Google is cracking down. Last month, Google filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and several others as part of an effort to stop fraudulent “Google Money” schemes. These are scammy offers that use Google’s brand to attract unsuspecting customers and then trap them into hard-to-break continuity programs, often via negative option contracts.

Whether the worst is behind us or yet to come, we know for a fact that people’s spending habits have changed and won’t be changing back for some time. Everyone is watching their wallet and pinching pennies – making every dollar count. So what does that mean for us as marketers?

We still have products and services that people want and need, we just need to make sure our website visitors understand why they still want what we’re offering – tight pockets or not.

Imagine that you are shopping at a department store and you ask a salesperson for men’s summer sandals and he takes you to the main entrance and drops you off. Your reaction?

There’s a good chance you’re frustrated. You probably think less of the store for its poor service. You’re probably going to leave without buying any shoes. You might even tell your friends and family not to shop there.

When customers start telling you that it's time to update your website, you've waited too long. That's the position that Chris George, CEO of Think First, was in when he emailed us asking to be considered for this edition of By Design Makeover.

In the May/June Affiliate's Corner column, I wrote about the ways super-affiliates prefer to be approached by affiliate program managers and merchants for the purpose of program recruitment.

Wooing a super-affiliate over drinks and dinner with offers of exclusive landing pages, significantly higher-than-advertised commission rates, or showering them with free product samples will certainly get their attention, but it does not guarantee that you will get the heavy hitters to join your program, however.

I talk to website owners all the time who are looking to design or redesign their websites. Most tell me what colors they like and what other websites appeal to them. Next they discuss features like animation or video. Some will go so far as to send long, prepared documents that include detailed color choices, font selections and so on. The concept of Web design is still largely looked at as a visual beautification of their website.

"Never watch sausage being made," folks say, lest you would find the process so unappetizing that you'd never eat it again. Regardless of how you feel about Spam®, the venerable luncheon meat, all search marketers must understand the ingredients that comprise search spam.

In our last column, we explored the dangers of spam, which include bad publicity and getting banned from the search engines. We also looked at a spam technique called cloaking, in which spammers feed a different page to the search spider than what they show to real people.

Kimberly Griffiths knows all too well what it feels like to be drowning in a sea of debt. Like many Americans, she's faced credit card charges totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The difference between Griffiths and the average credit-card-toting American is that she conquered the interest-accruing beasts.

It all started with Asa Candler, a "prescriptionist" in Atlanta 112 years ago. A modest pharmacist who dealt in tonics and medicines, he bought an unassuming recipe for a patent medicine called Coca-Cola. When he gave out handwritten slips of paper for customers to try the new drink for free, the coupon was born.

I find that many website owners are divided into two camps. One camp is very good at developing unique content and garnering tons of search engine traffic, but they have a hard time turning that traffic into dollars. The other camp is great at monetizing traffic, but they can never generate very much traffic. In both cases the individuals involved eventually become discouraged with their site's lackluster performance and move on to something else.