November 6, 2009
5 Google Updates for 11/6/09: News, Maps, Books, Music and Mobile
It's the end of another eventful week in search blogging, and once again there are several Google updates just piled up waiting to be written about. So, we're saving everyone some time and just compiling them into one post. Check them out:
Google News has a new sitemaps interface. You have six months to adopt the new sitemap.
Google Books now has a magazine search page.
Via Google Search's new music search, you can now access exclusive songs hosted by MySpace and Lala for artists such as Lady Gaga and Arctic Monkeys.
Google Maps has released imagery of Berlin from 1945 to 1953.
The Google Mobile App is now available at Best Buy (still free, which is the ultimate "best buy").
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 6, 2009, 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
PRSA 2009 International Conference Features Two Online Marketing Heroes
I'll by flying to San Diego this weekend to speak at the PRSA 2009 International Conference next week. Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and a member of the SES Advisory Board, will also be speaking at the annual Public Relations Society of America event.
Odden is speaking on Monday, November 9, at 10:15 a.m. about "Help Google Find Your Releases: Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Tactics for Public Relations Professionals."
Nine out of 10 journalists, reporters and editors use search engines to do their jobs, according to a recent survey by TopRank Online Marketing. In this environment, public relations professionals must understand the ins and outs of search engine optimization (SEO).
So, Odden will help PR people find out how to choose the best key words, optimize their newsroom and press releases, build better links, and sell SEO to decision makers. Plus, he'll share "the No. 1 SEO tactic to implement today."
I'll be speaking on Tuesday, November 10, at 11:15 a.m. with Laura Sturaitis, the senior vice president, media and product services, at Business Wire.
How do you know your press release delivers value? Are there ways to increase a press releases' ROI?
Sturaitis and I will discuss real live examples and techniques to get the most mileage for press releases, especially in the Web 2.0 world. We'll explain why PR people need to work hand-in-hand with their Web team to see how visitors are getting to their site and moving through it. We'll also examine Web analytics for compiling, tracking and measuring activity deriving from the press release via the wires and elsewhere.
If you want a preview, check out my post on the ComPRrehension blog, which is entitled, "Does Your Press Release Deliver Value?"
Odden and I also spoke last year at the PRSA 2008 International Conference in Detroit. Why is this useful information for search engine optimizers to share with their colleagues down the hall in the public relations department? SEO specialists and PR specialists need to work together to handle the opportunities and threats created by Google universal search.
When Google announced universal search in May 2007, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, said, "The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query."
This radically changed everything we knew about search engine optimization (SEO) and public relations (PR). If your webmaster isn't optimizing content for YouTube, Google News, or Google Images, then who is?
With more than 12.8 billion expanded search queries a month on Google Sites in the U.S., this isn't a rhetorical question. In other words, the SEO specialists and PR specialists need to get out of their silos to ensure that their organization is getting found in all the right places.
As I told Michael Miller, the author of "Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus," back in 2008, "For a good part of the 20th century, every part of the marketing mix was in a different silo. Advertising had its lingo and its metrics, and PR had its lingo and its metrics, and if you had a group that was focused on trade shows and events, they had their lingo and their metrics, etcetera. One of the things that is sort of a byproduct of keeping people in their silos is that things that the email marketing people learned ten years ago, or the search engine marketing people earned five years ago, the PR people in the same organization haven't learned yet. As a result, they keep doing what used to work but stopped working a long time ago, only nobody noticed."
I added, "To the extent that you can get the PR people interacting with the search people, they will discover that there are lots of things they can do together."
And Odden was also interviewed for Miller's book. So, your PR people will be getting the same advice no matter which online marketing guru they listen to at the PRSA 2009 International Conference -- or which chapter of Miller's book they read.
Odden and I both spoke at SES London 2008. Check out my video interview with him below.
Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing, at SES London 2008
And Odden and I are both speaking at SES Chicago 2009. So, there's no escaping our combined message: Get out of your silo; start interacting with other members of your marketing team.
Get it? Got it? Good.
Posted by Greg Jarboe on November 6, 2009, 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Google AdWords Updates Conversion Tracking Options
Google AdWords has updated the interface for Conversion Tracking. There are three tabs to manage data: Conversions, Webpages, and Code.
Conversions
Under this tab, you'll view details about the conversion actions you're tracking. The "Tracking Status" column shows whether those actions are being tracked properly. The "Value" column displays the accumulated value of the conversion actions. This is based on the value you assign to each action. Use the "New Conversion" button to set up the conversion actions to be tracked. These can also be imported from Google Analytics.
Webpages
Under this tab, you can view which web pages on your site are converting. You'll see the same columns you see under the Conversions tab (Tracking Status, Value, Conversions per click). This can help you identify poorly performing pages.
Code
Under this tab, grab the tracking code for each conversion. You can change the value of an action here too, which aids in ROI calculations.
What do you think of this Google AdWords update? Let us know by leaving a comment.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 6, 2009, 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
AOL Completes Financial Team, Names Additional Board Member in Advance
In preparation for being spun off from Time Warner, AOL has hired executives to their financial team and announced one additional board member.
Here's a list of the financial execs:
- Mike Suffredini - Vice President and Treasurer
- Eoin Ryan - Vice President of Investor Relations
- Don Neff, currently a Senior Vice President of Finance, will become Senior Vice President of Internal Audit.
- Ned Brody - rejoining the company as Executive Vice President of Paid Services
Meanwhile, Susan Lyne, Chief Executive Officer of the online luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, Inc. has been named to the Board of Directors. Last week, AOL named nine board members for the post-separation operations.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 6, 2009, 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Click Forensics Unveils Online Audience Verification Platform for Shopping Engines
At ad:tech New York this week, Click Forensics unveiled a new online audience verification platform for comparison shopping search engines. The technology evaluates traffic to determine its value to merchant partners.
"Comparison shopping engines and other content aggregators need a simple way to optimize the money they spend on search engine marketing, while improving the quality of leads they send on to merchant partners," said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. "The solution we're delivering does just that. To our knowledge, it's the only system available that provides the ability for content aggregators to manage traffic acquisition and traffic monetization in a single interface."
Features include:
- High-Volume Campaign Support - measures the quality of tens of millions of clicks, which supports the increase in demand during high traffic seasons.
- Real-Time Quality-based Filtering - prevents fraudulent and low-quality traffic from reaching merchants, which aids in optimizing ad spend.
- API Integration - allows integration of the platform directly with existing internal reporting and billing systems.
- Browser-based Reporting - enables viewing of traffic and audience quality statistics in a browser-based dashboard.
Ultimately, Click Forensics hopes their new platform will help shopping search engines maintain and grow their merchant partner base.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on November 6, 2009, 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
It May Be The Queen's English, But Google Likes US Results in the UK
As a post at Paul Carpenter's blog notes Google seems to have a preference for US site listings for people searching from the UK. This situation has been discussed before (examples can be found here and here) - and there is even a video from Matt Cutts in the blog post.
There are even US sites in the Google Maps listed for UK based searches.
This is not too much of a stretch given Google's history of problems with languages. BlogScoped pointed out one of many examples where all 10 results for a French search list pages from one site. Seems in Google's world it is the President's language.
Posted by Frank Watson on November 6, 2009, 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
