Google will fight domain name tasting, a practice by which web marketers temporarily purchase many domain names and test them, keeping just the ones that turn out to generate the most revenue. Under new measures being implemented, Google would will attempt to identify domain names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within a five-day grace period for full refunds and exclude those names from collecting AdSense revenue. Yahoo Inc., already has implemented measures to to ban tasted domain names that infringe on trademarks. Find the entire store here.

Kevin Newcomb at Search Engine Watch is reporting that Google has been sending termination letters to some AdSense publishers. The reason for the termination is cited as an "unsuitable business model".

Gmail's market share has increased 17% in just two months, according to Hitwise research director LeeAnn Prescott. Gmail's market share increase is coming from typical early adopter groups, which could bode well for the service's long term prospects.

Prescott also points out that Gmail has the highest proportion of high-income users, with 18% of its base in the $100 - $149K range.

It all started with a blog post from one of Firefox's co-founders, Blake Ross. Ross noticed that Google was offering "tips" at the top of its results when certain keyphrases where typed into its search engine. These tips offered searchers the opportunity to explore other Google websites. For example, Ross points out that a search for "photo sharing" invited searchers to try out Google's Picasa Web Albums. Ross took exception to this practice, since in his view, "the services they recommend are not the best in their class".

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame plans to launch a new search engine based on his Wiki methodology. Wales believes that content selected by computer algorithms do not do as good a job as content chosen by people. Wales will be partnering with Amazon for the project, which is slated to begin early next year. Read more about the project at Search Engine Watch.

According to John Chow, indeed they do. It's called the Google Display Advertising Network, and it's by invitation only. Google is targeting the service at large corporations, who are often interested in advertising for branding purposes than getting an ROI from selling a product.

"Google has been hand-selecting sites (no word on how many sites has been chosen) that they want to put in front of Fortune 1000 companies", says Chow. "The goal being to sell these big companies display and video ads at a very high CPM – unlike the AdSense network, the display network is 100% CPM based."

Read Chow's full commentary at his blog.

Vanessa Fox, Google's Product Manager for Webmaster Central, recommends the use of the meta description tag to resolve a potential indexing issue.

"There has always been confusion on if Google uses the meta tag data. Some say Google uses the meta description tag, some say they don't", says Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Rountable. "Most say, Google doesn't use the meta keywords tag. In any event, Google's Vanessa Fox said that you should use the meta description tag." See exactly what Fox had to say over at the SEO Roundtable blog.

Marshall Kirkpatrick over at TechCrunch is reporting that Google has started to mix in related blogs into its main search results.  Marshall shares a screenshot from Andy Boyd showing how Google's search engine is displaying blog posts related to a user's search.

Other bloggers have been unsuccessful in reproducing Boyd's discovery, however Kirkpatrick believes that Google's testing of this is plausible.  "It’s a believable scenario because Google recently added blog search to Google News last month and to Google Alerts four days later", says Kirkpatrick. "The UK, where Boyd lives, is frequently a testing ground for new Google features right around the corner."

Read Kirkpatrick's full commentary over at TechCrunch.

This is the question ReveNews' Adam Viener finds himself asking. Viener cites a RankingMeasures.com survey where the company correlated a site's search engine ranking with whether or not it displayed contextual advertising. Viener points out the study found that "for over 75% of searches, sites with contextual advertising from the search engine network are more likely to rank lower in the natural results." Read Viener's full commentary over at ReveNews.

Google is introducing several new features to its AdWords desktop. Blogger Jeremy Mayes of PPC Discussions describes a test of the new website optimization service that helps with multivariate/split testing. Mayes also previews two other features -- the Change Client Manager, which allows users to transfer client accounts and an Ads Diagnostic Tool that helps determine if your ads are displaying for a particular keyword phrase.

In an earlier news story, Scott Jangro reported seeing that AdWords' Dynamic Keyword Insertion didn't always work, and that this odd behavior seemed to start happening at the same time last week's Quality Score updates were introduced. His suspicions have now been validated by none other than Google itself. As Jangro comments, "Yesterday, I received conformation from Google that this is in fact related to the keyword quality scores. According to the Google rep, the usage of the keyword insertion may not be performed if the quality score of the keyword is too low." Read Jangro's full commentary on his blog.

If your site incorporates streaming video clips, Eches blog has a tip for you. Eches points out that AdSense ads placed next to the video generally receive higher CTRs. Darren Rowse also chimes in on the subject by wondering if the technique is allowable by AdSense's terms of service.

Google announced today that they have just released version 7 of its AdWords API. In this release, systems integrators are now able to update keywords in multiple ad groups in just one call, schedule ads, and pause/resume keywords, creatives or sites. The pause/resume feature is only available in the Sandbox however.

On her popular ClickNewz! blog, Lynn Terry has posted a "quick list of AdSense Q&A" excerpted from her discussion forum. The list contains useful AdSense insights such as when it is advantageous to use AdSense on your site and alternatives to AdSense worth considering. See Terry's blog post for the full Q&A.

Starting this week, the search engine giant intends to launch a test its new Google Print Ads service. The alpha test will include 100 advertisers and over 50 major U.S. newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe.