Subscribe to SearchDay, our free daily e-mail summarizing the day's Search Marketing News.

January 2009

Google AdWords Launches New Traffic Model for Ad Planner

Last year, Google launched Ad Planner as a way to help media buyers plan their advertising campaigns. Now, they've updated their traffic models to improve planning.

Here are the updates:

Added Unique Visitors (cookies), a new cookie-based metric, to help you cross-check and compare metrics, similar to Google Analytics unique visitor metrics.
Changed Unique Visitors to Unique Visitors (users) so it's clearer that you're reviewing estimated numbers of real world visitors.
Placed the Unique Visitors (cookies) and Unique Visitors (users) metrics on a site's profile page so users will have a more comprehensive view of how a specific site can support their media planning.
Added country demographics for Australia, Brazil, Japan, and Switzerland, which brings the demographics total to ten countries
Created Pre-defined Audiences that represent commonly used audiences. Uers can experiment with various criteria without having to manually select them.

What do you think of the update? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 30, 2009, 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Higher Education and Travel Industry Headed to SES London 2009

According to the organizers of SES London 2009, it looks like attendance will be up this year. While this may come as a surprise to some, Matt McGowan, Publisher of the conference series in addition to its sister sites ClickZ and Search Engine Watch, says, “Attendance figures are up 11% compared to last year, which is not surprising as businesses invest more of their budgets in digital marketing.”

He adds, “Whatâ’s noticeable this year however is the increase in representation from the education and travel industries. Delegates from these two sectors have increased by 10% (Education) and 16% (Travel). Many of Europeâ’s leading universities are sending people to SES London – from web managers to researchers. Similarly, established travel companies and tour operators are, as always, well represented, but this year has seen an increase in representation from the smaller, more niche, travel companies. The figures suggest that these two sectors will see significant growth in digital marketing spend this year.”

On this side of the pond, universities have seen grad school applications and enrollments increase as government funding and endowments have declined. This prompted Brandeis University to announce it would close the Rose Art Museum and turn it into a study and research center.

So, I can see why higher education on both sides of the pond is interested in finding more cost-effective ways to drive traffic to college and university websites than mailing out more college brochures. One of the first things Iâ’d recommend is registering for the Google Online Marketing Challenge, which is open to any higher education institution, anywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, here in Boston, weâ’ve had 49 inches of snow dumped on us – more than double the normal snowfall at this point in the winter and even more than the normal snowfall for the entire winter season. So, I can also understand why the travel industry sees search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) turning “the winter of our discontent” into “glorious summer” in the coming year.

Despite last yearâ’s economic conditions, travel spending by domestic and international visitors in 2008 increased 5.2%, to $778.2 billion, according to the Travel Industry Association. Heck, I canâ’t begin to describe the looks I get from my wife when I lamely explain that I “have to” go to London to speak at conference, blog about the event for Search Engine Watch, and conduct video interviews from the show. Hey, itâ’s a business trip.

So, when we all get together Feb. 17-20, 2009, at the Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, Islington, I need a little help. For the European universities in attendance, my daughter is planning to spend a semester abroad next year. What do you have for an art major? And for the travel companies who will be at SES London 2009, my wife is looking for someplace sunny, where she can forget about the sleet, wind and bitter cold. (If Iâ’m lucky, she might even bring me along.)

Iâ’m speaking at the sessions on Online Video Update - The Next Wave, News Search SEO, and Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online. Just come up after the session and introduce yourself.

If we haven't met before, Iâ’ve been called “the bearded guy you'd vote least-likely-to-be-in-public relations” by one industry observer. Or, I'm the bearded buy below who was interviewed by Li Evans of Key Relevance at SES San Jose 2008.

VSEO - Video Search Engine Optimization - with Greg Jarboe

Oh, and if you are from an art school in a sunny place like Spain or Italy, let me know all about the programs you offer. Who knows, I may even be able to come back from SES London 2009 a hero, instead of a zero.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 30, 2009, 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Live Search Launches Firefox Search Suggestion Add-On

Live Search has released an add-on for Firefox, interesting since Firefox is a competitor to Microsoft's browser Internet Explorer. The add-on enables search suggestions when using Live Search in the search box on Firefox.

The add-on is available for Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom, and United States.

You can access the add-on here. It was created with an OpenSource standard and uses the JSON interface.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 30, 2009, 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

YouTube Makes Annotations Easier

YouTube is making it easier for users to add annotations to their videos. Now, you can simply log in and annotate away. Still, they are keeping the separate annotations editor intact in case you want more control.

In addition, it's also now easier to add links to other YouTube pages in your annotations. You can link to other videos, search results, video response pages, etc.

Annotations, if you're not aware, are basically little notes you can add to your videos. You can explain a video, let a user know of an updated video, or express pretty much anything within YouTube's content guidelines.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 30, 2009, 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Battling Click Fraud is Important for All Involved

Search Engine Watch Expert - Frank Watson Search Engine Watch Expert - Chris Boggs Every pay-per-click advertiser sees the presence of click fraud, as does every search engine. We're just disagreeing about the numbers. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "Battling Click Fraud is Important for All Involved," Frank Watson and Chris Boggs remind us that both sides need to acknowledge that a certain level of click fraud exists, and work together to diminish its impact.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 30, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Best-Kept Secret in PPC? Part II

Search Engine Watch Expert - David Szetela Last week's discussion of Google Conversion Optimizer generated a flood of user questions. It seems the promise of simplifying the time-consuming, complicated chore of regulating keyword bids is especially appealing to advertisers. In today's Profitable PPC column, "Best-Kept Secret in PPC? Part II," David Szetela responds to reader questions, and clarifies a few things.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 30, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: 2009 is a Year of Change for Travel Search Marketing

Search Engine Watch Expert - Elisabeth Osmeloski The economy is forcing travel search marketers to change the way they approach online marketing. The travel vertical is already one of the most advanced groups of search marketers, but the industry has been under more pressure in recent months to make their campaigns count. In today's vertical search marketing column, "2009 is a Year of Change for Travel Search Marketing," travel search expert Elisabeth Osmeloski outlines a few ways travel search marketers, and marketers in other verticals, can get back to basics in these challenging times.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 30, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Behind Tool to Detect ISP Blocking

It's no secret that Google is an avid supporter of net neutrality legislation. Now, in an effort to further their cause, they've partnered with he New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, and academic researchers to create M-Lab (Measurement Lab).

M-Lab is designed to help detect whether an internet service provider (ISP) is blocking an internet application. This type of research has been attempted before, but Google says the lack of resources such as servers has held the research back.

That's where Google comes in. They'll be supplying 36 servers to 12 locations in the U.S. and Europe. M-Lab will collect data on the blocking or interference by ISPs of user internet use, including BitTorrent.

What do you think of M-Lab? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 29, 2009, 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yahoo's Search Ad Share Drops 40% in UK for Q4 2008

Yahoo's Q4 UK search advertising share dropped from 13.9 percent in 2007 to 8.4 percent in 2008, a 40% decline. Making things worse is that UK search ad spend actually increased by 11% during the fourth quarter.

Advertisers apparently shifted their dollars to Google, who saw an increase from 82.6 in 2007 to 88.2 in 2008. Microsoft held steady, coming in with a 3.4 percent share in 2008.

These numbers were released by Efficient Frontier and include contextual advertising. Yahoo's dismal performance may be one reason they decided to shut down their Content Match program in Europe earlier this month.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 29, 2009, 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google AdWords Opens Up Conversion Optimizer Eligibility

Google AdWords has opened up Conversion Optimizer to greater eligibility. Customers who use AdWords' free Conversion Tracking tool and have at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days are now eligible to use Conversion Optimizer.

Conversion Optimizer uses your conversion tracking data to optimize ad placement based on the likelihood of conversion. The tool should save you time by essentially automating the optimization process and time, making you more productive and efficient.

"You might already adjust your keyword bids with the goal of increasing your conversions or decreasing your costs, but the Conversion Optimizer is able to adjust bids using additional factors that are otherwise unavailable," wrote Amanda Kelly on the Inside AdWords blog. "This includes varying bids by broad match query, user location, and the particular search or content partner sites where the ad is appearing. These extra adjustments enable many advertisers to achieve double-digit percentage increases in conversions while paying the same price or less for each conversion."

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 29, 2009, 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Bribing People With $50 Gift Cards: Part Deux

Search Engine Watch Expert - Sage Lewis We asked what you might want to see here, and what a promotion-monitoring component would look like. In today's online promotion & link building column, "Bribing People With $50 Gift Cards: Part Deux," Sage Lewis shares some reader ideas that far exceeded expectations, and could really help push this column further along.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 29, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AOL to Cut 10% of Its Workforce

AOL will cut 10% of its workforce, according to Kara Swisher. That amounts to 700 employees.

The cuts will attempt to focus efforts in New York City, part of a gradual attempt to headquarter there. That will mean consolidation in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and the DC suburb of Dulles, site of the original HQ. It will also scaled down international business, which hasn't served them well.

Last year, parent company Time Warner announced that it would split AOL into two: one part internet access and one part search/media. Time Warner has been attempting to forge a merger or sale with Yahoo for nearly a year now.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 28, 2009, 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW/ClickZ Authors Among SEMMYs Finalists

The finalists have been announced in the Second Annual SEMMYs Awards recognizing the best blog posts in search marketing, social media and related areas. Congratulations go out to all the nominees, and especially to our own Search Engine Watch bloggers and experts who were nominated:

Local Search:
Google’s Carter Maslan and Eric Enge talk Local Search, Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting

Design & Usability:
Three Reasons Your Visitors Don’t Convert to Leads, Bryan Eisenberg, ClickZ
25 Design Best Practices for Your Small Business Web Site, Carrie Hill, Search Engine Watch

Please head over to the SEMMYs site and vote for your favorites.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 28, 2009, 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Data Privacy Day Exhibit Differences in Approach from Google and Yahoo

When it comes to privacy - and overall service/product offering - there is a big difference in how Google and Yahoo relate to searchers and customers. Google often strikes me as user-centered while Yahoo should seriously consider checking out Bryan Eisenberg's We-We.

Today is Data Privacy Day and the way Google and Yahoo are commemorating the awareness campaign brings those differences to light even more.

With Yahoo, it seems like they're for the user. They blogged a bunch of tips that users can do to protect their own data. But Google inserts a different tone: What *they* are doing for users.

Sure, Google shares tips for users, too, but they mix it with showing the great lengths they are going to, to ensure privacy on their end.

Yahoo's tone, of course, is symptomatic of a greater problem of not putting the user first. They're lashing out at bloggers for their own rule change in their search marketing service and overestimated themselves in the past year during the Microsoft acquisition attempt.

Of course, there's a new sheriff in town in Carol Bartz, the new CEO. Let's hope for Yahoo's sake that she can create a new tone and remind the purple people that the success of her company depends on putting the user first.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 28, 2009, 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click Fraud Increased Slightly in Q4 2008

Click Forensics has released click fraud data for the fourth quarter of 2008. The click fraud rate grew slightly year-over-year. Here are the primary findings:

The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1 percent for Q4 2008. That’s up from 16.0 percent in Q3 2008 and from the 16.6 percent rate reported for Q4 2007.
The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2 percent. That’s up from the 27.1 percent rate reported for Q3 2008 and down slightly from the 28.3 percent rate reported for Q4 2007.
Traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4 percent of all click fraud traffic in Q4 2008. That’s up from the 27.6 percent rate reported for Q3 2008 and the 22.0 percent rate reported for Q4 2007.
In Q4 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the U.S. came from Canada (7.4 percent), Germany (3.0 percent) and China (2.3 percent).

“Based on the data we tracked in Q4 2008, it seems that the online advertising industry is not immune to the growing tide of cybercrime during this recessionary period,” said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. “Both the overall click fraud rate and the rate of click fraud originating from botnets were the highest ever in Q4 2008. In addition, we’ve started to see old schemes like click farms reemerge. Advertisers should pay close attention to these types of threats in their online campaigns throughout the year.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 28, 2009, 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google AdWords Releases 7 New Help Videos

Google AdWords has released new help videos to assist customers in their search marketing campaigns. The videos (which can be found here) feature the following topics:

Entering billing information
Adjusting your budget
Using the Ad Preview tool
Applying a Promotional Credit to an existing account
Viewing Cost and Payment history
Using the Ads Diagnostic tool
Conversion Optimizer

Here's a sample:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 28, 2009, 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo Tries to Defend Account "Optimizations"

For the last several months, Yahoo has been meddling in advertisers search advertising accounts. On those campaigns that it deems to be underperforming, Yahoo benevolently steps in and "optimizes" those campaigns. Yahoo tries to defend the program on the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog, but its explanation is insufficient.

According to "The Team," the intention is to "make our small- to mid-sized advertisers more successful," and "raise the performance of accounts that are experiencing issues like low-quality quality scores, low lead volume or low click-through rates."

Unfortunately, the way it's implemented has left many advertisers up in arms, for good cause. While it may be successful for inexperienced advertisers, it has caused plenty of distress for many advertisers.

Once Yahoo identifies an account that it believes will benefit from "optimization," it will go in and create new ads for existing ad groups, including multiple ads which it will test against each other. Yahoo will also add keywords that it believes will drive more targeted traffic.

Yahoo says it will notify advertisers of any changes within 24 hours, and the changes are reversible. But several advertisers have said they were never notified, or were notified several weeks later, after a client's budget was already spent on these new ads.

And many advertisers are criticizing the changes that are made, saying that ads were poorly written and new keywords were hardly relevant.

If the program were entirely opt-in -- before the changes were made -- it might be welcomed as a new option to try out. But they're making changes to an advertiser's account, without permission, and without regard for existing client limitations or strategies.

As it stands now, it makes many advertisers question whether they should subject their clients to an ad program that removes any kind of control from their own ads.

UPDATE: Here's some advertiser feedback from around the Web:

YSM, You Are the Liar!, Searching Beyond the Paid
Yahoo Tries To Justify Automatic Account Optimization, Search Engine Land
Yahoo Now Calling Us Liars Regarding Their Auto-Optimization of Campaigns, Search Engine Roundtable
Yo Yahoo! The “Truth” is, Your Search Marketing Changes Suck!, Marketing Pilgrim
Yahoo! Is Justifying Automatic Account Optimization!, PageTraffic Blog
YSM - New Terms & Conditions, Search Engine Watch Forums
Yahoo Is Stealing Your Money, Marketing Don

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 28, 2009, 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Search a Bright Spot for Yahoo, too

Last week, Microsoft reported earnings, and announced that even amid job cuts in other areas, the company would continue to add jobs in its search business.

Tuesday, Yahoo reported earnings for Q4 and 2008, and again search was noted as a bright spot in otherwise weak quarter.

Search revenue for "owned & operated" sites came in at $436 million, up 11 percent year-over-year. U.S. search revenues were up about 17 percent. Query volume was up 10 percent, while revenue per search grew in the “mid-single digits."

The company reported overall revenue of $1.8 billion in Q4 2008, a 1 percent drop compared to Q4 2007. Marketing services revenue totaled $1.6 billion in Q4. Yahoo also reported full year results; revenue totaled $7.2 billion in 2008, up 3 percent over 2007.

During the quarter, Yahoo incurred $108 million in restructuring costs, a $488 million write-down of its international business, and $7 million in legal and advisory fees related to the proposed Microsoft and Google deals.
Not counting those charges, Yahoo would have met analyst expectations with $238 million in net income, or $0.17 per share. That's up from $184 million, or $0.13 per share, for Q4 2007. With those charges, Yahoo reported a net loss of $303 million, or $0.22 per share.

During the call, new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz assured analysts she was not hired to sell the company, that she h"didn’t arrive with preconceived notions about anything," in regards to selling the search business, although "everything's on the table."

“Whether we keep it or sell it, search is important to this company and it’s important to build it up,” Bartz said.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 28, 2009, 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Yahoo's New Era

Search Engine Watch Expert - Kevin Ryan President Obama received a warm welcome with record-breaking fanfare, but I just didn't see the outpouring of joy for Yahoo's new chief executive. I suppose one could argue the United States is in much worse shape than Yahoo, but the lack of enthusiasm I've seen for Bartz (among the digerati) is disappointing. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Yahoo's New Era," Kevin Ryan notes that new CEO Carol Bartz has exactly what Yahoo needs to turn things around.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 28, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Track Those Alternate Conversions

Search Engine Watch Expert - Eric Enge It's natural to think about revenue-generating events such as sales, leads generated, or ads clicked on when we think about conversions. In today's Web analytics and ROI column, "Track Those Alternate Conversions," Eric Enge explains that there are many other types of valuable conversions, and we're shortchanging ourselves when we look at conversions in a narrow way.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 28, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Top 10 Newspaper Sites See 16% Growth in December 2008 Web Traffic

Newspapers may be struggling these days but it's not for lack of web traffic, at least for the top ten newspaper sites. According to Nielsen Online, web traffic to the top 10 sites grew by an average of 16% in December 2008. Only one of the top 10 properties, Boston.com, saw a decline in web traffic:

"Nine of the top 10 newspaper Web sites experienced positive year-over-year growth," commented Chuck Schilling, research director, agency & media, Nielsen Online. "News coverage in December ranged from how the 2008 holiday season would be affected by the weakening economy to Obama's latest nomination for his administration, all of which helped to drive this impressive growth."

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 27, 2009, 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

AdMob Launches Offering for Android Applications

AdMob has announced the launch of its Android application advertising offering. This allows developers to monetize their apps via a mobile banner ad. AccuWeather, Jirbo, and TapJoy are among apps that are utilizing the new option.

“Android's open platform enables developers to build rich mobile applications that provide a great experience for users,” said Ali Diab, Vice President of Product Management for AdMob. “We are already seeing strong interest in developing applications for Android-based devices, similar to what we saw with the iPhone last summer, and are very excited to take the lead in helping developers monetize their applications on this fast-growing device platform.”

AdMob has been available to iPhone developers for months now. AdMob also offers advertising options for mobile sites.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 27, 2009, 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MySpace Parent Co. Fox Interactive Media to Cut 5% of Workforce

Fox Interactive Media, parent of popular social networking site, MySpace, announced Monday that it would be cutting 5% of its workforce, or 100 jobs. Employees at MySpace are affected.

Social networks are notorious for having trouble monetizing their sites, despite high traffic. MySpace has found additional challenges by increased competition from social network Facebook and the social chat client, Twitter.

