Back to Main

May 2007

May 31, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: May 31, 2007

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

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:00 PM | Permalink

SpotRunner Dives Deeper into Local

Yesterday, local video ad and distribution provider Spot Runner announced a deal with Lexis Nexus Martindale Hubbel. This gives the company closer access to local advertisers in the legal vertical by opening up a single point of entry to a broad base of private attorneys.

The deal will make Spot Runner's ad creation engine and cable spot buying dashboard available to Lexis Nexus affiliated law firms. This is very similar to Spot Runner's deal with Coldwell Banker in the real estate vertical that gives the firm's far flung agents immediate access to customize 30 second ads and choose where they want them distributed.

This involves voice overs and text that are overlayed on stock video footage (available for many different advertising categories). The cable spot buying dashboard then lets advertisers choose geographic and demographic targeting for where the ads will run. The price for ad creation is $500, while ad placements can be as low as $12 (surprisingly) for 30 second spots on comedy central and CNN in some markets.

These deals for spot runner are the best way for the business to scale. Otherwise it is addressing a very wide and fragmented segment of small businesses. This becomes even harder if you look at the fact that it employs a self service model without a sales force. One single deal with a large business with many decentralized constituents effectively gives it a single point of entry to many local businesses.

But the significance this announcement is that it's Spot Runner's first move into the legal vertical. Real estate and autos have already caught on quickly with video advertising and represent the biggest advertiser groups for Spot Runner. This is because of the high consideration items, pressure for leads, and high margins that have made early adoption a necessity, and advertising spends somewhat inelastic. These factors are also very much present in many professional services areas including lawyers.

Spot Runner's move into the legal vertical is also significant because it is an area traditionally "owned" by yellow pages publishers. In fact, this should be a call to action for yellow pages publishers to begin to offer video advertising to local professional services advertisers.

This could be a complimentary addition to the advertising bundle they currently offer including print and online (internet yellow pages) placements. Spot Runner could be a nice creative partner in rolling this out, but it currently offers only cable distribution. Other video producers such as TurnHere and Spotzer offer online video distribution, and Spot Runner will likely follow suit soon.

The model for IYPs and local search destinations could be a video window that is embedded in individual business listings that is sold as an additional ad unit or upsell. Many IYPs that spoke at The Kelsey Group's Drilling Down on Local conference -- including Yellowpages.com and YellowBook.com -- expressed a pressing interest to do this. But they better do it quick, or someone else will. Oops, Citysearch already has.

More on the subject of local video advertising in an upcoming SEW experts column.

Posted by MikeBoland at 5:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Mapping The Minds of Visitors Helps Categorizing, Keyword Development

Bill Slawski, of SEO By The Sea, wrote an interesting article about mapping visitor intent to help develop effective categories and keywords for your marketing efforts.

Between his detailed report and some perceptive comments, this is a post well worth reading and using to improve your search marketing.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 3:31 PM | Permalink

Yahoo SERP Lists Google Group That Redirects To MFA Search Page

Talk about a maze. I was checking one of my keywords at Yahoo and found down at the number 10 spot a listing for what would appear to be a Google Group covering the subject. The url should have told me something was most probably amiss.

groups.google.com/group/loan-loans-bad-bad/web/currency_trading.html


The arbitragers are getting really creative. But I really want to know how they got someone at Google to create the redirect. It is a little hard to do that without access to the server.

Now you aren't finding the result in the Google organic results, so I guess Yahoo places more stock in Google Groups than Google itself! After this they may be a little less likely to do so.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 2:18 PM | Permalink

Search's Place in the Marketing Mix

Are you giving search its due credit when you look at results of other marketing campaigns? Are you taking those campaigns into account when you plan your search activities? In today's SearchDay, In the Mix: Search in the Overall Marketing Mix, Impaqt's Pat Stroh explains that without knowing the full details of a client's media mix, an agency is limited in how well it can optimize a paid search campaign. But once an agency is armed with at least some of this historical data, it can begin to explain the mountains and valleys in those paid tracking reports.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:12 PM | Permalink

Calacanis Launches Human-edited Search Engine

Jason Calacanis, former CEO of Weblogs Inc. and GM of Netscape, has revealed his latest project: a human-edited search engine/wiki/directory called Mahalo.

The idea is to hand-craft search results for the top search queries. At launch (in Alpha, meaning "not ready for users, but looking for feedback"), Mahalo has results for 4,000 terms, and expects to have 10,000 by the end of the year. There are currently 40 editors on staff, with 100 planned by the end of the year. Calacanis, currently an "entrepreneur in action" at Sequoia Capital, is the CEO of Mahalo. Investors include Sequoia, Elon Musk, and Newscorp.

Calacanis has no pretensions about replacing Google, since the human-edited model would not scale to match the billions of pages in Google's index. Instead, he looks at Mahalo as a way for searchers to get a better answer for top queries, while defaulting to Google for those not served by Mahalo.

