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November 2007

November 30, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 30, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:43 PM | Permalink

Facebook Alters Beacon program

Facebook has faced objections from users and privacy groups since it launched the Beacon program earlier this month. The controversial program notifies a user's Facebook friends when the user buys a product at, or in some cases just visits, a partner site.

Facebook has apparently seen the light, making changes to the Beacon program to make it an opt-in program, rather than an opt-out one, according to the NY Times.

Facebook still does not offer users an option to opt out of the program altogether, other than to stop publishing their feed to friends. Users can opt out on a case by case basis with each advertiser, which Facebook has made more prominent.

Previously, when a user bought something from a participating advertiser, a pop-up box notified the user that it would send that information to Facebook, with an option for the user to click "No thanks." If the user didn't, a message would pop up at their next Facebook visit asking for permission to share that data with the user's friends.

Now, the pop-up box will ask for permission, assuming the answer is "no" unless told otherwise. The box will also remain on the screen longer, making it easier for users to notice.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:32 PM | Permalink

Strategic Link Building

A reader sent an email with a great question about the Widget Case Study that I published in my By The Numbers column. The question was as follows:

"If the widgets are built in javascript (presumably), how does it help with SEO? Was it via NOSCRIPT tags?"

Actually, the answer is no. The nature of the benefit has to do with the ongoing evolution of what SEO means. As we all know, link building is a critical component of improving ones search engine rankings. In spite of all the tweaks and changes to search algorithms you hear about, this is likely to remain true for the foreseeable future.

So the short answer to the question above is that one critical strategy for getting visibility for your site and its content and tools. CLIQ accomplishes this. It may not receive links directly (although some of the people who install the widget will link to the site that provided it), but it will create visibility.

The question got me to thinking about the broader strategic question underlying it, and concept I call Strategic Link Building. The rest of this post will focus on that topic, and provide a more comprehensive answer to the original question.

It is generally acknowledged that there is this notion of Trust Rank, where some sites are more trusted than others. For example, if nearly every site in a given market area links to one site, the chances are pretty good that the site receiving the links can be considered "authoritative".

You can also identify people in pretty much any space who are major influencers. Many times these people have their own authoritative sites, but many times they don't. An example would be a highly respected writer for a major newspaper.

An owner of an authoritative site has a valuable asset, as does a major influencer, and it is likely that they will treat this asset quite seriously. As a result, getting a link from them is not easy. I also maintain that it will become increasingly unlikely over time that you would be able to purchase a link from these sites or people.

No doubt we will continue to see stunning exceptions to this guideline, but Google's recent hard line against selling and buying links that pass PageRank will put cause fewer and fewer of these types of sites to sell links. Their reputation is critical, and they must protect it.

Even among non-authoritative sites, you will find a growing reluctance to link out to other sites unless they perceive them to be authoritative themselves. No one wants to link to a bad neighborhood, and if you are going to send some of your link juice to a third party, it better be for a really good reason.

Fortunately, many, many site owners will link to other sites when such good reason exists. The first step in getting these types of links is to become an expert regarding the topic matter of your site, and then make that obvious through the nature and the quality of the content and tools on your site.

Once you have done this, the next step is to create a high level of visibility for that expertise. There are many good ways to approach doing this. Here are a couple:

  1. Get links on authoritative sites
  2. Earn the trust of influencers in your space

So how does this all relate to link building? If you can accomplish either of these 2 things, you have gotten yourself into a situation that will produce links even if you do nothing at all (except continue to publish great content). That's a great place to be, and it will keep you secure from changes in search engine algorithms.

How do you earn that type of trust? Generally speaking, not by emailing someone and asking them for a link. Here are a few ideas as to how you can develop such trust:

  1. Build a relationship by investing time and effort to help out the person whose trust you are trying to earn
  2. Syndicate some of your content (showing your expertise) to other major sites in your market space
  3. Mount a successful social media campaign that provides regular visibility on relevant social media sites
  4. Offer tools to other parties that they can put on their sites

In the case of widgets, it fits in with point 4 in the above list. They can provide an excellent way to get visibility with a lot of people. Or in the case of the subject of our case study, CLIQ, it provides visibility with a highly targeted audiences (the other sites in the CLIQ), and it directly exposes your high value content in a fashion that is similar to syndication.

Posted by on 11:45 AM | Permalink

Google experimenting with Digg-like features

First, Jessamyn West spotted a Google experiment and posted a screen shot on Flickr entitled, "Google becoming Digg?" Then, Haochi Chen of Googlified posted an item about the "Google Digg-Style Experiment." So, what's up?

According to Google Experimental Labs, "Google is always experimenting with new features aimed at improving the search experience. This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks."

Check it out for yourself (while you can) at http://www.google.com/experimental/a840e102.html.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 8:57 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Local Search: Competing All Over the Map - Part 2

While Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft battle for online mapping domination, another competitor is fortifying its position quietly off to the side. In today's Vertical Challenge column, "Local Search: Competing All Over the Map - Part 2," local search expert Michael Boland looks at EveryScape, a new 3-D mapping beta site from MapQuest that could change everything you thought you knew about map-based advertising and local search.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 29, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 29, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:56 PM | Permalink

YellowPages.com Explains Ingenio Acquisition

Yellowpage.com CEO Charles Stubbs made a surprise appearance at ILM:07/ SES Local today to talk about AT&T's acquisition of call tracking provider Ingenio.

The acquisition didn't get the mainstream spotlight for the most part; admittedly, it's not the sexiest announcement out there. But it is big, and has gotten a nod in certain local search circles (Kelsey Group post here; and of Frank Watson posted about the deal here on SEW).

This comes down to a unifying call tracking platform to integrate with AT&T disparate media channels including Yellowpages.com, AT&T print directories and directional advertising that will emerge in new places such as IPTV.

"With all of the assets of AT&T, we needed a cross platform ad tool," said Stubbs. "This will be a common business platform to communicate to small business when our local sales reps sit down with them."

Stubbs admitted that selling clicks has been a great business for local (TMP Directional Media CEO Stuart McKelvey later presented data showing that more than 80 percent of local online advertising is resold by yellow pages sales channels). But a call is closer to most small businesses (and to the cash register) than a click is. This is especially true for certain categories such as trade services -- a huge local category.

Ingenio effectively brings this call tracking capability across AT&T media assets:"And Ingenio is more than call tracking," said Stubbs. "It gives us a platform for fraud protection, a self serve ad store and dynamic procurement across assets."

More importantly, it allows AT&T to execute better ad bundling to small businesses including clicks and calls across different forms of media including those mentioned above.

"There is a lot of fragmentation in the way consumers take in content. If we build 20 brands we'll split our audience," says Stubbs. "This is an attempt to unify our brands. It will be all about execution which won't be easy. But we'll continue to put smart people on it and get it done."

Posted by Mike Boland on 6:22 PM | Permalink

Citysearch Partners with MerchantCircle

Citysearch expanded its reach to small business advertisers and added small business content to its local guides through a deal with MerchantCircle, a social media network for local businesses. Combining Citysearch's high-touch, urban-reaching network with MerchantCircle's low-touch, mostly suburban base, makes for a complementary partnership, according to Citysearch President Jay Herratti.

In today's SearchDay, "Citysearch Looks to MerchantCircle to Complete Picture," Herratti and MerchantCircle chairman Ben Smith share their thoughts on local business search.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:18 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Europe Gets New Hire, Facing Possible Closing

Though Yahoo Europe has been given until the end of the first quarter next year to improve their numbers or face closing, their new hire of Kristof Fahy - former brand manager for BlackBerry and telephone service provider Orange - shows they do not plan on going out without giving it a hard shot.

Fahy dealt with brand, planning and advertising for the mobile operator Orange's UK business. Something Yahoo needs in Europe where they have a track record of abandoning products.

The growth of international search resurrected their interest in non-US countries and purchases of companies like Terespondo, the Latin search engine for Spain and South America.

Toby Coppel, the Yahoo! Europe managing director said recently "that poorly performing parts of the European business have until the end of the first quarter next year to improve or faced being closed down or sold," the UK Guardian reported.

Though I have advocated Yahoo move to niched portals and communities - I think they should have these available in Europe and the other continents, not just the US. If they are serious about competing in the search world then any plans to drop countries being serviced is a major sign of surrender.

Posted by Frank Watson on 2:30 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Fine Tuning Panama Tools, Launches Campaign Tune Up and More

Yahoo has announced some tweaks to the Panama paid search product including campaign tune up tools.

The Yahoo Search Marketing blog reported the changes today.

The blog stated:

Campaign Tune-Up
Kind of like installing a nitro booster, we've revved up your account with a new tool called Campaign Tune-up. Campaign Tune-Up can help you optimize your Sponsored Search campaigns if you're not running Campaign Optimizer. It automatically analyzes a campaign's performance history, budget and business objectives, such as cost per click or conversions, and offers suggestions for bids, match types and budgets. You can either accept or reject the suggestions, but fine-tuning your bids could help your campaign run a lot better.

From your Campaign Details page, you'll see a new link, “Tune-up Campaign.” Clicking the link starts the tuning. You can then set the business measurements that matter to you for tuning your campaign and will be walked through the rest of the process.

Sticky Widget
For our next tweak, we updated the system so that more of your preferences are remembered. As a result, viewing your account the way you want is easier and requires fewer clicks. These “sticky” preferences are also remembered each time your log into your account. This tweak affects the column-sorting on your Campaign Summary and Campaign Detail pages and your Ad Group Detail page.

Let's see how they work... any reviews can be posted here.

Posted by Frank Watson on 2:18 PM | Permalink

Yahoo to Distribute Contextual Ads on PDFs

Advertisers on Yahoo's Content Match network may soon see their ads appearing alongside Adobe PDF (portable document format) documents. In a new deal with Adobe, Yahoo will begin testing a program that will allow publishers to monetize PDFs with with contextually targeted text ads. The program, dubbed Ads for Adobe PDF, displays contextual ads in a side panel of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat when a user views the PDF.

PDFs will be added to the Content Match inventory, with no plans yet to allow advertisers to opt-out. But Josh Jacobs, VP for publisher solutions at Yahoo, told ClickZ News that Yahoo will consider allowing advertisers to opt out of the format or to specifically target readers of PDF documents.

"A big goal of the beta program for both of us is to gain more insight into how users are engaging with this," said Jacobs. "We'll continue to look at whether there are other types of creative and ad placements that make sense."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 1:53 PM | Permalink

Google Using Doodles To Viral and Brand Market

Guess Google just wanted to push their brand in the Australian market, but their promotion to hold a competition for the Google Doodle that will adorn the Australian search results next January 26th definitely had that impact.

A twelve-year old from Melbourne, Janelle San Juan won the Doodle4Google competition - one that saw over 10,000 entries from all over Australia.

The picture can be seen here. Congratulations Janelle on a great job.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:34 PM | Permalink

News Sites Look For More Control Over Search Listings

A number of the leading online news publishers are looking to organize greater control over how and what news of theirs gets listed in the search results of the various search engines, according to a report by the Associated Press.

"Currently, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other top search companies voluntarily respect a Web site's wishes as declared in a text file known as "robots.txt," which a search engine's indexing software, called a crawler, knows to look for on a site," AP noted.

Though the individual engines have other proprietorial code and the publishers want to have a greater influence on how this is developed and would like to see a unified methodology, the article reported.

"The current system doesn't give sites "enough flexibility to express our terms and conditions on access and use of content," said Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the European Publishers Council, one of the organizations behind the proposal. "That is not surprising. It was invented in the 1990s and things move on," Wade told AP.

Robots.txt files were first developed in 1994 and have been the standard method webmasters use to block spiders (the crawlers search engines use to go through websites' content). However, there has been much conversation online over the past 5-6 years that some crawlers ignore the robots.txt file.

The publishers desire for "proposed extensions, known as Automated Content Access Protocol, partly grew out of those disputes. Leading the ACAP effort were groups representing publishers of newspapers, magazines, online databases, books and journals. The AP is one of dozens of organizations that have joined ACAP", AP noted.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:10 PM | Permalink

Are Your Eyes Open to the Changed Advertising Ecosystem?

Books are food for the mind. Some merit gobbling down quickly; others are to be read more slowly, nibbled at and savored. Kevin Lee's new book with Steve Baldwin The Eyes Have It (ISBN 13: 978-0974380667) published by Easton Studio Press should be read carefully and thoughtfully, for there is a lot of nutrition for the mind between the covers. Those familiar with Kevin's column in ClickZ already know how many thought-provoking ideas he can cram into just a single column. Now, imagine what's in 189 pages of this book.

The book's premise is that we live in a time when advertising, as it was once known, has undergone fundamental changes. The advertising ecosystem of just a few short decades ago is dying. Gone are the days where a brand could rapidly get at millions of untargeted consumers through a few select television ads. The dying ecosystem is being replaced with a new ecosystem of digital media where constant change is the norm, and results are highly accountable and can be achieved very rapidly.

In the book Kevin provides a roadmap for navigating this changed ecosystem. It is a roadmap that is familiar ground for those who work in the new ecosystem, for it is both search and consumer-centric. Kevin provides a great deal of advice for those on the client side who are charged with marketing in the new environment, when to seek advice and what type of advice to look for.

This book gives an eyes-wide open view of the search space. I particularly enjoyed his tongue-in-cheek outline of the warning sign that he believes should be flashing at the start campaign moment of paid search. Marketers should heed this warning. The warning would remind (1) that the search engines are not responsible for the success of the purchaser's campaign (you've got to pay attention to conversion and bear the burden yourself), (2) that the search marketplace is very competitive and opaque, (3) that the engines provide lots of sophisticated targeting tools requiring intense concentration to learn and use, and (4) that lots of advertisers are chasing the same keywords – some smart and some well . . . you know who they are.

For those who must have the details, the book is in nine chapters, most of which have multiple subsections. They are titled:

Chapter 1 – Eye of the Storm: Madison Avenue in Crisis
Chapter 2 – Eyestrain: Digital Marketing Isn't Easy (And It Isn't Going to Get Easier
Chapter 3 – Eyes Wide Shut: The Media Plan is Obsolete
Chapter 4 – Lyin'Eyes: The Search Engine and Digital Media Marketplace are Neither Fair nor Transparent
Chapter 5 – 20:20 Vision: Branding Is Not dead
Chapter 6 – Eye of the Robot: Technology Is Central (But It Isn't Enough)
Chapter 7 – Fleeting Eyes: Change Is the Only Constant
Chapter 8 – Eyes on the Prize: Assessing the Digital Marketing Opportunities Provided by Today's Major Players
Chapter 9 -- Conclusions

One note that is heard throughout the book and is echoed in my own conversations with other search marketers is that search marketing is not getting any easier in fact it is a very complex marketplace even for the professionals to navigate. I am eager to hear Kevin's take on “Selling Your Integrated Plan to the C-Suite” Wednesday, December 5 when he is on a panel by this name at Search Engine Strategies Chicago.