But it's not for lack of effort on MySpace's part. Last year, they redesigned their site and launched a self-serving ad platform. MySpace has also partnered with Google and Yahoo in the OpenSocial effort to help social profiles be portable among several sites.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 27, 2009, 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Breaking the Norm with Search

Search Engine Watch Expert - Aaron Shear Many engines, especially Google, are looking for uncommon combinations of content that typically don't exist together. In today's enterprise search marketing column, "Breaking the Norm with Search," Aaron Shear outlines one untapped way to capture search traffic, by combining content of related items in new ways.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 27, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: SEO Web Site Review: Water Filter Corner

Search Engine Watch Expert - Mark Jackson This Web site recently launched and has several elements that need to be corrected to lay a sound foundation for future SEO success. In today's organic search engine optimization column, "SEO Web Site Review: Water Filter Corner," Mark Jackson offers some tips on how to improve things in this quarterly SEO site review.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 27, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Advanced Keyword Research Checklist: Using Multiple Datasets

Keyword research matters to nearly every aspect of Internet marketing. It used to be so simple. Back in the day the (now retired) Overture Keyword Tool made assembling keyword baskets simple and sweet. Sure, search frequency and category patterns were skewed by SEOs-of-day. We busied ourselves repeatedly running now-obsolete ranking reports.

In those days, transparent bidding lent true insight to the cost of any PPC keyword category. Paid platform keyword research tools worked really well for SEO...heady times indeed.

The golden age of search was upon us, a brave new world of über-targeted media buys served to inquiring customers. For goodness sake, I remember rolling around on the floor in complete delight in the late '90s, because our clients' customers were flocking to search engines to ask for product information. Imagine that! Advising brand creation was no longer about random hotel room focus groups. Marketers finally had empirical data by which to judge decisions.

Keyword Research in the Age of Data Overload

Now in 2009, there are additional datasets to advise creating keyword baskets, available to the savvy demographic research artist. Most of our SEO kits include mainstream tools like Trellian Keyword Discovery, WordTracker and Google AdWords Internal/External tool. They're obviously foundational resources.

Second tier engines offer their search logs in the form of PPC keyword inventory. Also there are terrific niche keyword tools out there.

Still we shouldn't miss opportunities to mash up site-specific datasets like PPC history, organic analytics and associated conversion metrics. In addition, we can now take social media's pulse by buzz pocket mining, which elevates thesaurus-like stemming creative to near nuclear levels.

All of this makes for terrific keyword research for SEO, PPC and social media optimization. Tools and datasets are often best used in creative combinations. Here are just a few examples:

Wire up a website's SEO, advised by its historic mid-tail PPC conversion metrics. Base decisions on "what to go for," on your site's authority and what's attainable organically.
Start with competitive intelligence from SpyFu, Paste top keywords into WordTracker Lateral Stemming Thesaurus. Then run the results through AdWords External Keyword Tool. Sort to find the sweet spot where low average CPC intersects with higher search frequency. Set up an inexpensive mid-tail AdWords Campaign.
Scrape any page in your site for phrase density. Then use social search engines like StumbleUpon, Twitter or Digg to find relevant content. Scrape your discoveries as well, to advise creation of additional content and categories for your site. Think of the process as keyword discovery by (buzz pocket mining).
Study seasonal organic traffic and its propensity to convert for certain geotargeted permutations. Then advise segmentation of seasonal PPC campaigns with the data. Create additional content (and associated SEO), advised by keywords' conversion PPC conversion success (one happy circle).
When multiple inline links to the same page from the same page exist, base your doFollow/noFollow decisions on PPC conversion data.

See, once you get going, applying creative wit to utilizing site-specific datasets at hand is simple.

Not The Kitchen Sink

Advising keyword research by measured consideration of multiple datasets certainly doesn't mean to always use every shred of data available. Having the wisdom to learn the difference between adding noisy layers to the research process or including just the right analytics combination, requires some experience.

Advanced Keyword Research: Multiple Dataset Checklist

Not everything on the list below will be available for all sites. One thing is for sure though -- taking a deeper inside-out approach to fleshing out keyword strategy, will likely result in sales.

Here's a checklist to aid in planning the keyword research process:

Standard: Trellian KW Discovery, Google AdWords External Keyword Tool, WordTracker

Each of these tools has lovely idiosyncrasies. Check out WordTracker's Lateral Stemming Thesauruses and KW Discovery's Industry Terms. Google AdWords Keyword Tool's ability to scrape a page for dense phrase pockets is incredibly useful. In addition to classic search frequency metrics, experiment with sorting by PPC advertiser competition, seasonality and Average CPC. Experiment with different match types and synonyms. Dial in negative keywords and export seriously useful reports. Each tool; has many more features and worthy of entire articles individually.
SpyFu is often a great place to start research. Download competitors' AdWords keywords and AdWords including bid cost metrics. Sort different ways. There are limited free accounts and subscriptions
Compete.com is another free and paid subscription service. Gain competitive insight for every site on the web, as indicated by the "largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry."
Buzz Pocket Mining means harvesting "community recommended" authority content to scrape for keyphrase insight, basket-build by keyword research tools, and extrapolate by other lateral stemming processes. BPM also provides a lovely side benefit in that, during the process, it's easy to identify and note each community's influencers and authority users for networking and conversational marketing later.
PPC traffic and conversion history. One of the main advantages of PPC is the ability to cast a wide net quickly, to gain insight as to what works.
Organic search traffic and conversion history. Often a site's authentic meaning and character is revealed by organic search traffic and conversion.

Keyword research is crucial to to nearly every aspect of online marketing and it's become much more complex. Whether for SEO, paid search or social bookmarks, think past traditional search frequency-based keywords research to build baskets. Take stemming past the online thesaurus and into Buzz Pocket Mining. Advise research by conversion metrics, search analytics advertiser competition and attainable SEO.

Take inspiration from competitive intelligence and go farther semantically than your competitors. Deploy SEO and PPC campaigns spread wide across highly relevant spaces to the product's demographics. Tools and datasets are often best used in creative combinations.

Posted by Marty Weintraub on January 26, 2009, 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Cars.com Adds DealerChat to Online Advertising Packages

Auto search site Cars.com has added a new feature, DealerChat, to its online advertising offering. It's available immediately, at no extra cost, and does exactly what the name says it does - allows dealers to chat with ready-to-buy customers, directly from their Cars.com listings.

"Cars.com is committed to equipping our dealers with the tools they need to engage in-market shoppers, drive traffic to their stores and close more sales," said Dennis Galbraith, vice president of advertising products and training at Cars.com. "By adding chat functionality to our listings, we give dealers a powerful new way to communicate with in-market shoppers who are still on their listings and interested in learning more about their vehicles and their dealership. Every chat inquiry represents a potential deal and gives our dealers a new opportunity to build a relationship with the prospect and win their business."

Andre Johnson, general Manager at Rothrock Chevrolet Lotus near Philly, tried DealerChat as part of a test and found great results.

"If they're going to chat, they want to know, 'Do you have that car now?' You have a greater chance of selling them the car - and not losing them - than when you're emailing them information about the car when they already have that in front of them," said Johnson.

With the economy the way it is, dealers need all the help they can get. It's great to see sites like Cars.com understanding their advertisers and helping them increase sales in these changing times. I've noticed that Cars.com is very good at this. Last November, Cars.com hosted a free webinar discussing how online ads drive offline traffic.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 26, 2009, 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Wants Feedback on Ad Planner

Google is asking for feedback on Ad Planner. The media planning tool was launched last June as a limited release and then made available to everyone last November.

Need incentive to complete the survey? Google is giving away 50 $50 gift certificates to the Google Store. (Seriously? How about some AdWords credit instead?)

Have you tried Ad Planner? Give us your impressions in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 26, 2009, 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Taking It Back: YouTube Allows You to Delete Your Own Comments

Ever written something on the internet you wish you could take back? Well, now on YouTube, you can take it back.

YouTube is allowing users to delete their own comments. Of course, it's always prudent to take a moment (or 100) and be sure you really want to make that comment in the first place.

After all, there is still the Abuse & Safety Tool that people can use to report inappropriate comments. And that tool can be used before you've cooled down and reconsidered that comment made in the heat of the moment.

So, as always, comment wisely. But we all make mistakes, so, thank you YouTube, for giving us an eraser.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 26, 2009, 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Global Internet Audiences Exceeds 1 Billion in December 2008

Last month, the global internet audience surpassed 1 billion, according to comScore. Asia-Pacific leads the pack at 41 percent share with Europe coming in at second at 28%.

Broken down by country, China is in the lead, with USA in second:

And here are the top sites:

“Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer, comScore, Inc. “It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries.”

It's still amazing to me that 5 billion people are not using the internet, despite my travels to underdeveloped areas of the world. I wonder just how quickly that second billion will get online. What say you? Leave a comment about your thoughts on reaching this milestone.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 26, 2009, 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo! Search Marketing Updates Help Center

Yahoo! Search Marketing has updated its help center. Specifically, it has made the following changes:

Better organization and easier navigation
Stronger search functionality
Links to related information available
Single Page FAQ

On the front page of the Help Center, you'll find four main sections:

Advertise Online with Yahoo! - This section outlines the account sign-up process for prospective advertisers.
Managing Your Account - This helps walk existing advertisers through the campaign creation process.
Fine-Tune Your Account - Advertisers ready to manage their account to a higher level of performance can mine this section for info on optimization features and general strategies for managing to specific business objectives or by industry.
Learn Online - A repository for all training materials, tutorials, webinars and webinar summaries, and general education material to help raise your advertiser IQ.

What do you think about the updated Yahoo! Search Marketing Help Center? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 26, 2009, 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

UK PR Firms Should Learn SEO at SES London 2009

Back in December, I posted two items to the Search Engine Watch Blog that encouraged UK PR firms to learn SEO at SES London 2009. With the Search Engine Strategies conference just three weeks away, I figure that now is a good time to remind my UK public relations colleagues why they must attend this must-attend event – even after official confirmation that Great Britain is in recession.

Fredrick%20Marckini%20and%20Greg%20Jarboe%20at%20SES%20London%202008.jpg My first post was entitled, “Half of British and Irish Marketers Use SEO for PR Purposes.” It reported on new research by Citigate Dewe Rogerson that found 51.4% of marketers in the UK and Ireland use search engine optimization (SEO) tactics for public relations (PR) purposes. However, the research also found that over four in 10 marketers in the UK and Ireland said that they did not have the in-house digital skills to develop a sound online PR strategy.

My second blog post was entitled, “Online PR Industry in UK Can Learn Lessons from SEO Industry.” It reported on a new Online PR Industry Benchmarking Report by E-consultancy that found about half of companies that outsource online PR are using PR agencies, but the other half are using search marketing agencies or web development agencies to develop and deliver their online PR strategy. The report also found, “Agencies and specialists should note that levels of client satisfaction are not encouraging and they may need to improve their Online PR knowledge and offering.”

So, if UK PR firms and UK public relations specialists want to do more than muddle through Britain's economic downturn, then they need to attend Search Engine Strategies London, which will be held Feb. 17-20, 2009, at the Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, Islington.

Now, I would urge public relations specialists to attend the opening keynote by Matt Mason, Author of “The Pirate's Dilemma”, and the Orion Panel, “Measuring Success in a 2.0 World”, on Tuesday, Feb. 17. And I would recommend that they attend the Orion Panel, “SEO: Where to Next?”, on Wednesday, Feb. 18. But I'd advise UK and European marketers, corporate decision makers, webmasters and search engine marketing (SEM) specialists, including pay per click (PPC) advertisers and search engine optimization (SEO) consultants, to attend these sessions, too.

However, if I were organizing a virtual track for just my PR peers, there are a number of sessions that I'd strongly encourage them to attend.

On Tuesday, Feb. 17, they should go to:
• Universal & Blended Search
• WebTrends Workshop
• Online Video Update - The Next Wave
• Analytics: Data Into Action

On Wednesday, Feb. 18, they should go to:
• SEO Through Blogs & Feeds
• News Search SEO
• Video & Podcast SEO
• Link Building Basics
• Keywords & Content: Search Marketing Foundations

On Thursday, Feb. 19, they should go to:
• Brand & Reputation Management
• Social Media Optimization
• Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues
• Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online
• Local Search Marketing Tactics

On Friday, Feb. 20, they should register for these training workshops:
• Reaching Your Audience Through Blogs
• Link and Reputation Workshop

UK PR firms and UK public relations specialists will also want to visit some of the exhibitors that will be at SES London 2009. This includes PRWeb, which is recognised as a leading online news and press release distribution service worldwide.

John Mulligan of SEO-PR interviewed Jiyan Wei of PRWeb at SES San Jose 2008. Wei talked about the public relations benefits of providing press materials online and the ease with which PRWeb customers can set up their own newsrooms complete with releases and other media.

PRWeb NewsRoom Launch Preview with Jiyan Wei

All this should convince UK PR firms and UK public relations specialists that they must attend this must-attend event. (And if they register for SES London 2009 by Monday, Feb. 2, they can save £100!)

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 26, 2009, 2:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

SEW Experts: 10 Ways Twitter Can Make Money

Search Engine Watch Expert - Erik Qualman With traditional advertising proving less effective, marketers need new outlets like Twitter and Facebook to help create interest and demand. In today's building brand equity column, "10 Ways Twitter Can Make Money," Erik Qualman shows that by working new features into the service, the company could enhance users' Twitter experience, and monetize their service at the same time.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 26, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Web Analytics 101, Part 2

Search Engine Watch Expert - Ron Jones When using Web analytics, it's easy to get caught up in all the numbers and lose sight of the overall goal of increasing your site's ROI. It doesn't do any good to use Web analytics to produce cool charts and reports, but then fail to act. In today's SEM 101 column, "Web Analytics 101, Part 2," Ron Jones illustrates how Web analytics can be used to make decisions to improve the effectiveness of an online marketing strategy and the performance of a Web site.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 26, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's NOT Business as Usual at SES New York 2009

According to Google Trends, the search volume and news reference volume for “hope” are greater than they are for “fear.” And it's worth noting that the search volume for “recovery” is greater than it is for “recession,” although the news reference volume is the other way around.

SES%20New%20York%202008%20web%20analytics%20session.jpg Still, this is NOT the time for “Business as Usual.” And you can see that reflected in the agenda for Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York, which includes a new track dedicated to “Search & the Fear Economy.” Thousands of the nation's marketers are expected to attend this year's event, slated for March 23-27, 2009, at the Hilton New York.

The new conference track, “Search & the Fear Economy,” features a line-up of timely themes:
-- Searching for a Solution: The Impact of Today's Economy on the Search Landscape;
-- Survival of the Fittest 2.0;
-- Publishing: New Business Models for Changing Times; and
-- Pay-for-Performance: Winning Strategies for Advertisers and Agencies.

And that's not the only change in the conference agenda.

There is a second new track, “Search & the C-Level Exec,” which features these sessions:
-- Entrepreneurs and C-Suite Executives: A Fast-Track to Search Marketing Fluency;
-- Thinking Outside of Your Website: Branding Without Borders;
-- Budget Migration: Going Digital without Impacting Your Brand; and
-- Implementing an Effective Digital Corporate Governance Program.

But wait, there's more!

In addition to the search engine marketing training workshops on Monday, March 23, there is also a one-day Bruce Clay SEO Training Course on Friday, March 27. And in between the optional SEM and SEO training are 65 conference sessions, two keynotes and an Orion Panel.

With the search industry rapidly changing, SES organizers are also reserving several sessions for late-breaking topics to be announced closer to the event. All this makes SES New York a must-attend event in the search industry as well as the largest show in the global SES series.

If you want to get a flavor of SES New York 2009, check out the Day 1 highlights from Search Engine Strategies New York, 2008. And it is worth noting (again) that the economy was in a recession back then, even if it hadn't been officially declared.

Search Engine Strategies New York 2008

So, as President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

And one of the places to start is at SES New York 2009. And if you register by Friday, March 6, 2009, you can save up to $200. Hey, that's equivalent to 40% of the tax cut – or payroll tax credit – that Obama is proposing to give individuals. And even “in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive,” $200 is still $200.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 23, 2009, 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Job Search is Fastest Growing Online Content Category in 2008

For news that should shock no one, the job search niche is the fastest growing online content category, according to comScore. The niche has grown a whopping 51% to 18.8 million visitors.

CareerBuilder.com leads the pack with over 9 million searches.

Women, the 25-49 age group and the $75,000+ salary set saw the most growth in job searches in December 2008 versus the same month a year prior:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 23, 2009, 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CNN.com Testing Longer In-Stream Video Ads

Ken Liebeskind over at Clickz.com is reporting that CNN.com is testing longer in-stream video ads. On inauguration day, a 60 second ad for Starbucks appeared in a video featuring President Obama's speech.

It should be interesting to see the results of the test, especially for a news organization. The inauguration wasn't exclusive to CNN. About the only thing I'll wait for is an in-stream ad while I'm watching a TV show online. And that usually only happens on the rare occasion when I'm trying to record too many shows at the same time on my DVR, which can only handle two tuners at a given time.

But how should the results be interpreted? It's hard to imagine that a longer ad would increase conversions, but many advertisers might use in-stream ads as branding anyway, especially since that's what television advertising (the "other" video advertising) is primarily used for.

CNN is in prime place to conduct this testing. Last spring, they led the field in news video searches, beating Google (and YouTube), MSNBC, Yahoo and MSN.com.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 23, 2009, 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo! to Announce Q4 2008 Earnings Next Tuesday, January 27

Yahoo! will announce their fourth quarter 2008 earnings next Tuesday, January 27 at 5pm EST/2pm PST. Will Yahoo!'s report be similar to yesterday's Google and Microsoft earnings?

Google and Microsoft's ads were a bright spot in their earnings calls. Even though Google beat the Street, the profit saw a big drop in a year marked by a tough economy. But Google still saw increases in paid search. Microsoft's profits were also nothing to write home about, but search revenue experienced double-digit growth.

Like pretty much every company out there, Yahoo will have bad news to report. Let's face it, 2008 was not there best year (big understatement). But the news has the opportunity to be offset by a fresh tone set by brand spankin' new CEO Carol Bartz.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 23, 2009, 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Maps Updates Transit Site

Google Maps has announced a new update to the Transit site. When you visit, now you'll find a map with markers showing every city where full schedule routing is available.

It's been quite a couple of weeks for Google Maps and their transit features. Earlier this week, Google and New York City launched nycgo.com and opened a public Information Center in Manhattan. A week ago, Google launched a new Transit layer in their Maps feature.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 23, 2009, 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Google Conversion Optimizer: The Best-Kept Secret in PPC?