"Google's mission is to index the world's information; our mission is to curate that wonderful index," Calacanis said in a statement. "It's my belief that humans can play a significant role in the development of search results and we're going to try to figure out exactly what that role is over the next couple of years. I am really looking forward to hearing what people think of the Alpha."

The idea is similar in certain ways to what About.com did with its guide sites, what the Open Directory Project was once, or what Squidoo or Wikipedia hope to become. Even with answers for only 10,000 terms, Mahalo's editors face a daunting task of keeping those terms updated, while adding newly popular terms.

But Calacanis has a track record of keeping a large team motivated, with more than 300 bloggers in the Weblogs Inc. Network at one point.

Another challenge, faced by all new search engines, is getting people to change their habits and try something new. Calacanis is counting on a good user experience and word-of-mouth to do that.

The site will be monetized with Google AdWords, and Calacanis has no immediate plans for Mahalo to sell its own ads. There is a way for users to suggest sites to a guide as answers to specific queries, but Calacanis – no fan of SEO – has said that process will be heavily monitored to prevent gaming of the system.

Track the coverage of Mahalo on Techmeme.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:06 AM | Permalink

Google Announces Google Gears

Google Developer Day kicked off today with the announcement of Google Gears, an open source project focused on the development of offline web applications. While the phrase "offline web" may seem like an oxymoron, it speaks directly to the goal of Google Gears, which is to increase access to data and applications even when there is no Internet connection available.

Google's announcement indicates that Google Gears is a browser extension that is being "made available in its early states so that everyone can test its capabilities and limitations and help improve upon it". In addition, Google is proposing that this concept evolve into a "single standard for offline capabilities that all developers can use". Google Reader has already implemented Google Gears and as a result is offering offline capabilities.

The underlying technology uses JavaScript APIs for data storage, application caching, and multi-threading. Companies announcing support for Google Gears include Adobe, Mozilla Corporation, and Opera Software.

Posted by Eric Enge at 9:41 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Avoiding Low-Quality Links and Link Networks

In today's Link Love column, "Avoiding Low-Quality Links and Link Networks," Justilien Gaspard tells you how to build links while spotting low-value links or links that might be devalued.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:28 AM | Permalink

May 30, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: May 31, 2007

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

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:59 PM | Permalink

Google Picks Up Geo-locating Photo Service

Google announced today that it will acquire Panoramio, a Spanish community site that links photos with the geographic location at which they were taken, viewable in Google Earth and Google Maps. Other users can also add metadata to photos posted to the site. Google has been using Panoramio data in a default layer in Google Earth since the beginning of the year, and will continue to do so. It will also incorporate the technology into its other mapping products.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:41 PM | Permalink

eBay Acquires StumbleUpon

As rumored last month, eBay has acquired social media service StumbleUpon for $75 million in cash. The deal gives eBay access to StumbleUpon's 2.3 million users via the StumbleUpon toolbar, which allows users to "stumble" to new sites, videos, and other content within user-selected categories.

StumbleUpon's founders and management will remain with the company, which will now be led by Michael Buhr, senior director at eBay, who becomes StumbleUpon's general manager.

It's unclear at this point what eBay plans to do with StumbleUpon. Om Malik hypothesizes that eBay will add a StumbleUpon search box to the Skype client, which it acquired last year, as a "desktop backdoor." Other options include adapting the technology to eBay's core auction business, to showcase related products based on a user's bid history, or using the StumbleUpon toolbar as the entry point.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:28 PM | Permalink

Yahoo CTO Retires

"Yahoo!’s CTO, Farzad Nazem, 45, has decided that it’s time to take a breather and has announced his retirement. His last official day at Yahoo! will be June 8, 2007", according to the company press release.

"Zod agreed to remain on board to help see Yahoo! through some key milestones including the company and subsequent Technology Group re-design efforts as well as the critical launch of Panama. Zod has established an extremely strong and accomplished leadership team within the technology organization" the press release explained.

"Effective immediately, Jerry Yang has agreed to step in as the interim executive sponsor of the group and will work closely with David Filo and the technology leadership team to continue to drive the technology strategy forward. We will begin an immediate search for a new technology leader.

For additional information on Zod’s retirement, please read his post on our corporate blog, Yodel anecdotal: http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/05/30/eleven-years-12000-yahoos-and-one-great-ride/."

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 5:56 PM | Permalink

Mobile SEO Presents Challenges

Mobile search engine optimization shares some common methods and problems with its Web-based counterpart, but there is a whole set of other issues unique to mobile sites. In today's SearchDay, Search to Go: Meeting the Needs of the Mobile User, Amanda Watlington looks at some of those challenges.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:33 PM | Permalink

News from SES China

I didn't make the trip to Xiamen for SES China, though I was tempted by the thought of spending at least 24 hours sitting on a plane. Thankfully, there were several intrepid souls from the States that did make the trip last week, and have blogged about it:

SES Milan took place yesterday and today, so if anyone attended that show, let me know and I'll link to any blog coverage, or feature it here. The next Search Engine Strategies events are coming up in June, in Toronto on June 12-13, and in Miami on June 18-19.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:22 PM | Permalink

Web Is 'Force for Democracy': Schmidt

Goolge CEO Eric Schmidt said, at a conference yesterday in South Korea, that the web is a force for democracy.

