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March 23, 2008 - March 29, 2008

March 29, 2008

Global SEO Makes Bloomberg News Headline

Sure there are lots of global news stories in Bloomberg News today. For example, "Verizon Faces Fight With FCC's Martin Over Rules for Open Wireless Network." Bloomberg.com says Verizon Wireless faces a new challenge after beating Google Inc. in the biggest U.S. mobile- phone airwaves auction: scrutiny from regulators who expect the carrier to build a truly open network.

While we get just as excited about "scrutiny from regulators" as the next guy, that's not the best story of the day.

Nor was it "Houston Topless Clubs May Turn to Pasties After Losing 10-Year Legal Fight" detailing Eric Langan's plans to respond to the U.S. Supreme Court with pasties.

And while we're impressed by Ivy League students with hearts of gold turning Spring Break into a "Guilt Trip" for all the other Spring Breakers in Cabo ("Students on Spring Break Skip Mai Tais on Cabo to Serve at Bowery Mission") we're wondering why Ivy League students need to fly to Cabo to volunteer in a soup kitchen.

The story says "It's lunchtime at the Bowery Mission, and seven Cornell University students are serving rice, chicken and gravy to homeless men staying there to learn job skills and conquer addictions."

They must be serving the homeless with a "Silver Spoon."

Here's the one story we loved:

Global SEO expert Nick Wilsdon and his wife, Anna, starred in the headline news story, Russia's `City of Brides' Triggers Baby Boom After Love Quests by Bloomberg reporter, Yuriy Humber.

It's a great story. Don't miss it. The Bloomberg News photo shows:

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English-Russian couple Anna and Nick Wilsdon in their home in Ivanovo, Russia, on Feb. 7, 2008. This year in the town of Ivanovo, babies are being born faster then ever, and deaths are slowing down. With any luck, the town known as Russia's "City of Brides'' will start to increase in population for the first time since the Soviet era."

Courtesy of the exceptional photographer, Dmitry Beliakov of Bloomberg News.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 3:15 PM | Permalink

Is Google's Price Drop A Reflection Of Recent Media Coverage

The value of Google's stock has taken a bit of a beating recently from their high of $747 last year to yesterday's close at $438. After doing my weekly news review, I saw a lot of articles questioning many actions Google has been doing lately.

Is this pervasive critiquing of Google having an impact of investors' confidence?

The articles I read this week came from a wide range of sources - not just limited to the search industry specific ones we all know within the industry. (I was at a offline/online media event on Thursday where the majority had not heard of SEW, AussieWebmaster or for that matter Danny Sullivan!)

The firing of people from DoubleClick supposedly slated for April 1, according to ValleyWag, should show investors that they are lowering expenses and thus increasing profits for them. But the general public usually sees the company laying people off after an acquisition as Gordon Gekkoish. The eventual impact should be seen in the coming week as this actually happens.

I was having dinner one night during SES NYC last week, I noticed a friend there who does angel investing and asked him what Google closed at that day to determine who in my party was paying. He knew to the penny as he told me he was shorting Google (now I know where he gets his seed capital).

Then I see an article this morning from the UK Guardian stating Google's PPC numbers were slowing. Given January had shown zero growth and February's growth was low single digits compared to previous growth being as high as 30-40%, this spending and growth wall could be a major hurdle for the company's valuation.

"Google maintains that the deceleration is a consequence of its strategy of focusing on quality. The Silicon Valley firm has been trying to eliminate accidental clicks and has been working with advertisers to make sure that links relate closely to users' search queries.

But the slowdown has contributed to a 36% slump in Google's shares since the beginning of the year and analysts are divided on whether the company's confidence is justified," the Guardian stated.

This is also challenged a little by recent complaints by advertisers over some of these methods of improving the quality. The $10 Minimum Bid push has lost Google advertisers. The arbitragers squeezing a few pennies from a click have had to drop away (leaving the really good ones at it a cheaper range), but so have the companies that provide legitimate inexpensive products or services very relevant to the people searching from that perspective.

The impact Google is having on other online industries may also be impacting their brand and through that their value. The analytics industry was impacted by Google's purchase of Urchin and the development of the free services of Google Analytics - so even a popular free service gets flak, and their mistakes are made public quickly as was the case with GA information being displayed in the Google organic results..

There will be an additional backlash from the DoubleClick acquisition. It is going to be hard for the soon to be unemployed to find jobs in the industry as Google launched Ad Manager which offers ad serving for free and thus will hurt the job market in the industry as the competitors lose market share.

The words of Larry Page's recent Annual Report letter reflect the perspective the founder sees his realm of "users, customers, Googlers (our employees), and investors who help bring everything that is Google to life".

Part of Google's success has been in its ability to maintain the "church and state" separation of organic listings and paid search ads. While that is to be commended, isolating customers from the users pool is a little naive - people advertise on Google because they have used Google and want to advertise to similar users.

Google would not still be in business if they had not been able to monetize the popular search engine. When they first started the company was nearly sold to Excite.com for a million dollars, because they could not monetize what they were doing.

With revenues of more than $10 billion last year - 90% of which came from paid search advertising - you would think the customers would take top billing, but the behemoth of search still sees search through the eyes of its users.


" We continue our effort to extract more and more real meaning from the web in order to help people find the right answers. We recently improved universal search, integrating different types of relevant information, such as video, maps, news, books, images, and more, right into your search results.

Sometimes you don't get a good answer to a search because the information simply isn't available on the web. So we are working hard to encourage ecosystems that can generate more content from more authors and creators. For example, we recently announced an early version of a tool called "knol" to help people generate and organize more high-quality authored content."

Watch out Wikipedia your space is soon to be seriously invaded.

And one has to wonder if Google is getting into the conference and hotel business next. Their proposal to develop a parcel of land in the Mountain View industrial park for office space, conference center and a hotel is lodged with the local council.

Wonder if they plan on starting their own search conferences, with attendees staying at the nearby hotel? Are we to see a conference advertising tab soon in our AdWords accounts?

The issues of Google's decisions about censorship seem to contradict their "protector of users" stance. The capitulation to the Chinese government;s demands of censoring information about protest has many activists protesting, including shareholders.

The UK Times recently wrote a piece about "Google and the threat to free speech" and mentioned the company's resistance to activist shareholders "anti-censorship proposal by arguing it would do more harm than good to set the terms of use in countries notorious for their hostility to free speech. In other words, a version of the Google search engine that edits out references to the Tiananmen Square massacre or a Tibet-free YouTube is better for the Chinese people, Google brass could just as well have said. Again, the same argument is expected this year at its annual meeting on May 8."

Guess they would rather be the search engine of record for phishers. Seems more than 75% of all phishing efforts use a customized Google search to help in their efforts, according to InformationToday.

