Search Engine Watch Blog

5 Google Updates for 11/6/09: News, Maps, Books, Music and Mobile

2009-11-06T20:38:55Z

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").

PRSA 2009 International Conference Features Two Online Marketing Heroes

2009-11-06T20:25:38Z

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.

Google AdWords Updates Conversion Tracking Options

2009-11-06T20:06:29Z

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.

AOL Completes Financial Team, Names Additional Board Member in Advance

2009-11-06T19:55:02Z

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.

Click Forensics Unveils Online Audience Verification Platform for Shopping Engines

2009-11-06T05:45:51Z

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.

It May Be The Queen's English, But Google Likes US Results in the UK

2009-11-06T05:07:50Z

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.

Google Launches Closure Tools: A Javascript Candy Store

2009-11-06T04:35:24Z

The Google Code blog announced the launch of a compiler, library, inspector and templates for sites to use to improve their javascript usage. The tools were "all started as 20% projects and hundreds of Googlers have contributed thousands of patches."

This central open source of all things javascript should prove very handy to web site owners and developers, as many of them are already being used by Google apps and widgets.

"Today, each Closure Tool has grown to be a key part of the JavaScript infrastructure behind web apps at Google. That's why we're particularly excited (and humbled) to open source them to encourage and support web development outside Google."

If the tools become widely adopted it could also help create a uniformity in code use that would help the search engine - but also the wbe community in general.

Twitter Rolls Out Retweet Test [Screenshots]

2009-11-06T01:54:01Z

Back in August, Twitter said it was developing a system of officially bringing the Retweet to the social network. Now, they're unrolling the test to a limited group of users.

Retweeting is quite simple. When you see a Tweet you want to retweet, simply mouseover the lower right corner of the Tweet. Then, click the "retweet" link.

When the Retweeting is done, a simple notification appears underneath the Tweet. You stay right where you are on the page and can continue checking your feed.

Here's what your Retweet looks like. And this is key for the feature we'll discuss just after the image.

But there's a feature of this new Retweeting integration that I don't like. When one of your followers Retweets something, the original Tweet appears in your stream.

In the screenshot below, I don't follow @wyattla. Nothing against him, I just have no idea who he is. One of the people I do followed Retweeted @wyattla's Retweet. But @wyattla's avatar and original Tweet appear in my stream.

Should the test prove successful, I suppose we'll all get used to those little grey Retweet indicators. But call me old-school, I still prefer the "traditional" method of Retweeting, where the Retweeter's Retweet appears in the stream.

What do you think of Twitter's Retweet experiment? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Funny or Die Becomes YouTube Partner

2009-11-05T18:59:51Z

Comedy video site Funny or Die is now a YouTube partner. This means you'll be able to access select Funny or Die videos on the largest online video site in the world.

Funny or Die was created by actor and comedian Will Ferrell and screenwriter/director Adam McKay.

Ferrell and McKay have managed to employ the talent of several Hollywood stars in promoting Funny or Die through simply having them appear in a funny video on the site. Natalie Portman, Lindsay Lohan, Zach Galifianakis, Paris Hilton, and Denis Leary have all appeared in Funny or Die videos.

Embedding is disabled on most of the YouTube version of the videos, so you'll still need to grab embed codes from FunnyorDie.com. Only a handful of videos are on the YouTube channel, which seems, thus far, primarily set up to advertise Will Ferrell's HBO special on DVD.

Google AdSense Launches New Interface Into Beta

2009-11-05T18:51:29Z

Google AdSense has launched a new interface that is currently in beta testing. But they're giving a glimpse of it over on the Inside AdSense blog.

Here's what to expect:

More detailed performance reports
View daily stats as graphs
New metrics including amount you've earned from various ad, targeting and bid types
Enhanced Ad Review Center
Streamlining common tasks. For example, changing several ad units simultaneously

Here's a screenshot, per the AdSense blog:

Music Search Wars: Yahoo! Goes for Music Video Search Supremacy

2009-11-05T18:30:16Z

It's no secret that music searches comprise a large number of searches on the web today. That's why the music search wars have heated up in recent weeks with rumors and announcements surrounding efforts by Google, Facebook, and MySpace.

Yahoo! has been a player in music search for a long time, but now they're amping up their game with music video search. They're including a special section on the left sidebar to help you filter results.

This seems to only happen with artists and bands of a certain popularity. You can see the left sidebar filter for U2, Foo Fighters and Coldplay, but not for Paramore, Jet or The Swell Season. You get the left rail for Frank Sinatra but not Dean Martin.

The left rail contains albums and songs. Click on one to see videos related to your selection.

What do you think of Yahoo! Music Video search? Let us know in the comment section below.

Google Dashboard Aims to Alleviate Privacy Fears by Showing Data Collection

2009-11-05T17:00:42Z

Google has released a new product called Google Dashboard. This allows users to see what data has been collected on an account associated with a number of Google products. So, if you use GMail, YouTube, and Reader on the same account, you'll see the data collected for each service.

You can check the data collected for your Google account at Google.com/dashboard. You'll have to sign in, even if you're already signed into your Google account. Also, it can take several seconds to load all of the data - and while 20 products are available to view in Google Dashboard, not all of Google's services are included just yet.

To learn more, check out this video:

Google Launches Commerce Search for Online Stores

2009-11-05T16:38:10Z

Google has announced the availability of Commerce Search. It's a search engine that e-commerce sites can place on their sites, effectively leveraging Google Search for their product offerings.

Commerce Search is cloud-based, meaning that Google hosts it. This removes the burden of hosting commerce search by e-commerce companies, which can be useful to avoid problems associated with spikes of traffic - such as the holidays.

Commerce Search is not free. You must contact a sales rep to get started.

There are three upcoming webinars to learn more about Commerce Search. They are:

November 12, 2009 (12 PM PST) Sign Up

November 17, 2009 (8 AM PST) Sign Up

December 3, 2009 (10 AM PST) Sign Up

In the meantime, check out this video about Commerce Search that Google put together:

Digg Trends: Experimenting with Users Choosing Homepage Stories

2009-11-04T20:02:57Z

Ok, so technically Digg users do choose homepage stories by voting up submitted links. But Digg Trends is an experiment in being a little more explicit.

Users who see the test might see a submitted story at the top of their screen. Their will be a countdown clock, showing how long until a story is set to appear on the homepage. The user can say whether or not they think the story belongs on the homepage. Here's a screenshot per the official Digg blog:

Digg has set up a Twitter account for the experiment. Follow @digg_trends to see which stories are trending.

What do you think of the Digg Trends experiment? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Google News Offers Customization via New Sections

2009-11-04T18:42:21Z

Alex Chitu over at Google Operating System noticed a new feature in Google News. Look to the top right corner and you'll see a link for "Add a section."

Clicking on "Add a section" takes you to a directory of news sections that you can use to customize your Google News experience.

Update: You can also create your own sections and either keep it private or make it available for public consumption. Here's how you do it: First, click the "Create your own section" button in the right sidebar (when you're on a sections page):

On the next page, choose a title for your section and then add relevant keywords. As you do, news related to those keywords will appear on the right. This will help you know if you're choosing the right keywords. Finish filling out the form. If you check the box for public view, you'll need to add a description and select a category.