"Politicians will be forced to be more transparent," PC World reported Schmidt said.

"Internet tools like search ultimately help make the world a better place, allowing more people to access information that affects their lives and make smarter choices when voting for officials. "More people looking at an idea results in a better outcome," Schmidt said, calling the Internet a "powerful force for democracy."

...

While Schmidt preaches the value of greater information access for democracy, Google hasn't always been so free with information about itself. Relative to many of its competitors, the company has earned a reputation for carefully managing the release of information about its activities and executives, even as it compiles reams of personal information about its users."


PC World

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Google Map Directions Have Sense of Humor

Friend of mine came across this. When you do a New York City to London request the results tell you to swim the Atlantic.

Guess the same jokesters that would prompt you with the question "Do you mean French war defeats" when searching for "French war victories" are playing here.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 12:17 PM | Permalink

SEW Experts: A Look at Latency In Search Engine Ranking

In today's By the Numbers column, A Look at Latency In Search Engine Ranking, Eric Enge presents a case study of a niche content site that reveals differences in latency involved in each search engine's index, and in how each search engine responds to removed pages.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 8:04 AM | Permalink

Google is a Data Company

Google is a data company. No, it's not a search engine company, or an advertising company, it's a data company. I'm talking about their core expertise here.

My thinking on this emerges from a few different discussions I had during my recent visit to the Google Searchology event. First during the presentation by Google VP of Engineering, Udi Manber, there were two interesting comments:

  1. Google does it's testing of new algorithms and changes to their UI on a complete copy of the web. This is already impressive!
  2. With it's Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) program, Google is performing real time, on the fly translations into 12 different languages that they are supporting with this program.

That means that they are keeping 2 total copies of the web, and are doing real time translation into 12 languages on a query by query basis. That's some serious data management.

After the main event, when we sat down for lunch, I spoke with Peter Norvig, director of research at Google. Peter is the first person who got me focused on this notion of Google being a data company. He underscored that by telling me a story of the early Google days. The gist of the story was that before Google was conceived, it occurred to Sergey Brin and Larry Page that having a copy of the entire web would be a useful thing, but they did not originally know how they would use it.

It was only after the fact that they thought about building a search engine, once they realized that the web's complexity would not be easily catalogued in a human edited directory.

Then there's the conversation that Manoj Jasra of Enquiro told me about. He was talking with Larry Page, who relayed to Manoj the notion that Google would like to get to the point where they are indexing data as you are typing it in (Don't scream big brother yet, the intention here was that this would only be for data intended for the public).

While this idea is not practical, the earliest Google would be able to get the data is when it gets made public by being published, it does communicate something about the Google mind set.

Regardless of whatever else may happen (e.g. Google acquiring companies like Doubleclick, I would expect them to keep leveraging this core technology expertise for the for seeable future.

Posted by Eric Enge at 7:32 AM | Permalink

May 29, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: May 29, 2007

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

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:51 PM | Permalink

Using Log Files To Improve Page Rank Distribution

Following a discussion on "Link & Ranking Strategies for Enterprise Sites" at SEOMoz, Hamlet Batista wrote an interesting article on ways top pass the link love around a web site using a dynamic solution.

Basically the conversation started about Enterprise sites - ones with tens of thousands to millions of pages. Many of the pages have little if any Page Rank and Rand started the discussion with suggestions of how the link love can be shared inside a website.

Batista contributed to the comments and then wrote his own piece with details of how this could be programmed to be done dynamically.

Both articles are worth a read.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 4:47 PM | Permalink

Colbert Interviews Wikipedia Founder

The Greatest Living American Stephen Colbert interviewed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Thursday.

With a mix of humor and serious questions, the two discussed the future goals of Wikipedia. Wales stated he wanted the site to be the leading source of information in every language.

Colbert summed up the benefits and pitfalls of Wikipedia when he said, "Wikipedia is the first place I go when I am looking for knowledge, or when I want to create some."

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 3:38 PM | Permalink

Google Can Now Find Faces

Google Image Search is in the process of adding face-recognition technology, as well as new features to filter out images from news stories, according to Google Blogoscoped. The features, which so far are available only by appending a variable to the end of a search URL, are apparently based on technology from Neven Vision, a company that Google acquired last August.

For a search of faces, the filter is &imgtype=face. For example, a search for images related to Search Engine Strategies would return several kinds of images, including people, buildings, presentations and company logos. With &imgtype=face at the end of the URL, the same search shows only people.

The news image search filter is &imgtype=news. Compare a search for whales without the filter to one with the filter. The news image search returns mainly photos related to recent news stories about whales, while the unfiltered search includes many more kinds of whale images.

So far, Google has declined to comment on the changes, or to say if any other search qualifiers are expected to be launched for image searches.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:19 PM | Permalink

FTC Looking at Google-DoubleClick Deal?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, according to the New York Times.

The outcry of privacy experts and competitors made an investigation all but inevitable, according to the report.

Because the FTC is handling the investigation instead of the Justice Department, which shares antitrust enforcement duties, some sources are assuming that the issues are more privacy-related than anti-trust related. When the deal was announced, three privacy watchdog groups asked the FTC to investigate the potential implications on user privacy. The groups feared that the combination of Google's search history and DoubleClick's tracking of sites visited would "give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world."

But privacy is not an antitrust issue, so it will not be relevant to the investigation except in the ways those issues would relate to a reduction in competition.

"We are confident that upon further review the F.T.C. will conclude that this acquisition poses no risk to competition and should be approved," Don Harrison, a senior corporate counsel for Google, told the NYT.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:03 PM | Permalink

80% of Podcast Listeners Seek Out Products They Hear About

As reported in the Guardian, a survey of over 300 U.K. podcast users done by Chrysalis Radio’s download division found that 80% of those surveyed indicated that they would be more likely to seek out products and services after hearing about them.

Before rushing out to promote products via podcasts, it should be noted that the most popular subjects for audio downloads are books and films (not search engine marketing, surprise), and 55% of listeners seek out podcasts on entertainment topics. Electronic goods and gadgets are good targets, for 49% of listeners downloaded podcasts about gadgets and electronic goods.

The survey also found that podcasts have an underexploited social component inasmuch as 90% of those surveyed said they would consider forwarding audio shows to friends. Podcasters not already doing so should consider adding social bookmarking to their show’s landing pages.

Confirmed by the survey is that podcasts are in a time-shifting medium. 75% of listeners listen at their convenience not during live show times and a similar number listen while away from home. While listening on an MP3 player or mobile phone (50%), podcast fans are engaged in exercise (10%), traveling on public transportation (20%) or doing housework (12%). Podcast listeners are dedicated listeners with 25% listening for up to two hours a day, but they are time-challenged, and a third of the time do not listen to their entire downloads. This suggests that if you want to make a point in your podcast, make it early since you may not get a chance to be heard if you wait until the end.

Posted by amandawatlington at 10:05 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Using a Corporate Blog for CRM

In today's au Natural column, "Using a Corporate Blog for CRM," Mark Jackson examines how corporate blogging can be used for customer relationship management (CRM).

Many times, a customer will visit your Web site and look for answers or a way to share their input. If none is found, they will look elsewhere. This is your window of opportunity to nurture positive comments, or nip negative ones in the bud.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:07 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Universal Search for Small Business

In today's Little Biz column, "Universal Search for Small Business: What You Need to Know About Google's New Search Results," Carrie Hill tells you what universal ranking of multiple silos of search results can mean for your small business.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:02 AM | Permalink

May 28, 2007

Interview with FeedBurner's Rick Klau

I had the pleasure of interviewing Rick Klau recently, and we got into a deep discussion about how to get the most out of your RSS feeds. One of the key points we discussed was the notion of including the your entire article into the feed, not just a summary.

I asked Rick about this, and he said that he is a fan of this approach. Many have debated the pros and cons of this approach, with the two sides of the argument being about the tradeoffs between providing users the ability to read your content directly in your feed, if they prefer this, versus the goal of getting users to your site.

Rick points out that there is another entire dimension to this argument that most people are missing. More and more RSS services are discovering feeds and indexing feed content based on the content of the article as presented in the feed. Including the full article in the feed itself increases exposure in these services, and therefore increases the reach of your feed and site.

One example of this is Techmeme that scans feeds to see links between posts to quickly build a map of all the discussions on a particular subject. If you publish only a summary of an article that does not include a key link, then you can miss out on participating in the traffic and exposure that a service like Techmeme can provide.

Posted by Eric Enge at 8:16 PM | Permalink

May 26, 2007

How To Market A Website for $100

Patrick Sexton aka feedthebot interviewed some major players in the search space and asked them all if they only had $100 how would they market their website.

The article gives some good insights, but collectively the crew (Aaron Wall, Andys Hagan and Beal, Todd Malicoat, Neil Patel, Lee Odden and CK Chung) impart the need to be dedicated.

Shoestring operations only succeed with perserverance. There is no guarantee, but a half-hearted effort is never going to get you there.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 12:58 PM | Permalink

May 25, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: May 25, 2007

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

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:57 PM | Permalink

Google Adds School Report Sellers To Banned AdWords Advertisers' List

The list of non-allowed advertising at Google's AdWords just got a little bigger.

Those "Buy A Term Paper" sites now join the comapny of gun dealers, alcohol and tobacco sellers as well as hackers, phisers and prostitutes; illustrious company.

The "banned" advertising list is growing... now if they could only drop all my competitors' ads I would be happy.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 2:10 PM | Permalink

The Impact of Universal Search

Gord Hotchkiss wrote an article titled An Intimate View Of The World Through Google's Eyes on Search Insider yesterday. The article provides some excellent thinking on how Google's Universal Search and Google's drive towards personalization will mesh.