Search Engine Watch Expert - David Szetela Google quietly added Conversion Optimizer to every advertiser's AdWords account a few months ago. In a nutshell, it regulates keyword-level bids, promising to deliver as many conversions as possible, at or below a cost-per-conversion you specify. In today's paid search column, "Google Conversion Optimizer: The Best-Kept Secret in PPC?," David Szetela describes the benefits of using an automated bid management, available for free and using Google's proprietary data.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 23, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

SEW Experts: A Linking Strategy Is About More Than Just Quality Content

Search Engine Watch Expert - Chris Boggs Search Engine Watch Expert - Frank Watson Some SEOs seem to think that all you need to do to get good links is to build quality content, but improving the quality and quantity of your inbound links doesn't rest on the shoulders of good content alone. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "A Linking Strategy Is About More Than Just Quality Content," Chris Boggs and Frank Watson remind you to spend the time to develop a sound linking strategy, or no one will ever find your quality content.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 23, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And Now For Something Completely Different: SEO Wars

Lisa Ditlefsen over at Base One Search has given us some entertaining parody video to enjoy. Appropriately its a "hands in" experience just like any SEO Wars should be.

See Matt Cutts, Ralph Tegtmeier aka Fantomaster, Rand Fishkin, Jane Copland and Greg Jarboe star in this indy video. Watch out Lisa that George Lucas does not come after you.

Check out these soon to be award winning videos.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 22, 2009, 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Google Beats Wall Street Estimates for Q4 2008, Despite Profit Drop

Google announced their earnings today as planned (though a bit early, but not as early as Microsoft) - and the news was good. They reported net revenue of $4.2 billion, while analysts' estimates were at $4.12 billion.

Adjusted earnings (see below) translated to $5.10 a share, whereas the Street predicted $4.95.

However, the good news comes with a caveat. Net income saw a sharp decline, year-over-year. The fourth quarter of 2007 saw a net income of $1.2 billion while Q4 2008 saw "just" $382 million.

Aggregate paid clicks for Q4 were up 18% year-over-year and up 10% over the third quarter of 2008.

“Google performed well in the fourth quarter, despite an increasingly difficult economic environment. Search query growth was strong, revenues were up in most verticals, and we successfully contained costs,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “It's unclear how long the global downturn will last, but our focus remains on the long term, and we'll continue to invest in Google's core search and ads business as well as in strategic growth areas such as display, mobile, and enterprise.”

UPDATE (Kevin Newcomb): The huge dip in Google's net income can be attributed to a $1.09 billion "impairment charge" Google took during the quarter, including charges of $726 million related to its investments in AOL, and $355 million related to its investments in Clearwire.

That basically means that Google is admitting it overpaid for those investments, and it's using the turmoil in the broader economy to make up for that, without drawing too much fire from investors.

Without those charges, Google would have reported $1.62 billion in net income, or $5.10 per share, for Q4 2008, instead of the $382 million in net income and $1.21 earnings per share with the charges. That compares to $1.56 billion in Q3, and $1.20 billion in Q4 2007.

ClickZ News has more details in "Google's Q4: Advertisers Keep Spending, Consumers Keep Clicking."

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 22, 2009, 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Search a Bright Spot for Microsoft

While Microsoft plans to lay off about 5,000 employees across its various business lines, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said today that the company will be hiring in some areas, including search.

According to ClickZ News:

"Even while we take away 5,000 jobs we will add back a few thousand jobs in areas like search," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft, on a conference call.

Search revenue experienced double-digit growth, display advertising continued to grow, and page views and search queries experienced "healthy engagement growth," suggesting an increase in queries and impressions per user.

"We continue to see healthy growth in our traffic, both in display and search," said Bill Koefoed, general manager of investor relations at Microsoft.

As part of its cost-cutting plan, Microsoft will eliminate up to 5,000 jobs in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, including 1,400 jobs today.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 22, 2009, 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Veoh Launches Slick Video Search Browser Plug-In for Firefox and Internet Explorer

Online video site Veoh has launched a nifty new video search browser plugin. The plugin is called the Veoh Video Compass and is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Here's how it works:

Once the plugin is installed, conduct a search. You can use Google, Yahoo, MSN Live and Live Search, Ask.com, AOL, Wikipedia and YouTube (pretty sneaky way to try and steal a little market share!).

The plugin will also work with searches on Amazon, BestBuy, Walmart and eBay. This is an awesome way to find a video review of a product you're considering. (And as you'll see in a minute, you never browse away from the original page.)

After your results come up, click on the Veoh button that's newly installed in your toolbar area. (Sometimes it's blue, sometimes it's grey.)

The Veoh Video Compass will load and show you videos related to your search. You'll also notice a horizontal bar of suggestions related to your search. Click the button in the toolbar area to hide the compass.

You can scroll for more videos by clicking the arrow on the left.

Once you've selected a video to watch, the video is pulled off, but a dark yet transparent background shows you haven't navigated away from the search page.

What do you think of the plugin? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 22, 2009, 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft Releases Earnings Early: Quarterly Profits Drop, Confirms Job Cuts

Microsoft surprised Wall Street by announcing their earnings early today. They were scheduled to announced their earnings at 5:30pm EST/2:30pm PST, after the closing bell.

Unfortunately, they had negative news to report. Their quarterly profits were down (despite a slight increase in revenue), which sent the stock down by 7% in early trading.

As a result, Microsoft will be laying off 5,000 people. 1,400 will get the pink slips today. Rumors and reports of Microsoft layoffs have been swirling for weeks.

“While we are not immune to the effects of the economy, I am confident in the strength of our product portfolio and soundness of our approach,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “We will continue to manage expenses and invest in long-term opportunities to deliver value to customers and shareholders, and we will emerge an even stronger industry leader than we are today.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 22, 2009, 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Satish Dharmaraj, Founder of Zimbra, Exits Yahoo!

Just a week after Yahoo! announced Carol Bartz as their new CEO, another exec is heading out the door. Satish Dharmaraj, founder of Zimbra, an email startup acquired by Yahoo! in 2007, will no longer bleed purple, according to Kara Swisher.

Swisher rightly points out that email has been one of Yahoo's strong suits, so this loss could particularly sting.

It should be interesting to see how Bartz, with her software-heavy background, handles the replacement. What vision does she have for Yahoo! email? It will be interesting to watch, indeed.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 22, 2009, 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

YouTube Expands Click-to-Buy

In the neverending quest to monetize YouTube, Google is expanding the popular online video site's Click-to-Buy e-Commerce platform. Previously available in just the U.S. and U.K., now user in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands can impulsively buy products featured in ads below videos.

The program was launched last October. It certainly wasn't YouTube's only attempt at monetizing itself. Sponsored videos were rolled out last year, and music label licensing agreements have been in place since before YouTube was acquired by Google.

Incidentally, those licensing agreements are in jeopardy, with Warner Music opting not to renew their contract and instead attempting to corral other music companies into starting their own Hulu-esque site for music videos.

Meanwhile, YouTube faces additional monetary challenges with various copyright suits, the most famous of which is brought by Viacom.

Still, YouTube is by far the most popular watched online video site. It reached a milestone 100 million unique visitors last October and has recently been giving Yahoo a run for its money when it comes to search market share.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 22, 2009, 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Jumpstart a Viral Marketing Campaign

Search Engine Watch Expert - Justilien Gaspard About to launch a viral campaign and need to energize it to increase the likelihood of success? In today's online promotion & linkbuilding column, "Jumpstart a Viral Marketing Campaign," Justilien Gaspard shares some strategies that can help jumpstart it and spread the word.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 22, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Delve Networks Releases Impressive Obama Inauguration Speech Video Search

Delve Networks has released an awesome tool that lets you search Obama's inauguration speech video. When you type in a keyword, the parts of the timeline where the keyword was mentioned are highlighted. Here's a visual:

Next, when you put your mouse over one of the highlighted areas, a bubble appears over the timeline and allows you to see other relevant keywords:

Here, try for yourself:

via Mashable

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 21, 2009, 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Live Search Offers Tips for Optimizing Large Sites

If you have or work for a large site, search engine optimization can be quite the undertaking. Jeremiah Andrick over at the Live Search Webmaster blog is offering tips for optimizing for their particular engine.

Of course, he has an interesting case to work with: Microsoft.com.

The first tip he offered up was canonicalization, also known as normalization. This is the concept of only exposing URL per piece of content to the engines.

Next, Live Search addressed some of the optimization problems that can occur due having multiple URLs due to tracking, co-branding, etc.:

Add or remove the trailing /
- http://www.mysite.com/ to http://www.mysite.com
Remove the index or default
- http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx to http://www.mysite.com
- http://www.mysite.com/en/us/default.aspx to http://www.mysite.com/en/us
Avoid CamelCase — convert your text to lower case
- http://www.mysite.com/FooBar/ to http://www.mysite.com/foobar
Remove query string variables or rewrite to readable URLs
- http://www.mysite.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ab99&displaylang=en to http://www.mysite.com/downloads/en/family/ab99
Remove Port Numbers
- http://www.mysite.com:8080/ to http://www.mysite.com
Avoid exposing secure HTTPS version
- https://www.mysite.com/en/us/ to http://www.mysite.com/en/us

Andrick also recommends 301 redirects, using a consistent linking convention, avoiding linking to multiple versions of a page, and using absolute links. To read all of Andricks' recommendations, click here.

Also, be sure to check out the following posts on large site search engine optimization from Search Engine Watch and sister site ClickZ:

Large Sites, Small Headaches
Link Building for Large Corporate Sites
The Value of Big Sites
Large Enterprise SEO: Content Development
Large Enterprise SEO: CMS Duplicate Content
Three SEM Tips for Big Media Sites
Recruiting SEO Talent for Big Sites
Big Brands Equal Big SEO Opportunities

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 21, 2009, 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

New York City and Google Team Up for New Information Center

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg guest blogged on the Official Google Blog today to announce a new website and Information Center. The effort is a partnership between NYC and Google. The new site is nycgo.com.

The site uses Google Maps and the physical location can be found at 810 Seventh Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets. The center features interactive map tables powered by the Google Maps API for Flash. There's also a video wall that uses Google Earth to display a 3D layout of the city.

Check out this video to learn more:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 21, 2009, 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Are Social Media Experts Ruining Twitter?

Over at Fanboy.com, Michael Pinto laments the volume of social media tweets and tweeple he's coming across on the popular social network, Twitter. He is frustrated about the constant stream of social media dribble that self-proclaimed social media gurus and experts put forth in their tweets. He says they autofollow and soon have upwards of 5,000 followers and followees alike.

I feel his pain.

However, there's a simple solution. Don't follow these people.

Pinto calls the social media gurus a "cancer" to Twitter. If that's the case, then Pinto should conduct a debulking surgery to remove as much of the tumor in his Twitter stream as possible. Then he should take preventative measures to avoid a recurrence in the future by not following these tweeple in the first place.

In fact, Twitter is nothing like having cancer (believe me!) and more like being in high school (believe me!). Pinto is sitting at the popular kids table and the conversation is shallow. The most popular people on Twittter are determined by vain methods found on grading websites that use things like number of followers as a crucial factor of someone's Twitter power.

I recommend sitting with the nerds instead. After all, the mind is a terrible thing to waste. And using "auto-follow" to participate on Twitter requires few brain cells indeed.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 21, 2009, 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

As Goes Google So Goes The Economy?

Forbes just published a piece about "Google as Economic Barometer". It has some merit and a lot of details. Basically stating "Investors searching Google's fourth-quarter earnings may see clues about the state of the Internet ad business, the economy and the future of the company itself."

Dropping various products like Print Ads, its Twitter-like application Jaiku, and Lively a Second Life clone, reflects a tightening of its bottom line. Firing 100 recruiters (and the implied drop in future hires) and the closing of its offices in Sweden and Norway, as well as a newly opened one in Austin, Texas are also the actions of a company trying to improve its numbers. The cutting of 20 engineers cuts a little to the heart of the company's operation.

In a recent discussion with a Google Adwords employee I found out it is going even deeper. Apparently budgets for entertaining top level advertisers have also been cut back. Guess now that they have them spending money there is no need to spend as much in appreciation.

To me this reflects a lack of foresight. Google has hit a wall. Those year over year double digit growth days are gone. They have become the major resource and there are not that many new clients to acquire.

Increasing what is paid for the clicks has been a careful balancing act that may not bring in as much revenue as it will lose them clients. That ban on gambling ads to stand as a "No Evil" stalwart lasted just as long as it took Yahoo to start taking money in countries that allow gambling.

Google does reflect our economy. And if they want to strengthen their position they have to do what will help the economy recover. Start helping the little guys. They are the ones that will stimulate the economy and can also stimulate Google's income.

If there was more transparency in AdWord's Quality Score, less expansion in broad match and an understanding of how to better serve the little guys - those 10s of thousands of minor advertisers - maybe the revenue numbers will increase.

I remember sitting in a search conference session and hearing many people say minimum bids have pushed them out of using PPC. They were not arbitragers, they were not agencies, they were small business owners who could no longer find a profitable CPA.

At one time all PPC companies had faith the market would work itself out. There was a little traffic left over for them to make some money. They worked the long tail and specific keywords many big comapnies did not. Now with expanded match the big advertisers are getting those and more for keywords that are now in some cases not converting.

If Google took a few steps back maybe everyone would be happier and the financial situation would work itself out. Whether our economy can do the same has yet to be seen.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 21, 2009, 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Even Google Can't Save Print Media

Google announced it is discontinuing its print advertising program February 28 and stop running ads March 31. Seems even Google cannot help the slow demise of print media.

Started in 2006, Google added the ability to place classified ads in over 50 newspapers throughout the United States and had reached over 800. As their Traditional Media blog notes "We will continue to devote a team of people to look at how we can help newspaper companies. It is clear that the current Print Ads product is not the right solution."

Google sees itself as a global media company encompassing all media forms. This bump in the road must be annoying.

"It's always difficult to say goodbye to products. Lots of people at Google have worked hard on Google Print Ads.... But as we grow, it is important that we focus on products that can benefit the most people and solve the most important problems."

In the newly developed Google speak I think that means they just could not make money doing it.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 21, 2009, 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Twitter Passes Digg For Usage, Is Facebook Next?

Seems Twitter may be the "next big thing" in social media. Hitwise reports it has surpassed Digg for usage - but realistically the two are different types of social media, though Twitter does have the recommendation aspects of Digg. Comparisons to Facebook may be more realistic.

Twitter has come to replace - or at least heavily supplement - the interactions between Facebook users via leaving messages on the Wall of each user. The big difference about Twitter is everyone who is following a person gets to see the messages sent and join in the conversation immediately.

It combines the community nature of Facebook with followers and there have been requests to start groups similar to those at Facebook and other features. But at the moment the rising number of users has been causing problems with overload.

Twitter doubled its resources for yesterday's inauguration, knowing people would log on to share comments, yet still had some problems.

If Twitter is going to continue to grow it will have to overcome more than its capacity issues. Methods of monetization are a major hurdle, but meeting the needs of greater features is the biggest one. Rivals have popped up and have yet to impact. If one can address the other features issue they may have better luck.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 21, 2009, 5:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

SEO is Alive and Well and Looking for a Fight at SES London

Yesterday, Mike Grehan wrote a guest comment for Netimperative entitled, “Who says community isn't search?” According to Mike, “SEO's glory days are over. And we should get over it.”

Mike%20Grehan%20at%20SES%20London%202008.jpg Back on June 11, 2007, Mike wrote a column for ClickZ entitled, “SEO is Dead. Long Live, er, the Other SEO.” Mike said at the time, “In November 2003, the earth moved for a lot of SEO people when Google rolled out a little thing called Florida. If you think that was scary, you're in for a much scarier ride. A couple weeks back, Google rolled out what it calls universal search. And that changes everything.”

As an American SEO (as well as a PR guy), I've always listened intently to Mike's pronouncements, which are usually accompanied with the wave of an extra long shoe horn. The global KDM officer of Acronym Media understands both traditional marketing and search engine algorithms, a rare combination which makes him a highly sought-after SEM conference speaker. It also makes him the perfect organizer and host for SES London 2009.

So, what has Mike gone and done now that will have everyone in the former colonies of the British Empire up in arms…again? Stir up a little controversy about SEO? Nah, he does that all the time. But, now he's gone put together a unique roundtable session that will open the proceedings on day two of the leading global search engine marketing conference series.

Why is this act so diliberately provocative? Because, damn it, it means you need to attend SES London 2009 to hear what Brett Tabke, founder of WebmasterWorld, Rand Fishkin, founder of SEOmoz.com, Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Search Engine Land, Jill Whalen, founder of HighRankings.com and Kevin Ryan, Chairman of the Search Engine Strategies Board of Advisors, have to say during the keynote Orion Panel entitled, SEO, Where to Next?, a special strategy session moderated by – you guessed it – Mike Grehan.

Oh, the impudence of the man! You'd think he was trying to put “butts in the seats.”

Will he succeed? Can't marketers, consultants and industry leaders from the world's leading businesses miss SES London 2009 and pretend the event is just Europe's leading event for education in online marketing and advertising, including Search (SEM/SEO)?

Oh, sure. And everyone on this side of the pond could pretend that World War II was just a regional conflict that they could miss...until “the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.”

(Germans? Forget it. I'm rolling.)

Can you afford to skip an all star line-up that has collectively been responsible for generating billions of dollars, Euros and Pounds of business for some of the world's most recognised brands? I think not.

The Orion Panel on February 18, 2009, will enable members of the audience to share issues and problems faced by their own businesses with practical advice provided by the best and most respected minds in search on how SEO will develop this year. How can you afford to miss this not-to-be-missed session?

Can any business looking to build an effective marketing plan to maintain stability and growth through a tough year ahead pretend that what takes place at the Business Design Centre on 52 Upper Street in Islington won't reshape the world?

As Winston Churchill once said, “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”

So, I'll be going to SES London 2009 myself to monitor the flow of conversation between each member of the panel, who has been monitoring the flow of conversation in the SEO world for up to 10 years and has heard opinions on everything from Black hat/White hat SEO, dynamic delivery, Flash, Google index updates to universal search. In other words, I will monitor the monitors.

And I will attempt to report back what is said there to the readers of the Search Engine Watch Blog who can't be there. And I will also post video interviews with as many of the panels as I can to the SESConferenceExpo's channel on Youtube.

But I know I'll just be scratching the surface. You really need to be there yourself -- if you really want a report as comprensive as Edward R. Murrow's on the CBS Radio Network during the Blitz, which began with what became his signature opening, “This is London.”

How do you convince the folks over in finance that you really need to be there?

Tell them that SES London 2009 features more than 60 SEM and SEO experts, who will be speaking at 50 conference sessions about how Search Engine Marketing can grow your business.

Tell them that this panel has been brought together for the first time to give delegates the unique opportunity to seek business advice from the world's most experienced experts in digital marketing.

Tell them to watch the 3-minute, 27-second video interview with Mike Grehan below and then dare them to try to answer the key questions which will undoubtedly be on everyone's lips this year, “Where is SEO going? How will the market develop? And how can developments in SEO help my business?”

Mike Grehan, Acronym, on the battle of the Internet browsers

If they won't let you go, if you can't attend SES London 2009, if you don't attend this must-attend event, then as Murrow would say at the end of his reports at the end of 1940, “Good night, and good luck.”