Prosecutors around the world must be awaiting their areas' inclusion in Google Maps now that it can be used to find crack dealers. Guess the police industry could be on the horizon.

Publishers and ecommerce sites see Google's action of adding a search box for more results within Google as opposed to going to the site, giving Google the chance to sell advertising for competitors.

Well that was my fill of Google for one week.... now if only my stocks would bounce back to the $700 range I would be much happier.

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:31 PM | Permalink

March 28, 2008

Search Headlines & Links: March 28, 2008

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 5:55 PM | Permalink

Does Google Allow Good Google Bombs?

To some, it appears that Google has painted itself into a corner with its reliance on linking for its ranking algorithm. The lines between legitimate SEO, paid links, and Google bombs are becoming increasingly blurred.

One highly-charged example is the case of Jew Watch News, an anti-semitic hate site that managed to get top ranking for the query "Jew." Several Jewish and anti-defamation groups joined together in a coordinated Google bombing campaign to push that result down in the SERPs, and the results of that bomb can still be seen today.

In today's SearchDay, "Google Bombs, Jew Watch News & the Hypocritical Linking Universe," Marty Weintraub looks at that Google bomb, and tries to find where a Google bomb meets SEO, and where paid links fit into the picture.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:29 PM | Permalink

New Google Webmaster Tool Aids Robots.txt Creation

When you have parts of your site that you don't want the search engine spiders to index, you let them know using a document called robots.txt. But for the coding-challenged, creating that document has not always been easy. Thankfully, Google has created a robots.txt generator as part of its Webmaster Tools.

Once your document is created, you can test it with the robots.txt analysis tool. Google points out that not every search engine recognizes robots.txt. They recommend securing truly sensitive material with password protection.

It's a big week for the Google Webmaster team. Today, they're hosting the first ever Google Webmaster chat, which begins at 12pm EST/9am PST. The chat will feature a site clinic and also discuss image optimization.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:04 AM | Permalink

Wordtracker Enhance Their Free Trial Offer

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For the first time Wordtracker are offering a 1-week trial of their entire service and have released an accompanying 7 day video tutorial on how to get the best out of your Wordtracker account.

Entitled 'Profit from Keywords', the videos are designed to help new webmasters get the most out of keyword research. The short 5 minute videos are accessible to complete novices to search engine optimisation but detailed enough to provide a useful resource for in-house experts & agencies to educate their brand owners & clients.

At the recent SES in London, Wordtracker CMO Ken McGaffin raved about the results of "keyword creativity" seminars he has been leading with household brands that were revealing unique market insights into both offline and online customer acquisition and retention strategies. By including other non-SEO staff and stakeholders in the keyword research process, he found that no two seminars produced the same results and these companies were broadening their online vision overnight.

"Wordtracker has always considered educating our clients a prime remit which is why we launched the Wordtracker Academy last year," said McGaffin. "Clients or potential clients need to know the various ways that keyword research can enhance their business online. At the start this can be especially daunting for SMEs, so the videos provide an easy step by step process so that businesses can get up to speed quickly."

Every SEM expert understands the value of educating the market, but it's no secret that as an industry we've never done it very well. Ken hopes that these videos will help small and medium sized businesses nip the cost of mistakes early in the SEM campaign implementation stages. After all, who wants to rank for terms that no one searches for?

Posted by Jonathan Allen at 7:33 AM | Permalink

The Video Search Revolution will be Contextualized

If you've been wondering how online video can be adequately searched or monetized, then video search company Digitalsmiths has some answers for you. At a luncheon hosted by the Triangle Interactive Marketing Association last week, Digitalsmiths CEO Ben Weinberger gave an impressive demo of his company's video search technology. VideoSense is an ad-matching and video indexing system that helps advertisers target audiences. The program uses image and speech recognition to facilitate video search and relevant ad-targeting.

To give people an idea of how powerful the ad matching is, Weinberger showed a clip of the popular NBC sitcom, The Office. Steve Carrell's character was wearing a watch, and the camera zoomed in on his arm. An ad popped up to the side of the video with an ad for a watch. The content was not interrupted and the ad was relevant. As for video indexing, Weinberger said that Digitalsmiths technology can help eliminate redundancies by finding clips that contain the same scenes. Digitalsmiths currently works solely with publishers and ad networks.

With the onset of DVRs and concerns over the slowing ad click rates, companies like Digitalsmiths stand to benefit from providing ads that don't interrupt the user experience. Expect that trend to expand. Weinberger predicted that advertising in online video will eventually become blended into the content. He said that content creators that learn to do this will have a bright and lucrative future.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 7:13 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Social Media: One Size Does NOT Fit All

Spending time on linkbait or viral ideas can drive traffic to a site. However, if the same attention isn't given to preparing what to do with the traffic, the only remaining value is links, many of which don't pass juice. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "Social Media: One Size Does NOT Fit All," Chris Boggs explains the down-side of linkbait, and how to better use it to your advantage.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: What Matters Most to Travel Search Marketers in 2008?

Now that we're nearly through the first quarter, it's time to check in on the accuracy of the many predictions for the future of search. In today's Vertical Search column, "What Matters Most to Travel Search Marketers in 2008?," travel search expert Elisabeth Osmeloski takes a look at how they're beginning to play out in the travel space.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: The SEO Copywriter: Wordsmithing the Web

Combining both technological know-how and a strong command of the written word, agency SEO copywriters are the front-line troops of any SEO initiative. In today's SEM Agency Issues column, "The SEO Copywriter: Wordsmithing the Web," William Flaiz writes an ode to these front-line troops of any SEO initiative.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 27, 2008

Social Media Pop Quiz: 3 Questions You'll Never Get Right

If you're following the PEW studies on Internet Life and Campaign '08, then you know the Presidential election will be won or lost online - or by whoever drinks the most wheatjuice on the campaign trail.

The election won't quite be "Go Vote at TNA Wrestling!" or counted by the TNAwrestling.com boys. (Except, maybe, in Florida.)

Politics makes strange bedfellows (Eliot, David, Jim) but nothing makes stranger bedfellows than social media and politics.

We're often asked by readers how they can prepare for a career in search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and social media optimization (SEO). Well there's one way even we didn't think of: politics.

So here's a quiz you'll never get right without searching online:

1. Which director of social media is the former press secretary to the former Governor of the great state of Florida? (pictured while in office below)

2. Which social media panel is he or she speaking on in the next couple months? (Hint: think Wikipedia)

3. Where and when is the conference? (Hint: $100. off if you register by March 31)

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Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:59 PM | Permalink

SEO Barry Schwartz AKA RustyBrick Joins Search Engine Journal

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While surfing the seamy underbelly of the Web we tracked down this scoop: former Search Engine Watch news editor Barry Schwartz AKA RustyBrick of SERoundtable fame has joined Loren Baker's Search Engine Journal, according to BlackHat Planet. We were unable to reach Barry, Search Engine Watch Forums member, to confirm the reasons behind his shocking move.

We know. You're as surprised as we are.

CORRECTION: Barry Schwartz DID NOT join Search Engine Journal.

However, the evidence shown (above) clearly indicates Barry Schwartz AKA RustyBrick is the pen-name for Ann Smarty AKA SEOSmarty.

How long SEO consultant Ann Smarty has been blogging as "RustyBrick" is not yet clear.

Exclusive! CORRECTION to the CORRECTION: Ann Smarty did indeed write the referenced post and apparently Barry Schwartz (who does in fact exist) is merely taking credit for Ann's post on Search Engine Journal.

We expect a full apology in writing from CartoonBarry soon.

UPDATE after the jump.

CORRECT CORRECTION to the CORRECTION: The renowned black hat SEO publication, Black Hat Planet, SCRAPED the Search Engine Journal post incorrectly. We patiently await their correction.

Our sincere apologies to all parties. We will (upon request) remove all links to Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Roundtable and SEOSmarty.com.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:51 PM | Permalink

Search Headlines & Links: March 27, 2008

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:

  • Conversion Rates & The Value Of Outsourcing SEM/SEO
    According to a new study, outsourced conversion rates are much higher. It may be that agencies that are specialists in a particular area see a wide cross-section of accounts and industries among their clients, and thus should be able to do a better job.
  • Google Ad Clicks Up, Down and Flat in Feb., Depending on Who You Ask
    According to today's headlines, clicks on Google ads are dropping, flattening and experiencing a slowdown in growth - all at the same time!
  • Google Launches YouTube Insight - Google Analytics Lite
    Today Google video search engine YouTube launched a free Web analytics tool. Think Google Analytics Lite: it's essentially a way to see how popular a video is over time combined with a global map that shows where it's popular.
  • SEW Experts: Creating a Link Building System
    We, as industry insiders, often lose the pulse of the real world. Sometimes, we all need to take a step back and look at things from a new perspective, and realize that the majority of marketers are not immersed in search marketing as we are.
  • SEW Experts: Read Any Good SEO Books Lately?
    Some people are looking for the right book to learn everything there is to know about SEM. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. Still, there are several books out there that can help further your understanding of search marketing in general, or do a deep dive on a specific sub-topic.

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:25 PM | Permalink

Conversion Rates & The Value Of Outsourcing SEM/SEO

I recently got my hands on Marketing Sherpa's newly released Landing Page Handbook. This detailed guide is packed full of industry information and practical case studies.

One of the things that jumped out at me was a table of conversion rate averages for different marketing tactics. The survey data was drawn from over 5000 active online marketers in a variety of settings.

In-house managed PPC Search - 3.84%
Outsourced managed PPC Search - 5.40%
Difference: 40%

In-house Natural Search Optimization - 2.62%
Outsourced Natural Search Optimization - 4.76%
Difference: 80%

As you can see, the outsourced conversion rates are much higher. Before I go any further, I must admit that this is not a scientific sample, and that self-selecting biases of various kinds are bound to obscure these results. We are not given any breakdown by industry or company sizes, or other critical information. However, at a high level the data makes perfect sense, since agencies must perform better to justify their fees and keep their client's loyalty and business.

Agencies that are specialists in a particular area see a wide cross-section of accounts and industries among their clients and should be able to do a better job. This is not a slam at their hard-working and capable in-house counterparts. It is an acknowledgment that our industry moves very fast, and unless you have a whole organization focused on keeping up with the changes, it is very difficult to stay up on the latest developments.

Marketing activities are the engine of growth for a company. They are not administrative cost centers. Many companies mistakenly try to save a little money by running their programs in-house. They do not realize the real cost is in the lost opportunities that they can not capitalize on. If your in-house program is profitable, that is not enough - you must consider the scale of your program and always question how much money you might be leaving on the table. Giant conversion rate differences such as the above can be turned into strategic weapons that let you soundly trounce your competition.

So next time you consider the in-source / outsource decision, consider opportunity as well as direct costs.

Posted by Tim Ash at 2:59 PM | Permalink

Google Ad Clicks Up, Down and Flat in Feb., Depending on Who You Ask

According to today's headlines, clicks on Google ads are dropping, flattening and experiencing a slowdown in growth - all at the same time! New comScore data is being reported and there are more angles on the numbers than there are flavors at Baskin Robbins. So who's right? Everyone is, to a point.

Here's the reported data:

* February 2008 clicks are up 3% to 515 million over February 2007
* February 2008 clicks are down 3% from January 2008.
* January 2008 clicks were down 7.5% from December 2007.

I contacted comScore's Andrew Lipsman for more details and to ask him if these declines were seasonal as opposed to sensational:

"We do not publicly release our paid click data, it is sent exclusively to clients. I can confirm the information you cited is accurate. It’s fair to say that all things being equal, February will see sequential declines vs. January because it has fewer days. It is probably more important to look at the y/y trends with this data as opposed to sequential changes."

Certainly these numbers are not as impressive as we've seen for Google in recent years. But how much of this should be attributed directly to Google is uncertain. The broader economic slowdown combined with low consumer confidence is producing a slowdown in growth in many industries.

But Wall Street doesn't like uncertainty, and GOOG was down 11 points at the time of this post. Still, Google dominates the search engine market in the United States.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:39 PM | Permalink

Google Continues Paid Links Crusade

According to Dave Naylor, the punishments Google is handing down for paid links appear to be retroactive. On his blog, Naylor outlines the case of a site that was recently penalized for selling paid links more than six months ago. According to Indigo Clothing's founder Alex Walker, the site had sold links in the past, but had removed them from its site about six months ago. The site was recently penalized by Google, and Matt Cutts indicated to Naylor that the cause was likely past sales of paid links.

While sites have been penalized for actively selling links, this case appears to be different. If Walker is indeed being truthful when he says they stopped selling links six months ago, that would mean that Google is punishing sites that have already stopped selling links. It will be interesting to see if this is indeed the case, and what the statute of limitations will be.

UPDATE: According to Matt Cutts, Google is NOT applying these penalties retroactively. "We first took action on this site months and months ago, back in 2007," Matt told me.

So it seems that webmasters that have stopped buying or selling links should not fear retribution by Google for their past actions, as long as they have removed the links from their sites.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 7:57 AM | Permalink

Google Launches YouTube Insight - Google Analytics Lite

Today Google video search engine YouTube launched a free Web analytics tool.

Think Google Analytics Lite: it's essentially a way to see how popular a video is over time combined with a global map that shows where it's popular.

The map? It's identical to Google Analytics. Hmmm, wonder if it will ever be integrated into the Google Analytics platform?

Google announced the tool in a blog post after midnight EDT stating Insight enables anyone with a YouTube account to view "detailed statistics" about the videos they upload.

So what insights will YouTube Insight provide?

1. how often a video's viewed in different geographic regions
2. how popular it is relative to all videos in a market over a period of time
3. how long until a video becomes popular (the fuzziest of fuzzy metrics)
4. what happens to video views as popularity peaks

What happens to video views when popularity peaks?

They go up? Then they go down?

If anybody knows for sure, ping me.

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Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:54 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Creating a Link Building System

We, as industry insiders, often lose the pulse of the real world. Sometimes, we all need to take a step back and look at things from a new perspective, and realize that the majority of marketers are not immersed in search marketing as we are. In today's Link Building column, "Creating a Link Building System," Sage Lewis goes back to link-building basics and offers a seven-step plan to get beyond linkbait and start getting ranked in the SERPs.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Read Any Good SEO Books Lately?

Some people are looking for the right book to learn everything there is to know about SEM. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. Still, there are several books out there that can help further your understanding of search marketing in general, or do a deep dive on a specific sub-topic. In today's Search Marketing Education column, "Read Any Good SEO Books Lately? Try These," Ron Jones offers some suggestions to add to your search marketing library.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 26, 2008

The Smartest Marketer at SES New York?

Here's a tough question: Who's the smartest marketer of the 8,000+ attendees at SES New York?

My first nomination: Jennifer Laycock who did a terrific training session post-SES and spoke eloquently at the conference.

What caught my eye during the conference: a ripped-from-the-headlines post-click search retargeting campaign that Search Engine Guide did during the height of the Eliot Spitzer scandal - and the topic everyone was cracking jokes about during panels and at the bar(s).

I was on Graywolf's blog and clicked thru to a New York Times article and here's what appeared, courtesy of Casale Media.

Who cares about contextual relevancy when your ads appear on the #1 story in the New York Times?

More important, who's your nomination for the smartest marketer at the show?

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Posted by Kevin Heisler at 4:13 PM | Permalink

Good to be Google, Apex Aviation and Pilot Eric Schmidt

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It's good to be Google, CEO/Pilot Eric Schmidt and Apex Aviation. Big-spending AdWords advertiser and vertical search engine Virgin Charter? Not so much.

Apex gets the Google gold.

Eric Schmidt has the use of a corporate jet that he makes available from time to time to Apex Aviation Corporation for charters by Apex to its customers. This aircraft has been chartered by Google from time to time and made available to certain Google executive officers for time-critical business trips.

In 2007 Google paid Apex $7,000 per hour for use of this aircraft.

(That's more than some SEOs charge for hourly consultations!)

The Google board of directors approved this hourly reimbursement rate based upon a competitive analysis of comparable chartered aircraft and which Google's board of directors determined was at or below market rates for the charter of similar aircraft.

In 2007, Google used Schmidt's aircraft for business-related travel services for certain of our executive officers and we paid Apex approximately $1,107,938 in fees through December 31, 2007.

Bluestar Jets must be singin' the Blue Star Blues to Google. Great SEO and position in Google. Great Google paid search results. Blue Star follows the 10 Golden Rules of SEM.

It's not all that bad though. Google runs an auction and doesn't show any favoritism in this case to big spenders in the Google ecosystem.

Plus, Blue Star Jets reportedly posted their most profitable month ever in February for customers of private jets (46% increase on the month, and 27% increase on the year).

That's not proof of recession. That's recession-proof.


Posted by Kevin Heisler at 3:24 PM | Permalink

Maybe Google's Not Becoming a Portal?

Last week at SES NY, new comScore data on universal search showed that Google was sending more traffic to its own properties than it had been in the past. That led some people (including me) to wonder if that meant Google was becoming more like a portal than a search engine.

But that data appears to miss the larger picture, where Google is sending even more traffic to news sites than it does to Google News. In today's SearchDay, "Is Google Not So Portal-Like After All?," Greg Jarboe digs into the subject, and finds some surprising results.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:05 PM | Permalink

Searchers Beginning to See Google Video Ads in Sponsored Listings

If you look carefully in your next Google search, you might just see a video ad included in the sponsored listings along side your organic results. It's not obvious at first. You have to look for a version of the PlusBox, used for things like local search results and video in the organic listings, in the ads column.

In February, word came that Google was testing video ads, and searchers began noticing the ads on live searches this morning.

I did a search today for [smart phone] (since [smartphone] didn't return a video), and found an ad with an invitation to "Watch Commercial" under it:

Google video ads

When you click on the plus sign, the listing expands to display a video right there in the results. You also may need your grandmother's magnifying glass as the video ads are tiny! They're just 160x140 pixels, including the player navigation.

Google video ads

So far, it looks like only searches for "tech" terms like laptop or cell phone will trigger a video ad. Searches for cat food, personal finance, and luggage did not return any video ad results.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:31 PM | Permalink

Hearst Jumps on Answers Bandwagon, Acquires Answerology

Searchers want answers, not just results. That's something Hearst Magazines is apparently abundantly aware of with its acquisition of Answerology, a relationship advice site. With Google becoming more of a destination site than a portal, companies like Hearst need to compete online by offering a robust destination site of their own. Hearst is poised to do just that with the addition of Answerology, which allows users to post questions anonymously and select specific demographics in which to seek answers from.

"Service journalism is all about helping people find answers to their questions, from trusted experts. That's what we do in our magazines and on our magazine-branded web sites every day. Answerology offers us a new type of service journalism, using a 'wisdom of the masses' model built on the expertise of users who are like you," said Chris Johnson, VP, content and business development, Hearst Magazines Digital Media.

If wisdom of the masses proves to be more valuable than wisdom of the algorithm, companies like Hearst stand to benefit monumentally. Answers sites saw significant percentage increases in traffic last year.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:36 AM | Permalink

New SEOmoz Report Features Data from 3,000+ SEOs

Search engine marketers are getting more sophisticated, still don't trust search engines, and keep spending on PPC. Those are some of the findings in a new SEO Industry Survey from SEOmoz.

Seattle-based SEOmoz has released findings from their SEO Industry Survey. The survey was conducted in February 2008 and includes answers from over 3,000 search engine marketing professionals from all over the world.

According to SEOmoz, the biggest takeaways are:

  • The vast majority of respondents from SEM agencies use tools to aid their marketing efforts.

  • Marketers are still unsure about things like the potential of negative effects from registering with Webmaster Central, or the use of nofollow.

  • From the 2,060 people responding, we see at least $73 million is spent on PPC a month. That's more than $35,000 per respondent per month. This assumes all our respondents are from different companies.

For the full SEO Industry report, click here.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:34 AM | Permalink

Citigroup Upgrades Yahoo, Predicts Microsoft Bid Increases to $34 a Share

Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney upgraded Yahoo from hold to buy, based on the belief that Microsoft will increase its bid to $34 per share for the Sunnyvale search engine. The bank said that Yahoo's dates with other suitors will likely force Microsoft's hand. However, with no firm offers on the table, and NewsCorp having said no to the possibility of acquiring Yahoo, this statement is a bit of a stretch.

Still, Yahoo recently tried to boost its cred by releasing 3 year projections estimated at $8.8 billion. And Citigroup thinks that Yahoo is Microsoft's best bet for scalability in its grand plan for catching Google. Mahaney doesn't think antitrust concerns would ultimately kill the deal but provided no insight on how culture clashes could stall or interrupt scalability.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Free Google Live Chat - First Time in History

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For the first time ever Google will host a worldwide live chat, where everyone will have a chance to hear and see Google Webmaster Central answer your questions.

If you own a blog, a Web site, or just want to move your company into the 21st century, do not miss this call.

Here are the details.

WHEN: Friday, March 28, 9am PDT / noon EDT / 16:00 GMT

Google will pay for the call. It's free.

No strings attached.

The only 4 things you need to join the Google WebEx chat:

1. Phone
2. "Sufficiently-modern" Web browser
3. Internet connection
4. Search Engine Watch Membership

(Okay - just kidding (Google) about #4 - but a Search Engine Watch membership will help you prepare to ask Google the toughest search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search (PPC) questions).

Seriously - all you need is a phone, browser and Internet connection.

The call will be hosted by Google Search Evangelist and SES London speaker, Adam Lasnik, the heir-apparent to Google's one-and-only Matt Cutts.

We know this isn't an early April Fool's Joke from Google because it's signed off by Adam himself - and we quote:

"Talkatively yours,
Adam and the English Webmaster Help Guides"

We love the Google English Webmaster Help Guides. They have such cool accents. (Maybe Google will let the American Webmaster Help Guides answer a few questions too.)

Stay tuned for more on this historic Google event. All the techo-geek requirements for the WebEx chat? After the jump.

Google's WebEx Requirements:

Windows 98, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista

* Internet Explorer 6/7
* Firefox 2
* Mozilla 1.7 or higher
* Netscape 8.1 or higher
* JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled
* Recommend ActiveX be enabled for Internet Explorer
* Vista supports Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 browsers only

Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 (PowerPC/Intel)
* Safari 1.3 (Mac OS 10.3)
* Safari 2.0 (Mac OS 10.4)
* Safari 3.0 (Mac OS 10.4,10.5)
* Firefox 2
* JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled
* Requires Apple Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 or higher
* No support for Remote Access

Solaris 10 (SPARC/x86)
* Mozilla 1.7 or higher
* Firefox 2.0 or higher
* JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled
* Requires Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 or higher
* No support for Sales Center and Remote Access

HP-UX 11.11 (PA-RISC)
* Mozilla 1.4 or higher
* Firefox 1.0 or higher
* JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled
* Requires Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 or higher
* Only Meeting Center supported

Ubuntu 7.04, Red Hat 4.0, SuSE 10.0 Linux
* Firefox 2
* Mozilla 1.7 or higher
* JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled
* Requires Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 or higher
* No support for Sales Center and Remote Access

AIX 5L 5.3
* Mozilla 1.4 or higher
* Firefox 1.0 or higher
* JavaScript and cookies need to be enabled
* Requires IBM Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 or higher
* Only Meeting Center supported

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:33 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Search Within a Search: Where's it Leading?

Some publishers are getting up in arms over a new feature from Google, which allows users to search a publisher's site without leaving the SERP. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Search Within a Search: Where's it Leading?," Kevin Ryan points out that their concerns may be misdirected, and they should be thinking a bit more about the big picture, and Google's evolution into a destination site.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

SEW Experts: Yahoo and the Future of Search

Because of spam, search engines had to stop trusting Webmasters to tell them about their site. Now, Yahoo is looking at new ways to get information from Webmasters. In today's Web Analytics and ROI column, "Yahoo and the Future of Search," Eric Enge explains the ways Yahoo is putting webmaster trust back into its search results.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

March 25, 2008

Search Headlines & Links: March 25, 2008

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:

  • World's First Search Engine for Meetings: Worktopia
    The only thing worse than attending a corporate meeting is planning one. For those with the thankless job of planning corporate meetings, there's Worktopia.
  • Yahoo Gets REAL About Job Searches
    In an effort to improve access to job seekers and assist recruiters, Yahoo announced today the launch of "R.E.A.L., a patent pending search ranking system that is based on Relevance, Engagement, Availability and Location," for Hotjobs.
  • How to (Actually) Earn Money (Now) with Social Media (Really): Part 1
    Leveraging digital assets and hot social channels for long-term SEM benefit has now become SEO 101. However, your boss or client may need to be convinced that investing in another layer of content management system (CMS), content, and conversational networking WILL in fact yield measurable financial results soon.
  • Microsoft Tries to Compete with OpenSocial
    Microsoft has announced a partnership to create data portability across 5 social networking sites. Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn are all part of the arrangement, which will "exchange functionally-similar Contacts APIs."
  • Google, Yahoo & MySpace Team Up for OpenSocial
    Yahoo, MySpace and Google have pledged their support to open standards for social media development and data by joining together to form the OpenSocial Foundation.
  • Google's New Wifi Push Will Drive Mobile Search
    There's unused "white space" lying between the regulated TV signals and Google has big plans for them. In new lobbying effort, Google is asking the FCC to auction the unused airwaves to establish faster internet access that has a wider reach. Expanding Wifi will have major implications for mobile search.
  • Twitter: Welcome to my Google Nightmare
    Twitter may give Google a run for its money. Twitter's one more way, though, that Google knows everything about you.

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:25 PM | Permalink

World's First Search Engine for Meetings: Worktopia

worktopia.jpg

The only thing worse than attending a corporate meeting is planning one. For those with the thankless job of planning corporate meetings, there's Worktopia.

How many times have you wanted to schedule a meeting at or near an airport while you cool your heels waiting for a connection? Perhaps you've experienced one of those rare flight delays that occur so infrequently in the airline industry? Or ,maybe you just prefer meeting your clients someplace else besides the airline club where all your competitors are lounging around?

While not Utopia (a world without meetings), the Worktopia search engine provides a real-time database of available meeting spaces by geographic location. There's even the ability to see room layout, order A/V equipment and order catering.

If you're a fast-growing search marketing agency (is there any other?) then Worktopia offers an alternative to "booking" one of the local Starbucks--and battling the new class of virtual office workers fighting for space in 'Buckies.


Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:01 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Gets REAL About Job Searches

In an effort to improve access to job seekers and assist recruiters, Yahoo announced today the launch of "R.E.A.L., a patent pending search ranking system that is based on Relevance, Engagement, Availability and Location," a company press release detailed.

Yahoo explained the process thus:

R.E.A.L. is an industry-first search algorithm that builds on an innovative set of principles derived from Yahoo!'s research in Web search technology. Leveraging Yahoo!'s behavioral targeting and search optimization strengths to rank job listings based on user engagement, R.E.A.L. has moved Yahoo! HotJobs' job search rankings beyond the traditional category-based, date-sorted experience. With the launch of R.E.A.L., "applies" per job listing have increased by 25 percent, a key success metric for recruiters.

"R.E.A.L. is a key pillar in our strategy to deliver the best in performance and value for recruitment advertisers," said Jeff Kinder, senior vice president and general manager, Yahoo! HotJobs. "Yahoo! has shown that relevance matters in search results, and it's powerful to apply Yahoo!'s search technology to HotJobs and see immediate and significant performance improvements. We believe Yahoo! HotJobs has a distinct advantage as online recruitment evolves and insights and technology play increasingly important roles."

The principles of R.E.A.L. are described in a newly released "Playbook" for recruiters, a compilation of best practices for posting, editing and managing job listings, designed to deliver optimal quality and performance. By aligning the goals of recruiters and job candidates, R.E.A.L. creates an indispensable experience that is defined by four critical characteristics of high-performance job listings:

R - Relevance: Matching text in job titles and descriptions to the keywords candidates use

E - Engagement: Measuring how well candidates respond to the job listing

A - Availability: Determining that the positions displayed are still unfilled

L - Location: Showing jobs in a location of interest to the candidate

These four characteristics are part of an insights-driven search algorithm that will continually improve on itself.

"We've started following the principles of R.E.A.L. and have already seen a significant increase in the number of applies per job listing," said Kathryn Jordan, chief financial officer, Fishpond Recruiting. "By applying Yahoo! HotJobs' best practices, we've not only expanded our candidate pool but we're seeing matches with high-quality candidates that are far more relevant to our job openings."

R.E.A.L. also benefits Yahoo!'s Newspaper Consortium partners who have implemented Yahoo! HotJobs as their exclusive online recruitment solution. R.E.A.L. includes location-based job searching features which enhance the ability to narrow or broaden relevant job search results by zip code, city, nearby cities, full metro areas, or entire states. The Newspaper Consortium now reaches 30 percent of all U.S. daily newspapers, and Yahoo! HotJobs has launched co-branded career sites serving more than 425 newspapers with strong local presences.

As part of its effort to be the "must buy" solution for recruitment advertisers, Yahoo! HotJobs has increased job candidate traffic by more than 50 percent over the last year while competitors remained largely flat. As a result, Yahoo! HotJobs has become the fastest growing Web site among the leading job boards and has surpassed Monster.com in the U.S.(1)

For more information about R.E.A.L., please visit http://hotjobsresources.com/ and click on the 'Library' section.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:47 PM | Permalink

Go to Search Marketing Salon SF Launch Party

searchmarketingsalon.jpg

If you're anywhere near the Bay Area, Silicon Valley or Alcatraz, mark this event on your search marketing calendar: Search Marketing Salon. It's free. No cover charge. 21 and over to drink.

When: Thursday March 27, 2008 -- 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Where: Otis Lounge, 25 Maiden Lane (bw Grant & Kearney) nr Union Square, downtown.

Wear your favorite hat...because if there's one thing SES has proved over the years: the industry boasts Awesomely Bad SEO Celeb Fashion.

Black hats, white hats, and grey hats all welcome.

Meet other SEOs, SEMs, and Web 2.0 social marketers, trade tips and share advice. In NYC, we had over 100 attendees at the SEMPO SEO Meetup last month.

Why Go? To meet:

Lorna Li (no relation to Li Evans), SEM Networking Maven, Web 2.0 blogger, Green activist and rainforest crusader. What's not to like? Plus you may meet cshel and Brian Solis.

When Lorna's not getting all Amazon with the Indians in the Amazon Basin, she can be spotted at SF Bay Area tech events, Green events, and conscious lifestyle parties.

That beats SES New York SearchBash: Webmaster Radio.FM's "Unconscious Lifestyle party" for SEOs and SEMs. (Yep, the party where Kevin Ryan officially became a RockStar with guys hi-five'ing him on the street outside the club, "Yo, Kevin Ryan, you rock. Love your sense of humor.")

The "Search Marketing Alchemist" AKA Jacob Morgan who works for an undisclosed marketing agency in SF and does marketing consulting gigs for private clients. Tell Jacob he needs to quit acting and start blogging more. (Just kidding).

The "Minister of LinkedIn Viral Marketing" Jose Nunez. He's an SEO consultant and PhD in Computer Engineering Technology. He's a dozen years in to SEO and the CTO of HiRank. Tell Jose to stop making the big bucks as a world-famous DJ and blog more. (Just kidding.)

Seriously, guys, seize the #1 position for your name in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. That's the first rule of "Search Marketing Salon."

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 3:46 PM | Permalink

How to (Actually) Earn Money (Now) with Social Media (Really): Part 1

OK, everyone knows the nearly mythological powers of social media to help grow long term site equity. Link building comes to mind immediately to most. Traffic waves can carry motivated visitors who might subscribe to your feed, engage in comment threads, complain about how bad your company sucks, and/or rave about fantastic customer service. It's all good.

True, leveraging digital assets and hot social channels for long-term SEM benefit has now become SEO 101. However your boss or client may need to be convinced that investing in another layer of content management system (CMS), content, and conversational networking WILL in fact yield measurable financial results soon. There is no better way than to set and achieve short term goals for immediate social media cash flow, to get folks excited about the long-term.

Here's a few ways to get hands plenty dirty and flow cash in the first quarter of your initial social media forays:


  1. Social PPC starts with Facebook if your demographic includes 14-26 year olds. Make no mistake; savvy clients are making millions of dollars in the space. Drill down into the Facebook social graph and you'll find fascinating PPC categories (aimClear has charted about 10,000 preset interest-categories on the USA Facebook PPC social graph.)

    Anything in the pop culture, sports, music, education categories fly really well. Software, games, kissy, and in some cases even an emerging young corporate mindset can work. FB is noisy, applications are really annoying, and sometimes carefully crafted PPC works very sweetly amongst the clutter. Make it go Ka CHING$$$ the first day with landing pages segmented by interest categories (Buzz Pockets) rather than keywords.