A couple of Gord's comments stood out for me: "I can't help but think that personalization will drive universal search", and "Google will be able to be more confident in offering a much richer and more diverse set of universal results when you can tap into previous search and Web history". I agree with Gord that personalization will do a lot to empower universal search, and vice versa.

At another point, Gord also indicates that he thinks that "universal search, in one fell swoop, makes the idea of vertical search irrelevant". I see the impact of universal search on vertical search a little bit differently. Improving horizontal web search will certainly impact certain types of vertical search opportunities. Some of these search properties may well be affected significantly.

But, I also think that vertical search is such a deep topic that universal search can't possible impact all of it. For example, there is a huge amount of vertical search in the B2B space. Outsell recently forecast that the B2B vertical search market would exceed $1.0 B in revenue in 2009 (not too far away!).

I also think that there are plenty of vertical search engines that use completely different contextual crawling methods, or use and integrate specialty data bases which are not easily interpreted by, or may not even be accessible by, a web search crawler. I suspect that borh of these scenarios will be unaffected by Universal Search.

However, as noted above, I also think that there are plenty of "thin vertical search engines" where the value add is pretty minimal, and these could be affected in a big way.

Posted by Eric Enge at 11:47 AM | Permalink

Blinkx savors IPO success, announces video search growth plans

The following is a transcript of the recent Reuters UK interview with blinkx’s CEO, Suranga Chadratillake, on its breakout success with soaring public shares, and growing plans with its new capital.

Reuters: The online video company blinkx is making a strong debut on London’s alternative investment market after announcing a placement price of 45 pence per share, giving the newly demerged company – [demerging from the British search software specialist Autonomy Corp] – a market capitalization of 125 million pounds ($247 million). The oversubscribed shares were trading at close to 63 pence per share at last glance. To talk about the decision to float, and what lays ahead, I’m joined by the CEO of blinkx, Suranga Chadratillake. First of all, tell us how it feels to debut as the boss of a publicly listed, stand-alone company?

blinkx: It’s absolutely exciting. Obviously, we been working very hard over the last few years and building a great business, and its great to take it to this next step.

Reuters: What will this flotation help you accomplish?

blinkx: It will help us accomplish a lot of things. First of all, the fact that we’ve been able to grow significant momentum in growing the index to where we are now – as the single largest video search engine on the web. Going forward, this allows us to do more of that, but do it on a bigger scale. This market we’re playing in is one that’s very, very large and growing very, very fast; and we have to grow our team and stay with that market.

Reuters: How are you fairing in your mission to become the “remote control” of video on the Web?

blinkx: I think we’re absolutely getting there. Online television is at the stage where we’re literally seeing an avalanche of content. We were at 7 million hours of content a couple of months ago. Today, we’re at almost 13 million hours of content. You can see how fast its growing.

Reuters: A few months ago… you said the future of online content was mass proliferation. Is that what its still looking like?

blinkx: Yes, it absolutely is. I think the key thing there is looking at the type of content that’s coming online. Until recently, the majority of online content was small, scrappy, amateur stuff – which was interesting and fun in lots of ways, but not really television. What we’ve seen over the last 6 months is the acceleration of actual TV content online. That’s really exciting… but to really make use of it, to really navigate it – you need remote control. That’s what Blinkx hopes to be.

Posted by Grant Crowell at 10:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

Blinkx IPO shares soar to near-record debut

Shares of the video search company blinkx (ticker: BLNX), the largest video search engine on the web, soared on London’s Alternative Investment Market on its first day of trading. Blinkx shares jumped 40% in a single day by close – from 45 pence to 65 pence – increasing its market cap to £180 million/$355 million.

For more information on blinkx’s success with its IPO – and its growing plans and expectations – I recently interviewed a source close to the company.

Crowell: How does this debut IPO rank compared to other companies?

blinkx: We are being told that blinkx's performance is the second best debut in the last two years, on any exchange, UK or U.S.

Crowell: What does blinkx foresee as the benefits of its strong public showing in the stock market?

blinkx: The success of the IPO reflects a general acceptance that Web is moving from a text-based medium to a network for audio and video. The proof points are there: broadband is essentially ubiquitous, which means that content providers are eager to get their video on the web and monetize it; advertisers are quickly embracing the power of online video advertising; and finally, people are fundamentally changing the way they watch TV, consuming more and more news and entertainment online.

Crowell: Blinkx has often said that their unique technology has given them a tremendous lead on other video search engines. With the new money generated from the IPO, what are blinkx’s plans for further developing its technology, and expanding its presence?

blinkx: The benefit of the money that we raised yesterday is that we can now expand our sales and development teams, and increase our presence in the industry… Blinkx has now signed deals with 130 media companies, and has indexed more than 12 million hours of video. … We also have plans to announce a broadband tv product later this year.