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 21, 2009, 2:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

SEW Experts: Writing Sales Copy For Conversions, Part 2

Search Engine Watch Expert - Tim Ash Once visitors end up on your landing page, you're no longer competing for their attention with other Web sites, so change the focus to the task they're trying to accomplish. In today's By the Numbers column, "Writing Sales Copy For Conversions, Part 2," Tim Ash explains that you're missing an enormous opportunity by not creating a hype-free zone on your landing page.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 21, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Is One-Stop Media Buying a Failed Model?

Search Engine Watch Expert - Kevin Ryan Once merely an afterthought in the media buying process, auction-based media has changed everything for everybody. Or has it? In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Is One-Stop Media Buying a Failed Model?," Kevin Ryan asks if it's possible that some things just don't fit? The media buying model has yet to achieve the much-hyped shift that so many pundits predicted a short time ago.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 21, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Method To See If Site Is Banned or Penalized in Google

Marcus Tander - aka Mediaadonis - has discovered a way to check if your site has been penalized or banned in Google. How long this flaw in the system will remain open one cannot tell, but it is working right now.

All you have to do is add hyves as a subdomain to the front of your domain. Hyves.yourdomain.com would be what you put into the browser and look at the page rank - through a PR toolbar for the page that comes back. It will be an error page that normally does not show any rank.

So if you are getting a PR 7 all is right with the world. If you get a PR 4 there is a penalty involved and if it is PR 0 well you have been banned.

Sorry for the lack of clarity of the earlier edition of the story. Thanks Marcus I am just an idiot sometimes - had the toolbar turned off and was expected some miracle page to be generated. Goes to show what happens when you ignore PR.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 20, 2009, 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On a Slow Search News Day: My Google Sauce Dream

My daily search news duties are a bit slow today due to some apparently big government change of power in the nation's capital. So it is with great pride that I share with you a dream I had involving Google last night.

I was back at the summer camp I worked at in high school and college. But this time, a couple of Google sales reps were there. They wanted the kitchen to use Google Sauce in a pasta meal. The sauce was a white, creamy, cheesy sauce but didn't taste like alfredo.

It was very delicious and I wanted to use it at my house.

I have no idea what this means, dear reader, so I'm accepting dream interpretations in the comments. Should Google get into the pasta sauce game or am I just drinking too much of the Google Kool-Aid? You decide.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 20, 2009, 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

SpokeUp.com: A Smarter Kind of Social Network

When SpokeUp.com launched a few weeks ago, I was a bit confused. Where's the social voting? Where's the splashy Web 2.0 design?

I gave it another chance and I'm glad I did, because SpokeUp.com is a smarter kind of social network. Instead of just voting, you actually have to comment, bookmark articles, blog, or post a short blurb to the site's wire in order to participate.

SpokeUp.com is technically a niche network. It's geared primarily towards politics, government and the economy. But I've posted tech and search news and still found interest. The idea is in the name: to speak up about the things that are on your mind that need to be addressed. There's all sorts of people from all types of persuasions. So far, the discourse is cordial and hopefully it will remain that way.

The best thing about it is that you can't game the system like Digg. Adding friends won't gain you any points, votes or power. The system is simple. Once you're logged in, if you head to the "Activity" tab you'll see what's been posted in chronological order, simple as that.

SpokeUp.com reminds us that the web, yes even the social web, can be smart. It's not about design and it's not about trend. It's truly about conversation and community.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 20, 2009, 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Holds, Yahoo Gains Search Ad Share in Q4 2008, According to Efficient Frontier

Efficient Frontier has released a search engine advertising report for the fourth quarter of 2008. They found that Google held onto its 76% market share while Yahoo gained 3%.

Here are additional trends they found:

Large vs. Small Advertisers: Small advertisers in the U.S. accounted for a greater decrease in search advertising spend than larger, more established brands. Advertisers spending less than $50,000 per month cut spending by 23 percent year-over-year, with many of the cuts coming between Q3 and Q4 of 2008. Companies that spent more than $200,000 per month only reduced spending by 9 percent over the same time period. These margins are typical during a recession when larger, more sophisticated brands aggressively utilize the search channel to drive revenue and sales while strengthening their position.
Overall Impression Trends: Overall impressions for search engines are down 6 percent year-over-year. From Q4 2007 to Q4 2008, Google experienced a 3 percent decrease, while Yahoo lost 13 percent impression volume. Microsoft Live garnered 21 percent more impressions in Q4 than in Q3 2008 and gained 18 percent more impressions year-over-year.
Click-Through Rate Trends: Overall click-through-rates (CTRs) in search were relatively flat year-over-year, gaining only 2 percent. While Microsoft Live Search had higher CTRs than all other search engines from Q1 to Q3 of 2008, it dipped below Google Search in Q4 2008. Google Search CTRs decreased by 2 percent year-over-year, while Yahoo CTRs improved 3 percent year-over-year. Google Content CTRs increased 150 percent year-over-year.
Cost-Per-Click Highlights: Overall search cost-per-click (CPC) is down 5 percent year-over-year. In the last quarter of 2008, Google Search's CPC declined by 8 percent, while Microsoft Live Search declined by 3 percent and Yahoo Search declined by 1 percent. Microsoft Live Search has consistently maintained a higher CPC than all other search engines, indicating that advertisers are willing to pay a premium for a high quality, albeit smaller audience.

Here are some niche-related findings:

Automotive: 15 percent decline in spending over 2007, due primarily to lower impression volume, reflecting weakness in consumer demand.
Finance: 25 percent decline in spend over 2007, with impressions up by 5 percent reflecting high customer demand for financial services, with but fewer qualified conversions.
Retail: 9 percent increase in spend over 2007, reflecting the strength of the channel in price comparison and shopping efficiency, particularly for more established online brands that increased spend to reach revenue goals.
Travel and Entertainment: 24 percent decrease in spend year-over year, primarily due to reduced traffic volume, which is down in by 18 percent in the sector year-over-year.

“Search engine marketing remains the most accountable sales and client acquisition channel on or offline,” said James Beriker, President and CEO of Efficient Frontier. “To continue to achieve stellar results, the current recession has made it even more critical for search marketers to know their metrics and manage campaigns based on actionable market, sales funnel and conversion data. The reason we work with more than 150 of the most sophisticated search marketers in 20 markets worldwide, and manage more spend than any other firm, is that we use math to automate the process of accurately modeling data and making the right overall strategy and keyword bidding decisions to deliver optimal performance, no matter the market dynamics.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 20, 2009, 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AOL Updates Truveo iPhone Video Search App

AOL has released an update to its Truveo Video Search application for the iPhone. Here's what to expect:

Intelligent Query Completion, which assists users by suggesting key words or even television shows. For example, if a user enters “stock” into their Truveo application on their iPhone, the query completion engine will not only suggest Truveo's “stock footage” category, but will also suggest shows related to investing.
The ability to easily discover related video content.
Improved sharing.
Advanced sorting.
The ability to search for videos by length.

“Truveo was the first company to release a video search application on the iPhone and we're delighted to be the first to release a second generation video search app, one that incorporates much of the feedback we've received from users,” said Pete Kocks, President of Truveo and Vice President of AOL. “With the most comprehensive video search index and a widely praised iPhone application, Truveo is perfectly positioned to continue to lead in video search.”

The application is available for free in the iTunes App Store.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 20, 2009, 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Testing Your Online Business Plan

Search Engine Watch Expert - Carrie Hill When a small business fails at search marketing, more often than not the problem boils down to a poorly thought-out business plan. Monetizing a Web site is so much more than slapping some ads on a page and waiting for the checks to roll in. In today's small business search engine marketing column, "Testing Your Online Business Plan," Carrie Hill advises you to create a business plan, and test viability of that plan before you spend any money on marketing and development.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 20, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: The Better You Rank...the Better You Rank!

Search Engine Watch Expert - Mark Jackson The more popular your Web site is, the better the likelihood that your Web site will rank. In today's organic search engine optimization column, "The Better You Rank...the Better You Rank!," Mark Jackson explains that you need to maintain momentum in your both SEO and general marketing efforts to keep a steady flow of traffic coming to your Web site.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 20, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Updated Google Analytics Code Fixes Rare JavaScript Message

Google Analytics has updated the code snippet that is placed on websites. The update fixes the rare display of a JavaScript message that can be seen by visitors to sites using Google Analytics.

You don't have to update your code to keep analytics tracking going, but if you want to avoid the JavaScript message, the new code will help you do just that.

Here's the new code snippet. The bold type is the update. Log into your Google Analytics account to access your account-specific code snippet.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 19, 2009, 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Search Engine Share Remains Flat Month-Over-Month in December 2008, According to comScore

comScore has released its December 2008 search engine share rankings. Despite a 3% increase in overall searches, the share among the search engines changed little from November.

12.7 billion core searches were conducted in December, with Google seeing 8 billion of them:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 19, 2009, 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Live Search Launches News Alerts Service

Microsoft's Live Search has launched a news alerts service. This service will let users know when a keyword they choose appears on a news website. This is similar to Google alerts.

Here's the process for setting up a Live Search alert:

Go to news.live.com.
Sign in with your Live ID (or get one if you haven't already).
From any page within news search (like the default page for top stories or the results page associated with a search), click the News alerts link (in the right column).
Click Create alert.

News alerts are a great tool for keywords or topics that you're perpetually searching. Let the results come to you.

What do you think about the new Live Search alerts? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 19, 2009, 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Google Celebrates 100,000th Knol

A few weeks ago, Google Knol received its 100,000th entry. Google Knol launched as a Wikipedia-esque knowledge sharing product last summer. In October, Google integrated Custom Search with Knol.

Knol has grown quickly and the interface is now available in eight languages including Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Knols have been written in 59 languages thus far.

People from 197 countries have visited Knol. And the community of workers is collaborating as Google hoped. Writing on the Official Google Blog, Cedric Dupont, Product Manager, and Michael McNally, Software Engineer commented:

We are happy to see that most authors choose to accept moderated edits from their audience and that the volume of suggested edits from readers is steadily growing. So if you find yourself reading a knol and want to suggest an improvement, go ahead and press that edit button! You will be able to make the desired changes directly in the knol, and the author(s) will be able to review and act upon your suggestions. We look forward to seeing this new mode of online collaboration used more widely.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 19, 2009, 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Is Google's New Preference Option Building Trust Ranking?

The introduction of Google's latest search feature "Preferences" where you get to add sites whose results you prefer to be a source of your search results seems to reflect their move to "Trust" ranking.

"The preferred sites feature lets you set your Google Web Search preferences so that your search results match your unique tastes and needs. Fill in the sites you rely on the most, and results from your preferred sites will show up more often when they're relevant to your search query," Google explains.

You can add and remove sites you do or don't want factored into what you are looking for. Sounds like you are giving Google solid information to move from a link based algorithm to a 'trust based' one. How things change in the future could be interesting.

Factor in William Flaiz's recent article about the relevancy of rankings and the idea is not a stretch.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 19, 2009, 2:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Forget Behavioral Targeting, Body Targeting Could Soon Be 'The Thing"

We soon may be able to give a search engine information on our body size and outstanding features and get true tailored search results for clothing and other dress accessories, if a new Yahoo patent gets integrated into search.

Bill Slawski explains the patent that Yahoo has registered. "A patent filing from Yahoo describes a Fashion Search Engine that can use a 3-dimensional model to present clothing, a way for others to provide clothing recommendations, and a matching algorithm that can help you find clothes that match."

This could be a feature Yahoo could work with some serious retailers to help revive their paid search sales. Create it, sign retailers and white label it - store the world's statistics. Hey prompt them to update when they have lost or out on weight and you could have an audience for weight loss and exercise information as well.

Keep moving in this niched direction, work your own fashion portals where you can gather the people's inofrmation and you move away from the search for generalized information and stride into the social search arena.

Now get Twitter to create a fashion category specifically for you and you are off to the races. You could use it to make sure the right ads are shown when inventory for certain sizes become unavailable - send them to an alternative where their sizes are still available!

Posted by Frank Watson on January 19, 2009, 2:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Web Analytics 101, Part 1

Search Engine Watch Expert - Ron Jones Web marketers who ignore analytics are like doctors who start writing prescriptions before bothering to examine or diagnose the patient. In today's SEM 101 column, "Web Analytics 101, Part 1," Ron Jones explains that without looking under the hood to see how your Web site is performing, and learning more about the people visiting your site, you're throwing away a huge opportunity.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 19, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Are Rankings Still Relevant?

Search Engine Watch Expert - William Flaiz Are we heading toward an age where site ranking doesn't matter? By incorporating searcher behavior into their algorithms, search engines are no longer serving the same results to everyone. In today's SEM agency issues column, "Are Rankings Still Relevant?," William Flaiz wonders if search marketers have been relying on rankings as a crutch, when we should have been looking at the bottom lines.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 19, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lycos Dropping Lycos Mail, Tripod February 15

Well it looks like one of the last of the old school search companies is closing its email service and website creation and hosting service Tripod, according to emails sent to users.

The plug will be fully pulled and all data will be gone, so if you are still using any of these services you have about 4 weeks to grab all essential information before it is history.

Lycos once was a popular destination. I used it along with Alta Vista in my early forays in the search space. The company was no longer in the top ten of email providers - with an estimated global user base of under 500,000, according to TechCrunch.

Guess the old dog just can't find the bones anymore.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 18, 2009, 3:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Stock Price Low Yet New Yahoo CEO Could Make $19 Million Plus?

Apparently the new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz could make well over $19 million dollars this year, according to Reuters. This despite the fact that some of her comments the other day caused a further dip in their stock price, the New York Times reported.

Bartz receives a $1 million dollar base salary, and has bonuses of up to 200% of that. But she will also receive $10 million in cash and restricted stock to cover benefits and stock options she gave up at Autodesk.

The New York Times stated: "After reports that Ms. Bartz wasn't sold on the idea of selling Yahoo's search business to Microsoft, investors sent Yahoo shares plunging 6.5 percent on Thursday."

Seems the Microsoft deal just will not die. Regardless, Bartz joins Yahoo when their stock has fallen from a 52 week high of $30.05 to a under $10 - the stock is now trading at around $11.50.

Disclosure and commentary on her financial package could further impact Yahoo's short term value.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 16, 2009, 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Realtor Century 21 Moving Its TV Spend To Online Advertising

One of the largest national realty companies, Century 21, has decided to move a large part of their TV advertising budget for 2009 to online marketing, according to Advertising Age.

While Advertising Age see this as part economic and part going where has worked for them over the past two years:

"With the beleaguered real-estate market showing no signs of a turnaround, the realtor has decided to play the numbers and go where the buyers and sellers are: online."

this change in spend could also have a major impact on online advertising perceptions in general.

Century 21 has noticed that they have seen very successful results with their online spends.

As Beverly Thorne, Century 21 senior VP-marketing, told Advertising Age, "the company's research and testing revealed that its online investments in 2008 were substantively more productive and efficient than its offline efforts."

In 2008 online spend was less than 10% of Century 21's advertising budget.

While marketers and writers in our space have been touting the intelligence of increasing spends on paid search, if Century 21 has noticeable success many others in all industries could soon follow.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 16, 2009, 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

HelloMetro Hiring Journalists to Cover Local News for Their Online Sites

HelloMetro is hiring former print journalists to cover the news for 10 of their local sites. They hope this will bring better local coverage as opposed to local sites they say just resort to blogs.

“We have avoided leaving our local stories to bloggers,” CEO Clark Scott said. “Other websites lean heavily on blogging because the content is free. While blogging is useful, we insist on the traditional standards of reliability and accountability that we could only get with our own staff of professional writers.”

Hey Clark. I'm a blogger. I cover the news. I'm not free. (Oh yeah, and print journalism doesn't always = reliable and accountable.)

I digress.

There's a bunch of journalists out there needing jobs, so hopefully the ones who end up at HelloMetro are able to build a nice career and add value to the communities they write about.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 16, 2009, 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Federal Court Dismisses Online Travel Hotel Tax Suit

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has dismissed a suit brought forth by Pitt County, North Carolina (Greenville, NC is located there for those who are NC-challenged) to charge online travel sites such as Expedia and Travelocity for hotel occupancy taxes.

The ruling used an NC state sales tax statute for support of its decision. G.S. 105-164.4 says that online travel sites are not hotel retailers that could be subject to the tax.

This is good news for consumers, as they would essentially be taxed twice. If the ruling had gone the other way, no doubt the taxes would be passed onto the consumer.

Art Sackler, Executive Director of the Interactive Travel Services Association said, "Online travel companies work hard to bring visitors and tourism dollars to cities and hotels around the country. Since they do not manage or operate hotels, motels or other lodging establishments, the online travel companies are not liable for occupancy taxes on the reservation services they provide to the local tourism industries."

Pitt County's real problem is having enough to attract tourism dollars in the first place. East Carolina University is likely the biggest tourism money maker, but a weak football season could hinder the number of dollars spent there.

Promoting ECU's medical center is a more consistent means of bringing in the dough. Also, offering incentives for companies to operate in the county (i.e. research + university = good) could give an overall boost to the tax revenue. Good companies could also boost travel tax dollars when people travel to make business deals go down in the home of the purple and gold Pirates.

Still, cities around the country seem intent on addressing the problem from the wrong end. And different court districts are bringing different decisions. A judge in Texas granted a motion to file suit by San Antonio. Houston is also going after online travel taxes.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 16, 2009, 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Apps Get an Added Layer of Security

Just a few days after the announcement of the Google Apps reseller program, comes news that an added layer of security has come to Google Apps. The new layer gives administrators the ability to set password length requirements and view indications of password strength.

Apparently, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are already getting in on the action:

Administrators of Premier and Education Edition apps can find the new features in the administrative control panel under 'Advanced Tools' > 'Advanced Password Settings.'

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 16, 2009, 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Offers Free TV Ad Creation with SpotMixer

Google TV Ads is now offering free tv ad creation with a self-serve video ad creation solution implemented inside AdWords. The solution was developed jointly between the two companies. The video creation tool has been available through a private beta since September. Now, it's open to everyone.

Well placed TV ads are a great way to drive traffic directly to your site or to drive people to search for key terms you're ranking or advertising for.

SpotMixer's platform automatically takes text from existing AdWords text ads and inserts them into tailored ads using dynamically changing templates (in order to offer up multiple ads).

Another plus, especially in this economy, is the ability of companies and agencies to resuse previously developed creative. Photographs, video, and audio can be repurposed in the SpotMixer tool to create ads that are coordinated with search marketing efforts.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 16, 2009, 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Truveo Video Search to be Added to SFGate.com

AOL's Truveo video search has been added to SFGate.com, the online site of the San Francisco Chronicle. The search is currently implemented on the cars section with additional pages in the pipeline. SFGate.com sees 12 million unique visitors per month.

“We're delighted that SFGate.com has taken advantage of our technologies to give their readers a great video search experience,” said Pete Kocks, President of Truveo and Vice President of AOL. “With users expecting a far richer experience on every site they visit, video has become a critical part of the news experience and is a great way to keep users engaged.”

AOL acquired Truveo in 2006. This past September, they released the beta version of their video search.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 16, 2009, 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yahoo Adds Wikipedia SearchMonkey App as Default

Beginning today, searchers on Yahoo! will find Wikipedia results displayed in their new SearchMonkey app form.

If you remember, Yahoo! launched SearchMonkey last year to allow customization of search results. Yahoo! has already set Yelp, LinkedIn, and Yahoo! Local SearchMonkey apps as default, as well as Citysearch and Zagat.

Users can also check out the Yahoo! SearchMonkey Gallery to select other apps they'd like to see in their searches.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 15, 2009, 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Curious Case of Music Disappearing from YouTube Videos

Lately, many have noticed that copyrighted music has mysteriously been removed from user-submitted videos on YouTube. Now, YouTube is addressing the occurrences with a simple explanation.

Previously, when a video was faced with copyright issues, users could dispute the claim or select from a library of approved tunes. Now, users have a third option: simply removing the music.

Maybe silent films will make a comeback, because sometimes these copyright issues feel so archaic. The good news is that ditzy blond girls with bad voices can be stars again! Oh wait, we have Britney, Heidi and Paris. That trend never did go away, did it?

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 15, 2009, 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Website Optimizer Announces Website Workout Winners (Plus, Visualize Testing!)

Last June, Google Website Optimizer launched the Website Workout contest, where companies could submit their websites for analysis. Four winners were chosen and they are:

Colonial Candle
Extra Space Storage
Outrigger Hotels & Resorts
Team In Training

Google posted a video of Colonial Candle's experience in website testing and landing page optimization, which helped boost their sales by 20% (yes, even in this economy). I know when reading a blog, things like landing page testing can seem very cerebral if you've never done it before. So, check out this video to get a visual sense for what testing can do for your site:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 15, 2009, 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Obama Aide: Broadband Portion of Stimulus Package for Timely Needs, Not Overall Goals

An aide of President-elect Barack Obama is clarifying what can be expected from the broadband portion of the stimulus bill currently being constructed in Congress, according to Reuters. Blair Levin, a former FCC employee under Clinton, is insisting that the bill will address timely broadband needs that can create jobs, instead of being used to implement the overall goals of the incoming administration.

That doesn't mean the Obama technology agenda is out the window. It simply means the stimulus bill is not what is going to make it happen.

Many groups are vying for a piece of the stimulus pie. A public interest group known as Free Press is calling for $44 billion of the $800 billion bill to be used to expand high-speed internet.

Consumer groups want more competition, which they feel will help the United States catch up with European and Asian countries that are currently leading in Internet speed and widespread adaptation.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 15, 2009, 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nielsen Online December 2008 Search Engine Share Rankings

Nielsen Online has released its search engine share rankings for December 2008. Google had a big year-over-year gain with Yahoo, AOL and Ask seeing modest increases as well. Live Search didn't fare so well:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 15, 2009, 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Google Lets Go 100 Recruiters, Reorganizes Engineering Team

Google has reduced their recruiting efforts and, as such, layoffs have come to their recruiting team. About 100 contract recruiters will be getting the pink slips.

Meanwhile, the engineering team is also being affected, albeit in a different way. Engineers in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden are required to relocate or say goodbye to the search engine. About 70 employees will be affected. A similar requirement was made recently of engineers in Phoenix, Arizona.

Over the summer, Google closed its Dallas, TX office.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 15, 2009, 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Bribing People To Send You Emails With $50 Gift Cards

Search Engine Watch Expert - Sage Lewis Whenever you're doing a promotion of any kind, the key to success is to measure it. Set out goals, costs, and end results. In today's online promotion & link building column, "Bribing People To Send You Emails With $50 Gift Cards," Sage Lewis shares the results of his own promotion, highlighting some ways to measure success.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 15, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online Display Ad Pricing Drops in Q4 2008

Pubmatic has released online ad pricing data for the fourth quarter 2008. They found that ad pricing dropped in Q4, likely due to an all too unstable economy. Here's what they found:

All sizes of websites (small, medium, and large) were down dramatically from Q4 2007; small, medium, and large sites dropped 52%, 23%, and 54%, respectively, from the previous year.
All sizes of websites were down from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008, but the drops leveled-off, bucking the trend of larger drops from quarter to quarter throughout 2008; this may be an indicator that the online ad sector received enough of a boost from holiday advertising to keep ad rates steady.
All vertical categories experienced significant drops in their ad pricing from Q4 2007; the biggest drop by a vertical was Business & Finance, which fell from an average price of $2.13 in Q4 2007 to $0.83 in Q4 2008 – a 61% drop.
No vertical categories dropped by a significant amount from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008, with some verticals even improving from the previous quarter -- the Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Gaming, and Music verticals all had higher ad price averages in Q4 of 2008 than in Q3 of 2008.

“Online ad pricing is a reflection of what is happening in the overall economy, and as a result, pricing has dropped significantly in almost all categories in the past year,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-founder and CEO of PubMatic. “However, with overall advertising budgets shrinking, the need for marketers to have more accountable advertising could bring more advertising dollars online in 2009 and start an upward trend as some vertical categories have already experienced.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 14, 2009, 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Releases New Sitemap Generator

Google Webmaster Central has created a new sitemap generator and released it to the general public. The new generator is open source and uses your webserver's traffic, its log files, or the files found on the server to quickly find the URLs on your site.

It ping Google blog search and creates the following sitemap files for you:

XML Sitemaps for Web Search according to the sitemaps.org standard
Mobile Sitemaps for mobile-friendly websites
Code Search Sitemaps for source code that you make available to users

The generator is a server plugin that can be installed on Linux/Apache and Microsoft IIS Windows-based servers. For more information, check out the Google Sitemap Generator documentation.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 14, 2009, 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matt Cutts: Hate Review Sites With No Reviews? Tell Me About It

Google's spam guru Matt Cutts is asking for people to help his team address the issue of review site pages with no reviews.

In other words, have you ever been researching a product and included "review" in the search phrase - only to click on sites with no reviews? Annoying to say the least. (Especially on a mobile browser!)

Cutts says this is a major concern among his blog readers. So, his team has set up a way for you to help them find out about URLs with this problem. Per Cutts' blog:

Go to our authenticated spam report form. You'll need a Google account to sign into our webmaster console. This form is available in dozens of languages, not just English.
In the “Additional details” section, make sure you include the word “noresults” (all one word, all lowercase). Feel free to fill in the other fields with info if you want.
Provide an actual “no results found” or “empty review” example url.

Cutts rightfully points out that these sites/pages are not intended as spam per se, but, of course, they do affect the quality of search.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 14, 2009, 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Maps Adds Features to Local Business Ads

Google Maps has updated features for local business ads. First up, the pop up box for a local business listing will now include interactive links for features on Google Maps. These links include "Get Directions," "Street View," and "Save to My Maps."

Secondly, there's a new reporting feature. Available through your account's Report Center, the report offers details on the number of users opening the info window for your business listing as well as how many clicked on the interactive link.

Writing on the Inside AdWords blog, Amanda Kelly said, "Often, Maps users are looking for different information than Search users. The new interactive links and the interaction reports should not only help customers connect with you faster but should also help you understand how to better target Maps users versus Search users. We'll post again on this blog when the new changes to the reporting capabilities take effect."

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 14, 2009, 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reciprocal Links And Yahoo: Some Interesting Reading

Okay I would not have bothered to read Yahoo's latest patent on reciprocal links if it were not for two blog posts by Bill Slawski and David Harry. These guys thankfully can interpret patent details in a way that does not make my head spin and explode.

I mean look at the abstract of Timothy Converse et al application:

"A method for identifying reciprocal links is provided. At a particular host, the set of hosts which link to the particular host and the set of hosts to which the particular host links are determined. The intersection and union of the two sets of hosts are also determined, and the sizes of the intersection and union are calculated. The concentration of reciprocal links at the particular host is calculated based on the sizes of the intersection and union. A ratio of the intersection size to the union size is used to determine the concentration of reciprocal links. The particular host's rank in a list of ranked search results may be changed as a result of identification of a high concentration of reciprocal links. "

David gets the nod for the most entertaining read - he even includes a cartoon - while detailing how the excess reciprocal links are spotted and flagged. Explaining three way link schemes and "suspicious clusters".

Bill, on the other hand, gets the tip of the hat for his detail in simplifying various link related patents; taking the jargon and explaining it in terms even I can understand.

He notes - as does David - that:

"If the links between pages (or domains or hosts) is a small percentage of the links on each page or domain or host, the process described in this patent filing may not kick off. I say “kick off” because this is an automated process rather than a manual review at this point.
If the percentage of links is larger than than, a number of steps might be taken by the search engine.

The sites might be reviewed manually by “human investigators” or they might be examined by a program from the search engine that has been trained to look for signals of suspicious activity."

Both articles should be read, despite the fact that they address much similar ground. With their different ways of explaining by the time you are done you will have a firm grasp of the state of reciprocal links as seen by the major search engines, Yahoo in particular.

Thanks guys!

Posted by Frank Watson on January 14, 2009, 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Apps Reseller Program Could Become Biggest Affiliate Program

Google is building a reseller program for its apps and training future affiliates to build up their market share of email, calendaring, project management and team site creation, as well as documents, video sharing and collaboration.

The program will give resellers 20% of each $50/user/year they sign up, as well as any other service fees they may charge for implementing them to a company's specifications or continued maintenance or service. This could mean a large amount of money for people able to convert companies with large user bases.

After completing a test - not unlike the one for AdWords Professional - the resellers/affiliates will be able to use the Google Apps badge.

As the video below states: "You bill the customers and Google bills you... you, not Google, has the relationship with the customers. You keep the margins and the service and maintenance fees."

This is a clever way for Google to build out their cloud technologies, as well as challenge many of Microsoft's core products. They are building a sales force they will train and help implement their products.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 14, 2009, 5:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEO Training Workshop on Blogs at SES London 2009

One of the four SEM and SEO training workshops that will be held at SES London on Friday, Feb. 20, 2009, will be focused on “Reaching Your Audience through Blogs.” The instructor is Jennifer Evans Laycock, the Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide, an online publication aimed at educating Small Business owners about search engine marketing, viral marketing, social media marketing and blogging.

Jennifer%20Laycock%20at%20SES%20New%20York%202008.jpg There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, yielding widely disparate estimates of both the number of blogs and blog readership. All studies agree, however, that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream.

This means the opportunities for businesses to speak with their customers is nearly unlimited. That's why more and more companies are turning to the blogosphere to connect with consumers. Businesses have never had such effective access to the frustrations and desires of their target audience.

After attending this half-day workshop, you will have a solid understanding of concepts that are vital to reaching out to consumers via blogs including:
• Why blogs are the fastest growing form of consumer generated media.
• How blogs can change the way you interact with your customers.
• How to engage your target audience in conversation and how to put what you learn into action.
• Why blogging works for both B2B and B2C companies.
• How to avoid the most common corporate blogging mistakes.
• Crisis control tactics in case you encounter negative blogging.

In this workshop, you will learn why so many companies are launching corporate blogs and how they are creatively using them to advance their brand and marketing campaigns. You'll also learn how to leverage other people's blogs to build your company's reputation, address criticism and introduce new products.

The workshop will give real life examples of both good and bad blog campaigns as well are sharing insight on how your business can build their own blog style based on consumer feedback.

During this workshop, you will learn:
• How to find your corporate blogging voice.
• What resources are needed to launch an effective corporate blog.
• How to balance sales and information to build a more loyal readership.
• Why pitching bloggers is different than pitching traditional media.
• Why companies ignore blog comments at their own peril.

In addition to being the Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide, Jennifer also operates as an independent online marketing consultant specializing in organic search marketing and viral marketing. Her clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings, Highlights for Children, and Option-Line, a national crisis-pregnancy hotline. She is also the author of the popular e-books "The Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing" and "Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and Thirty Days."

During SES London 2009, Jennifer will also be speaking at the “SEO Through Blogs & Feeds” session on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009. In 2005, she delivered the keynote presentation at the MIVA Small Business Conference.

Jennifer has been interviewed and quoted by a variety of publications including The Financial Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Entrepreneur magazine. At SES San Jose 2008, Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media interviewed her about using social media sites like Linkedin and Twitter to communicate one's marketing message to a dedicated and enthusiastic audience.

Small Business Viral Marketing Tips, SES San Jose 2008

And check out the other three SEM and SEO training workshops at SES London 2007. Participants may register for training in addition to the SES London conference or independently, since the workshops take place on the Friday after the event.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 14, 2009, 2:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

SEW Experts: Training Your Content Developers on SEO Copywriting

Search Engine Watch Expert - Eric Enge SEO copywriting can be a misleading term. Too often, writers will get stuck on the SEO part and lose sight of the other, more important goal: creating a good user experience. In today's Web analytics and ROI column, "Training Your Content Developers on SEO Copywriting," Eric Enge offers advice on how to teach your copywriters to create quality content, which will also rank in search engines.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 14, 2009, 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Tibet's Revenge

Search Engine Watch Expert - Kevin Ryan There's quite a bit of controversy over things like censoring search results. Judging by the majority of the responses I received on last week's column, most of you got the humor in it. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Tibet's Revenge," Kevin Ryan asks those who didn't, or only read the headline and first three sentences, to please continue on to the punch line at the end.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 14, 2009, 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Did Yahoo President Sue Decker See New CEO As Snub?

Despite the suggestion by ValleyWag, that incoming Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's first job would be to fire President Sue Decker, seems Decker beat her to the punch by announcing her resignation.

Decker has overseen many of the few innovations and major changes at Yahoo during the past few years - as Terry Semel stood down to give Jerry Yang the CEO spot and their stock fell from the 30s to below 10. But, ValleyWag reports Decker was ambitious and "engineered a reorganization that drove out her chief rival, COO Dan Rosensweig, and then led a palace coup to drive out Hollywood movie mogul Terry Semel as CEO."

People had thought Decker was a major contender for the CEO spot and when another female from outside the company was named Decker had to leave.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock stated "“The Board thanks Sue for her service as President, the important contributions she has made to Yahoo!'s development in a variety of roles over the past 8-1/2 years, and her willingness to work with Carol Bartz to ensure a smooth transition. We respect her decision to move on to other challenges and wish her only the best.”

The news of the new CEO and Decker leaving did little to impact the Yahoo stock price today.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 13, 2009, 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AdGooroo Releases Q4 2008 Search Advertising Data

AdGooroo has released data for search engine advertising in the fourth quarter of 2008. Google's first page advertisers grew by 58%, and Live Search grew by 42.3%. Yahoo only grew by 8.8%.

More interesting tidbits from Q4:

A combined Microsoft/Yahoo! entity would increase large advertiser counts on the Live Search network by 157 percent, making a strong case for Microsoft acquiring Yahoo!
Microsoft continued to close the gap in advertiser share with Yahoo: In Q3, Yahoo! led by 17.6 percent, but this lead has narrowed to 3.0 percent at the end of Q4

“Ad coverage on the search engines continues to provide a reliable indicator of advertising activity and is the focus of increased industry chatter,” said AdGooroo Founder and Chief Gooroo Rich Stokes in the new report. “The Q4 report shows that we measured large increases in ad coverage on Google. Microsoft ad coverage fell, on the other hand, likely indicative of their continuing focus on ad quality control and holistic search. Yahoo! showed little change in ad coverage from other 2008 reports.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Report: Carol Bartz Accepted Yahoo Offer to Become CEO

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Carol Bartz has accepted Yahoo's offer to become their next CEO. I have no link at the moment. Just a breaking news headline:

Bartz is currently executive chairman of Autodesk, a design software company. She formerly was CEO of Autodesk and was an executive as Sun Microsystems. She currently serves on the boards of Cisco (with Jerry Yang) and Intel (with Sue Decker).

Yahoo! stock was on the rise in reaction to the news. At the time of this post, Yahoo was at $12.38.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online Video Spend Up 36% in 2008 Topping $2.12 Billion, Expected to Grow in 2009

Online video gross media spend was $2.12 billion in 2008, up 36% from 2007, according to AccuStream. Here's a breakdown on the details:

In-banner video impressions grew by 65% in 2008, and accounted for $1.5 billion in gross media spend
Inventory for pre-roll ads expanded by 12.6% in 2008, reaching 18.75 billion total avails, following a 16.8% increase in 2007.
Video buys made through rep firms totaled $90 million in 2008.
Overlay executions associated with video added $37.6 million.
insertion frequency for onsite experiences was capped at 1.5 (content views per avail) on average in 2008, reduced 13.7% from 2007

The forecast for 2009:

27% growth in pre-roll inventory
22.5% growth in gross media spend

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Four Advertising Groups to Develop Online Behavioral Advertising Privacy Standards

Four advertising groups have announced plans to collaborate on privacy standards for online behavioral advertising data. The four groups are:

The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA)
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)

The Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB) is also participating in the effort.

Online advertising data collection has been a concern of politicians and consumer groups. Election years typically see a flurry of activity over the matter and 2008 was no different. From state government efforts in New York and Connecticut to hearings in Congress, online advertising was in the hot seat last year.

It's nice to see advertising associations take the initiative to create standards, which can hopefully allay some of the fears out there over data collection.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Delicious Founder Joshua Schachter Now Employed by Google

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter was among several Yahoo! executives who fled the Sunnyvale search engine last summer. Yahoo! acquired Delicious, a social bookmarking site, in 2005.

Now, Schachter is calling Google home when it comes to his career. Details on the new gig are thus far being kept private.

Will he aid Google in social efforts? Or will he pursue new interests? We'll have to wait and see.

Let us know your hopes for Schachter at Google in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Obama to Nominate Former IAC Executive as FCC Chairman

President-elect Barack Obama is planning to nominate former IAC executive Julius Genachowski as FCC Chairman, according to the Wall Street Journal. IAC is the parent company of Ask.com.

Before his stint at IAC, Genachowski was Chief Counsel to Chairman Reed Hundt of the Federal Communications Commission under the Clinton administration. He is a former classmate of Mr. Obama's at the Harvard Law School and most recently co-founded DC-based venture capital firm, LaunchBox Digital.

Genachowski has sat on the boards of Expedia, Hotels.com and Ticketmaster. He currently serves on the boards of Beliefnet, The Motley Fool and Website Pros.

If approved by Congress, Genachowski will face a number of challenges including national broadband, white space spectrum issues, and the changeover to digital television.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rent.com Tops Top Ten Most Popular Apartment Search Sites for Q4 2008

Rent.com topped the list of top ten most popular apartment search sites for the fourth quarter of 2008, according to Realty DataTrust. The rankings are compiled by quantifying the number of times renters checked availability online per property.

The list is as follows:

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google to Announce Q4 2008 Results on January 22, 2009 (Same Day as Microsoft)

Google has announced that its earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2008 will occur on Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 1:30pm PST (4:30pm for East Coasters). The call can be accessed live at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html.

Guess who else is holding their earnings call that day? Microsoft. Their call will begin one hour later and can be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/msft.

We've already seen indications that the fourth quarter was a rollercoaster for search advertising. This is likely to have much more of an effect on Google than Microsoft, who will benefit from strong Xbox 360 sales during the holidays and be affected by the larger software and enterprise offerings of their overall business.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 13, 2009, 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mobile Search Training Workshop at SES London 2009

In addition to more than 40 conference sessions at Search Engine Strategies London on Feb. 17-19, 2009, there will also be four SEM and SEO training workshops at SES London on Friday, Feb. 20, 2009.

Cindy%20Krum.jpg These four-hour workshops provide the in-depth training you need to become (and remain!) a top performer in your field. The small class setting also ensures that your instructor is accessible for informal one-on-one or small group discussions.

One of the training workshops should be of particular interest to UK and European marketers - because it is in a field of search that is more advanced in Great Britain and on the Continent than its is back on my side of the pond. It's the field of mobile search and the training workshop is entitled, "Mobile Marketing 101."

The session will focus on mobile SEO, but will also touch on driving traffic and conversions with mobile applications, text messaging and mobile email. You will learn what you need to know to develop, launch and track a mobile marketing strategy.

After attending this workshop, you will be able to:
• Understand how mobile marketing fits into the traditional and online marketing mix
• Determine what mobile marketing strategy is most appropriate for your target market
• Update your existing site to be found and used on a variety of mobile devices
• Choose a mobile site architecture that will work for your site and your customers
• Direct mobile meta crawlers and mobile users to mobile content
• Author meta data that ranks well in mobile search and is compelling for mobile searchers
• Leverage local and universal search results in mobile search engines
• Provide a good mobile user experience for all mobile devices
• Test mobile websites to ensure they render correctly across different devices
• Track and evaluate your mobile success
• Anticipate future opportunities in mobile marketing.

The instructor is Cindy Krum, the Founder and CEO of Rank-Mobile, LLC. She will also be speaking at SES London 2009 during the "Mobile Search Update - The Next Generation," which will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009.

Cindy writes for industry publications, and has been published in Website Magazine, Advertising & Marketing Review, Search Engine Land, and ODG Intelligence. She also currently serves as the co-chair of the SEMPO Emerging Technologies Mobile Web Task Force.

Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed her at SES Chicago 2008 about both the Mobile Search Update - The Next Generation conference session as well as her Mobile Marketing 101 training workshop at SES London 2009.

Cindy Krum, Rank-Mobile, previews SES London 2009!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG-eOWzSmNE

If you watch the video interview, Cindy says the training workshop is being held on her birthday and she'll be bringing a cake. Let's see if the instructors for the other three SEM and SEO training workshops try to top that.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 13, 2009, 2:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Women Aged 30-39 Spend Most Time Viewing Internet and TV Simultaneously

A new report from Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) shows that the group that women aged 30-39 are the group that spends the most time viewing the internet and television simultaneously. In second place are teenage boys aged 15-18.

Here's the breakdown:

"Considering the amount of sports-related programming that connects the Web to television, it was surprising to see the highest simultaneous usage was among adult women," said Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI. "Our interpretation of this is that women are more inclined to multi-task than men, particularly when in the home balancing their personal and professional lives. This is entirely consistent with studies of online television consumption previously conducted by IMMI."

Maybe, but considering teenage men were almost the same as the women, I'm not sure such generalizations are true. Plus, as those men grow older, will they carry their habits with them?

And are those teenage women texting on their phones instead of viewing the internet, while watching tv? Will that translate into mobile internet viewing while tv watching as they grow older, possibly obtaining more sophisticated phones?

What do you think about this data? Let us know in the comments section!

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 12, 2009, 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

adCenter Rolls Out New Custom Date Range & Filter Options for Performance Data

Microsoft's adCenter has rolled out a couple of new options to sort and filter your data. First up is custom date ranges. Now, you can access data for up to 31 consecutive days from the last two years without running a report.

Secondly, adCenter has brought custom filters, similar to what you might find in Microsoft Excel. For example, you can display keywords with a high spend but low click-through rate (CTR) in order to optimize them for better performance.

Writing on the adCenter blog, Mel Carson says, "Finding the information that is most important to you by applying column filters to your campaign performance grids can help you hide low-performing keywords and let you focus on the high-performing ones."

What do you think of adCenter's updates? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 12, 2009, 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Rounding Up the Usual Click Fraud Suspects

In a new report by entitled "Anatomy of a Fraudster," Anchor Intelligence has identified the top four types of click fraud perpetrators. Their research is based on a year of studying traffic patterns and gathering intelligence across their client base.

The four types are:

Click fraud farmers – members of click farms, which are outsourced by an organization and paid to generate clicks on behalf of a third party.
Pyramid schemers – individuals who are caught up in illegal schemes, in which they are “paid” to click on ads, visit Web sites and recruit other users.
Money launderers – fraudsters who recruit consumers to use their personal information to register various websites with ad networks with intent to generate false clicks on ads hosted by their Web sites.
Kit sophisticates – fraudsters who purchase kits online to commit fraud. These kits often serve as a one-stop shop for click fraud perpetrators and provide tools to create hundreds of Web sites, mass register accounts and generate thousands of fraudulent ad clicks.

“Pinpointing the bad guys can be extremely difficult,” said Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence. “Much like spammers, click fraud perpetrators have their methods for staying under the radar. Understanding the ‘how' and ‘why' behind their actions is essential to preventing their fraudulent activity.”

What do you think about the four types of click fraud perpetrators? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 12, 2009, 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Internet TV: What Do Users Want?

Last week at CES, several TVs that were internet-capable were rolled out for the world to see. So what do consumers plan on using their TV internet browsers for?

Strategy Analytics set out to find out in a recent survey.

The number one answer? Video on-demand. This should come as surprise to absolutely no one as online video has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Here are the top 8 answers from the survey:

Access Video on Demand without a PC
Searching the home network for video content
Access user-generated content such as Youtube
Play media from a USB drive
Share television experience using messaging services
Make video conference or voice calls via the TV
Download widgets
Give the TV different colour schemes or skins (Note: Selected applications only)

David Mercer, VP, Digital Consumer Practice, comments: "It's perhaps not surprising that TV viewers want to be able to watch video and TV on the big screen. But many of today's early web TV services are focusing too heavily on what they perceive as hot internet technologies such as widgets. Our research suggests these are a low priority for many consumers; instead developers should focus on bringing TV viewers the wealth of video content that is available on the web."

Mercer is right. The only concurrent news with the devices was about the Yahoo! Widget Channel.

Marketers, however, can take note from these survey results. Pursuing video is increasingly becoming a must, with creative that goes beyond traditional advertising. Including user-generated content is a great way to engage that pursuit, something that brands have already been trying with great success. Doritos annual Superbowl campaign is a great example.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 12, 2009, 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FCC Takes White Spaces Initiative Global

Now that the FCC has unanimously agreed to use white spaces for unlicensed use in the United States, they're expanding the campaign to an international initiative. Dubbed the "White Spaces Fellowship and Training Initiative," the FCC can now share insights with international regulators.

Google has been one of the most vocal supporters of opening up as much spectrum as possible. Their motivation is an obvious one: They want it to be open for their mobile initiatives with the Android operating system.

Google has not been extremely effective in promoting some of their other efforts in Washington, such as a search advertising deal with Yahoo.

But their support of the open spectrum is one area where they've seen some headway. It will be interesting to see how future efforts fare with a new administration in the White House and during a tough economy.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 12, 2009, 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Unveils New Favicon

Google has a new Favicon, which it unveiled over the weekend. If you're not familiar with the term, a Favicon is a small image that appears in a browser bar or tab, next to the title tag and/or URL, depending on the browser you use.

Here's Google's new Favicon:

It's based on a submission by a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Campinas in Brazil named AndrÃ© Resende. Here's Resende's original design:

Here are some honorable mentions, which also incorporate the letter G and Google's famous use of primary colors:

by Hadi Onur Demirsoy

by Lucian E. Marin

by Yusuf Sevgen

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 12, 2009, 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Doing A Google Search Impacts The Environment!

Seems you can boil water for a cup of tea with the amount of energy it takes to do two Google searches, according to a Harvard professor. Though, in response to the TimesOnline article posted yesterday, Google took time to reply stating it is many times less than that.

This may be more than a tempest in a tea cup (I know bad pun), given Google's appointment of Bill Weihl as their Green Energy Czar in February 2006 and their claims to be carbon neutral by 2008.

No doubt, the information by Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross has heated things up at Google, for a number of reasons and their response may have been motivated more than by the carbon footprint they are leaving, but the suggested access to operating information of the company.

As Weihl told the Climate Group last year, "We aren't disclosing the absolute numbers of our footprint because it's closely coupled to the details of our operations, but the bulk of our emissions are from our data centre operations. Employee commuting and business travel also contribute, as do emissions associated with manufacturing of the servers that we use."

As the TimesOnline noted however,"Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern."

Google has long had an almost counter culture, support the environment image. And their efforts to contribute to environmental issues can be praised, but their endless supply of widgets and services most obviously impacts on energy use and one wonders if they had foreseen this type of publicity arriving eventually. After all, as any brand management conscious person can tell you, these articles do not go away - even storing them takes up energy.

But Google is not the only ones at fault, as Wissner-Gross told TimesOnline in a (energy consuming) companion article "every website owner contributes as well. As websites have real-world environmental footprints. Their files are stored on servers, viewed by personal computers, and connected via networks. To operate these components, all of which are necessary to create a complete website experience, electricity must be consumed. And to generate much of that electricity, fossil fuels like coal and natural gas are usually being burned."

Seems we are all using a lot of energy - hey reading (and writing) this article just took away from the world's energy supplies.

And we can't forget Yahoo and Microsoft - hell the press about the take over bid last year must have used enough energy to power a small country.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 12, 2009, 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's “Horses for Courses” at SES London 2009

A year ago, I wrote an article for Search Engine Watch entitled, “It's ‘Horses for Courses' at SES London.” In the article, I said business professionals may want to bring a team to Search Engine Strategies London – because there will be three concurrent conference tracks and no business professional will be able to attend all of the sessions.

SES%20London%20conference%20agenda.jpg Well, it's a year later and I'd make the same case – even in a recession. In fact, if you need to grow your business online now more than ever, then the smart move will be to bring a team of three people to SES London 2009.

To some extent, this is a case of “In for a penny, in for a pound.” If something is worth doing, then you might as well go the whole nine yards.

But it also turns out that it has economic benefits. If you read the rates and registration details closely, you'll see that there are Special Group Discounts. (First two conference registrants pay full price, the third person from the same organization, registering at the same time qualifies for 50% off their registration fee.)

And sending a team of three people will enable you to take advantage of the fact that the SEM conference includes advanced sessions, intermediate sessions, and beginner sessions. And this will enable your organization to put different "horses" on different "courses."

For example, someone entering the SEM steeplechase for the first time will race through the the Fundamentals Track on Wednesday, Feb. 18, as well as the Beyond Fundamentals Track on Thursday, Feb. 19.

Meanwhile, someone who's been around the SEO racecourse a few times will gallop through the Organic Track on Tuesday, and the Issues and Tactics Track on Thursday.

To extend the metaphor, someone who already knows how to harness PPC will be trotting through the Advertising Track on Wednesday, as well as the Improve Me Track on Thursday.

How can I be so sure? Well, I've been speaking at Search Engine Strategies London each and every year since 2005. And when I wasn't speaking, I was sitting in on sessions to report on the conference for Search Engine Watch.

If you've never been to SES London before and want to get an idea of what you'll see and hear, you can take a look at the descriptions below of half a dozen out of more than 40 sessions -- as well as some video interviews with six the more than 60 conference speakers.

Let's start with a couple of the advanced sessions first.

Search Advertising Tools: In order to get a leg up on the competition, successful Search Engine Marketers need to be armed with the latest tools of the trade. This session will explore a range of popular search engine advertising tools along with some important features you should be aware of. One of the speakers on the panel of experts will be Thomas Bindl, Founder & CEO, Refined Labs GmbH.

Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed Thomas about the evolution of search ad tools during SES Chicago 2008. Thomas mentioned the best paid and free search ad tools on the net and provided a preview of SES London 2009.

Thomas Bindl, Refined Labs, on search ad tools and SES London 2009

Ads in a Quality Score World: More and more, ranking well in paid search listings is less about how much you pay and more about the "quality" of your ad campaign. But what goes into making up your quality score? One of the speakers on this panel will be Andrew Goodman, Principal, Page Zero Media.

As SES Chicago 2008, I interviewed Andrew about the updates he made to his book, “Winning Results with Google Adwords.” His book take a closer look at quality factors and gives tips on increasing the perceived relevancy of your campaign.

Andrew Goodman, Page Zero Media, on Google Adwords at SES Chicago 2008

Next, let's take a look at a couple of the intermediate sessions:

Search Resources: Building a Better Economic Model: In today's uncertain economic times, businesses need certainty around their marketing and sales initiatives. Measurable, quantifiable strategies which have a defined ROI will win, as managers will only invest in activities they can measure. One of the speakers on this panel will be Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder, Future Now, Inc.

Mitch Joel of Twist Image and Six Pixels of Separation interviewed Bryan at SES Toronto 2008. Bryan was the talked about his keynote presentation as well as his new book, “Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer.”

Bryan Eisenberg on Site Metrics and Optimization

SEO Through Blogs & Feeds: Not yet running a blog? Not syndicating your content through web feeds? Then you're missing out on an important area that can help your overall SEO efforts. One of the speakers on this panel is Jennifer Evans Laycock, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Guide.

At SES San Jose, 2008, Andrew Goodman interviewed Jennifer about the best tips on viral campaigns and social media marketing, especially for small business who want to make the most of their business online without spending too much money.

Small Business Viral Marketing Tips, SES San Jose 2008

Finally, let's take a look at a couple of the beginner sessions:

Search Engine Friendly Design: How can you build a website from the ground up that pleases both crawler-based search engines and your visitors? Discover how “search engine-friendly” design can tap into free traffic from search engines. One of the speakers at this session is Matt Bailey, President, SiteLogic.

As SES Chicago, Chris Boggs of Rosetta interviewed Matt about difference between Analytics 1.0 and Analytics 2.0. Matt said Analytics 1.0 is the endless reporting of numbers with no analysis of the data, while Analytics 2.0 digs into the "why and how" to better understand what the data means.

Matthew Bailey, SiteLogic on 1.0 and 2.0 Analytics at SES Chicago

Search Advertising 101: Paid placement is a form of search advertising that provides a top ranking in return for payment. Every major search engine offers a paid placement program. The moderator of this session, which is especially geared toward beginners, will be Andy Atkins-KrÃŒger, Managing Director, WebCertain Europe Ltd.

Byron Gordon interviewed Andyat SES Chicago 2008 about that show as well as his expectations for SES London 2009. Andy also talked about the state of search in Europe for 2009.

Andy Atkins-Kruger, WebCertain, discusses SES Chicago and SES London 2009

In other words, there are courses for horses at SES London 2009. That's what makes it the definitive event for UK and European marketers, corporate decision makers, webmasters and search engine marketing (SEM) specialists, including pay per click (PPC) advertisers and search engine optimization (SEO) consultants.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 12, 2009, 2:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: 7 Social Media Predictions for 2009

Search Engine Watch Expert - Erik Qualman It's a new year, which means it's time to raise a virtual glass within your social network and toast your collective social graphs for a great 2009. In today's building brand equity column, "7 Social Media Predictions for 2009," Erik Qualman shares seven things to look for this year.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 12, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2

Search Engine Watch Expert - Ron Jones Getting a good quality score requires that you create relevance and continuity from beginning to end of the search experience. Then you need to test, test, test. In today's SEM 101 column, "Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2," Ron Jones shows you how to create landing pages that will lead to conversions, which is the ultimate goal.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 12, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is Yahoo on the Verge of Naming Yang's Replacement?

The Wall Street Journal today is reporting that a new Yahoo! CEO could be named as early as next week. Lately, the buzz has surrounded Autodesk executive chairman Carol Bartz.

Bartz previously was CEO of Autodesk from 1992 to 2006. She has also been an executive at Sun Microsystems.

She serves on the board of Cisco with current Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and on the Intel board with current Yahoo! President Susan Decker.

Last November, Jerry Yang announced that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO. He will remain at the Sunnyvale search engine as Chief Yahoo!

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 9, 2009, 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ogilvy Public Relations Launches Social Media RSS Dashboard

Ogilvy Public Relations has launched The Daily Influence, something they call a social media RSS dashboard. Built on Netvibes, an RSS aggregator (aka newsreader), the site comes standards with pre-selected feeds from popular social media and technology sites.

If you click on different tabs near the top, you'll find different niches.

Hey, Ogilvy - why not add Search Engine Watch to your advertising page? Just sayin'

Anyway, you can sign up and customize the feeds you want to see. If you already have a Netvibes account, you can use it to sign in.

This is probably best for Social Media newbies who just don't know what blogs to follow. Or if you're new to RSS and newsreaders, this might be a good place to start.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 9, 2009, 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yelp User Being Sued for Negative Review

A new lawsuit brought by a San Francisco chiropractor Steven Biegel is raising a very good question about online reviews. The chiropractor was none too pleased to find a negative review about his practice on Yelp.

The review was written Christopher Norberg, who has a conflict with the chiropractor over a billing issue. His review said that Biegel was dishonest.

Biegel's attorney is calling it libel, thus the lawsuit. Today, the two sides are undergoing court-ordered mediation. If it's not resolved, the suit will go to court March 2.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 9, 2009, 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Web Analytics Association Releases 2009 Outlook Survey Data

The Web Analytics Association has released data from a survey conducted about analytics proffesionals' plans for the coming year. Here's what they found:

Over 40 percent of respondents see funding as the biggest challenge in 2009, the investment outlook is positive
Over 96 percent of respondents indicated that they plan to increase or maintain current spending on web analytics in 2009. According to the survey, the budget increases will primarily be used to boost web analytics training.
Roughly 81 percent of respondents plan to invest in consulting and staffing to help make the most out of their existing analytics tools and take action on the data they provide to improve web site performance and boost ROI from online marketing campaigns.
Over 41 percent indicated they will be investing in add-on tools such as behavioral targeting and paid search.
Over 65 percent of respondents revealed a demand to have business decisions driven by analytics, a top web analytics initiative in 2009

What do you think of the results? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Related Reading:
Web Analytics Association Asks for Public Comment on New Standard Definitions
Web Analytics Association Adds Yahoo's Mortenson to Board of Directors
New Board of Directors for the Web Analytics Association

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 9, 2009, 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: We're All Convertibles, And It's Time to Take the Top Down!

Search Engine Watch Expert - Frank Watson Search Engine Watch Expert - Chris Boggs Many of us are still looking at the Web through a narrow perspective of search. If we think in terms of what search is -- not as it exists online, but what motivates it, how it can be answered, and what happens when it truly is delivered -- there may be an answer on where the industry is headed and how to be successful in it. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "We're All Convertibles, And It's Time to Take the Top Down!," Frank Watson and Chris Boggs discuss the future of search marketing accountability.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 9, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Search Engine Watch Expert - Gregg Stewart Over the past year, I've been in numerous meetings with advertisers, agencies, and online media vendors, and I'm often amazed at the confusion surrounding how local search campaign analytics are reported, and sometimes twisted, to create a desired story. In today's local & mobile search column, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics," local search expert Gregg Stewart lays out the basics you need to know to implement useful Web analytics for your local search campaigns.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 9, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: PPC Landing Pages: Surprising Examples

Search Engine Watch Expert - David Szetela It's time to kick off the New Year by looking at examples of good and bad combinations of PPC ads and their landing pages. In today's Profitable PPC column, "PPC Landing Pages: Surprising Examples," David Szetela looks at some real-world examples to see what they're doing right, and what they're doing wrong.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 9, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo Gets Into the TV Business (Kinda), While TiVo Gets Into Search (Sorta)

The news coming out of this year's CES is turning out to be a showcase for the way things are changing for the internet, which in turns affect how people use search (for both searching and marketing).

First, Microsoft had its major Live Search announcements. Then, we saw a device with Android to compete with the iPod Touch.

But another major topic is the merging of TV with the Internet. This isn't anything new, it's just getting cooler. You or your grandma may have used Web TV before. Remember those good ol' days? But it's online video sites like YouTube and now Hulu which are really driving the convergence.

Electronics companies such as LG and Samsung are debuting new televisions that are Internet connected. Yahoo is taking advantage of the opportunity.

Yahoo has developed a Widget Channel for these new devices. The channel is powered by their Widget Engine. Developers can create widgets to enhance a viewer's TV watching experience.

Here's what a Yahoo! weather widget looks like:

eBay, CBS and MySpace have widgets on the channel, with more expected soon from Netflix, Twitter, the New York Times and more.

“Yahoo! has combined key attributes of the Internet, including openness, community, and personalization, with the power of television,” said Patrick Barry, vice president, Connected TV, Yahoo!. “By creating this revolutionary new Internet experience, and combining our technology with the global distribution of major consumer electronics partners, we enable consumers to access the relevant information and content to enhance their television watching experience.”

Last but not least, TiVo has updated the search on their digital video recording service.

"What Google did for the Internet, TiVo is now doing for the TV, bringing people a combination of excellent search results and innovative discovery that can't be found anywhere else," said Tom Rogers, CEO and President of TiVo. "TiVo has always been known as the best way to watch what you want, when you want it. Now we're taking that to a new level, using TiVo technology to find just the right program from hundreds of channels and thousands of broadband options, all in seconds. It is clear TiVo is leading the way in providing more choice, and also leading the way in finding content quickly. TiVo Search is a new way to find what you've been missing."

With the marriage of TV and the internet, TiVo could rise as a player in search.

What do you, dear reader, think about these new developments? Share your thoughts on the convergence of TV and the internet in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 8, 2009, 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Web Application Delays of 5 Seconds or More Significantly Affect Business Performance

If you have web applications as part of a linking strategy or other online marketing strategy, be sure you don't have delays of 5 seconds or more. That's the moment when business performance really starts being affected, according to new data released by Aberdeen Group.

For every second after the 5 second mark:

Page views decline by 11%
Conversations decline by 7%
Overall customer satisfaction decreases by 16%.

"As the importance of managing performance of Web applications is increasing, some of the power that traditionally was reserved for technology vendors is shifting to the end-user side," states Bojan Simic, research analyst, Aberdeen. "Going forward, market leaders in this space will be defined not by features and functionalities of technology solutions, but by the willingness to understand end-users' expectations, usage patterns and needs for new types of Web content."

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 8, 2009, 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

GiiNii's Movit Mini is like the iPod Touch for Android

Last week, we talked about the idea of putting Google's mobile operating system Android on a netbook. This week at the Consumers Electronic Show (CES), a device akin to the iPod Touch is also running Android.

The GiiNii Movit Mini is basically a small tablet running Android. It's Wifi-enabled, has a touch screen and of course, can play music. The screen is 4.3 inches with a resolution of 480 x 272. It only comes with 256mb of storage, but a microSD slot allows users to add memory cards.

Engadget got to play with the device at the trade show and when they asked about pricing, they got a very vague answer about the device costing less than an iPod Touch.

With less internal storage, lack of multi-touch and a not-so-sexy design, pricing it below the iPod Touch will be a necessity!

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 8, 2009, 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going to Search Engine Strategies? In a New York Minute!

Are you going to Search Engine Strategies New York, which will be held March 23-26, 2009? Of course you are. It takes less than a New York minute to make that decision.

SES%20New%20York%202008.jpg SES New York is a not-to-be-missed event in the search industry. I've been attending each and every year since 2004. And I attended SES Boston in 2002 and 2003, before the spring conference and expo was moved to the Big Apple.

Why do I keep coming back year after year? Because search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are not static fields. You can't learn the industry best practices in a week and then continue applying them without getting an annual update.

Let me share a recent conversation I had with an unnamed organization. (All I can say is that it's big, which is why it wouldn't want its name dropped in a blog post.)

This organization's website was built seven years ago. And it was “optimized” back in 2002. But nobody inside the organization could understand why the website didn't have high rankings anymore.

I diplomatically observed that the website had been optimized back when AltaVista was the leading search engine. Who knows, maybe it still ranks well in AltaVista – but that doesn't matter anymore.

And one of the industry best practices back in 2002 was changing the Meta keywords tags. Hey, I still remember those days like…they were yesterday.

So, I had to explain politely that no one in the organization had made a mistake in the spring of 2002. It's just that AltaVista dropped its support for the Meta keywords tag in July 2002, prompting Traffick.com's Andrew Goodman to declare “the end of the metatag era, full stop."

Oh, and during 2002, Google charged past AltaVista to become the leading search engine. And Google never supported the Meta keywords tag.

In other words, things change in the search industry.

A couple of years back, I tried to get a handle on the pace of change and discovered that about half of what I had learned the previous year was obsolete. That's why I had to go back to SES New York each year to discover which half.

And then the pace of change increased. Today, I estimate that about two-thirds of what I learned last year is now obsolete.

Hey, anyone still optimizing the video on their website for Google Video and Yahoo! Video?

Well, according to comScore Video Metrix, YouTube.com accounts for more than 98% of all videos viewed at Google Sites. (This means Google Video accounts for less than 2%.)

As for Yahoo! Video, while it began as an internet-wide video search engine, it added the ability to upload and share video clips in June 2006. And Yahoo! Video launched a re-designed site in February 2008 that changed the focus to Yahoo-hosted video only.

Meanwhile, comScore just reported that 97 million viewers watched 5.1 billion videos on YouTube.com during November 2008, ranking it as the top U.S. video property. MySpace.com ranked second, with 52.5 million viewers watching 371 million videos that month. Neither are video search engines.

And this is just one example of the kind of changes that can fly past you like a stealth jet under the radar.

This is what makes SES New York 2009 a not-to-be-missed event in the search industry. Even if you've attended in the past, you can't afford to miss the latest twists and turns in this ever-changing business.

So, you know you're going to Search Engine Strategies New York. It's a no brainer.

Then, here's a tip: Register by Friday, Jan.9, 2009, and you'll save up to $700 with the Early Bird Rate. That's tomorrow! Just do it.

Now that I've done you a favor, maybe you can do me a favor.

At SES New York 2009, we plan to do some more “Escalator Pitches” like the ones we did last year. An Escalator Pitch is like an elevator pitch – except the escalators at the Hilton New York move much faster than the elevators. Check out the YouTube videos below to see what I'm talking about.

Escalator Pitches at SES NY 2008

So, if you've got a story to tell that can be told in the time it takes to get from the bottom to the top of the escalator (or the other way around), just let me know. You can email me at Greg (dot) Jarboe (at) SEO-PR (dot) com.

Get it? Got it? Good!

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 8, 2009, 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Street View Aids Cops in Finding Missing Child

We often hear about the bad stuff about Google's Street View on its mapping product. People are concerned about privacy and some have been photographed in a less than flattering light. Google's street view vehicles have also been banned from U.S. military bases.

But today Street View is getting some good press by way of a happy ending to a missing child case.

Nine year old Natalie Matlais was picked up from her legal guardian's house by her biological grandmother last Saturday. Some comments made by the grandmother alarmed her guardians and they notified police.

Cooperating with a cell phone company, they were able to track GPS coordinates. One smart officer plugged in the coordinates to Google Maps, and found a hotel near the given coordinates using Street View.

It was their best bet, and their hunch turned out to be right. You can read the entire story at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.

Related Reading:
Street View and Walking Directions Added to Google Maps for Mobile
Google Releases Updates to Google Earth; Includes Street View

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 8, 2009, 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Three Major Announcements from Microsoft Regarding Live Search

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and President, Entertainment & Devices Division Robbie Bach took to the stage at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to make three major announcements about Live Search.

They are:

Dell: Beginning February 1, Dell will offer Live Search on the majority of its consumer and small business PCs in 23 countries around the world. Live Search will be the default search engine in the browser, and Dell will also include a Live Search-powered toolbar and Windows Live Essentials on new PCs. Last year, Microsoft struck a deal with HP to ship the Live Search toolbar on 2009 PCs.
Verizon Wireless: Verizon Wireless has selected Microsoft to provide portal, local and Internet search as well as mobile advertising services to customers on its devices beginning the first half of 2009. Microsoft beat out Google, who was also courting Verizon.
Live Search for Mobile: Microsoft is releasing an update to the Live Search for Mobile client for Windows Mobile phones. The update will include several new features, including Query Autosuggest, Bird's Eye View imagery, and LocateMe, which helps people automatically know their approximate location, even without GPS.

What do you think about these announcements? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 8, 2009, 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Microsoft Could Win Mobile Search With Verizon Deal

While Google may own the web search market, Microsoft's announced deal with Verizon could put them at the top of the mobile search space. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the partnership at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas yesterday.

With the purchase of Alltell expected to be completed soon, Verizon would have the largest market share of the mobile space in the United States.

"Under a five-year agreement, Microsoft Live Search will become the default search service on cellphones and smartphones running on the Verizon Wireless network. Verizon's customers will still be able to access other search services through their mobile Web browsers," the New York Times reported.

Though they can access other engines, just like the browser installed on a computer, most would likely use the default. Given the growing use of mobile devices in place of computer use this could be a major play by Microsoft in what could become the future of search.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 8, 2009, 4:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Don't Overlook These Link Building Opportunities

Search Engine Watch Expert - Justilien Gaspard With each passing year, link development becomes increasingly difficult. Yet we sometimes tend to overlook good link opportunities that are right under our noses. In today's online promotion & linkbuilding column, "Don't Overlook These Link Building Opportunities," Justilien Gaspard outlines a few types of links that may not seem worthwhile, but could turn out to be a useful link.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 8, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Two New Free SEO Tools Released by Bruce Clay

The folks over Bruce Clay have released two new SEO tools and the best part is that they're free.

The first one is called the Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool. It helps you know how competitive the keyword term or phrase is that you wish to optimize for. Just type in the keywords and the results appear in a chart below. Here's a screenshot of how it works.

The second tool is the SEMToolBar. It's only available for Internet Explorer. Use the search box with the toolbar to conduct a search for the keyword or phrase you're interested in. Once the regular results load, wait a few moments as the toolbar performs its magic. Underneath the results, you'll see a variety of competitive intelligence data including page rank and inbound links.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 7, 2009, 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Facebook Reaches 150 Million Users Worldwide

Facebook is starting off the new year with a bang. Today, the social network announced that it has reached the 150 million user mark. Members speak in 35 different languages and represent 170 countries and territories.

But how many of those users are active? Facebook says half of them use the social network every day. That's remarkable.

Writing on the Facebook blog, founder Mark Zuckerberg said, "The full potential of the web is to make the world more open, so everyone has a voice and can share what is important to them. With 150 million voices and counting, we can't wait for the rest of 2009, and we look forward to offering even more ways for you to connect with the people who matter most."

This should make Microsoft happy as well. Last year, they struck a deal to become the search engine for Facebook.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 7, 2009, 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Maps for Mobile Updates Servers for Easier Local Business Search

If you've ever typed in the name of a business into Google Maps for Mobile, you may have been a bit frustrated. Google would return results of street names that contained the search term you typed in instead of finding the business itself.

That all changes today. With a new update to their servers, Google Maps for Mobile is smarter. Type in Starbucks and find a local Starbucks store.

If you're using a smartphone such as a BlackBerry, Nokia S60, T-Mobile G1, or iPhone, you do NOT need to download anything new to see the change.

If you don't have Google Maps for Mobile downloaded on your phone but would like it, click here. Warning: it won't be available for all devices.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 7, 2009, 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Paid Search Spend up 12% in Q4 2008

Paid search spending was up 12% in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the same quarter in 2007, according to SearchIgnite.

We've been hearing that advertising dollars were being shifted online, with the strategy accelerated by the rough economy. But is that trend slowing?

SearchIgnite says October's spend was up by 15% and November was up by 43% year-over-year. But December's spend dropped 14% from the previous year.

It could be a reaction to consumer behavior. Conversion rates increased by 11% in October, but dropped 2% in November. They went back up in December but just by a 4% increase.

Still, Roger Barnette, President of SearchIgnite, suggests that in all the confusion there is opportunity for the technologically innovative.

“Retailers were more aggressive with their paid search spend in the first half of the quarter compared with the year earlier in an effort to capture more consumer dollars ahead of the holidays.” said Barnette. “This is evidence that the challenging and changing economic environment is requiring retail marketers to adjust their online marketing strategies accordingly. As such, tools for testing and understanding how both search and other online media are performing together will become increasingly important for retailers as they look to make more nimble, data-driven decisions about where to allocate their media spend.”

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 7, 2009, 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

SEW Experts: Writing Sales Copy for Conversions

Search Engine Watch Expert - Tim Ash One of the most common components you can test is sales copy. In today's By the Numbers column, "Writing Sales Copy for Conversions," Tim Ash explains that changing your approach to writing can often lead to a double-digit increase in conversion rates.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 7, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

SEW Experts: Forget Tibet; Free the Content

Search Engine Watch Expert - Kevin Ryan In China, search engines are responsible for the content to which they provide links. This means anytime the Chinese government decides that a certain type of content isn't worthy of its people, they can tell search engines not to list them. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Forget Tibet; Free the Content," Kevin Ryan discusses the Chinese government's ongoing efforts to censor the Internet.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 7, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

hakia Updates Search Box

hakia has updated their Search Box, which is a site search feature you can place on your website. The biggest change is the ability to search multiple domains. Here's a mockup, via the hakia blog:

Another update is the highlighting of the semantic relevant words in the results:

Search box is available for free, up to 30,000 searches per day.

Related Reading:
hakia Launches Personalized Search Feature
Meet the New hakia
hakia Calls for Librarians to Contribute Credible Web Sources

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 6, 2009, 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Judge Rejects Universal Music's Arguments in Another Veoh Copyright Case

You might remember that online video site Veoh recently had a copyright lawsuit thrown out by a judge. That lawsuit was brought by adult entertainment company IO Group.

But Veoh has other lawsuits it's facing, one of them brought by Universal Music Group. Techdirt reports that one of the main arguments being made by Universal was that Veoh didn't have DMCA safe harbor protection because it changed the format of the video and made smaller chunks than the original.

The judge in the case has now said Universal's argument doesn't fly. The lawsuit isn't over yet, but it's another good sign for Veoh and online video in general.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 6, 2009, 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online Video Views for November 2008 Up 34% Year Over Year

comScore has released the stats for online video viewing in the United States for November 2008. Overall, the number of videos viewed was up 34% from November 2007.

YouTube-fueled Google sites saw almost the same number of visitors as they did in October, which saw 100 million unique visitors. This time, it was 98 million.

Other interesting tidbits:

77 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
The average online video viewer watched 273 minutes of video.
97 million viewers watched 5.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (52.3 videos per viewer).
52.5 million viewers watched 371 million videos on MySpace.com (7.1 videos per viewer).
The duration of the average online video was 3.1 minutes.
The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 11.9 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 6, 2009, 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yahoo Gives Itself Permission to Change Your Search Marketing Campaigns

If you conduct search advertising through Yahoo, you just got a brand spanking new addition to your search marketing team: Yahoo.

Through an update to their terms and conditions, Yahoo gives itself permission to hijack your search marketing campaigns. Check out the new language:

Sponsored Search 3. OPTIMIZATION. In the U.S. only, for those advertisers not bound by an Insertion Order, we may help you optimize your account(s). Accordingly, you expressly agree that we may also: (i) create ads, (ii) add and/or remove keywords, and/or (iii) optimize your account(s). We will notify you via email of such changes made to your account(s), and can also include a spreadsheet of such changes upon your written request. If you would like any of such changes reversed, please reply to such email within 14 days of the change(s), and we will make commercially reasonable efforts to reverse the change(s) you specifically identify. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you remain responsible for all changes made to your account(s), including all click charges incurred prior to any reversions being made. It is your responsibility to monitor your account(s) and to ensure that your account settings are consistent with your business objectives.

Actually, Yahoo began invading its customers' personal space about a month ago. Al Scillitani was alarmed when he got an email from Yahoo saying they had made changes to his account - after the fact.

Now, it's just official.

This is kind of like a fast food restaurant going into your burger after you've take a bite and removing or adding pickles, ketchup and cheese. Or your cable company going into your DVR and choosing which programs to record.

Have you received the new Terms and Conditions? Has Yahoo made changes to your account? Let us know in the comments!

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 6, 2009, 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

SEW Experts: There's No Shortcut to Good SEO...Or Is There?

Search Engine Watch Expert - Mark Jackson If search engines want all SEOs to operate in an ethical manner, they should show us that they're penalizing the Web sites that abuse their guidelines, and reward those who follow their guidelines. In today's organic search engine optimization column, "There's No Shortcut to Good SEO...Or Is There?," Mark Jackson explains that anything less makes it hard to justify following the rules.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 6, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

SEW Experts: E-mail Marketing Tips for Small Business

Search Engine Watch Expert - Carrie Hill Any well-rounded Internet marketing campaign must include a strong e-mail marketing campaign. In today's small business search engine marketing column, "E-mail Marketing Tips for Small Business," Carrie Hill shows how search plays a role when you use PPC or organic search to grow your subscriber list.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 6, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Track Google Rankings With Google Analytics

Guest blogger for Yoast Andre Scholten has come up with what I think is the best filter ever created for Google Analytics. He has given us a way to track keyword rankings!

The filter is so good it even has options of how deep to go, a choice between word rank by number or page number. Click now - rush to this one - everyone has to read this.

Bravo mate - this goes down as the Best Damn Google Analytics Filter Ever. Mr De Valk - a truly great guest find.

UPDATE: Was linking to wrong page but corrected.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 5, 2009, 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Call Secret Service Someone Hacked Obama's Twitter Account

Hackers usually are smart, but can be really, really stupid. The person who hacked Twitter - not the Direct Message phishing expedition that started over the weekend - could have picked pretty much anyone else on the planet and be less concerned of being tracked down.

This person hacked President-elect Obama's Twitter account! There has to be Secret Service people - like the Diane Laine character in Untraceable - crawling through the internet tracking him/her down. That is if the person has not been quietly killed already (for my conspiracy theorist readers).

Barack's account was one of 33 hacked, according to the Twitter blog.

"This morning we discovered 33 Twitter accounts had been "hacked" including prominent Twitter-ers like Rick Sanchez and Barack Obama (who has not been Twittering since becoming the president elect due to transition issues). We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Rick, Barack, and others are now back in control of their accounts," the site stated.

If the Secret Service kill the person during the arrest, I have a nomination for the Darwin Awards.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 5, 2009, 8:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The 5 Web Resources You Need to Find a Job in Search

It's a New Year, but we've got that same old economy from 2008. If you find yourself looking for a job in search, these five resources should be the foundation of your efforts:

Indeed.com - Culls results from a variety of jobs sites as well as job listings from company web sites. Searching here keeps you from having to go individually to a variety of sites. You can pull an RSS feed of your job search into your news reader, making your search process even faster. You'll find results from:
- SEMPO
- Monster
- HotJobs (owned by Yahoo)
- CareerBuilder
- Dice
- TalentZoo
Twitter Let your followers know you're looking for a job. I once did and had three leads in 24 hours. I got offers from all three. The Twitter community is generally a very compassionate bunch, raising money for good causes. Helping people find jobs is something I think we'll see a lot of in 2009 - 2010.
LinkedIn Not only does LinkedIn have its own job listings, but here you can many times find the people who are doing the hiring or at least work in Human Resources at the company you're interested in. Use your network to get introduced and create connections.
Craig's List Answering an ad for a Search Marketing Copywriter on Craig's List is how I got my start in search. Well, that and the great Marketing Don taking a chance on me.
Search Engine Watch Board - Rounding out the list is a completely shameless plug for our very own jobs board.

What resources do YOU recommend? Leave a comment and let us know!

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 5, 2009, 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Google, Microsoft Higher Ups Dish Out the Dough for Obama Inauguration

Execs from Google and Microsoft are ponying up big time for President-elect Barack Obama's big day. On January 20, the former junior Senator from Illinois will become the 44th President of the United States.

Who from search is giving big for the shindig?

From Google:

Eric Schmidt (CEO) $25,000.00
Larry Page (Co-founder) $25,000.00
Marissa Mayer (Vice President, Search Products & User Experience) $25,000.00
Richard Costolo (former Feedburner CEO) $25,000.00
Chad Hurley (YouTube co-founder) $25,000.00
David Drummond (Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer) $25,000.00

From Microsoft:

Steven Ballmer (CEO) $50,000.00
Bradford Smith (Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, Legal & Corporate Affairs) $25,000.00
Craig Mundie (Chief Research and Strategy Officer) $25,000.00
Steven VanRoekel (Senior Director, Windows Server Solutions Group, Microsoft) $50,000.00

So far from Yahoo, one lone donation, from an attorney:

Laura Covington $10,000.00

For a full list of donors, click here.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 5, 2009, 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

China to Crack Down on Search Engines

Bloomberg is reporting that China plans to crack down on search engines, among other sites they deem harmful. This certainly wouldn't be the first time.

The reason this time is concerns over pornography. Of course, search engines don't host pornography on their sites, they simply provide links to searchers. If China feels it has a pornography problem, the origination of that problem begins with the searcher, not the engine.

Web sites and search engines that ignore their new found regulations will face penalties and possible closure.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 5, 2009, 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

UPDATE: Steve Jobs Weight Loss Due to Hormonal Imbalance

UPDATE: Link to Steve Jobs Letter at Apple Site

Last week, Frank Watson reported to you that Steve Jobs health was in question. If you read a bunch of tech blogs, you've seen the rumors. Jobs once had cancer, and bloggers, journalists and Wall Street analysts have been wondering if it had returned because Jobs had lost a lot of weight.

The good news is that the cancer is not back. According to Fox Business (which I have on in the background, sorry no link yet, but check out the screen shot below) Steve Jobs has released a letter to shareholders acknowledging the weight loss and explaining that the doctors have finally determined that it is a hormonal imbalance. He is being treated and expects to gain the weight back.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 5, 2009, 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Phishing Scam Hits Twitter; Will it Become the Next MySpace?

This morning, I received a direct message from one of my Twitter friends. It was a very strange message. Check it out:

I clicked on the link, which lead to this:

I checked the Tweet stream of the friend who sent me the direct message. She said she had been fooled into following a phishing scam.

She wasn't the only one. Originally, the blogspot page directed people to another site which looked like the Twitter homepage. They signed in, giving away their user name and password. Of course, this helps spread the phishing scam via direct messages.

What really happened is that a mockup of the Twitter homepage was hanging out at a very bad URL. The good folks at Twitter captured this screenshot of the site:

These phishing scams hit MySpace pretty hard once it got popular. Now, it looks like we have to watch out for them on Twitter.

Phishing schemes kind of took the shine off the once popular MySpace. Looking back, I think it's one of the reasons I stopped hanging out on the social network. I saw so many messages that weren't from my friends even though it looked as though they were. I haven't noticed the same on LinkedIn or Facebook yet.

If phishing hits Twitter consistently, then it might just be their demise.

What do you think? Did you get an unusual direct message? Think phishing could ruin Twitter? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 5, 2009, 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Building a Business Case for Going to SES London 2009

With six weeks to go before SES London 2009, it's time to build a business case for going to the definitive event for UK and European marketers, corporate decision makers, webmasters and search engine marketing (SEM) specialists, including pay per click (PPC) advertisers and search engine optimization (SEO) consultants.

SES%20London%202008%20busy%20bees.jpg Yes, yes, I know there's a recession on both sides of the pond. I read The Economist. (I loved the article in the print edition on December 30, 2008, which reminded us that Alfred Kahn, one of President Jimmy Carter's economic advisers, was chided in 1978 for using the “R” word. So, Mr Kahn, in his next speech, replaced the offending word, saying, “We're in danger of having the worst banana in 45 years.”)

So, how do you make the business case that you need to go to an SEM conference during the worst banana since 1978?

I would argue that it is penny wise and pound foolish to miss SES London 2009 just because we're in a recession. In fact, it's probably more important to go now than ever before.

So, what makes Search Engine Strategies London a not-to-be-missed industry event? And what makes it particularly important for people who have attended in the past to make a return visit this year?

First, SES London 2009 is the place where the search industry gathers to chart the year ahead. The pace of change in this industry hasn't slowed down. This search industry keeps reinventing itself at an amazing pace and last year's cutting-edge program already is dated in some areas. You can't afford to be left behind.

Second, it's where you can learn how to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts from top search experts. Now, I'm just one of the 48 conference speakers who will be making presentations at SES London 2009. And I plan to share some case studies of how optimized press releases generated:
• $200 million in B2B leads for Symmetricom's chip-scale atomic clocks,
• More than $2.5 million in ticket sales for Southwest Airlines, and
• Almost 1.3 million searches for “florists” on SuperPages.com.

I'll also explain how combining blog outreach with press release optimization generated:
• A record 450,000 unique visitors to The Christian Science Monitor in 24 hours,
• A record 88,000 entries into Parents magazine's cover kid photo contest, and
• A record 1,100 attendees to the Wharton Economic Summit.

Now, I think I'm supposed to say, “Past performance is no indicator of future success.” And I should disclose that SES became a client about 14 months ago.

But check out the list of speakers who will be presenting at SES London 2009. I know most of them. I've heard many of them speak at previous Search Engine Strategies conferences. And I know they have similar success stories to tell.

If you want to hear more than 200 of their success stories from 2008, just go to SESConferenceExpo's Channel on YouTube. Or watch the three SES London 2008 Roundup Reels below.

So, can your organization really afford to skip SES London 2009 just because there's a recession? Missing a not-to-be-missed industry event would be penny wise and pound foolish. Skipping the event because you went last year would be “bananas.”

Now, you could simply cut your print magazine, print newspaper and other offline advertising budgets. But that isn't going to grow your business online and it isn't going to help you weather the storm any better than your competitors.

The only way you can do this is by learning the SEM strategies, PPC tactics and SEO tips that generate a measurable marketing ROI. And then you need to keep learning what's coming next in the constantly evolving world of search, and how you can profit from those changes.

And where can you do that? You already know where I'm headed. You can learn all this by going to SES London 2009.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on January 5, 2009, 3:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Search Shifts and Predictions for 2009

Search Engine Watch Expert - William Flaiz Time to ring in the New Year with a few search marketing predictions for 2009. In today's SEM agency issues column, "Search Shifts and Predictions for 2009," William Flaiz predicts what another year will hold for Google, the Web and SEO.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 5, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 1

Search Engine Watch Expert - Ron Jones It's been about two years since Google and Yahoo implemented their quality score algorithms. Instead of giving the top ad spot to the highest bidder, search engines now take the perceived quality of the ad's landing page into account. In today's SEM 101 column, "Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 1," Ron Jones takes a closer look at what affects the quality score.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on January 5, 2009, 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stanford Students May Have Answer To Video Monetization

Another group at Stanford may have come up with the next big thing. Zunavision is a way to embed video inside video and could lead to true successful video monetization.

Okay it has been out there since midNovember, but it really does have some of the slick tricks needed to ultimately help the video industry develop a working revenue generating model.

The insert can be placed into the background of a video - and people can walk in front of it - so if you had a video and put it on the wall in the background it renders into the video and allows foreground action to continue.

Once they have a clickable solution, video advertising will be officially scalable to true monetization. In the meantime, play with it.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 2, 2009, 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Free Computer Engineering Classes From Stanford

If you want to take some of the same courses the Google and Yahoo founders took, nows your chance and they are even free. Part of the Standford Engineering Everywhere initiative, the courses include all needed sylabi, handouts, tests and access to reading lists.

"For the first time in its history, Stanford is offering some of its most popular engineering classes free of charge to students and educators around the world.," the Stanford website explains.

“We are excited to extend our teaching and learning opportunities worldwide through SEE,” said
Jim Plummer, dean of the Stanford Engineering School. “We hope SEE will enable a broad range of people to learn, to share their ideas and to make their own contributions to knowledge.”
The 10 courses, arranged in three subject areas, include one of Stanford's most popular
sequences: the three-quarter introduction to computer science. SEE also offers three courses on artificial intelligence and robotics, and four on linear systems and optimization. The address for SEE is http://see.stanford.edu - the university press release explains.

Now if it only came with free time.....

Posted by Frank Watson on January 2, 2009, 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple Should Buy Yahoo: Why I'm Now Convinced

I'm not the first to ponder this, but I would never have given it true consideration until today's earlier speculation about Google Android netbooks. Should Google head in that direction, it would make the company not just a search engine but an operating system provider. Simply competing in just the mobile handset market isn't enough, but getting on mini laptops - that's an

They would be the opposite of Microsoft, which was first all about operating systems and later about search.

That would leave Apple and Yahoo, one an operating system provider and computer manufacturer and the other the second place search engine with a wealth of solid web properties (finance, sports, news, etc.)

Apple has built its business on providing the awesome alternative to existing products that are already quite decent. The iPod, iPhone, and all of Apple's laptops weren't the first, but they were an impressive addition to existing markets. In the case of the iPod and now the iPhone, they took the markets they entered into a whole new level.

Search is waiting for the next level. Apple is noted for its great file search on its laptops, though iTunes search sucks so bad, it needs some definite help. Apple has the corporate culture to innovate search. Perhaps what it needs is talent.

Yahoo has that in droves, but management has been holding it back.

Now, I know that the natural response is that Apple has close ties with Google. But I'm not sure how long those will last. Already, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who sits on Apple's board, leaves board meetings when the iPhone comes up due to the conflict of interest with Google Android.

If Android hits the netbook market, how could Schmidt legitimately remain on Apple's board at all?

Another caveat is that if Apple were to acquire Yahoo!, the brand Yahoo! would likely cease to exist. This would become more acceptable if Yahoo!'s stock drops to $2-3 a share, which is the only likely scenario in which Apple would actually pick up Yahoo.

At that point, they would very likely have to fight Microsoft to do it. Microsoft's cash reserves are deeper than Apple's, and Microsoft would want to beat out Apple on both search and operating system fronts.

But almost no one sees Yahoo as thriving under Microsoft. The second and third search engines would be consolidated, but increasing search market share would be a big IF.

Apple right now is the only viable, visible shot search has at innovating - unless there's another genius building the next great thing in a dorm room at Stanford. But they'll have to be very forward thinking and beat Microsoft to the punch at just the right moment. With their increasing share of the pc market as of late, they might just be able to pull it off.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 2, 2009, 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Google Explains the Nuances of Language Translation

Since search involves people from all of the world speaking a variety of languages, Google takes language translation very seriously. Shankar Kumar and Wolfgang Macherey recently took to the Official Google Research blog to explain more about Google's translation methods.

Specifically, Kumar and Macherey talked about the Minimum Bayes Risk (MBR) criterion in how to determine which translation to return to a user. It's best explained in their own words:

Essentially, we look at a sample of the best candidate translations (the so called n-best list) and choose the safest one, the one most likely to do the least amount of damage (where 'damage' is defined by our measurement of translation quality). You might want to view this as choosing a translation that is a lot like the other good translations instead of choosing that strange one that had the good model score.

Kumar and Macherey went on to say that they improve the diversification of MBR by adding candidate translations. They build lattices (a mathematical set, not a fence, though the fence is a decent visual) of translations which the MBR uses to search for the n-best approach. The more languages added to the lattice, the more diversified the search is.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 2, 2009, 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Wants You! (To Vote for Mobile Product Ideas)

Have an idea to improve a Google Mobile product? (Like the ability to edit Google Docs on the iPhone? Just sayin.) Now you have a way to suggest it.

Or vote for it, if someone else has suggested it.

Google Mobile has launched its Product Ideas site and once you're signed in, you can suggest and/or vote on ideas you want to see implemented - or taken away. Click here to access the site.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 2, 2009, 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Android on a Netbook: How Soon Will We See It?

Thought Android was just for mobile phones? Think again! VentureBeat has taken an Asus Eee netbook and thrown Google Android on it as the operating system. It took them four hours to configure and they expect to see the first Android Netbooks in 2010. Keep in mind this is purely speculative and not at all official from Google.

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 2, 2009, 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple Founder Steve Jobs Health Declining?

Seems Steve Jobs health could be in serious decline, though at this stage the information seems to be rumors.

Interestingly, Gizmodo - the publication that starting the health conversation - said "Steve Jobs' health is nobody's business."

I hope JObs health issues are not serious, and that he is around to inspire more inventions such as the iPhone.

Though I am sure the average stockholder would be concerned given the possible impact such news could have on the stock price.

As a Dallas Morning News tech blogger states:

Actually, I suspect the "strategic loss" of Jobs will be a huge bang with investors. The guy literally invented the iPhone, after all.

That's not to say that Apple can't recover from Jobs' departure or death, but I would bet that the company's stock, especially given the current economic malaise, will get hammered if/when Apple confirms these reports.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 2, 2009, 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

IE Browsers Drop Below 70% Market Share

The Dallas Morning News reported Internet Explorer - Microsoft's pervasive web browser - has fallen to 68% market share.

Firefox is now over 20% and browsers such as Safari, Opera, and Google's Chrome make up the rest.

The article shows Chrome at below 1% though I have seen reports that have that number as high as 2%.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 2, 2009, 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Offers Browser Security Handbook

Google recently published a Browser Security Handbook and given that they are now in the browser space it is worth a read.

It gives a good overview of how a browser works and then details security issues to be aware of, as well as some good advanced security issues. Perhaps if we were a little more aware of securing our browser we could avoid attracting those malware and other ghosts in the machine that reduce computer speed.

The section on CSS and javascript are worth a read if you have some tech background as it gives insights into how hacks are possible, as well as how Google sees things.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 2, 2009, 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Rumors Have Microsoft Laying Off 17% of Work Force This Month

Though the possibility of Microsoft laying off 15,000 employees this month is getting some attention, it is definitely in the heavy rumor category, as Ars Technica reports.

We will not have long to see if it is real as the sack by date is January 15, a week before the company's earning report, Ars Technica noted.

The 15,000 possible Microsoft unemployed represents about 17% of the global company's work force. Fudzilla, one of the two sources for the report, has misreported possible actions by Microsoft in the past.

The rumor suggests a large number will come from MSN which includes their search space - so could be a waving of a surrender flag in the search traffic competition.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 1, 2009, 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Can Google Maps Find $3 Billion Treasure As Well As New Porsches

Add treasure hunting and new car previews to the list of benefits from using Google Maps.

A court case in Texas about access to a possible $3 billion treasure has included Google Maps as a source of the treasure hunters research. "Nathan Smith testified Tuesday that he not only used Google Earth to spot buried treasure in South Texas but he also checks updated images to monitor whether anyone else is snooping around the possible loot," the Houston Chronicle reported.

Another story, shows the Google satellites have been busy, in this case capturing pictures of the new porsches being road tested, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

In the past Google Earth has captured all sorts of bizarre pictures from people urinating on the side of the road to sunbathing naked. But using it for treasure hunting is one that may have others scanning through the Google results.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 1, 2009, 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If You Want To Know When Google Updates Toolbar PR Follow Matt Cutts on Twitter

Call it a late Christmas gift or a New Year's present, but Matt Cutts confirmed the recent Google toolbar PR on Twitter the other night.

His tweet can be seen here. While you are there you might as well start following him for any other short sentenced pearls of wisdom.

Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal gave some more details of the update. Hopefully your site got some lift from it. But as Loren points out the toolbar is not a truly accurate measure of PR.

Posted by Frank Watson on January 1, 2009, 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

This Week | This Month