Posted by Amanda Watlington on 1:02 PM | Permalink

Organic Results Showing Many Malware Sites, Google Expunges Thousands

Seems companies using malware are starting to get good placement in the organic SERPs (search engine result pages), according to numerous reports this week. The sites contain code that install intrusive software that creates automated popups and subvert browsers amongst other things.

Sunbelt Software CEO Alex Eckelberry told ComputerWorld he had come across "27 different domains, each with up to 1,499 [malicious] pages. That's 40,000 possible pages."

Sunbelt offers security software including antispyware and antimalware.

One site "tried to install more than 25 separate pieces of malware, including numerous Trojan horses, a spam bot, a full-blown rootkit, and a pair of password stealers. All the malicious code pitched at users is well-known to security vendors, and can only exploit PCs that aren't up-to-date on their patches," ComputerWorld reported.

Google has expunged thousands of such pages since Monday when the problem was first reported, according to Sunbelt.

"Google did confirm yesterday with us that they were working the case, and they are good about nailing this stuff," Eckelberry told ComputerWorld.

Though ComputerWorld did say Google had not confirmed or denied any actions taken on their part.

If anyone is seeing any of these in any of the search engines please let us know here.

Posted by Frank Watson on 12:38 PM | Permalink

SEW Experts: 5 Best Reasons to Build Links In-House

It's tempting to outsource link development, but that may not be the best move for your site. In today's Link Love column, "5 Best Reasons to Build Links In-House," Justilien Gaspard shares the key advantages to in-house link development.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Brand Strategies for Search Marketing - Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, we showed you how to convince your executives to buy your own brand terms, even when you already rank first organically for these terms. Now the question is: How do I properly manage and measure my paid brand terms? In today's Brand Equity column, "Brand Strategies for Search Marketing - Part 2," Erik Qualman shows you why dumping these terms into your portfolio is not a wise move. See how to prevent brand terms from covering up weakness in other areas.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 28, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:50 PM | Permalink

Everything's Jake at Kelsey Group ILM:07

The Kelsey Group Interactive Local Media Conference in LA kicked off with SES Advisory Board member Anne Kennedy and Search Engine Watch News Editor Kevin Newcomb's panels -- featuring, among others, SEW Expert Sage Lewis on link building.

Of course, Kelsey Group analyst and SEW Expert Mike Boland is one of the star Local Search moderators.

It's been a great day of CEOs, audience members, and Kelsey Group analysts debating -- and learning -- about the past, present, and future of Local Search.

One of the stellar presentations: RH Donnelley. Hunh? The YP guys? Sure, now that everything's jake at the old media stalwart.

Business.com Founder/CEO Jake Winebaum became President of R.H. Donnelley's interactive unit (RHDi) 90 days ago, reporting directly to the Chairman and CEO.

RHDi now includes DexKnows.com, search marketing company LocalLaunch! , Business.com, Work.com and the Business.com Advertising Network.

Great catching up with Todd Sims, Business.com VP Business and Corporate Development. I first met Todd when Business.com was little more than a famous domain name and a small vertical search engine.

Kevin Newcomb interviewed Jake after his presentation. Keep an eye out for RHDi search marketing / digital strategy from a vertical search engine veteran transforming old media.

Posted by Kevin Heisler on 6:31 PM | Permalink

Strumpette testifies in social media press release trial

Yesterday, during the prosecution's opening remarks, I asked, “Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae?” A short time later, the defense said, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, The Social Media Release is not a Meatball Sundae.”

With the opening arguments out of the way, the prosecution will now call its first witness to testify.

Q: For the record, can you please state your name and tell us something about your background?

A: My name is Amanda Chapel. I have about 20 years experience in marketing communications. I am a former vice president in the Consumer Marketing Group at Weber Shandwick, one of the world's largest PR firms. Prior to Shandwick, I spent about 10 years bouncing around various leading agencies. That includes senior posts at Cone Communications in Boston and Porter Novelli in Chicago. I started my career at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in London.

Most recently, I was the managing editor of Strumpette. Strumpette is one of the leading online PR trade publications. I helped launch the pub and was partly responsible for establishing its unique brand.

Q: When did you first hear of the social media press release and what was your initial reaction to it?

A: As I recall, PRX Builder made an announcement of a new service on around September/October ‘06. I thought it was a good idea actually. Obviously, communications forms, like language, are dynamic. Certainly, a modified version of a paper release needed to be adapted to a digital networked environment.

Q: When did you discover that StoryCrafter is almost identical to Shift Communications' social media news release template?

A: The moment Edelman released it. Wrote a story about it actually, “Mega PR Firm Releases ‘StoryMakerUpper 1.0'”. Ya know, you can count on Edelman for comedy. Frankly, I think their involvement severely hampered the adoption of the concept ironically.

Q: Do you believe that PR's Web 2.0 “leaders” are a band of self-important nincompoops and, well, snake-oil salesmen? In other words, please expand on today's Strumpette article by Mark Abrams, "An Open Letter Apology to PR's Web 2.0 'Leaders'".

A: Funny. Just saw that. I do think Mark's piece speaks for itself. But I will say that these guys are the product of a society that has raised mere opinion to the status of celebrity. In reality, they've got little to no genuine expertise. When you add that their primary motive is to bamboozle ya, it gets pretty smarmy.

Q: So, in your expert opinion, would you say that the social media press release is a meatball sundae -- the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas?

A: Indeed. The assumption that “conversation” is always good isn't silly; it's stupid. The language of a corporation is primarily contracts. Contracts are not something that is open to the whims of a mob. In the “StoryMakerUpper” piece, I jokingly said, “by also incorporating features such as comments and trackback, Edelman uniquely can help companies dramatically lessen the time it takes to get mugged by rabid pitchfork-and-torch-bearing idiots in the blogosphere.” That's the form's Achilles Heel. The language of a corporation is 90 percent articulation and 10 percent conversation. The snake-oil gang doesn't get that, nor do they want to.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 3:39 PM | Permalink

What are exhibitors exhibiting at SES Chicago?

A significant number of people will attend SES Chicago next week with an expo only pass (which is free if you get one in advance or $25 if you pick one up on site).

That's right. A lot of people will be coming to see what the exhibitors are exhibiting on the show floor.

But, what will they see?

While I should disclose that SES Chicago is a client, I don't have any inside information to share about what the exhibitors will be exhibiting on Dec. 4-5.

In fact, the lack of advance publicity from exhibitors reminds me of “Silver Blaze”, one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In the story, Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard asks, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes replies: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

In contrast to the curious lack of publicity from exhibitors, you can find half a dozen press releases about conference speakers like the ones below:

Adapt Agency Development Director to Discuss Agency Pay-Per-Click Management Challenges

Engine Ready CEO Jamie Smith to Speak at Search Engine Strategies Conference

Local.com to Present at Search Engine Strategies Chicago

Red Bricks Media's CEO to Speak at Search Engine Strategies Conference 2007

Think Partnership to Present at Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2007

Where 2 Get It CEO Manish Patel to Speak at Search Engine Strategies (SES) Chicago 2007

So, if speakers are out promoting what they will be saying in the conference sessions, why aren't the exhibitors promoting what they'll be exhibiting on the trade show floor?

Google will have a booth. Will we see Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform? It's a mystery.

Microsoft adCenter will also have a booth. Will they open their publisher network, aka ContentAds, to the public? This, too, is a mystery.

Ask.com will also have a booth. Will we see anything new from Bloglines? This is also a mystery, for now.

I plan to spend some time on the trade show floor trying to find answers to these and other questions. If you are exhibiting at SES Chicago and want me to drop by to see your new product, service or research, send me an email at Greg dot Jarboe at SEO hyphen PR dot com.

I'm pretty confident that there will be plenty of news hidden in plain sight on the trade show floor. I'm just curious why the dogs aren't barking about it ahead of time.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 2:59 PM | Permalink

SEO Is Not a One-Time Event

Too often, companies "approve" SEO only to treat it as a one-time hit, or a short-term project. Months or years later, when they asked someone else to "do" SEO for them, it is discovered that the company had laid none of the basic foundation for SEO, and it is clear that even the implementation was done incorrectly. Unfortunately, no follow-up or long-term measurement plan is in place that would catch this. In today's SearchDay, "SEO Expectations and Commitments," Steve Haar offers some guidelines for those who approve SEO to know what to expect, and what's expected of them.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:06 AM | Permalink

Defense of the social media press release

Yesterday afternoon, the prosecution asked, "Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae?"

A short time later, the defense made its case on the PR 2.0 blog in a post entitled, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, The Social Media Release is not a Meatball Sundae."

As a member of the jury, you should read both posts -- and then look forward to both the prosecution and the defense calling expert witnesses to take the stand. Each of these witnesses will be asked to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The prosecution will not rest until all the facts in this culinary disaster have been examined.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 9:08 AM | Permalink

YPA Adds Mobile to Local Search Guide

At The Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media 2007/Search Engine Strategies Local show today in Los Angeles, the Yellow Pages Association launched a mobile section to its Local Search Guide. The Local Search Guide provides information on Internet Yellow Pages, search engines, search tools, vertical directories, and now profiles local mobile tools including voice-based search and free directory assistance providers.

According to a Local Search Guide home page poll, 66 percent of visitors are using mobile phones to search for local information. Of these voters, 37 percent say they use free directory assistance, 17 percent most often use SMS/text messaging and 12 percent say they use downloadable mobile search applications to find local information. An additional 34 percent report not using mobile search because the experience is frustrating.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 9:04 AM | Permalink

Google Maps Add Collaboration Features, Terrain Maps

Google Maps has gained some more features from Google Earth this week, including the ability for a group to collaborate on map updates, and the addition of a terrain maps feature, according to the Google Lat Long Blog.

The collaborative map-making option lets multiple people edit the same My Map by clicking on the 'Collaborate' link and enter the email addresses of the people you want to invite. Users need to be signed into a Google Account that's associated with that email address. Users can also allow anyone to edit a map.

Terrain maps focus on physical features such as mountains, valleys, and vegetation, with labels for even very small mountains and trails. They are enhanced with subtle shading that can often give a better sense of elevation changes than a satellite image alone, according to Google

As Duncan Riley notes on TechCrunch, these two features were among the remaining differences between Google Maps and Google Earth. Google has been moving more and more features into Google Maps since it acquired Keyhole Software in 2004 for its satellite imagery technology.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 8:42 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: SEO for Widgets: CLIQ Case Study

The search marketing world continues to expand in all sorts of ways. In an SEO strategy, widgets can be extremely effective gaining exposure for the content and tools featured on a site. In today's By the Numbers column, "SEO for Widgets: CLIQ Case Study," Eric Enge shares an exclusive preview of a new SEO case study of a beta widget called CLIQ, developed by Offermatica, Otto Digital, and StepChange.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 2

Searches are up all over the world, and it's an interesting juxtaposition to think of the rest of the world as "emerging" compared to North America and Europe. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 2," Kevin Ryan looks at some global search data provided by comScore to see if any search provider is staking a claim to the title of global search leader.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 27, 2007

Take Advantage of the Offline Rush

As an online advertiser, you can actually take advantage of the Offline Rush -- and maybe stretch your holiday ad budget as well. Especially if you are a multichannel or off-line retailer who's aiming to boost holiday sales, then it's possible to consider pacing your ad spends differently through Christmas Day and beyond.

Take a look at these interesting findings from Microsoft's Atlas Institute, based on last year's holiday season. Atlas analyzed display ad consumption (red line below) versus online sales volume (green line below). The Online Crush period took place between Thanksgiving and December 11th, followed by the Offline Rush until Christmas.

HolidaySalesAds.JPG

Index: Middle bar equals average holiday sales
Upper bar is 50% higher; Lower bar is 50% lower


Note that sales volume peaked right at the end of the Online Crush, at about 175% or so of average holiday sales levels. Yet that's just the beginning of the highest online ad consumption for the season, which seemed to top out and remain at 125% of average levels throughout the Offline Rush.

While these data are based on display ad impressions, the consumption trends seem quite relevant for text ads too. If you are finalizing search or contextual ad buys now, then don't taper too early in the season. Your customers are still actively shopping online before they head to the malls, and can be influenced during that last-minute frenzy.

Posted by on 11:30 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: November 27, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:26 PM | Permalink

Social Media + Press Release = Meatball Sundae?

According to Seth Godin, a meatball sundae is the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas. In this case, the meatballs are the press releases and the sundae toppings are the Technorati tags, Digg buttons, del.icio.us bookmarks and other Web 2.0 features. In today's SearchDay, "Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae?," Greg Jarboe puts the social media release on trial, and finds it guilty.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:51 PM | Permalink

IBM enhances free enterprise search software

Earlier today, IBM unveiled a new release of the free IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition enterprise search software. OmniFind Yahoo! Edition 8.4.2 enables users to further customize and personalize their searches to quickly and easily find, access and capitalize on information stored inside organizations and across the Web.

The new version of IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition offers the ability to separate content into different searchable document collections, an improved administration console, and enhanced search support based on the latest open source Lucene indexing library. Other enhancements improve the performance, indexing and custom search field capabilities. It also supports additional browsers.

IBM introduced IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition last December. Since its launch, nearly 25,000 users have downloaded IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition. In addition, numerous ISVs and businesses have developed new offerings that integrate with or support IBM's free search platform.

Earlier this year, IBM announced localized language support to meet expanding worldwide demand for the product in Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese and Swedish. IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition can search websites and local or remote file systems up to 500,000 documents per instance and search the web all from a single search user interface.

IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is available at no charge and can be downloaded at http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.com. Worldwide phone support is available from IBM.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 4:15 PM | Permalink

Matt Cutts Videos on Search Snippets

Matt Cutts did a video about search snippets during his recent visit to the Google Kirkland office. In it Matt takes a detailed look at how Google constructs a search snippet. Matt uses the example of a search on "Starbucks", which results in the following search result:

Starbucks Snippet

Here is a summary of the observations by Matt, with a few incremental comments sprinkled in by me:

  1. The title of the snippet comes from the title of your page. In this case, it's "Starbucks Homepage" and the SEO advice that Matt provides is that you might want to have this say "Starbucks Coffee" instead. Now in the case of Starbucks, they already rank #1 for the term "Starbucks Coffee" any way, so the advice may not be important to them. For most web sites, however, Matt's advice is critical.

    To paraphrase: Get the keywords that are most relevant to your web page in the title of the page. Do this in a way that does not baffle the user, as this will lower your click throughs to your site. Do this for all the pages on your site.

  2. Next up is the description. This can come from multiple places. First of all, if Google can't currently crawl your page for some reason (e.g. you server is down when the Googlebot comes visiting) Google can't construct the description snippet from your page. This is the one scenario where you may see Google using the Open Directory Project (aka "DMOZ") description for your site (if such a description exists).

    Next, Google looks to see if they can find text within the user visible part of the page itself that matches up with the query. For example, if the search was for a specific name, and that name shows up at the bottom of the page in the text, the description snippet will likely get pulled from there, even though it is way down on the page. Google does this to help searchers more rapidly determine the relevance of the returned result to the query.

    If Google is not satisfied that what they find in the user visible text of the page matcehs up with the query they are then likely to return the contents of the met description tag. This is why this tag is so important. While it does not influence rankings in any search engine I know about, it is a powerful opportunity to entice the user to click on your listing instead of someone else's.

  3. The other thing that Matt observes about the title and the description in the result, is that keywords from your search query will be bolded. For that matter, if the keyword appears in your URL, that will also be bolded, but we'll cover the URL separately in a moment.

    Matt notes that Google does know about stemming and synonyms, so if your search includes the word "car" in it, that it will understand that this is the same as "automobile" and potentially the same as "auto". However, in this example, automobile and auto will not be highlighted in the search results, only car will.

  4. Over to the right of the description you will see a link to get a stock quote for Starbucks. This is because Google knows that Starbucks is a public company, and many of their users who search on Starbucks may be looking for a stock quote. Similarly, if their is an address on the page, Google may show a link to a Google Map for that location.

  5. Below the description you will see a line that has the URL in it. This is simply the URL of the page for this search result. As mentioned above, a portion of this may be bolded if the a word from the search query shows up in it.

    Just to the right of the URL you will see a page size, 12K in our example. Sometimes you will also see a time stamp for when it was last crawled. This likely shows up most on those sites where freshness matters.

  6. Further to the right of the URL, you see a link called "Cached". This shows the copy of the page that Google last obtained from your site. At the top of the cached page you will also see information on when Google last retrieved the page from your site. The cashed page is one way for you to see if Google has seen your latest changes. In addition, searchers can click on this is for some reason you site is currently down.

    To the right of the Cached link appears "Similar Pages". This is a link that will show you links to other similar sites. In Starbucks case, you get Starbucks Japan, Pizza Hut, Peet's, Quiznos, and other food and beverage chains.

    "Note This" is a link that shows up over on if you happen to be logged into Google Notebook (I was not for my screen shot). You can use that link to save a bunch of links if you are actively researching something.

  7. Next up is the site links. Google only does this for some sites. As Matt clarifies in the video, there is no way to pay to get Google to put up sitelinks for your site, it is done completely algorithmically. The sitelinks show other pages within the site that are very popular.

    Basically, Google is trying to help the user get to the page they really want much more quickly. If they really wanted to see the About Us page, for example, this presentation will save the user a click.

  8. Lastly, there is the "More results from starbucks.com" link at the bottom of the snippet. Clicking on this will automatically generate a " site:starbucks.com starbucks" query for you, which will basically repeat your orignal query, but limit the search results to those pages on the starbucks.com site.


That provides a pretty complete look at a Google search result snippet. Matt has promised more videos and I will make a point of covering them all in detail as they come out.

Posted by on 10:52 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: SEO for New Web Site Launch

The first step in any SEO initiative for new sites is to set realistic expectations and goals. In today's au Natural column, "SEO for New Web Site Launch," Mark Jackson shares SEO tips and tricks for brand new Web sites.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: SEO and Usability: Use 'em or Lose 'em

Making sure your small business Web site is user- and search engine-friendly is a challenge. In today's Little Biz column, "SEO and Usability: Use 'em or Lose 'em," Carrie Hill shows you that SEO strategy combined with Web site usability can complement each other, allowing search engines and users to find what they're looking for.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 26, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 26, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:07 PM | Permalink

Seth Godin Interview - What's a Meatball Sundae?

In my latest interview, I sat down again with Seth Godin to talk about his upcoming keynote speech at SES Chicago on Tuesday December 4th. The session focuses on his new book, Meatball Sundae, and focuses on the confusing nature of today's marketing opportunities.

Seth spoke about the nature of the problem previously in a pre-show webinar. You can see coverage for the webinar from Lisa Barone, Kevin Newcomb, and yours truly.

One of the major components of the discussion that was particularly interesting to me was a discussion about SEO. Seth had offered some criticism of SEO in the past, and I wanted to see what his thinking was on the matter.

It turns out that the real criticism Seth has is not of SEO, or SEOs. It's more focused on what happens when people start thinking that SEO is a magic bullet. I.e., take you online business, no matter how crummy it is, stir in some SEO, and presto change-o, you are raking in the dough. He goes on to say that the real challenge for all webmasters is what are they going to to present some new unique stuff to the world that people are going to want to see.

He then goes onto say:

I am just going to spend money, because I am a marketer hiring some guy to wave a magic wand to make something happen. And then, when the SEO people comeback and say here are ten recommendations, eight of which are about better stuff and two of which are about magic words and secret hyper-tags, all they do is take the other two, and leave the eight important ones off.

What I've been saying to people and mostly people who read my work or other clients is pretend it doesn't exist. Do everything you can before you call on the SEO wizards to do the last part. Because, if you are not willing to do the first part, if you are not willing to put in the effort, it doesn't matter how good they are, it's not going to work. Somebody else who is doing the first eight steps will do better even if they don't do the last two.

I have definitely seen some of this along the way as well. As an SEO, what I have learned to do is to qualify the willingness of a potential client to invest in the quality of their web site before taking them on. If they don't seem willing to do that, we turn them away. No sense in taking on a client where we will not be successful.

Posted by on 10:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: The 5 Commandments of Content Advertising

Content algorithms operate in ways that are counter-intuitive, and to some extent different than the search engines' explanations imply. Before you get into content advertising, you need to know what to do, and what NOT to do. In today's Content Advertising column, "The Five Commandments of Content Advertising," David Szetela describes best practices for structuring and creating content campaigns.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Knowledge Gap: CEOs, CMOs, VPs and SEM

When your CEO, CMO, or other decision-maker knows a little bit about SEM, you've got trouble. While knowledge sharing is a good thing, there's a problem when people consider themselves knowledgeable on a subject well before that's actually the case. In today's Search Ads column, "Knowledge Gap: CEOs, CMOs, VPs and SEM," Matt Spiegel discusses the need to help those decision-makers realize that because they now have more knowledge doesn't necessarily mean they are prepared to make key decisions with this information.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 21, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:26 PM | Permalink

BidHero Brings Analytics to PPC Bid Management

Bid management for PPC campaigns has become more complicated with the introduction of "quality scores" by the major ad platforms, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. BidHero, a new bid management tool from Lyris, addresses the changes through its integration with Lyris' ClickTracks Web Analytics product. In today's SearchDay, "Lyris Intros BidHero Campaign Management Tool," we look at BidHero, along with the larger Lyris HQ portfolio it is a part of.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:39 AM | Permalink

Gift Giving That Really Helps

If you have not chosen all your holiday gifts for your family and have children who you need to get something for then the current promotion for the charity One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) may be just the answer.

For the next few days the OLPC Foundation has a buy one get one free promotion going where you can buy a needy third world child a laptop and get one for someone in your life.

Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. This is the first time the revolutionary XO laptop has been made available to the general public. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).

For all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access a $350 value free.

"OLPC's mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education" their website tells us.

Posted by Frank Watson on 11:36 AM | Permalink

Privacy Group Takes on Facebook

The latest advertiser to use Facebook's new Social Ads platform may not have been the kind of marketer the company was hoping for. Privacy watchdog MoveOn.org has posted an online petition demanding that Facebook respect the privacy of users by making it easier to opt out of the "Beacon Ads" program, where actions Facebook users take on partner sites are added to their Facebook news feed. The feed is delivered to the user's friends, along with a related ad and the user's profile picture.

The full petition text reads:

"Facebook must respect my privacy. They should not tell my friends what I buy on other sites – or let companies use my name to endorse their products– without my explicit permission."

MoveOn.org has also launched a group on Facebook, "Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy!." There are currently more than 4,900 members.

Facebook does not offer users an option to opt out of the program, other than eliminating their feed altogether. Users can opt out on a case by case basis with each advertiser.

When a user buys something from a participating advertiser, a pop-up box notifies the user that it will send that information to Facebook, with an option for the user to click "No thanks." If the user doesn't, a message will pop up at their next Facebook visit asking for permission to share that data with the user's friends.

MoveOn.org thinks that's not enough. In the Facebook group, they write:

"Facebook says its users can 'opt out' of having their private purchases reported to all their friends. But that option is easily missed. And even if you do 'opt out' for purchases on one site, it doesn't apply to purchases on another site – you have to keep opting out over and over again. The obvious solution is to switch to an 'opt in' policy, like most other applications on Facebook."

More coverage on Techmeme.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 9:33 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: How to Integrate PPC and Display Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) or display advertising? You don't always have to choose one or the other. In today's By the Numbers column, "How to Integrate PPC and Display Advertising," Eric Enge shows you how to integrate PPC campaigns with display advertising, and use this cyclical approach to improve overall ROI.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 20, 2007

Discover Your Video Search

At the recent NewTeeVee conference, a panel comprised of several Video Search providers agreed that indexing and searching through millions of online videos isn't the real challenge facing them. According to Mary Hodder, Chairman of Dabble, “recommendation and discovery is 80% of the problem.”

No one is denying the video explosion and fragmentation underway. In October 2006, there were approximately 100 million video viewings online, with over half seen through YouTube. Today, by contrast, about a quarter of all videos are viewed on YouTube, and online consumption has grown to 300 million total views monthly.

In response, Dabble and its competitors are adapting their approaches to content management. How the results are organized, clustered and presented is important. Tim Tuttle, who serves as the CEO of Truveo (owned by AOL), explained that, “we want to make it possible for you to find video every time you want it...[and] it's hard to solve this problem.” According to Alex Vikati, president of castTV, “the lines between search, discovery and browse are a little fuzzy.”

Tuttle says that a focused approach is also important, and Truveo “goes to all [key] places, including media companies and major content producers.” Vikati feels that, “it's not just size, but comprehensiveness” that matters. He believes that premium content is important, but classifying spam and other poor quality results should be addressed first. Bearing in mind how many videos are ephemeral, there has been significant progress made by providers in de-duping and updating search results.

Additionally, search vendors are working with new outputs from video sharing and social environments. They have taken advantage of user metadata, like commentary, surrounding the videos. While I do think the answer lies somewhere in the social arena, text surrounding the videos seems a bit askew – comments may not actually be very insightful or even related to the video subjects.

A better approach to discovery? It's telling that when NewTeeVee attendees were asked to vote on the best Video Search provider, they crowned StumbleUpon as the winner! Founder Garrett Camp doesn't focus exclusively on video but rather anything interesting on the web. His business helps people share what's intriguing to them. Heresy? Perhaps. But clearly the answer isn't about old-school search.

Posted by on 5:22 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: November 20, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:00 PM | Permalink

Oodle 2.0: Improved Classifieds Search

With a new release it's dubbed "Oodle 2.0," the classifieds search engine has greatly improved its search functionality and user experience. To improve its search experience, Oodle has redesigned and better integrated features it had before, as well as added new features and improved search on the back end. All results also offer additional data to place the results in context, such as how often new results are expected to appear, or what the average price for similar items in the area have been in the past. In today's SearchDay, "Oodle Upgrades Search Features," we take a look at some of these features.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:53 PM | Permalink

Senate Subcommittee Cautions FTC on Google-DoubleClick Acquisition

U.S. Senators are urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look with a critical eye on Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick. According to ClickZ News, the heads of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights sent a letter yesterday to FTC Chairperson Deborah Platt Majoras urging her to examine the competition questions raised by the deal.

"While we have not reached any definitive conclusion regarding this issue, we urge that you only approve the merger if you determine that it will not cause any substantial lessening of competition with respect to Internet advertising," the Senators wrote.

The deal is also being looked at by the European Commission, which has until April 2 to render a decision. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission approved the deal earlier this month.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 9:22 AM | Permalink

Google Custom Search Engines Go International

Google has expanded its Custom Search Engine program internationally. Now it's available in 40 languages, and in close to 80 countries worldwide. The Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE), which provides users with complete control over their look and feel, and does not show any ads in the results, is also being made available in those same languages and countries. Unlike the free edition of Custom Search Engines, CSBEs come with a fee. Another benefit of CSBEs is that you can get email support, which is not available in the free edition.

Yesterday I spoke with Nitin Mangtani, lead product manager of enterprise search at Google, and he told me that Google has found the predominant use of Custom Search Business Edition is as a tool to implement site search. Correspondingly, Google plans to setup a web page just for site search applications, though this page is not currently implemented. This should make the setup and management of site search versions of Custom Search Engines easier to manage and deploy.

Posted by on 8:25 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: On Page vs. Off Page SEO

Off-page SEO factors are getting all the attention these days. But good, old-fashioned, on-page factors are also vital for every SEO project. In today's au Natural column, "On Page vs. Off Page SEO," Mark Jackson discusses a few cases where on-page SEO is most appropriate, and others where off-page SEO tactics will get the most bang for your buck.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Slow Growth in Search? Long Tail Keyword Solutions

When building a new startup, you initially see search marketing boom year over year. Inevitably, that growth will slow. In today's Big Biz column, "Slow Growth in Search? Long Tail Keyword Solutions," Aaron Shear explains that the first step in reversing the slow growth trend is to admit your search campaigns may have hit a wall.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Global SEM Growth Leaves U.S. SEOs Behind

Now that search engine marketing has become a global game, the need for translation services for Web sites has never been greater. In today's Search Engine WarGames column, "Global SEM Growth Leaves U.S. SEOs Behind," Kevin Heisler notes with surprise that relatively few SEOs and SEMs leverage language translation.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 19, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 19, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:54 PM | Permalink

AdSense Video Units To Launch In UK, Ireland and Canada

The AdSense blog announced it is adding video units to AdSense users in Canada, Ireland and the UK.

"With this new launch, publishers in the UK, Ireland and Canada will be able to show videos from our YouTube content partners and choose those videos by category, individual YouTube partner, or have video automatically targeted to their site. Based on publisher feedback, we've also just added a feature which lets you choose individual videos to be displayed in your video units" the press release stated.

Posted by Frank Watson on 4:23 PM | Permalink

Google Gets Its Court Date In Australia

Australians are taking Google to court over the lack of clear division between paid and organic search results. The courts set the date for the hearing at June 23, 2008.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC), a government watchdog, had some initial problems with their brief but were allowed to represent and the new suit will be heard June 23.

"Separate allegations of deceptive and misleading advertising were first levelled against Google and Australian website Trading Post's parent company, Sensis, in July after the Trading Post was found to have purchased Google keywords using competitors' business names which were displayed on Google's sponsored links," ZD Net stated.

Google Australia claims the ACCC's allegations are an attack on all search engines and Australian businesses that use Google to connect with customers, ZD Net reported.

Sensis - "the search engine for Australians" - was also named in the suit and has suggested it may settle, ZD Net repoted.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:26 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Could Be Selling European Units

Seems Yahoo is unhappy with their European marketing efforts, the new head of Yahoo's European business Toby Coppel told the Financial Times.

"Yahoo's problems in Europe stemmed from a historical lack of focus on the region," the FT.com report stated.

Coppel told FT.com "that Yahoo has not always used its most advanced technology in Europe'.

"In rushing out to market, we built a lot of applications that didn't speak to each other," Coppel t said. "We didn't have the same resources. We were managing a larger number of legacy products with fewer people than in the States."

If the European division does not increase market there is the possibility Yahoo will sell it off. Seems Yahoo did this a few years ago and then had to play catch up again. While agree that the portals need to be geared towards the various European countries to get more repeat visitors, they may need to purchase some of the small European engines to gain that boost. Similar to the purchase of Telerespondo which help improve the Latin market.

The other local engines would have local sales teams in place as well as current clients.

The new year could be an interesting time for the Yahoo International people.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:14 PM | Permalink

AT&T To Acquire Pay Per Call Company Ingenio

AT&T announced plans to acquire Ingenio whose Pay Per Call technology they intend to integrate with YellowPages.com, according to the company press release.

"AT&T plans to integrate Ingenio's Pay Per Call solutions into its directory service and local search advertising portfolio, including the YELLOWPAGES.COM Network, AT&T Real Yellow Pages and 1-800-Yellow Pages. Ingenio's Pay Per Call service is an advertising platform that allows businesses to manage their ad programs and generate valuable phone leads. The platform uses proprietary technology to provision unique published phone numbers to track calls to businesses generated by those ads, and advertisers' fees are based on the volume of these leads," the release stated.

Interesting play into the space, and a smart forward move on the part of the local directories. The use of online information sources for local searches previously done with Yellow Books and 411 calls is on the rise and the old major players need to adapt to this change.

Just how effectively they use the technology will be the test.

"Throughout the past few years, we have built and deployed innovative products that help the services economy flourish online," said Mark Britto, president and CEO of Ingenio. "What we have lacked, however, is scale -- the ability to bring those solutions to the market in the biggest possible way. Our merger with AT&T allows us to bring our innovations to more businesses nationwide."

Posted by Frank Watson on 12:58 PM | Permalink

Bloglines Eric Engleman Interviewed

Recently I had the chance to interview Eric Engleman, the General Manager of Bloglines. We talked about the overall blog marketplace, the recent updates to Bloglines, and more.

One of the more interesting aspects of the interview was learning about the search functionality built into Bloglines. Here is what Eric had to say about it:

You can actually search within that person's feed library. You can search the entire Bloglines feed index, or I can search within my own set of feeds, or I could search within Eric Enge's set of feeds.

This is really cool functionality that shows how a vertical search tool can really enhance the functionality and usability of a web application.

Posted by on 11:00 AM | Permalink

User-Edited Locations on Google Maps

Google Maps users now have the ability to edit locations on Google Maps for all users to see. It's starting with the ability to move a place marker to the correct location, and will later include the ability to edit more details about the location, Seth LaForge, software engineer for Google Maps, writes on the Lat Long Blog

The changes will be reviewed by Google before they are made available to others, at least at first. There will also be the option to view the original location offered by Google. If a business listing has been claimed by its owner, edits will require the owner's approval. All edits require a Google account, and that user's account will be identified as the author of the edit.

The service should help Google keep its local data fresh, and give users and business owners more control over their listings.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:49 AM | Permalink

Poynt Gives New Local Search Option for Windows Live Messenger Users

Windows Live Messenger users have a new option for local search in the U.S.: Poynt. Multiplied Media has teamed with Idearc to deliver Superpages.com's full directory of local U.S. business listings over instant messaging platforms.

To use the service, consumers add the Poynt "buddy" to their contact list in Windows Live Messenger and interact with it like they would their other IM contacts. Once consumers have specified their search location, they enter keywords for the businesses and services they need and results are returned, with those closest to their specified search location listed first.

Poynt has been live in Canada with Yellowpages.ca data. Multiplied Media is currently developing an AOL IM version of Poynt as well.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:32 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Search Marketing Staffing Crisis

There's a tradeoff most people face in the process of hiring a search marketing team: hire people with less business experience who are likely more familiar with search (even if only from their own personal use), or hire people less familiar with search who have more business experience. In today's Search Ads column, "Search Marketing Staffing Crisis," Matt Spiegel offers a solution to the search marketing staffing crisis, but it's going to require some outreach on all our parts.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Content Advertising Explained - Part 3

Content ads need to work harder than search ads to distract the reader's attention from the Web site content that attracted them in the first place. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Advertising Explained - Part 3," David Szetela shows you some ways to test your content ads, and offers some good and bad examples to study.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 16, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 16, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:08 PM | Permalink

Microsoft Exec Claims They Will Have 30% Search Market Share

Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, said he thinks Microsoft can get a 40% share of the search market in the next 3-5 years, Reuters reported.

"Speaking at a UBS investor conference, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, laid out the company's strategy to become a leader in the growing online advertising industry with a "10, 20, 30, 40" plan.

The plan, which represents Microsoft's aspirations over the next three to five years, calls on Microsoft to increase the company's share in Web search, page views, percentage of time on the Internet and percentage of advertising dollars.," Reuters stated.

Interesting projection given the six percent they have right now. Guess the buy out of Yahoo could be coming after all.

Posted by Frank Watson on 5:03 PM | Permalink

Thanksgiving Turkey, Image Search, and Missed Opportunities

Thanksgiving is a major holiday for my family. With the first changes of color in the foliage, I begin the counting the weeks until the family gathers at my cousin's for this event. So, with Thanksgiving less than a week away, I decided to share my mounting enthusiasm with one of my siblings by sending a note with a picture of what I hoped would be a gorgeous roasted turkey. I fully expected that finding such an image would be as simple as firing up my browser turning to either Google or Yahoo image search and selecting a choice roasted turkey. To my surprise this was not to be.

Here is what I found when I went turkey tracking. An image search for “turkey” at both Google and Yahoo! yielded differing, but unsatisfactory results. Google's included live turkeys, some turkey humor, maps and images of the country Turkey, but no succulent roast turkeys on page 1. On page 1 of the image search results Yahoo! had a number of live gobblers, no maps, some images of Turkey and Turkish people, and lone image of a roast turkey – not quite what I had in mind. Both search engines suggested that I narrow my search to include “Thanksgiving turkey.” I took the suggestion, and the results were somewhat better. Google offered up more turkey clip art and a few images of roasted turkeys. Yahoo! had similar results.

As I reviewed the results, I got to thinking – a dangerous activity – where are the large purveyors of turkeys? Why are there no images from Butterball or Perdue, two large poultry producers or even the food magazines that every year have many gorgeous images of roasted turkeys within their covers? I thought initially that my mistake was not searching correctly so I gave image search another try using “butterball turkey” and “perdue turkey.”

Now we're cooking, I thought. The results in Yahoo! for “butterball turkey” were short on images of cooked turkeys, long on displays of the logo. There were also disturbing images of maimed and dead (not in grocery settings) turkeys and images chronicling a turkey “offal to oil” initiative. With Yahoo! it wasn't until the second page of results that a search for “butterball” turkey yielded a beautiful cooked turkey.

A search for “perdue turkey netted on Google netted a wide variety of images including some appetizing pictures of turkey sandwiches. On Yahoo! the results were startling, for I could have filled a grocery bag with raw turkey parts in neat packages, but no beauty shots of roast turkey.

Still not satisfied, I made one last try using “roast turkey” as my image search term. Google offered up lots of images of roasted turkeys, but curiously not a single one on the first page was from a turkey producer or packer. On Yahoo! there were lots of roasted turkeys some with a more homey touch since they were from Flickr, but again not a single one on the first page from a turkey producer.

Just to get a rounded picture I searched for “thanksgiving turkey” in the main “web results” pages for Yahoo! and Google. Lo and behold, Google offered a lovely cooked turkey, from a family advice site, not a turkey producer. Yahoo! had turkey clip art but no roasted turkey.

Is this a missed opportunity? Surely, I am not the only person searching for a beauty shot of a roasted turkey? Were my searches that defective? My persistence at least should have been more easily rewarded. I even took the help that the search engines offered. I'm left with the conclusion that image search has been neglected. A visit to the turkey sites reveals very sophisticated marketing programs for assisting the consumer in preparing the ritual bird. There are hotlines, chat rooms and podcasts, but alas, lowly image search appears to be overlooked. With the advent of universal search, businesses must be found in all the right places. (Note: this is the title of the workshop that I will be giving at SES Chicago along with Greg Jarboe.)

Oh! When all was said and done, I decided not to send a beauty shot, but instead to go with the image of the roasted turkey in a bikini – an effect that can be achieved with creative use of foil and the tanning effects of oven roasting.

Posted by Amanda Watlington on 4:25 PM | Permalink

The 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes

There are surely hundreds of different ways that people can mess up their sites. Based on our experience from working with scores of clients, here are the 9 most common problems that we find:

  1. Broken information architecture - These are sites that fail to map the nature of the information they are providing into an understandable hierarchy. Bad for users and search engines.
  2. Poor site usability - Results in poor conversion rates, poor lifetime value per visitor, and a less attraactive site for linking to.
  3. Mismanaged internal link juice - Some sites allocate their link juice poorly, resulting in not enough of it going to their most important pages.
  4. Content getting buried over time - A surprising number of sites that create huge amounts of content use publishing systems that buries stuff over time. Such a lost opportunity. People and crawlers are looking for this stuff, don't hide it!
  5. Bad redirects - Why is is that every engineer who does not have a background in SEO defaults to using a 302 redirect? OK, that's probably unfair (you might even say ignorant), but it sure seems that way at times.
  6. Poor titles and headers - Keyword tools are wonderful weapons. These are valuable for far more than SEO. Keyword tools tell you what language people use when referring to your products and services. Even in a world without web sites, this is something you would want to know. Then you need to make sure you have pages and content that addresses the major topic areas that relate to your business.
  7. Insufficient content - No content (or tools) means no links means no traffic. It's that simple. What unique value are you offering a visitor to your web site? Why would someone link to your site?
  8. Duplicate content - It's unbelievable how much duplicate content that some sites create. It's a common killer, and it's a very big factor in poor page rank management.
  9. All flash site - Very, very pretty, but not a great experience for a crawler. This does not mean you can't have an (almost) all Flash site. Just make sure you offer text link navigation options and use a technique like Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) to tell the crawler what is in the movie.
  10. Same meta description (and keywords) on every page - These elements are included in duplicate content filter checks by the search engines. And, of course, the meta description is important because it often gets used as the description that the search engine uses for your web page, so make sure it describes the unique info to be found on that page.

We have run into many other problems along the way, of course, but these are the most common offenders. What other common SEO mistakes do you see? Discuss this over in the SEW forums.

Posted by on 10:34 AM | Permalink

Clickable Areas on AdSense Redefined

Google announced today on the Inside AdSense blog that it has redefined the clickable area of its text ads to make only the ad's title and URL clickable, instead of the whole block of text.

The move is intended to prevent advertisers from paying for accidental clicks on an ad:
"By allowing users to click only on the ad title and URL, we aim to decrease accidental clicks, better aligning visitor behavior with their intent," writes Katie Mandel, AdSense product marketing. "Overall, the decrease in accidental clicks will keep users on your website, interacting your content, until they intend to click on an ad."

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The changes began rolling out earlier this week, as noted at Search Engine Roundtable. Google warns advertisers on the Inside AdWords blog that they should not be surprised if they see a decrease in both the number of clicks and the clickthrough rate (CTR) in content network campaigns. It's expected that advertisers will also see an increase in the average return on investment (ROI) of content network traffic.

Early forum conversations finds the impact is not huge, though many publishers are seeing a drop in CTR.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 9:24 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Local Search: Competing All Over the Map

Google Maps, launched with AJAX functionality, draggable maps, and satellite imagery in late 2005, started an "arms race" in development of new features and functionality. In today's Vertical Challenge column, "Local Search: Competing All Over the Map," local search expert Michael Boland looks at the many ways competitors have raised the bar with real-time traffic reports, multipoint routing, social features, geotagged video and images, personalization, and most recently, 3-D mapping.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 15, 2007

SEW Experts: Brand Strategies for Search Marketing - Part 1

Whether you're an agency, consultant, or in-house search expert, it's likely that you will eventually need to answer this key question from your CEO: "Why would I buy my own brand terms? Aren't we are already listed at the top of the search engines?" In the inaugural Brand Equity column, "Brand Strategies for Search Marketing - Part 1," Travelzoo's Erik Qualman shows how paid search can bring incremental traffic, control of your brand's messaging, and other benefits the CEO will appreciate.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: A Winning SEO Plan to Create Buzz, Traffic, Links

How do you engage users, create buzz and generate links all at the same time? In today's Link Love column, "A Winning SEO Plan to Create Buzz, Traffic, Links," Justilien Gaspard presents the idea of a contest to generate traffic, buzz, and links, using the Reservation Road film as a case study.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 14, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 14, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:40 PM | Permalink

What Can Local Learn from Universal Search?

It remains to be seen how big of a role local search results will play in the blended search results that the major engines have all moved toward. But in the meantime, local content providers can learn a bit about self-promotion by following the search engines' lead.

In today's SearchDay, "What Local Can Learn from Universal Search," The Kelsey Group's Mike Boland looks at the long overdue opportunity to apply the principles of blended search to local search, with LiveDeal as an example of blended local search results.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:35 PM | Permalink

Vanessa Fox is on the Move

Vanessa Fox, formerly the driving force (and friendly face) behind Google Webmaster Central, is on the move again. Vanessa left Google in June to join real estate search startup Zillow. Today, she announced that she's leaving Zillow to become entrepreneur in residence for Ignition Partners, a Seattle-based VC firm. She'll also keep active in the search world, as the new features editor at Search Engine Land.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:29 PM | Permalink

SES Webcast Today: How Large Enterprises Effectively Integrate Paid & Natural Search Marketing

There's still time to sign up for a webcast beginning at 1 p.m. EST today discussing the challenges large enterprises face when integrating SEO and paid search. The one-hour session, part of the Search Engine Strategies Webcasts series, features SEW's executive editor Kevin Heisler.

Kevin will focus on what the best and brightest CMOs are doing right – and why no corporations have the answer, yet. You'll learn why CMOs still have "the most dangerous job" in America, and find out which major corporations are on the path to global SEO SEM integration.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:27 AM | Permalink

Myth Busting: Affiliate Marketing

There is a persistent belief out there by many that affiliate marketing is bad. The truth is that it's all in the packaging, and whether or not your site adds any value.

During the early days of SEO, when it was easy to rank highly in search engines, about all you needed to know was how to spell SEO, it was almost trivial to make hordes of money with affiliate sites. The problem was that hordes of sites that were extremely thin on content came out.

As the search engines matured in their understanding of ranking issues, they recognized that these sites did not add any unique new value to the user. They began to try and detect these types of sites, and the sites became known as "thin affiliates" or "affiliate spam sites".

A classic thin affiliate site would be a directory of products from one affiliate partner, organized into a tree, with no other products on the site, and all the product descriptions are supplied by the affiliate partner. There is no added value here, because the affiliate partner's product appear all over the web, on sites using that same description.

Unchecked, this leads to a search engine index that may have most of its first ten results for related search queries coming from pages with the same content. Search engines don't like this. One big reason is that they work hard to provide variety to their users, because if the first 10 results are all essentially the same, and it's not the answer the user is looking for, the user will most likely leave without being satisfied. Not good.