Posted by Grant Crowell at 9:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBack

SEW Experts: Getting Hyper-Active in Local Search

In today's Vertical Challenge column, Getting Hyper-Active in Local Search, Michael Boland dives into the world of hyper-local, where newspapers and online startups use local online communities to get an edge on news aggregators like Google and Yahoo.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:43 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Measuring ROI Can Be Difficult for SEO

In today's Outsourced column, Measuring ROI Can Be Difficult for SEO, Chris Boggs offers tips on calculating ROI to see if your SEO campaign is cost-effective.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:26 AM | Permalink

May 24, 2007

Enquiro Finds Search Plays an Integral Role in B2B Purchases

For business to business (B2B) buyers, search engines are the primary research source, and one of the top influencers on purchasing decisions, according to the latest research from Enquiro Search Solutions. In today's SearchDay, How Do B2B Buyers Search?, we look at the findings of Enquiro's Business to Business Survey 2007.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:59 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: May 24, 2007

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

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:51 PM | Permalink

Lee Odden Polls For Best Search Podcast

Lee Odden over at Top Rank Blog asked a number of search marketers for some input on what they consider to be the better search podcasts. Using that information he has started a poll of the top 10 or so and is looking to get an indication of which search podcasts we listen to regularly.

The poll is here and worth a visit and vote.

Share your opinion and give some hard working members of our industry a little recognition. The list being polled is:
Beginning SEO Podcast - Brian Mark
Daily Search Cast - Danny Sullivan
Rush Hour - Neil Patel
Web Analytics World - Manoj Jasra
The Alternative - Jim Hedger
Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal
MR SEO - Joe Balestrino
Net Income - Jeremy Shoemaker
Good Karma - Greg Niland
Strike Point - Dave Naylor
SEO Rock Stars - Greg Boser
RSS Ray - Brian Offenberger
SEO Radio - Bryan Azorsky
eMarketing Talk Show - Cindy Turrietta
The Pulse - Barry Schwartz

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 6:04 PM | Permalink

Hakia Holds Concert To Launch Music Search

Hakia is throwing two concerts to promote the launch of their new music search. I RSVPed for the New York City event next Tuesday and will add a review next week.

It is an interesting approach and one that seems to reflect a playfulness the company presents.

"In the beginning, there was light. In the digital age, there is the search engine. Man asks questions and expects answers. To search for the meaning of life on the Web is to plunge into the depths of absurdity, a challenge to any creative mind. The “Search Music" reflects this challenge", the website tells us.

Hey they are even looking for musicians to submit music for their next CD!

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 5:56 PM | Permalink

Google Patent Details Mobile Search Plans

A new patent application published today may reveal some of Google's plans for mobile search, according to ZDNet blogger Russell Shaw.

The application, Local Search and Mapping for Mobile Devices, describes a method that geo-targets a local search based on user-submitted text info, a location currently being displayed on a map, or using the location of user detected via GPS.

The application also goes into detail on some possible page navigation methods, with stored query histories, visual hints of which direction on the map has more results to a query, and click-to-dial functionality.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:10 PM | Permalink

Search Still Leads Online Ad Spending

According to the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), search advertising made up 40 percent of the $16.9 billion spent in the U.S. for online advertising last year.

Search ad revenues (which include PPC search ads, contextual text ads, paid inclusion and SEO) total $6.8 billion for the year, up 31 percent from the $5.1 billion reported in 2005. The next-largest category for 2006 is display ads, at $5.4 billion, or 23 percent of total online ad spending. Next comes online classifieds, at $3.1 billion, or 18 percent of overall ad revenues.

Online ad spending in 2006 was still dwarfed by offline:

  1. Direct mail – $55.7 billion
  2. Newspapers – $51.2 billion
  3. TV networks (broadcast and cable) – $39.9 billion
  4. TV distribution – $32.5 billion
  5. Magazines – $24.6 billion
  6. Radio – $20.8 billion
  7. Internet – $16.9 billion
  8. Outdoor – .6.8$ billion

Kate Kaye has the full story at ClickZ News.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Google's Cross-Language Search Launches

The cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) technology which Google VP Udi Manber previewed at Searchology last week has launched, according to the Google Blog. The technology has been built into Google Translate. It allows users to type in a query in one language, and instruct Google to find results from another language.

Google will translate the query into that other language, find results, and then translate those results into the original query language to present to the user. In effect, this allows users to seamlessly search documents in foreign languages as easily as they search in their own language.

An example is [wine tasting events in Bordeaux].

Google admits the translations are not always perfect, as illustrated by a search of Japanese Web sites for Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, or a search of Spanish sites for soccer team Real Madrid. But of course, the product is still in beta.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:40 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Building the Love

In today's Link Love column, "Building the Love," Sage Lewis gives tips for brainstorming ideas for building links. It takes more than business basics on a Web site to create link bait, and even a site offering the most mundane products can create compelling content.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:26 AM | Permalink

May 23, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: May 23, 2007

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

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:02 PM | Permalink

Local.com on a Roll II

Following its string of recent announcements (previous posts on Local.com here and here), Local.com today unveiled a new mobile search product.

