Spin Doctoring. I forgot. It is Corporate America’s favorite pasttime. But, you would think that they would actually review what was going to be said publicly before actually saying it.

Maybe I am just out there in left field, but it seems from the clueless quotes coming from eBay, they have no idea how to even read the simple reports from Google Analytics. I mean, it isn’t that tough guys. It doesn’t matter if the campaign is for $500.00 or $5 million, you read the reports the same.

eBay’s ads were stupid anyway. I loved searching for “dirt” and seeing, “Looking for Dirt? Find it on eBay!” However, even though eBay said that the ban has been pulled, I struggle to find any ads for eBay in Google searches that I have performed over the weekend and for a solid hour today.

I know lots of affiliates who have been thrilled at the boycott, as it has allowed them to compete in the space for about 40% reduced cost. I see the trend continuing as eBay still is not a player. I even saw a post today that stated eBay did it as a marketing ploy to get more backlinks to their site and another suggested it was Link Bait.

Are you serious? I doubt anyone at eBay even knows what SEO is based on their marketing approach … and Link Bait? Seriously? Why would a corporate giant have to revert to tactics used by small marketers to get recognition.

Have the stupid eBay ads stopped? Um, no. Check this out:

That was sent to me by a good friend of mine, who also sent me the great clip of Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live years ago.

Let’s face it, eBay doesn’t have a clue how to run a PPC campaign and Google should have said “Stick It” to eBay in Boston and thrown their own party. Personally, I am glad to see the ads gone from Google. Makes the search experience much more clean … but then again, when the holidays are here, I will know where to get some Schweaty Balls.

It seems that the hoax emails that were sent to a handful of German webmasters has spread and more people are getting upset over Google’s “stance” of using 301 Redirects, as the email states that it is violation of their terms of use.

Turns out, the emails are from Spammers.

Google announced last month that they were going to discontinue the practice of notifying webmasters through email. I strongly suggest that every webmaster have a Google Webmaster account. In your account Google can tell you if there is a problem, and there is no risk of a Spammer nailing you there.

Just be careful with statements in email … addresses and headers can be forged.

Famous line sung by Jimmy Hendrix … and with Vanessa Fox (”Foxy Lady”) hanging it up with Google and moving on to a new gig, it is appropriate to quote it here. With the news of Fox moving on it comes at no surprise that the reason that Google Webmaster Central has sucked so bad recently with NO UPDATES is a lack of focus from the team that Fox headed.

I like Vanessa, I think she is brilliant, but no one can argue that when a new gig presents itself, that no matter how much you focus, your “all” just isn’t the same as it was. That is just human nature.

Enough of that, let’s discuss what is going on with Google Webmaster Tools. Okay, so they just updated the information, which is great, but it is a little late. While I understand the “well it’s free what do you expect?” comments, they don’t hold any water. While I agree I am not paying Google for this information, I am supplying them with a TON of information which I feel is a win-win for both parties. They SHOULD update the link information more than once every two months. They SHOULD tell me when GoogleBot visits pages OTHER than my home page. And what happened with informing me which page has the highest PageRank on my site?

Even my “query” stats have been stale … on average of 7-10 or so. While it is still great information, it used to be updated quickly … but no longer. If MSN and Yahoo! really want to steal some thunder here, they should launch a better service and you might see a lot of webmasters jumping.

Well, Yahoo! and MSN would need more market share of course.

The bottom line is, hopefully with a new person in charge, we can get Webmaster Central back on track and get the information that we need in order to make our websites as successful as possible. Now that there have been updates, I will show the members of the SEO Revolution how to make the most of Webmaster Central.

If you play the AdSense game, whether you use it to monetize your exit traffic or if you use arbitrage aggressively, you need to know this information.

According to Brett Tabke of Webmaster World, Google can ID a click with a 95% accuracy. And just because they aren’t 100% certain that the click came from you don’t think that they won’t discount the click because they often do.

In fact, according to Google’s blog they said:

…chances are we’ve already detected your clicks on your ads and discounted them.

Basically, what I found is that Google knows exactly who you are and if you think you are smart enough by cleaning your machine, nuking your cookies, and using proxies, you are naive. Google tracks you and if you click on your own ads, it knows about it. They are punting people left and right for fraud more so than ever. They are also severing ties with webmasters that they have had relationships for a long time due to the information they have on these webmasters.

Google has discovered it is more of a risk than they care to take. Webmasters are crying, whining that their “cash cow” is being taken away and they did nothing wrong. Please. I have heard it time and time again. The guilty NEVER do anything wrong, do they?

I will post the results of my test in the SEO Revolution (Closed Paid Membership).