Looking deeper into this, one of the big issues is the natural ambiguity in user search queries. It's a fact: Users do not accurately specify what they want. This goes beyond the obvious queries, such as "Jaguar", which can mean an animal, a car, a guitar, or even potentially a football team.

Even with a fairly straightforward query such as "diabetes", it is not clear what the user wants. Do they want diet information? Do they want to find a doctor? Do they want to read about novel new treatments? Are they a doctor looking for the latest research? These types of query problems are the rule, and not the exception.

The way the search engine deals with this is by providing variety in results. Thin affiliate sites do not provide variety.

It would be wrong, however, to say that affiliate marketing is bad. The problem with thin affiliates is in the sameness of the content. If you have a site loaded with content that you have uniquely developed, there is nothing wrong with monetizing that through affiliate programs. The key question is whether or not your site provides variety.

This very same issue is at the heart of successful link building as well. People don't link to your for the purpose of helping you make money. The sites you really want links from are the ones who link to great content, because they want users to find that content in the event that what the user wants is not on their site.

So even if you write a bunch of original articles, but they are more or less on the same topics with the same message that 100 other people have written about, you are not adding enough value to the conversation to get authoritative sites to link to your site. You really need to be adding something to the conversation.

From a strategic perspective, the search engines don't want this remixed content either. This may be a bit harder for them to detect directly, but if they see you have written a bunch of "original" articles, they may not be able to detect that you have said nothing new, but they will be able to see that you are not getting the high quality links that would be an indicator of high content quality.

Ultimately, it's about the content. If you are really adding value to the conversation, no one is going to worry about how you are monetizing it (of course, this assumes you are not flooding all your pages with ads and creating a bad user experience).

Posted by on 10:05 AM | Permalink

Using Google Trends to target cities with press releases

Mike Cheslar of eVisibility Insider has figured out a simple yet clever strategy to make sure that your press releases are seen by cities and regions that are looking for your specific keywords. Check out his post to see how he combines Google Trends and the MSA field in PRWeb.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 8:33 AM | Permalink

Only Searchable At Your Library

This week, I learned about a newly accessible treasure trove of history and literature online. Once again, my excitement was tempered by the reality that it's only available through paying libraries. While I'm a big fan of libraries and even remote access for patrons, it's troubling that the public-at-large cannot access these holdings -- or quickly discover them through commonly used search engines.

Publishers Gale and ProQuest announced their electronic bridge which connects some of the most treasured English language resources. According to these publishers, who are the Coke and Pepsi of academic resources, researchers will find “digital collections of nearly every printed work from the late 15th through the 18th centuries, [which] are considered to be among the world's most valued research collections.” This includes nearly everything printed in England between 1700-1800, and over 220,000 books and works.

At least the lucky library card holders at 200+ universities will be able to search and read these seminal collections more easily, beginning next year. The rest of us get zilch. Now I can understand the economics, as it costs a lot to collect, curate, digitize and share these tremendous holdings and the libraries pay for all this to be done. Unlike commercial content, there won't be advertisers lining up to sell their Christmas gifts next to texts from the Age of Reason.

Both Gale and ProQuest are trying to make strides towards more open access, by helping librarians deliver extensive catalogs, an array of digitized content, and 24/7 access for patrons. Last month, the ProQuest executives even mentioned that they want to help librarians in “building products from the end user point of view.” Gale has offered gateways for the public to research what's available at their local libraries. All this is to be applauded.

Yet the “long tail” information we really deserve is still largely unsearchable outside library gates. Try as they might, the search engines aren't solving this problem, because there's nothing to crawl or license here. There needs to be a better way to find the world's knowledge…anyone?

Posted by on 1:29 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Bid Management Lookback Options

One of the key factors when using bid management tools is how far back in time you need to look at the data to get meaningful results for each keyword – the lookback time interval. Usually, there's no one time period that works for all keywords. In today's By the Numbers column, "Bid Management Lookback Options," Eric Enge offers some real-world keyword data that shows how and why to subdivide the problem to a finer level of granularity.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1

The search world is expanding. Global players like Google, Yahoo, Baidu and Microsoft are competing to be the single resource for accessing information. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1," Kevin Ryan begins an exploration of global search marketing, with some exclusive comScore data.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 13, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 13, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:56 PM | Permalink

Do You Know What's Really Causing Your Results?

Is a seasonal lift masking losses in your PPC campaign? Sometimes, gains in ROI could have been even better, if you could identify the point of diminishing returns. In today's SearchDay, "Tracking Real Value with Incremental ROI," Steve Haar reminds you that you need to question your results, especially in SEM, and especially around the holidays.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:43 PM | Permalink

Report: UK Small Businesses Shy Away from Search

A majority of small businesses in the U.K. are not investing in search marketing, but those who do are seeing an increase in sales, according to a report published by Microsoft and Vanson Bourne. As reported in ClickZ News, 62 percent of small businesses in the U.K. are not investing in search marketing, even though 76 percent of those doing so report an increase in sales.

The study polled 400 SMBs across the U.K. via online questionnaires. Of the respondents not using search marketing, 44 percent say it is too time consuming, more than 55 percent say it's too expensive, and 33 percent say it's too complicated.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 1:48 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Adds 9 Asian Countries To Mobile Search

Yahoo is now offering its mobile search product in Chinese and has added nine new partners in the Asian market according to a press release today.

Yahoo is claiming they now lead the mobile search sector and with US, European and Asian markets being covered this could be accurate.

The release stated:

Since the introduction of Yahoo! oneSearch in January of 2007, Yahoo! has announced distribution partnerships with 20 mobile operators around the world, offering leading mobile search capability to consumers. Earlier this month, Yahoo! expanded its partnership with Rogers Communications in Canada to become the exclusive mobile Internet search service on the Rogers Wireless mobile portal. In October, Yahoo! announced a deal with Telefonica to provide Yahoo! oneSearch as the search engine partner on mobile portals in 15 countries across Ireland, Latin America and the United Kingdom, as well as the integration of Flickr and Yahoo! Mail into Telefonica's portfolio of mobile Internet services.

The new partnership agreements announced today include leading mobile operators across the Asia Pacific region including Aircel Limited (India), BPL Mobile (India), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL; India), DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd (DiGi; Malaysia), PT EXCELCOMINDO PRATAMA Tbk. (Excelcom; Indonesia), PT Hutchison CP Telecom (Hutch 3; Indonesia), PT Indosat, Tbk (Indosat; Indonesia), PCCW Mobile HK Limited (Hong Kong) and Starhub Ltd (Singapore).

Additional mobile search partnerships announced this year include 3 Group (Italy and the United Kingdom), Globe Telecom Inc. (Philippines), Idea Cellular Limited (India), LG Telecom (Korea), Maxis Communications Berhad (Malaysia), PT Telekomunikasi Selular "Telkomsel" (Indonesia) SmarTone-Vodafone (Hong Kong) and Taiwan Mobile Co. (Taiwan).

Yahoo's move in the mobile space is another example of their diversified approach to building their search platform. With their ongoing push into the niched vertical space - providing specialized areas of interest such as health and sports - has the ability to increase their search share.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:33 PM | Permalink

Live Search Shopping Feature Commentary

Recently I covered the new shopping search when I did an interview with Garry Wiseman of Microsoft, but yesterday the Live Search blog highlighted some additional aspects of their shopping search engine. You can see their example if you do a search on hp printers and then click on the HP Color LaserJet 2600n.

The resulting screen shows user ratings which have been culled from a review sites across the web. First of all, there is a global rating up top, a feature offered by many shopping sites. What is truly unique though is the presentation of summaries of all the review comments on a attribute by attribute basis. The above referenced interview covers how Microsoft put this together in detail.

What yesterday's post by Microsoft adds to the equation is an examination of the detailed review comments. If you click on the "Speed" link, for example, you get to see the detailed review comments themselves. This comes in two views, one that shows just the positive comments, and one that shows just the negative comments.

This is great if there is one aspect of the printer that is particularly important to you. Not only can you see the aggregated review score for all apsects of the printer, or the score on an attribute by atrribute basis, you can also see the detailed comments without having to visit multiple sites across the web.

For example, when you look at the detailed comments on speed, where 56% of the comments were positive, and 44% were negative, you can get a better picture as to how that feature was evaluated by users on these review sites. Not knowing the particular printer at all, after reading the comments, my sense was that it was reasonably fast if I put it in an environment where it was essentially for personal use.

You also get the sense that in office environments where larger printing jobs might be relatively common that you might not be as happy with it. This ability to drill down rapidly and quickly to the core of the issue that matters most to you is an extremely useful feature.

Posted by on 10:02 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: How To Choose an SEO Agency and Why

When pricing SEO services, many companies have a hard time getting a handle on what they should pay. In today's au Natural column, "How To Choose an SEO Agency and Why," Mark Jackson explains the numerous tactics and strategies that go into an SEO project, and shows you how to get the best value for your money.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Keywords First - New Web Site Second

Where do you start once you have an idea for a new online venture? If your goal is to build it and they will come, then you need to start with keyword research. In today's Little Biz column, "Keywords First - New Web Site Second," Carrie Hill shares everything a small business needs to know about keyword research, but was afraid to ask.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 12, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 12, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:48 PM | Permalink

Google Wants To Be An American Idol

Talks between Google and Simon Fuller - TV and music impressario - to develop a global online video presence, according to reports and rumors.

Fuller was part of the creative team that developed American Idol and the UK version Pop Idol and has been in talks with Google for over a year. IPTV is seen as a coming technology and the pair seem to be negotiating about developing content for this new form of television.

"It is likely that the partnership will involve creating original content competing directly with major TV networks in the UK. Neither 19 nor Google were available to comment today.

Google has long been planning to ramp up its internet TV services, having launched its pay-per-view Google Video TV and film service last year. Now owning YouTube, the internet giant has been building up an array of deals with content producers and broadcasters over the past year, such as ITN, CBS and Sony BMG," C21Media stated.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:15 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Announces Change To Shorter Descriptions

I received two emails this morning both stating the same thing (slightly different subject lines) - Yahoo will be cutting off ads at 75 characters. They had started this shortened descriptions some time ago but let you enter longer descriptions and they would only show the first 75 characters.

Seems now you will not have the option - all ads will use the 75 character limit.

"Beginning in late November 2007, if you have created short descriptions for your ads, those short descriptions will automatically be displayed on Yahoo! Search results (currently the short description will not always be displayed) but if you have not created a short description for a particular ad, the long description will be automatically cut off to fit within a 75 character limit," the emails stated.

Why are we making this change? - email asked
"We are implementing these changes to streamline the search results displayed on Yahoo!, making it easier for users to read and absorb your ad messages. Our research has shown that by improving the search experience in this way, advertisers may see an increase in clicks, while maintaining their conversion rates" the announcement explained.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:01 PM | Permalink

AOL Acquires Q&A Platform Yedda

Last week, AOL announced the acquisition of contextual ad network Quigo to Platform A, its growing group of ad companies. Today, AOL follows that move with the news that it has acquired Yedda, an Israel-based Q&A platform similar to Yahoo Answers.

Yedda employs semantic matching technology that automatically matches questions to other related questions and topics, while selecting the best available users to answer the question. AOL expects to incorporate Yedda's technology into some of its content areas of AOL.com and throughout its network.

"This acquisition builds on AOL's community legacy," said an AOL spokesperson. "Asking a question is the most natural way to search for information and with the incorporation of Yedda's unique patent-pending technology, AOL will enhance our programming efforts while bringing together editorial and user-generated communities."

Platform A, launched in September, now includes Yedda, Quigo, Advertising.com, AOL-run sites, Tacoda, Third Screen Media and AdTech.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:17 AM | Permalink

Interview with Microsoft's Ramez Naam

I had the chance recently to interview Ramez Naam of Microsoft. It was an interesting discussion focused on some of the key issues that impact core search algorithms. It turns out that there is an enormous amount of complexity in basic processing of search queries.

For example, one core concept is search is the notion of "stop words". These are words like "the", "and", is", and other words like them that search engines strip off user queries to simplify the process of finding the best results. Consider what happens when you enter the search query "the", for example. Microsoft returns 9.68 billion results, Google returns 1.57 billion results, and Yahoo returns 15.6 billion results.

Of course, this is because nearly every web page in the world has the word "the" on it. So this is a smart move that simplifies query processing. But, what do you do when the query is for "the office"? If the search engine strips of the word "the", the query becomes "office".

In addition to their being millions of offices across the United States, let alone the entire world, this is also the brand name of a pretty well known software suite (yes, I am being a bit flip). But if the person is searching for the TV show, "The Office", stripping the word "the" from the query will hurt the relevance of the results.

Dealing with stop words, and deciding when to not strip them from the query was one of the many enhancements to their core search announced by Microsoft in late September. There are many different issues of this type addresses by Microsoft at this announcement, most of which are discussed in my interview with Ramez, and it just reminds us of how complex search truly is.

Posted by on 9:40 AM | Permalink

Going to SES Chicago for the first time

Last Wednesday evening, I spoke at the SEMNE networking event about “Getting found in all the right places.” SEMNE stands for “Search Engine Marketing New England” and was co-founded by Jill Whalen and Pauline Kerbici in November 2006. It was formed as a way for anyone interested in marketing their websites through search engines – from business owners to agency and client-side marketing professionals to web developers – to get together in-person on a regular basis.

About 90 people turned out for the SEMNE event – and many of them had read my article, “20,000 Reasons to Attend SES Chicago,” which had appeared in Search Engine Watch the previous day. Several of them observed that it seemed to be written for Search Engine Strategies Chicago alumni who had attended last year's conference and needed to make the business case for going back to the conference again this year.

Yes, I guess it was.

I was then asked if I would recommend different sessions to someone who was planning to attend SES Chicago for the first time.

Well, I guess I'll tackle that in today's post.

I've been to so many Search Engine Strategies conferences over the past six years – 24 and counting – that I sometimes forget what it was like going to my first SES. It was Search Engine Strategies Spring 2002 in Boston.

And I remember the challenge of selecting which of the 28 sessions – divided into three concurrent tracks – I should attend over the two-day event.

Compare that to the challenge of selecting which of the 69 sessions, workshops, panels, keynotes and classes – divided into three to five concurrent tracks – someone who is going to SES Chicago for the first time should attend over the five-day event. Yes, there's a full day of training classes after the four-day conference.

(This seems like the right place to disclose that Search Engine Strategies Chicago is now a client. But this is a recent development and I've been a frequent speaker at the event since 2003.)

Now, many business owners, agency and client-side marketing professionals, or web developers might want to check out the conference at a glance and training classes pages on the conference website and make their own selections. Learning what your options are for each time slot provides you with a priceless education all by itself.