Known as Local Mobile, the ad supported mobile site lets users search by entering keywords and locations using mobile device keypads. This includes access to Local.com’s business profile pages, mapping, driving directions, click to call, and the ability to send listings to other mobile users (using SMS).

Mobile distribution of listings will be built into the company’s ad offerings to local businesses, which currently include online featured listings and landing page development.

This falls in line with Local.com's slow reinvention of itself that should help it to gain more users and advertisers in the highly competitive and quickly developing local search space. Some of the company's recent developments have involved site enhancements and redesigns while most are new ad products.

Today's press release can be found here

Posted by MikeBoland at 5:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBack

Creating a Global SEO Strategy

Developing a global SEO strategy is not an easy undertaking – not by a long shot. However, if you have a worldwide presence, or plan to have one in the future, you should be thinking about SEO globally...and sooner rather than later. John Tawadros takes a look at what's involved in today's SearchDay, Is Your SEO Strategy Global?

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:45 PM | Permalink

Google Invests In Sergey's Wife's Company

Guess Google likes to keep the money in the family. Sergey Brin's new wife, Anne Wojcicki, cofounded the bitech start-up that just received $3.9 million in funding from the search giant, according to EcommerceTimes.

"Formerly a biotech investor herself, Wojcicki cofounded 23andMe last year with biopharmaceutical industry veteran Linda Avey. The startup, located near Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, is trying to "allow individuals to gain deeper insights into their ancestry, genealogy and inherited traits," Wojcicki said, according to ECommerceTimes.

23andMe plans to officially launch by the end of the year. The company name refers to the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 2:21 PM | Permalink

"Microsoft Does Not Need Yahoo Anymore" MSN Strategist Claims

With the purchase of aQuantive and its other advertising assets, Microsoft nolonger needs to buy Yahoo to conquer the online advertising world, Microsoft Chief Advertising Strategist Yusuf Mehdi stated, according to 247WallSt.com.

"The whole thing rings a bit hollow. Numbers from Hitwise show that Microsoft's US search share dropped from 12.6% in April 06 to 8.5% last month. Google's share of market rose sharply to 65.3%," wrote Douglas A. McIntyre, at the 247wallst.com site.

"While search is not everything when it comes to building a successful online advertising business, it is something. Or, perhaps a lot of something. Microsoft may hope its new aQuantive's ad serving platform and MSN and Microsoft Live can dig that company's online business out of its hole," McIntyre stated.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 2:11 PM | Permalink

Google Buying Feedburner?

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch says that he's confirmed that Google is acquiring Feedburner for close to $100 million. He's citing "a source close to the deal," so he could still be wrong, but if he's right, it's an all-cash deal, mostly upfront, with Feedburner's founders to stay on for a couple of years, at least.

The deal had been rumored to be in the works earlier this week, and ValleyWag said it had confirmed the deal as well.

The move gives Google a working feed-based ad network, but more importantly it keeps Google close to publishers, which it can then try to entice to take on more of its services. Feedburner also offers an impressive analytics package that can be incorporated into both Blogger and Google Analytics.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:33 PM | Permalink

Technorati Retools, Gets "Universal" Too

Technorati has gotten a "major refresh" that's six months in the making, according to founder and CEO Dave Sifry. The biggest change is a shift away from searching only blogs to include more kinds of user-generated content, including photos and video. Technorati's search technology is still tag-based, but now include more social media:

Whereas folks using Technorati a couple of years ago were predominantly coming to us to search the blogosphere to surface the conversations that were most interesting to them, today they are increasingly coming to our site to get the 360 degree context of the Live Web - blogs of course, but also user-generated video, photos, podcasts, music, games and more. They want all the good stuff out there, all in real-time, and we're using the power of 80 million bloggers to help organize it and make it fun to browse; using the wisdom of crowds as a mirror on ourselves.

In addition, Technorati has gone the same "universal" route as Google, eliminating search silos to return multiple media in the same results set, rather than having a separate search function for each category. Technorati has kept a blog-search-only option. Another way Technorati is similar to Google is the presence of a ticker across the top of the page highlighting popular searches, as Google is doing with its Hot Trends.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:01 PM | Permalink

Google Testing AdSense for Video

Google has announced a pilot with a small group of publishers to test streaming video ads. Writing on the Inside AdSense blog, product marketing manager Christina Lee said, "Just as AdSense adds value to the text content on your website and is useful for your users, we think these in-stream ads in video will add value to publishers' video content and help to deepen engagement with users watching the videos."

In this pilot, the selected publishers, with their own video content, will be able to control which videos get ads, and when the ads play in those videos.

This is different than the standalone click-to-play video ads Google offers to publishers in its content network. It's also different from the video distribution tests Google did with Warner Music and Sony BMG in January, and with MTV last August, both of which paired video content from those providers with video ads from Google advertisers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:47 AM | Permalink

Strategic Analytics Consulting from Eric T. Peterson

Eric T. Peterson recently left Visual Sciences to focus his attention on strategic consulting through his company Web Analytics Demystified. I spoke with Eric yesterday about his new focus.

Eric said that his focus on strategic consulting came about because he saw problems with how companies were utilizing web analytics. He indicated that "part of organizations are good at web analytics", but "very few organizations are good at web analytics throughout the organization". This speaks to a failure to get the best ROI from a company's web analytics investment.

It's common for organizations that invest in web analytics to setup a team that focuses on analytics, and then does a good job with it within that team. But the value of analytics does not stop there. For example, getting the marketing team engaged and benefiting from analytics is something that is often not done as well as it could be. In addition, getting senior management buy in for ongoing investments in analytics is usually quite a bit easier if they are being fed the metrics for the business that they are looking for.

These are the types of areas that Web Analytics Demystified is going to focus on. This enables them to focus on the strategic view, and therefore work with other companies that provide services such as web vendor selection, implementation assistance, and business analysis of the analytics data as it comes in.

In addition, Web Analytics Demystified recently announced a partnership with Aquent, the world's largest marketing staffing firm. This partner will help Eric's new venture gain steam fast.

Aquent works with something like 90% of the Fortune 100, and will frequently receive requests from it's clients for people to staff an analytics team. Eric can then help ensure that Aquent's clients get the most out of their analytics investment by providing strategic consulting.

Posted by Eric Enge at 10:25 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Digging Deeper Into Google Analytics

In today's By the Numbers column, "Digging Deeper Into the Latest Release of Google Analytics," Eric Enge explores the subtle differences in the latest version of Google's metrics tool. Among other enhancements, Enge notes that the new interface does a much better job of presenting the most common numbers people look for up front.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:02 AM | Permalink

What Should Ask.com Do?

An interesting discussion has begun on several blogs this week considering what Ask.com should do to be successful. It focuses on ways that Ask.com could compete with Google, both in search and advertising. While there are many things that Ask.com is doing right, it's hard not to wonder if it will be enough.

It's interesting that so much discussion is being devoted to Ask.com all at once. Is it a wish to back the underdog, or a dissatisfaction with Google, and a lack of faith in runners-up Yahoo and Microsoft? Let's start with a run-down of the conversation to this point, and see if we can come up with any answers to help everyone's favorite underachiever.

We begin with Allen Stern at Center Networks, who writes Ask.com goes "all in"... and my strategy suggestions to help them fight the beast. He outlines five areas of focus he'd suggest if he were asked:

  1. Get site publishers to integrate Ask.com, with cash incentives, if necessary.

  2. Focus on Google's potential data and privacy issues.

  3. Look for categories to own, like Ask Kids.

  4. Work with bloggers to educate them and create an 'Ask.com feeling."

  5. Arrange local demos of Ask.com

Over at Read/Write Web, Josh Catone weighs in with The Future of Ask.com: Search? How About Advertising. He shares his opinions on Stern's suggestions, and adds another area of focus for Ask: advertising.

This, I think, is an area that Google dominates which is currently ripe for competition (more so than search). Google's service isn't great (the most glaring check against them, in the eyes of publishers, is their lack of transparency -- they don't disclose how much of the ad revenue is being shared), and publishers are always willing to try out a new service to see if it makes them more money.

Catone also outlines several elements of an advertising program that Ask should focus on to match Google, including management tools for advertisers and publishers, contextual ad matching technology. He also names a few areas where Ask could potentially beat Google, including transparency with publisher earnings, a solution to stop click fraud, and the creation of "hybrid" text/image ads.

Over at Search Engine Guide, Jennifer Laycock asks the question, On Fire, or Going Down in Flames?, citing the latest Nielsen//NetRatings search share data that shows Ask.com losing ground after a year of slow but steady growth.

"It's a frustrating journey to watch as it seems that every time they do something great, they follow up with something that makes me cringe," writes Laycock.

At the Bruce Clay blog, Lisa Barone shares her hopes for Ask.com's success, and points to a major flaw amidst minor successes:

Let’s be fair. Everyone knows that Ask.com’s tools are better than Google’s, Yahoo’s, or Microsoft’s. AskCity is awesome, their blog search kills, and the Smart Answer and query refinement tools Ask has been using for years are just now starting to be adopted by the other engines. When it comes to advanced search tools, Ask.com is in a league of their own. This is great, but their traditional search results are still lacking. Without a strong SERP, Ask.com will never become more than a specialty engine. You’ll use it when you need to find a local furniture store, but you won’t trust it for everyday searching.

There are many things that Ask.com is doing right. It's clearly committed to developing both its search and advertising products, and has committed $100 million to a TV ad campaign to try to spur user interest.

On the search side, Ask has been innovating with its Smart Answers product, which searches multiple databases to return more targeted results on certain queries. They've made some strides in local search with their AskCity product. They're also doing some interesting things with Ask Mobile and the AskX interface.

Ask.com is also in the midst of combining its Teoma and Direct Hit algorithms, along with other technologies it has developed, into the upcoming Edison algorithm, which will roll out over the course of 2007.

And Ask.com is reaching out to certain niches, notably librarians. Gary Price, Ask's director of online information resources, told