But, for those who want the net net, here are the sessions that I'd recommend to someone going to Search Engine Strategies Chicago for the first time:

Day 1 - Monday, December 3, 2007
Strategic Development Workshops
9:00am-10:00am: Will Consult for Food!
10:15am-11:15am: Meet the Web Analytics Players
11:30am-12:30pm: Orion Panel: Search, Privacy and Community in the Digital Age
12:30pm-1:30pm: Networking Lunch
Strategic Development Workshops
1:30pm-2:30pm: There's Still Money on the Table!
2:45pm-3:45pm: Orion Panel: Universal, Blended and Vertical Search
4:00pm-5:00pm: Opening Keynote: Don E. Schultz, Professor (Emeritus-in-Service), Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern University & President of Agora, Inc.

Day 2 - Tuesday, December 4, 2007
9:00am-9:45am: Keynote Presentation: Seth Godin, Entrepreneur, Agent of Change and Author of The Dip
Fundamentals Track
10:15am-11:15am: Introduction to Search Marketing
11:30am-12:30pm: Landing Page Testing Overview
12:30pm-2:00pm: Networking Lunch
2:00pm-3:00pm: Actionable Social Media
3:30pm-4:30pm: Search Advertising 101

Day 3 - Wednesday, December 5, 2007
9:00am-9:45am: Keynote Presentation: David S. Isenberg, Principal Prosultant, isen.com
Hybrid Track
10:15am-11:15am: Personalization, User Data & Search
11:30am-12:30pm: Your Marketing Program in Context
12:30pm-2:00pm: Networking Lunch
2:00pm-3:00pm: Analytics: Data Into Action
3:30pm-4:30pm: Last Minute Holiday Search Tactics

Day 4 - Thursday, December 6, 2007
Clinics Track
9:00am-10:00am: Contextual Ads & Ad Sense Clinic
10:15am-11:15am: Landing Page Optimization Clinic
11:30am-12:30pm: Site Clinic

I would also strongly recommend that someone who is going to SES Chicago for the first time should sign up for the search training classes on Friday, December 7. These workshops will provide you with the practices and applications you need to become a top performer in your field.

Again, some business owners, agency and client-side marketing professionals, or web developers might want to check out the search marketing training classes for themselves. Or, here are my recommendations of the workshops that are worth attending:

Day 5 - Friday, December 7, 2007
Track 1
8:00am-12:00pm: Search Engine Optimization Workshop
12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch Break
1:00pm-5:00pm: Landing Page Testing Hands On: Developing Your Action Plan

So, newcomers will get a lot out of attending Search Engine Strategies Chicago for the first time and SES alumni can justify coming back because 92 percent of the content for the 2007 event will be new.

In last week's article, I said that one of the reasons why the content at Search Engine Strategies Chicago has changed so dramatically is because our industry keeps reinventing itself at such an amazing pace.

But, there's another good reason. Danny Sullivan has moved on from chairing SES, making this the first event to be organized and hosted by Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch.

And Kevin has put a different spin on SES Chicago – dedicating the first day to strategic development workshops and creating thought-provoking Orion Panels. These offer an important foundation for newcomers and alumni alike.

Still, it's worth noting that Danny, who is now the Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land, will be moderating four sessions over the first three days of the conference. Widely considered a leading “search engine guru,” Danny has been helping webmasters, marketers and everyday web users understand how search engines work for over a decade.

So, if you can't figure out which session to attend, check out the one being moderated by Danny. He was the one who got me hooked on going to Search Engine Strategies an average of four times a year after I attended my first SES back during the spring of 2002 in Boston.

And, if you're planning to go to Search Engine Strategies Chicago for the first time, you should try to register before this Friday, November 16, 2007. You'll save $150. And, if you're a SEMNE member, there's a 10% discount.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 7:26 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: The Future of Search: Strategy, Execution, Evolution

These days, search marketers seem to be filled with high anxiety, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. In today's Search Ads column, "The Future of Search: Strategy, Execution, Evolution," Matt Spiegel dispels a few myths, and offers advice to put these concerns in perspective.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Content Advertising Explained - Part 2

Content ads are not search ads, and need to be thought of differently. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Advertising Explained - Part 2," David Szetela reminds advertisers that ads created for the content networks perform a different job, target different users, and require a different strategy. He gives you five types of successful copywriting tips for content ads to get you started.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 9, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 9, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:26 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Shares Hints on Improving Quality Index

Yahoo search ads have been ranked using a quality index since the launch of Panama. This number is important, because ads with a higher quality index can receive higher ranking in sponsored search results. Advertisers can see what their ad's quality index is, on a scale of one to five, within their account interface. But knowing how to improve that index is another matter.

Yahoo offers some tips to understand and improve your quality index in the Yahoo Search Marketing blog.

Your ad's quality index reflects its ability to meet the needs and desires of users – that is, how well it helps them find what they want, quickly and accurately. If your ads don't meet the needs of users, users are less likely to click them. Fewer clicks means fewer customers and conversions.

When this happens, nobody wins: not you, not us and not the user. High-quality ads, by contrast, can help create winners out of all of us. The quality index was set up to encourage advertisers to better meet the needs of users – who are, after all, the reason we are both here.

Tactics to improve quality index include using relevant keywords within an ad group, including keywords in creative, utilizing excluded keywords, and using ad testing. Yahoo also suggests gathering intelligence about competitors' ads, and including special offers in your ad copy.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:49 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: SEO Engineers Keep Agency on Track

There's a dirty little secret about SEO. Most people have absolutely no idea what we do. In today's Outsourced column, "SEO Engineers Keep Agency on Track," William Flaiz breaks down the role of the SEO engineer – the life-blood of any successful SEO team.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Local Search for National Brands

National brands that empower their local sales channel can generate more sales, leads, and conversions. In today's Vertical Challenge column, "Local Search for National Brands," local search expert Gregg Stewart shows that simply providing a dealer locator is not a comprehensive local search strategy. Instead, the smart national brands engage and educate your local sales channel on how to leverage the local search channel and maximize lead generation and sales conversion.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2007

Here Come the Social Network Ads, Part II: The Local Angle

To follow up on Kevin Newcomb's post earlier this week, there are some interesting local search and small business advertising implications to Facebook's and MySpace's new ad platforms.

First to reiterate, both platforms will seek to utilize users' level of engagement, combined with the amount of information they make known about themselves through their profiles, interaction with friends and behavior.

But a key part of both ad platforms will also allow advertisers to target users by location. This will mostly be utilized by national advertisers that want to target users in certain geographies, but it could also have implications for small-business advertisers.

Some of these local advertising possibilities for Facebook have already been developed around classifieds, while MySpace has seen some activity around SMBs creating profiles to gain exposure through viral marketing. The new ad platform could create a channel for these businesses to more meaningfully market themselves on MySpace, similar to the way artists and bands have historically done.

One of Facebook's new ad products, Facebook Pages will similarly let small businesses build a profile -- just like an individual would -- which can develop a network of "fans" that connect to the business. Connecting to a business, writing on its "wall" and other activities will be very much the same as individual user profiles. The only difference is that the business has the option to promote that page within the Facebook network by buying demographic, geographic and keyword based targeting.

A newly opened tavern in San Francisco, for example, could target Facebook users between the ages of 25 and 40 that live in the city and have shown through their profile content, a behavioral affinity towards night life, microbrews and "gastropub" fare.

As part of its announcement, MySpace underscored that only 1 million of the 23 million SMBs in the U.S. advertise online, and most of that is search based advertising. Meanwhile MySpace has about 10 million companies of all sizes that have developed profiles on the network. The company is hoping the location-based targeting and other viral marketing capabilities baked into its platform will close the gap on the untapped SMB segment.

For both social networks, this however meets the traditional challenge (explored in an SEW expert column last month) of relying on small businesses to sign up on their own.

It's yet to be seen if this self provisioning challenge — made apparent through SEM — applies to social networking. There is a good chance it will, although it does have the baked in advantage of spreading itself virally as different small businesses get social and connect to one another. At least for MySpace, it won't just be "a place for friends" anymore.

Posted by Mike Boland on 7:01 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: November 8, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:33 PM | Permalink

Getting a Blog's Benefits, Without a Blog

Don't want to put a blog on your B2B site? You can still get some of the benefits of blogging by doing as the bloggers do. In today's SearchDay, "Corporate America Can Learn a Lot from Bloggers," Bill Hartzer outlines some alternatives that can still help you drive qualified traffic and leads to your corporate Web site, as a blog might, and to get the search engine ranking benefits a blog might bring.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:26 PM | Permalink

Google Refines Site Targeting, Adds Bid Options

Google has changed the way it allows advertisers to target ads by site in its content network, and added a cost-per-click (CPC) bidding option for those ads. While advertisers have been able to target a specific site through site targeting for the past two years, they will now be able to target specific subsections of a site through the newly renamed placement targeting feature. So advertisers can now serve ads only to the sports section of a news site, or only to ad units above the fold on a given page.

AdWords advertisers can also buy these placement targeted ads as cost-per-click (CPC) units, in addition to the CPM-based option. A CPC-based bid model has been one of the most-requested feature of ads on the content network, according to Google.

This is good news for advertisers, as it moves away from the one-size-fits-all approach, and lets advertisers have more control over their content network spending.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 9:40 AM | Permalink

Local Search at the Pump

Google Gas PumpGoogle has struck a deal with gas pump kiosk maker Gilbarco Veeder-Root to implement Google Maps on the company's Applause media system. The touch screens on the pumps offer a live Internet connection, so customers will be able to look up local businesses by category or name, and print out driving directions or coupons.

At the Google Lat-Long Blog, Karen Roter Davis compares this implementation to the in-flight maps Google offers on JetBlue and Virgin America flights.

This is an interesting way to bring Google Maps to the average consumer, especially those who are not early mobile device adopters. The couponing element is interesting too, especially if Google eventually offers targeting to these kinds of kiosks specifically.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 8:21 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Link Building and Brainstorming Content

Nothing's worse on the Web than upsetting users. Building links using great content can save even the most disastrous site. In today's Link Love column, "Link Building and Brainstorming Content," Sage Lewis takes a look at the Reservation Road site, and discusses how links can save a boring site.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 7, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

  • Fitting Search Into Your Marketing Strategy
    There are a few different ways to integrate search into your overall marketing strategy. Working with a best-of-breed search marketing firm alongside other best-of-breed marketing partners has the most potential upside, but also is the most challenging to manage.
  • Bloglines Debuts Top 1000
    Bloglines today launched the Bloglines Top 1000, a list of the most-subscribed blogs in its feed reader.
  • AOL Adds Quigo to Platform A
    AOL has confirmed the acquisition of Quigo, a contextual ad network serving text, display and video ads.
  • Here Come the Social Network Ads
    The top social networks have each unveiled plans this week for bringing more targeted ads to their networks. How will users react?
  • Ajax and Search Engines
    We still live in a world where crawlers have problems with Ajax and Javascript, but there are ways to minimize those problems.
  • Content is Dead, Community is King?
    A combination of both professional and user generated content can increase organic traffic and create more ad inventory. But success depends on the quality of the actively participating community.
  • Sign of the Times – Agencies Go Vertical
    Just a few short years ago when search engine marketing was still very young; a prospective client looking for help with search marketing sought an agency with expertise in search. Fast forward just a few short years, add a lot more sophistication, millions of dollars in search engine advertising, and the equation changes.
  • SEW Experts: Should You Join the PageRank Hysteria?
    PageRank is the SEO equivalent of a stock ticker. How much time do you want to invest watching the PR ticker?
  • SEW Experts: Facebook D-Day, Meatball Sundae
    Meatballs and ice cream are great on their own, but not so good together.

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:24 PM | Permalink

Fitting Search Into Your Marketing Strategy

There are a few different ways to integrate search into your overall marketing strategy in order to maximize your returns across all channels. You can work with a traditional agency that has moved into search, work with a search agency that has expanded into traditional media, or work with a best-of-breed search marketing firm alongside other best-of-breed marketing partners.

The third option has the most potential upside, but also is the most challenging to manage. In this week's SearchDay, "Making It Work: 6 Factors to Integrate Search with Other Best of Breed Partners," iProspect's John Tawadros shares six factors that should help you pull it all together.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 2:35 PM | Permalink

Bloglines Debuts Top 1000

Bloglines today launched the Bloglines Top 1000, a list of the most-subscribed blogs in its feed reader. It's been tracking the Top 200 for a couple of years, but the list was expanded to include the next level of feeds beyond the most popular.

The list shows the feed's relative rank, along with its movement since the last update. Bloglines says they track the number of "active" subscribers who interact with a feed during a specific time period. No more details than that are being offered, to prevent gaming of the system.

<SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION>

We're currently ranked at 191 for the SEW feed (feel free to subscribe in Bloglines to help us along).


Subscribe with Bloglines

The SEW Blog feed is at 231 (you can subscribe in Bloglines to that one too).


Subscribe with Bloglines

If Bloglines isn't your feed reader of choice, feel free to subscribe to our feeds using any method you like.

While you're at it, why not favorite it in Technorati?

favorite it in Technorati

</SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION>

If you haven't tried Bloglines in a while, it's worth a look. The new beta version has added several nice features, and holds its own against most other feed readers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:38 PM | Permalink

AOL Adds Quigo to Platform A

AOL has confirmed the acquisition of Quigo, a contextual ad network serving text, display and video ads. Quigo's distribution network includes several A-list publishers, including ESPN, Forbes, Time Inc. magazine sites, CareerBuilder, and McClatchy's newspaper sites.

Quigo will be added to AOL's growing Platform A division, formed in September. That unit includes Advertising.com, AOL-run sites, Tacoda, Third Screen Media and AdTech.

AOL parent Time Warner also reported earnings today. AOL advertising revenues rose 13 percent year-to-year to $61 million, which was not enough to counteract a 56 percent plummet in subscription revenues.

Time Warner also announced this week that Chairman and CEO Dick Parsons will step down at the end of the year, and COO Jeff Bewkes will take his place. That move, along with the moves to beef up AOL's ad business, have many guessing that the company will be split up soon.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:41 AM | Permalink

Here Come the Social Network Ads

The top social networks have each unveiled plans this week for bringing more targeted ads to their networks. On Monday, MySpace expanded its HyperTargeting platform to capitalize on the mountains of data from user profiles to better segment its audience and refine ad targeting. The system launched in July with 10 broad categories, but now slices the MySpace audience into more than 100 segments.

Yesterday, it was Facebook's turn, as it launched the Facebook Ads system. The system has three parts: Facebook Pages, Social Ads, and the Insights reporting interface. Brands will now be able to create their own profile pages, filled with their own content, applications, and of course ads.

Social ads will use keyword and profile-based targeting to serve ads into users' news feeds, which serves as the start page for most Facebook users. At the launch event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested a scenario where friends of a hypothetical Facebook user and Saturn ASTRA owner named Ben might see in their news feed a sponsored ad with Ben's photo and the ad copy "Ben is a fan of Saturn ASTRA." Other interactions that may appear in ads include anyone who added content to a brand page.

There's currently no way for a user to opt out of endorsing Facebook's advertisers – look for that to explode in their face once the first ad appears.

In addition, Facebook has partnered with 44 Web partners in the Beacon program, which will allow users to incorporate their user data from other sites into their Facebook profile. So users can do things like share their movie plans, using data from Fandango, or show their eBay listings in their feed.

Facebook has also recently entered into an agreement with Microsoft to sell and serve ads into its network. This new program is unrelated, and will not affect that deal.

There are more details for users on the Facebook Blog, and you'll find plenty of commentary on the news at Techmeme.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:21 AM | Permalink

Ajax and Search Engines

The Google Webmaster blog has a post today about how to develop search engine friendly sites, even though they use Ajax.

One of the things that the post reinforces is that we still live in a world where crawlers have problems with Ajax and Javascript. They do include a nugget on the optimum way to help Ajax and static HTML links coexist:

When creating your links, format them so they'll offer a static link as well as calling a Javascript function. That way you'll have the Ajax functionality for Javascript users, while non-Javascript users can ignore the script and follow the link. For example:

<a href=”ajax.htm?foo=32” onClick=”navigate('ajax.html#foo=32'); return false”>foo 32</a>

Note that the static link's URL has a parameter (?foo=32) instead of a fragment (#foo=32), which is used by the Ajax code. This is important, as search engines understand URL parameters but often ignore fragments.

Basically, the code fragment above presents a static link to the search engine, but still follows your desired Ajax path through the use of the onClick function.

Our own advice to people who want to build tools, or have other interesting uses for Ajax, is that it's a great thing to do. In the increasingly social web, usability and site experience is playing a bigger and bigger role in driving traffic, and yes, in driving links to the site.

Don't be afraid to leap in and create such tools. Just make sure you still leave a trail that the crawler can follow.

Posted by on 11:06 AM | Permalink

Content is Dead, Community is King?

These days, every web publisher wrestles with finding the right balance between producing their own content versus relying on contributions from visitors. It's almost magical when visitors return to your site just because they can find appropriate experts or like-minded people there. A combination of both professional and user generated content can also increase organic traffic and create more ad inventory.

One major dependency for user content is the quality of the actively participating community. At last week's Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) brown-bag session, experts in "how to grow" communities for major brands were on hand. Their advice and approach seems worth sharing, to help optimize your site.

Define Community

According to the experts, a community forms when two or more people share common interests. It gets further refined down to people with common purposes, such as business professionals who need to share practices or make decisions. To the bigger marketers, it's far more than a group of friends or colleagues -- although that's a start.

For publishers of all stripes, who joins their respective communities matter because these joiners drive loyalty and repeat visits. There can be controlled access or permission required to join into conversations, which creates a defined group of experts. Or, there can be more open, serendipitous environments where consumer experiences are shared.

Plan Ahead

Experts suggest that you set your community goals clearly. What's important is thinking about the nature of your visitors and what you really want from them. Do you want a broader, less engaged base? Do you want to appeal to more involved people who can carry your message? Do you really have a narrow group to whom you can differentiate your community?

Of course, it's not possible to create communities in a vacuum. The experts also encourage you to consider how your goals will play out against your own expertise or reputation. For online publishers, this means considering these community-building criteria:

* Look at subject matter. The current popularity of some topics can work for or against your efforts. Another Britney site won't draw active participants unless you have a special twist to compete with others. A specialized "long tail" subject might work better, particularly if it's dynamic and worth sharing and discussing with others.

* Think about participants. There's plenty of social glue among certain types of people. Clear examples include parents sharing stories and angst with one another, patients or caregivers discussing medical conditions, and business managers based on their industries or functional roles. So define your targets beforehand -- though you may end being surprised about who bonds.

* Examine your competition. Are there many social outlets already? Even with passion-provoking topics, not all sites will be able to attract communities. In many cases, potential joiners might be loyal to other places already. Or, there might be others who chose not to join active communities. Figure out how to appeal to prospects, with unique offerings.

What To Do

While all of this sounds pretty logical, we are living in a social sharing era: Set up sharing tools or blogs and your traffic problems are cured! Open up a MySpace page and create more link love! Act now.

These are common tactics that appear on "must do" search engine optimization lists, but it's not a cookie-cutter world. At the SES Travel conference earlier this year, it's worth noting that even travel competitors had different ideas about what level of social functionality belonged on (or off) their domains.

With your unique community goals in mind, you should be able to create a comfortable balance between content and community. Decide which social tactics you want to try out. Like all optimization efforts, there's a mix of art, science and testing ahead.

Posted by on 1:30 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Should You Join the PageRank Hysteria?

PageRank is the SEO equivalent of a stock ticker. How much time do you want to invest watching the PR ticker? In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Should You Join the PageRank Hysteria?," Kevin Ryan takes a look at the buzz surrounding this nonevent to find some meaning in this mess.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Facebook D-Day, Meatball Sundae

Social search is having a bigger impact than ever. But marketing opportunities should not define your business. Rather, your business should define what marketing opportunities are interesting. In today's By the Numbers column, "Facebook D-Day, Meatball Sundae," Eric Enge takes a look at social media through the lens of Seth Godin's recent webinar on the idea of the "meatball sundae." The idea is that meatballs and ice cream are great on their own, but not so good together.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 6, 2007

Sign of the Times – Agencies Go Vertical

Just a few short years ago when search engine marketing was still very young; a prospective client looking for help with search marketing sought an agency with expertise in search. Once the client selected a search capable agency, they did not want “their” agency working with other companies in their industry or vertical market. Clients viewed their search agency as a “secret marketing weapon” and wanted to be sure that none of their competitors shared the same secret or an interest in competing for the same keywords. There was fear that there would be conflicts of interest.

Fast forward just a few short years, add a lot more sophistication, millions of dollars in search engine advertising, and the equation changes. Just yesterday, iCrossing announced a reorganization that will align their client service teams by industry expertise. The iCrossing verticals include: automotive, energy, financial services, life & wellness, retail & consumer packaged goods, telecommunications & technology, and travel & hospitality.

This is a model similar to the one used by large consulting firms such as Accenture with its 170,000 employees. Using a vertical industry organization allows team members to leverage their expertise across clients and for clients to gain from the team's deep knowledge of the market and its demands. It is also a model that is familiar to C-level executives who look for vertical bench strength in consulting teams and expect that team member resumes will reflect experience in their specific market.

Is this the iCrossing reorganization a sign of the times? Is search really growing up? Are agencies now achieving the mass where they can establish entire teams dedicated and experienced in industry verticals (iCrossing now has 550 employees in 13 offices)? Looks like it to me.

Posted by Amanda Watlington on 7:05 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: November 6, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:39 PM | Permalink

Justifying the Investment in Industry Conferences

Going to industry conferences is expensive, no doubt. But it would cost you more in the end if you let your competition get an edge on you. Actually, if you crunch the numbers, you may find that you could get a five-fold return on your investment in attending and getting to a show like SES Chicago.

In today's SearchDay, "20,000 Reasons to Attend SES Chicago," Greg Jarboe does the math for you, so you can go back to your boss and justify the expense.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 3:57 PM | Permalink

Times Online editor claims Google is 'hugely dangerous'

According to a story by Oliver Luft in Journalism.co.uk, the editor of Times Online today told the Society of Editors conference in the UK that Google was "hugely dangerous" to the newspaper industry. Responding to a question from the floor during a Q&A session, Anne Spackman told delegates, "We absolutely can't afford not to be brilliant on Google News. I think Google is hugely dangerous." If you parse through her double negative, I think she said that Times Online needs to be brilliant on Google News. And, as we all know, brilliant means "wicked smart."

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 2:31 PM | Permalink

Kevin Newcomb to moderate two panels at ILM:07

Check out the agenda at The Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media (ILM:07) conference, which will be held November 28-30, 2007, at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. One of the keynote speakers is Jake Winebaum, President, RHDi, CEO, Business.com. I first met Jake back in the 1990s when he was the publisher of Family PC magazine.

But, wait, there's more! (I've always wanted to say that.)

Kevin Newcomb will be moderating two panels at ILM:07 -- "Local Link Love" and "Local Keyword Research – Laying the Foundation for Success." I think this is Kevin's debut as a moderator. This is big industry news. And I'm proud to say that I knew Kevin before he became an industry superstar.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 12:20 PM | Permalink

Yahoo announces Fireeagle

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch reported that Yahoo is announcing fireeagle, which is a new service for obtaining geo-location information, storing it, and making it available to other web applications. This is a technology coming out of Yahoo Brickhouse, a semi-autonomous Yahoo group focused on new product development.

Evidently, the whole system is permission based, which means that users can choose to share their location information, or choose not to. This includes giving users the ability to eliminate any stored information about their locations over time from Yahoo's servers. This should keep the "big brother" concerns to a minimum.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this is that the geo-location information can come from any number of sources, such as other applications, and from GPS devices. You can setup a GPS phone to periodically update your locations information automatically.

The Techcrunch post provides the example of users who make submissions to Flickr who frequently don't provide any geo-location information for the photos submit. With fireeagle enables, this information could be extracted automatically.

Of course, search engines have been using location based information for a long time. They have the ability to look at the IP address of a person who is entering a search query, and then do a reverse lookup to determine the approximate location of that person. Geo-location information from a GPS device, however, would be much more accurate.

IP address based geo lookup is very general in nature, and in some scenarios can be completely wrong. For example, AOL users may have an IP address that changes mid-session. In other cases, someone working in a company office in LA may connect through their corporate network based in Chicago. There are many other example of these types of errors.

From a search perspective, improved location information can improve the location based personalization that search engines have already engaged in for some time. As an example of this, if you are sitting in Seattle, and type in "Italian restaurant", there is a good chance that you really mean "Seattle Italian restaurants".

However, if you just a few miles outside of Seattle, and type in "Italian restaurant", traditional IP based geo lookup might still give you a list of restaurants in Seattle, where what you may really want is a list of restaurants closer to where you are.

Posted by on 11:35 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: SEO for Brand Reputation Management

Do a Google search for "walmart" and you'll notice the top results include a few sites that aren't exactly favorable to the Wal-Mart brand. In today's au Natural column, "SEO for Brand Reputation Management," Mark Jackson discusses some things that Wal-Mart is doing right and some things that they may want to do better to fix their online reputation.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: SEO for Start-ups and VCs

There are few venture capital firms that really understand the importance of SEO, and few resources devoted to supporting it. In today's Big Biz column, "SEO for Start-ups and VCs," Aaron Shear suggest ways for startups to reconsider how they're investing VC money to build their business.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Machines In Translation: Do MT Engineers Dream of Selectric Sheep? Part 3

What does Google really want to achieve with machine translation? In today's Search Engine WarGames column, "Machines In Translation: Do MT Engineers Dream of Selectric Sheep? - Part 3," Search Engine Watch Executive Editor Kevin Heisler suggest that you may find the stinging answer in that book by Nabokov. More Google android dreams in Part 3 in a series for search marketers with multinational momentum.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 5, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 5, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:20 PM | Permalink

Google Outsources Product Uploads

Google has announced its newly established Product Search Partners who can help people develop and submit feeds for their products.

Seems Google likes letting people outside the company provide help to others seeking to have their products entered into the Google database. The handful of companies - the Google information page shows just three at the moment (Channel Adviser, Channel Intelligence and Single Feed) - should reap the benefits of being recommended by Google.

Google seems to like outsourcing over adding more work for themselves - the AdWords Professionals, and other non-company assistants seem to be growing. An interesting way to build a media giant.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:58 PM | Permalink

Yahoo To Kickstart College Students' Careers

Yahoo is launching a social networking service for college students to help them find careers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Kickstart as the product will be called is designed to help college students network with professionals who can help them with internships, jobs and career advise. A combination of Linked In and Facebook features, Kickstart will help college students build their own networks with future employers and people who can help them with their post college futures.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:33 PM | Permalink

Google Android: Mobile Platform, No Gphone (Yet)

Google today unveiled a new mobile operating system, user interface, and applications platform dubbed Android. It's being developed by Google and about 30 members of the "Open Handset Alliance," a group comprised of mobile technology providers, carriers, and other mobile industry players.

Some of the participants include Google, Broadcom, eBay, Intel, LG, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sprint, Telefonica and T-Mobile. The biggest missing partners are Verizon and Vodafone, which still may join in, and AT&T, which threw its hat into the ring with Apple's iPhone

Android, named after the company of the same name that Google acquired in 2005, is being spearheaded by that company's founder, Andy Rubin, who's now director of mobile products at Google.

"Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform. We think the result will ultimately be a better and faster pace for innovation that will give mobile customers unforeseen applications and capabilities," Rubin wrote at the Google Blog.

There's no mention at the outset of monetization, but ads served by Google into the mobile platform seems like the logical direction this will lead. That could potentially ruffle the feathers of some of the partners in the alliance, since they're all interested in serving their own ads on their own decks.

"Google's announcement may be misconstrued as a forum for interoperability to advance mobile applications and services, yet it is actually a part of Google's multilayered strategy to win over the wireless search and advertising industries and commoditize all key players," said Dan Olschwang, CEO of white label mobile search and advertising provider JumpTap. "By losing control of key services such as search and advertising, operators are at risk of losing everything – customer data, their brand, revenue and ultimately the customer."

ClickZ News has more details on Android and the Open Handset Alliance.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:39 PM | Permalink

IAC Splitting Into Five Separate Companies

Ask.com parent InterActiveCorp is splitting itself up. After years of touting the importance of "synergy" between its partner companies, IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller has gotten permission from the board of directors to split the business five ways.

IAC has acquired several companies in the last few years, and Diller explains that things are getting too complicated to explain to investors:

"We've been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years. And while we've created a lot of value, I've always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors,” Diller said.

IAC will divide its businesses among the five sectors it is involved in:

  1. IAC, which will include:
    • The businesses currently comprising its Media & Advertising sector: Ask.com, Bloglines, Citysearch, CursorMania, IAC Advertising Solutions, Evite, Excite, InsiderPages, iWon, My Fun Cards, My Way, Popular Screensavers, Smiley Central, Webfetti and Zwinky
    • Match.com, ServiceMagic, Shoebuy.com, Entertainment Publications and ReserveAmerica
    • The businesses currently comprising its Emerging Businesses sector: Black Web Enterprises, BustedTees, CollegeHumor, GarageGames, Gifts.com, Green.com, InstantAction, Primal Ventures, Pronto, Very Short List, Vimeo and 23/6
    • IAC's current investments in Active.com, Brightcove, FiLife, Medem, MerchantCircle, OpenTable, Points.com and SHOP Channel.
  2. HSN, which will include the primary businesses currently comprising IAC's Retailing segment, including HSN TV, hsn.com, and the Cornerstone Brands, Inc. portfolio of catalogs, web sites and retail locations, including Alsto's, Ballard Designs, Frontgate, Garnet Hill, GrandinRoad, Improvements, Isabella Bird, Smith+Noble, The Territory Ahead and TravelSmith
  3. Ticketmaster, which will include its domestic and international operations including Admission.com, Biletix, Billetnet, BillettService, Cottonblend, Echomusic, Kartenhaus.de, Lippupalvelu, LiveDaily, TicketService, Tick Tack Ticket, TicketWeb and Ticnet.se, as well as Ticketmaster's current investments in Frontline and iLike
  4. Interval International, which will also include CondoDirect, Resort Quest Hawaii and VacationSource.com
  5. LendingTree, which will also include RealEstate.com, Domania, GetSmart, Home Loan Center and iNest.

IAC already spun off Expedia two years ago.

IAC will retain substantially all of the company's cash and Diller will continue as its chairman and CEO of IAC.

ClickZ News has coverage of Diller's comments during a press conference call.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:54 AM | Permalink

Microsoft's Garry Wiseman Interviewed on Shopping Search

I recently interviewed Microsoft's Garry Wiseman. Garry is the group program manager for the commerce search team in the Live Search group. We spoke at length about Microsoft's new Shopping Search engine. I covered the announcement of the new shopping search in detail previously on Search Engine Watch, and I wanted to get under the covers a little bit to learn more about how it worked.

One of the most intriguing things that Microsoft did with this release is start publishing detailed ratings for a large number of characteristics for consumer electronics devices. You can get to these by searching on a consumer electronics device, for example, iPod Nano, and then clicking on one of the 4 pictures presented in the results to get to the product details page. For example, you might see ratings for up to 40 different characteristic of the device. For an iPod Nano, 15 characteristics including price, sound quality, size, ease of use, battery life, screen, memory, instructions, and more.

According to Garry, this information is extracted from the web using a "sentiment extraction engine". This engine is used to automatically scan trusted review sites and then find out what are the attributes of a product that users comment on in reviews. Then, the engine looks at what people say about each attribute, to determine whether the review is positive or negative for that given attribute. This data is then all tabulated and presented on the product details page for that product.

Garry was not able to comment on whether or not this sentiment extraction engine might be used in other verticals in the future. Clearly, this depends on their being enough data available across the web for them to extract meaningful information. I suggested to Garry that they consider implementing a master product directory for consumer electronics to make the navigation from product a little easier than using search as the interface to all this great information. Understandably, he could not comment on that either.

Posted by on 8:58 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Content Advertising Explained

Little-understood, content advertising consumes a big portion of many advertisers' PPC budgets. But for many advertisers, content advertising performs far worse than their search campaigns. In today's Content Advertising column, "Content Advertising Explained," David Szetela, founder of Clix Marketing, kicks off his new column that will explore the myriad problems with content advertising, and the ways advertisers can solve those problems.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Searches in Vegas, Stay in Vegas

In so many ways, Las Vegas is the best-marketed city in the world. Given that sophistication, one would expect to find all the main casinos, restaurants, night clubs, and shows listed in paid search results. In today's Search Ads column, "Searches in Vegas, Stay in Vegas," Matt Spiegel shows that, just as there's no sure thing in a casino, there's no sure thing when it comes to paid search utilization.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 3, 2007

Your Visitors Appreciate Targeted Ads, Really

Despite all the privacy concerns of late, online shoppers appreciate the benefits of personalized and targeted promotions.

According to an Avenue A | Razorfish study, some 72% of online shoppers find personalized recommendations helpful. In the chart below, only 34% were concerned with privacy -- and that means 66% don't have these concerns when receiving recommendations.

Recommend.JPG

We do live in a capitalist society, and see ads all day long. Also we are all shoppers, whether literally shopping or not at that moment. So it doesn't surprise me that so many people appreciate promotions related to their interests or prior purchases.

Publishers and advertisers should gain comfort from these findings. While it would be good to ask these same questions about ads versus recommendations, I think it's fair to say that targeted ads won't be a problem for most people. They might really see them as useful instead.

This week, AOL said they will allow individuals to "opt out" of their ad targeting services, which are based on surfing patterns alone. If you extrapolate from this study, then very few people will actively opt out. We'll wait and see.

Posted by on 5:07 PM | Permalink

November 2, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: November 2, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:56 PM | Permalink

When Business Mags Venture Beyond Wall Street

When the well-known business magazines venture beyond Wall Street and even Main Street to find stories, don't be surprised to see your contextual and search ads running on their august domains.

There's a battle currently waging among publications hungry for larger online audiences. They acknowledge the need to reach site visitors who are distinct from their print readers, and are positioning themselves in different ways to grow online revenues.

At the recent Future of Business Media conference, we heard a wide range of plans and tactics discussed by Forbes and others. Magazine publishers are deciding how much to invest in more web-only content and resources, including video and other multimedia options. Like other web publishers, they are actively exploring social elements both on and off their domains.

For advertisers, all of these plans translate into more opportunities to reach responsive audiences. Publishers say they will attract more dollars from travel, tech, shopping -- pretty much all the productive ad categories.

See more below, including my take on what the publishers shared this week.

Forbes: CEO/President Jim Spanfeller, Board Member Roger McNamee

They aim for “wide aperture versus narrow aperture” as the web audience is much larger with completely different demographics. People don't have much free time, so they seek sites with a broad range of news, features, interpretative elements, etc. The brand is fully separate and distinct online. Forbes produces a mix of articles, images and video for the web. My Take: One of the earliest players in online multimedia and web-only content. We all know them for their highly-promoted Forbes slide shows related to lifestyles of the rich and famous. Let's see how they grow from here. Text Ads: Quigo/AdSonar contextual ads; No search ads seen.

Time Inc: Chairman/CEO Ann Moore

Digital revenues are finally growing much faster than print. They still have “lots of work” to do on their digital offerings in the U.S. and are also pushing internationally. Video will be part of their focus and investment online. The crown jewel is CNN Money, which appeals to the wider audience. It gets “glorious CPMs” and is profitable. My Take: They are riding the Main Street coverage approach. The well-known Fortune brand isn't mentioned much at all, nor getting leveraged online. Also, they decided to shutter Business 2.0 due to low performance. It will be interesting to see how their video plans pan out. Text Ads: Quigo/AdSonar contextual ads; Google search ads.

Business Week: Group President Keith Fox

They are a “liquid brand” where print content flows to online version. In addition, they include or link to content from other places. Business Week has a profitable business model, with strengths in auto, tech and finance ads. The magazine was recently redesigned, keeping in mind the multiple channels. However, they aren't “bullish on video” right now. My Take: This brand stays relatively small, because it is sticking more closely to what we know as business news. They aren't investing much in original web content. It's a tough battlefield, as BW directly competes with Yahoo and other news outlets. Text Ads: Google and Industry Brains contextual ads; Business.com search ads.

The Economist: Publisher and Global Marketing Director Susan Clark

This brand reaches a high-end, global audience with a wide range of international news. The magazine is a ritual pleasure. The Economist offers the same content online, with additional news and columns to keep things fresh. While the first year of content is freely accessible, you have to pay (or be a print subscriber) to access archives and audio. Interestingly, they keep tabs on their online reputation and see Facebook communities which are self-forming about their brand -- but stay away from them. My Take: This brand has a true identity. They aren't doing anything revolutionary online, but will continue to appeal to advertisers who want to reach their small but well-heeled niche. Text Ads: Economist classifieds; No search ads seen.

Conde Nast Portfolio: Publisher David Carey

This well-funded Conde magazine is “challenging the legacy titles” with a long-term commitment. The print version covers forward thinking content, while the site is about immediate news. About 85% of content is created for the Portfolio site. The publisher says, “Advertisers like productive customers…and you'll see good pickings from readers.” They aim for category diversity -- including business, luxury, travel and lifestyles. My Take: Great out-of-the-block effort, achieving 1mm uniques on site already. Like Forbes, they threaten the status quo by re-defining business news and establishing their niche. Text Ads: No contextual or search ads seen.

Mansueto Ventures: Publisher John Koten

Better known as Inc. and Fast Company, the publisher reports a 15% increase in revenue this year, described as a turnaround. “Our success is not dependent on [the] business category,” and is not trying to be all things to all people. They are pursuing lifestyle coverage, and want to appeal to their two defined communities. Today there are Facebook efforts for Inc. and blogs for Fast Company. My Take: These brands seem more participatory than the others titles. With consistent targeting both off-line and online, they have strong prospects based on growth of their social networks. Text Ads: Google contextual ads for both; Google search for Inc; Fast Company's own links appear on search and other pages.

Posted by on 3:44 PM | Permalink

OpenSocial and Search Marketing

As has been previously reported here on Search Engine Watch, Google has launched a set of APIs known as the OpenSocial APIs. This post will consider the implications for web and search marketers. What makes this so intriguing is the large list of particpating companies, including: Bebo, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, mixi, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. This list provides access to more than 200 million people, which certainly provides critical mass.

What developers can do with these APIs is develop an application that works across all of the particpating social media properties. The Google announcement stated:

Several developers, including Flixster, FotoFlexer, iLike, RockYou, Slide, Theikos, and VirtualTourist have already built applications that use the OpenSocial APIs. A developer sandbox will be available soon at http://sandbox.orkut.com so developers can go in and start testing the OpenSocial APIs. The goal is to have developers build applications in the sandbox so they can deploy on orkut and ultimately other OpenSocial sites.

The company left out of the party so far, Facebook, had this to say about the announcement:

Despite reports, Facebook has still not been briefed on OpenSocial. When we have had a chance to understand the technology, then Facebook will evaluate participation relative to the benefits to its 50 million users and 100,000 platform developers.

For application developers, the new OpenSocial API offers the ability to access a much larger audience then they could with a Facebook application. This does not mean that they will necessarily stop developing Facebook applications, but you can see that large numbers of these companies will look to add OpenSocial applications to their development mix. Not only that you can access a wide range of user profiles, friends and activity streams, which differ from platform to platform.

For search marketers, reaching these large audiences provides a unique opportunity. While we are conditioned to think of getting links to our site in a direct way, and then having the search engine give us traffic, there are new types of opportunities. These come in the form of branding activities and direct traffic.

Successful Facebook applications have succeeded in reaching millions of users. This type of success can provide you with a lot of brand value and material traffic. With an OpenSocial application the potential reach is even larger. This type of exposure will certainly have a beneficial impact on a search marketing strategy as well. For one thing, some of these people will love what you are doing and link to you.

More importantly, it's an opportunity to differentiate your site. If your site becomes a hub that offers useful tools and applications, there are plenty of ways to play that into ongoing new traffic, and yes, search engine rankings as well.

Posted by on 10:36 AM | Permalink

The toughest decision marketers must make

Late last night I received an email from a marketer who needed help with the toughest decision in the industry: Who do you recommend to handle our search engine optimization and paid search marketing?

The marketer had a short list of candidates and specific needs.

It was great to hear from a reader who signed up for a webcast we're doing, but frustrating that I couldn't solve the problem immediately. The webcast won't address the issue of agency selection.

Plus, at Search Engine Watch, we can't recommend agencies, consultants, SEOs, or SEMs -- even if the ClickZ and Search Engine Watch reporters and editors know a significant amount about their team; technology; strategies, clients, awards, and references.

Complete editorial independence and objectivity: that's why I'm here.

If you think a series on agency selection would help marketers -- and agencies -- do their respective jobs better, let us know.

Posted by Kevin Heisler on 10:25 AM | Permalink

Washington Post creating Facebook "News Tracker'

According to Rob Curley, WashingtonPost.com is developing a "newsTracker" service for Facebook users. The news app is designed to keep users of the social networking site updated on topics that are important to them, with news compiled from the Washington Post and 400 other news sources from around the world.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 9:48 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2007

Seth Godin Dishes Out Meatball Sundaes

Today, SES Chicago keynote speaker Seth Godin spent an hour dishing out his marketing wisdom on a webcast with our own Kevin Ryan. He expounded on the ideas behind his new book, Meatball Sundae.

meatball sundae
What is a meatball sundae? According to dedicated live-blogger Lisa Barone, Seth described it this way:
A meatball is a worthwhile commodity. They are things we need and sold to everyone. The sundae is the hot fudge and the peanuts, the tactics of social media and the MySpace profiles. These things work but they work best when they're not on meatballs, but when they're on an organization designed to work with them.

Seth also offered 14 trends to help organizations avoid ending up with the meatball sundae. Jody Nimetz at SEO-space has a good recap of those.

Specifically for search marketers, Seth advises ditching the reactionary moves to find the latest and greatest tactics to place well in the search engines, and focus on real marketing:

What he's trying to say to the search engine optimization world is that SEO has traditionally been a tactical minute-to-minute game. It's been about figuring out what the search engines want right now and tweaking sites to meet that. That's over.

What we want to do now is to change the very nature of what SEOs do so that regardless of what tactics are hot at the moment, the engines will want to find them because the stuff they're doing matches the strategies the engines are always going to have.

You should print that little bit out and stick it on your wall. If this wasn't a free event, that would have been worth the price of admission right there.

If Lisa and Jody's great coverage is not enough, you can also find more insight from Josh Bernoff, David Dalka, and Darren Barefoot.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:49 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: November 1, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:05 PM | Permalink

GoogleClick Clears One Hurdle, Another Looms

Google's planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick cleared another regulatory hurdle this week when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced on Monday that it would not intervene in Google's plans, according to ClickZ News.

The deal is still working its way through Congressional and FTC approval in the U.S., though experts expect approval of the deal to come soon. Google is still facing anti-competitive troubles in Europe.

The Brussels-based European Commission is currently weighing anti-competitive concerns that may arise from the transaction. A verdict is due November 13. The FTC can approve the deal irrespective of the EU verdict, but Google and DoubleClick cannot complete the deal unless both EU and FTC approve it.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 1:05 PM | Permalink

Ask.com Carrying IAC Through Tough Times?

Ask.com's strong performance is helping offset a rough quarter on parent IAC, driven largely by a troubled mortgage industry's impact on its real estate and lending businesses.

During a conference call yesterday, IAC officials said the company's media and advertising sector revenue -- which includes Ask.com and Citysearch --increased by 40 percent during the quarter. That segment's operating income before amortization was $27.6 million, about $12 million more than the year-ago period, reports ClickZ News.

During the call, COO Doug Lebda said the company's next move in search "is to rebuild and redeploy the infrastructure of the core search engine." Ask.com is in the midst of that rebuild now, he said, adding that the end result should yield “more relevant, more complete and fresher” search results.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:12 AM | Permalink

Google Custom Search Overlay

The Google Custom Search blog just announced a new feature, the Custom Search Results Overlay. What it does is provide a way to have the results of a user's search overlay itself on top of the screen containing the search box. You can see an example of this here.

It's an interesting idea. A bit like a pop-up concept, except it avoids the issues inherent with pop-up blocking. The overlay lets you provide search functionality to your users without losing their focus on your web site. So now you get to provide a better site experience for your users, and you don't have to feel like you are actively driving them away from your web site.

Posted by on 6:32 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: How Site Architecture Influences Link Building

Site architecture determines how successful link building campaigns will be. In today's Link Love column, "How Site Architecture Influences Link Building," Justilien Gaspard takes a look at the site architecture for the Web site for the "Reservation Road" film as a case study, and makes suggestions for improvement.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:00 AM | Permalink

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