  2. Other communities have different gateways to insert paid advertising.  StumbleUpon, Digg, MySpace, and LinkedIn have advertising options. Whatever the community there is nearly always some paid method to insert advertising by way of a the site's own and/or major ad platform partners like Google, MSN and/or Yahoo. Some communities use multiple ad platforms, both internal and third party.

  3. Open a door with outbound linking for your boss or client to make a sale right away    . You'll find an abundance of blogging-tips in the SEM trade pubs regarding the incredible value of outbound linking as a PR mechanism. At base, link out to bloggers and corporate sites to benefit your clients and customers. Any marketing department quality enough to warrant your outbound link will soon discover that you did it. Identify 30 authority-writers in your product or service's space (who don't directly compete) and ping them with an outbound link on compelling anchor text.

    After linking out to them in properly published content, have your VP send an email to alert your target site's VP to the link. Tell your sales department that you've "made a new friend." Suggest they invite the friend out for gruyere and Fume Blanch. This tactic is a more aggressive version of linkbaiting and can work really well. A) The social media department softens the target up. B) The sales staff at corporate follows. Case in point, here I invite distinguished CopyBlogger Brian to the table @ SEW Blog. He'll hear about it in a daily alert. "Hello there" Brian Clark! Use this technique and make a goal of directly associating a SINGLE sale in the first 60 days from which the conversion can be directly attributed at least in part to a social media tactic.

  4. Increase conversion on traditional (AdWords/Panama/AdCenter) PPC landing pages by mashing in headlines from feeds of corporate or customer activities. In other words, take the top 3 headlines each from the corporate media and community relations feeds and display them just above or below the conversion goal mechanism you're trying to get users to bite on. aimClear's data shows that when PPC landing pages display mashed-in headlines radiating from true community activity, conversion rises in a measurable way. Ka CHING$$$ again!

    BTW, yes it's certainly OK to moderate what excerpted content is allowed to bubble into PPC landing pages, or any pages for that matter. If you've not incited much user generated content yet, prime the pump by originating the mashed-in feed content as "push PR" from a department of your company I.E. like customer support and relations. There's nearly always good recurrent content available to source somewhere which will prove interesting to potential clients.


Money Talks, BS Walks
Methods to immediately quantify the value of investment in social media are limited only by the creativity of the SEM team. With social PPC and other paid SMO, financial objectives are immediately attainable. If cash matters and you're used to PPC, the first questions to ask of any potential social value are "what are these folks chattering about" and "What Ad Platforms insert ads into the SMO stream?"

Outbound linking targeted to savvy customers (who monitor their reputation) can be a terrific door-opener. Partner with your sales department and upper level executives to maximize the "overture of friendship" embodied in giving a high quality outbound link.

After priming community activity within your own site's data flow, mash-in community feed content to traditional PPC landing pages and watch how the authentic nature of the content spurs conversion. Show your boss or client the cash-money early in the game in order to achieve buy-in for long term link, traffic, and community building CMS and content building investments.

Posted by Marty Weintraub at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Microsoft Tries to Compete with OpenSocial

Microsoft, in an clear attempt to compete with Google's OpenSocial, has announced a partnership to create data portability across 5 social networking sites. Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn are all part of the arrangement, which will "exchange functionally-similar Contacts APIs." Microsoft says the move will allow them to create a safe, secure two-way method for users of the sites to move their relationships among the respective services.

Microsoft is including Windows Live Messenger in the mix. Invite2messenger.net was developed to help users invite their friends from the five social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list, if they have one.

What's unclear is what Microsoft would do with Yahoo if the proposed acquisition takes place. Earlier today, it was announced that Yahoo has joined Google's OpenSocial. And AOL's Bebo is now part of Microsoft's data portability network, which should fan the flames of some analysts' commentary that Microsoft should buy AOL instead. The soap opera continues.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:37 AM | Permalink

Google, Yahoo & MySpace Team Up for OpenSocial

OpenSocialYahoo, MySpace and Google have pledged their support to open standards for social media development and data by joining together to form the OpenSocial Foundation. The group will ensure that OpenSocial continues as an open, community-governed specification.

OpenSocial is a specification, launched by Google last year, that defines a common API for social applications across multiple Web sites. It has implications for search marketers and application developers, since it will speed up the development of cross-platform applications. It could also force the hand of non-members, such as Microsoft and Facebook.

Using JavaScript and HTML, developers can create applications with OpenSocial that access features in a social network, like friends and update feeds. By using a common API, developers can build one application that will work across multiple social platforms, extending the reach of their applications and making it easier to add more functionality for users.

The formation of the foundation is not entirely altruistic. By uniting the interests of three of the largest Web entities, the group will have a strong voice in the development of future standards and specifications.

According to Yahoo, "The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:35 AM | Permalink

Google's New Wifi Push Will Drive Mobile Search

There's unused "white space" lying between the regulated TV signals and Google has big plans for them. In new lobbying effort, Google is asking the FCC to auction the unused airwaves. The search giant hopes to use any airwaves it wins to establish faster internet access that has a wider reach.

Expanding Wifi will have major implications for mobile search. If the FCC goes along with the request, and if Google wins airwaves, then devices supporting the technology will be out as early as next year. Should all of this happen, get ready for mobile monetization.

Google has some obstacles in convincing the FCC of its plan. The government agency has concerns about the use of this "white space" interrupting existing TV signals. But Google doesn't want to touch all of the signals, and recommends that some be left alone.

The other FCC concern has to do with the devices. Microsoft had an embarrassing flop when its prototype broke during FCC testing. Google again, has done its homework, backing a Motorola plan that would require a device to receive permission from a local transmitter before using one of these wave lengths.

This effort comes less than a week after Verizon and AT&T were the big winners in the 700 megahertz spectrum auction. But Google didn't bear a complete loss. They were able to get a requirement for one part of the spectrum to open its network to any devices and internet services.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:27 AM | Permalink

Twitter: Welcome to my Google Nightmare

twitter.jpg

Twitter may give Google a run for its money. Twitter's one more way, though, that Google knows everything about you. Speak now, and Google listens.

That may not be good for business. Yours, not Google's.

In the past, IM conversations and text messages were private.

Now Twitter has made text messages public.

If you don't believe me, change your Google search preferences:

Go to Google.com - Preferences
SafeSearch Filtering
Do not filter my search results.
Save preferences.

Then do a site search (the Google "search-within-a-search" that now appears in a box below some Web sites) and search Twitter for your choice of inappropriate language, unfortunate insults, or bad behavior. Type in "site:twitter.com (fill in the blank)."

Yahoo's striving to make search more resemble the Semantic Web. Google's indexing it. Either way, Twitter's the Romper Room of chat rooms -- preschool with money. That's the subject of this week's SearchEngine WarGames.

Read now - or forever pay your online reputation management consultant.


Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:47 AM | Permalink

March 24, 2008

Search Headlines & Links: March 24, 2008

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 5:25 PM | Permalink

Stupid SEO Spammers

Generally, I like to write about what to do in SEO. Today, I want to write about what not to do.

Lesson #1: Don’t spam people with your SEO services.
Lesson #2: Definitely don’t spam people who write for SEW and have close relations with spam blacklist owners about your SEO services.

This morning I got an email (my tenth) from a company that hadn’t read my rules: National Positions, an “SEO” firm out of California, promising me “five times the RELEVANT traffic at a substantially reduced cost.” The site, which I’ve linked to above using a 302 redirect so as not to give out any of my link juice, said they could place my “website on top of the Natural Listings on Google, Yahoo and MSN” using their “proprietary techniques” and “valuable closely held trade secrets,” without using “link farms or black hat methods.” And they charge “less than half of what other companies charge!” Awesome.

So I checked out their site, and their SEO service includes: nplogo.jpgKeyword Market Intelligence (umm…keyword research), Meta-Data Optimization (sweet), Title Optimization and a Best Practices Doc. Considering most companies give away most of that info for free, their prices must be excellent. Their “proprietary trade secrets” don’t seem to include, as far as I can tell, any blackhat techniques, so there is no need to worry about National Positions being the next Traffic Power (who cold-called me back in the day), but it’s still a rip-off. They’re charging people who know nothing about search to do nothing about search for them. And they’re advertising through pure spam methods; they contacted me via an email posted on my site that I have never used to sign up for anything.

The email came from npseocompany.org, which I already submitted to URIBL and SURBL, the major spam blacklists. Check your inbox, and report the email if you get it too.

One of the latest emails claimed that “Our services and proven strategies are all ethical.” Perhaps no one bothered to tell them SPAM is unethical—and illegal. I’ve received 10 emails from them so far, without ever opting in. According to the law, any company that "harvest[s] email addresses from Web sites or Web services…for the purpose of sending email,” as National Positions did to me, is liable for a fine up to $11,000. I opted out after the first email I received, and I continue to receive emails from them—some from Gmail accounts! The law gives 10 days to honor an opt-out, and prohibits “another entity send[ing] email on your behalf to that address.” It's been more than 30 days; that’s another $11,000.

I’m going to do all I can to make sure they get hit with those penalties—and I urge you to help me out if you get spammed too. Look out SEO Spammers—you pissed off the wrong group.

Posted by Eli Feldblum at 4:48 PM | Permalink

Lifetips Escalator Pitch, SES NY 2008

Byron White, the president and founder of LifeTips, helped us launch a new feature at SES NY 2008: The Escalator Pitch. The brainchild of Kevin Heisler, the Escalator Pitch is like an elevator pitch – except the escalators at the Hilton New York moved much faster than the elevators.


Lifetips Escalator Pitch, SES NY 2008

Byron White is the president and founder of LifeTips.com. He is an active speaker at various Search Marketing conferences and co-hosts the weekly LifeTips radio show on WebMasterRadio.FM every Wednesday at 5 PM EST. Byron’s entrepreneurial success has been well documented in Inc. magazine, Adweek, The Boston Globe, The Boston Business Journal, Portfolio Magazine and numerous other publications.

Find out everything you need to know about LifeTips, a content design and development company with more than 500 freelancers, in about 30 seconds.

You can find other Escalator Pitches from SES NY 2008 on the Search Engine Strategies conference and expo channel on YouTube.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:58 PM | Permalink

Matt McGowan in Times Square, Day 1 SES NY 2008

John Connor Mulligan of SEO-PR interviewed Matt McGowan, the Global Vice President of Marketing at Incisive Media, on the first day of SES NY 2008 – which happened to fall on Saint Patrick's Day.

The interview was conducted at Times Square, where you could see banners promoting the Search Engine Strategies conference. Matt discussed attendance at the event and some of the featured sessions – especially the social search track – that were developed by Kevin Ryan (another son of Ireland) for this show.


Matt McGowan in Times Square, Day 1 SES NY 2008

Matt McGowan oversees all marketing activities for the ClickZ Network and Search Engine Watch in addition to their respective trade show series, ClickZ Specifics and Search Engine Strategies.

There are plenty more videos from SES NY and London on the SES Conference & Expo channel on YouTube.

For full coverage of last week's Search Engine Strategies conference, check out SES NY 2008: Day 1 Coverage Roundup, SES NY 2008: Day 2 Coverage Roundup, SES NY 2008: Day 3 Coverage Roundup, and SES NY 2008: Day 4 Coverage Roundup on the Search Engine Strategies Blog.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:31 PM | Permalink

Google News Unveils Two Updates to Comments Feature

Google has just made SEO-PR (that's Public Relations, not PageRank) harder and easier at the same time! Two updates have been made to the Comments feature in Google News. Comments allows people in the news to, well, comment on stories about them or their company.

Comments have to be verified by Google, which is good since we can only imagine how this service could be abused. To make that process easier, there is now a contact form in case you find yourself in the midst of your 15 minutes of fame.

Also, there is now a link to all Google Comments in the main Google News page. Once on the page featuring all of the comments, you can search the comments as long as you put your keyword with "source:google_news." You can subscribe to an RSS feed of those specific results or create a Google Alert for them.

An SEO's job is never done, and these updates to Google News Comments has made sure of it! Universal search made online reputation management an ever more important task. At least with these updates, Google News offers users an outlet for telling the flip side of the story.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:24 PM | Permalink

New Google Mobile Search Feature Gives Your Thumbs a Rest

Do you dream of searching Google for local information with your mobile phone without having to use your thumbs? Soon, you may be in luck. It seems that Google is working on such a feature.

A new and curious listing in their robots.txt file prevents spiders from indexing http://www.google.com/m/lcb. Go to the site, type in a city, and you can see the top searches for that town as well as browse categories. The page won't be winning any juried art competitions anytime soon. And the results would be far more relevant if Google took into consideration your exact location, which always brings cheers and jeers depending on how freaked out you get about privacy issues.

So far, this is a bit of a slow way of doing local search, as it requires so much effort on the part of the searcher. But hey, you could just call 1-800-GOOG-411 instead.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:29 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Cloud Computing with 4th Largest Supercomputer in World

internet%20gods.jpg

Yahoo announced an agreement today with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) to support cloud computing research. At Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York last week, Yahoo Chief Scientist Andrew Tomkins previewed the future of search in his keynote address. (For a video of his keynote click here soon.) No doubt cloud computing will one day make search engine innovations possible that we can only dream of today.

CRL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd., a Mumbai, India-based industrial conglomerate, will lend one of the world's top five supercomputers to Yahoo for joint research. The CRL supercomptuter has "substantially more processors than any supercomputer currently available," according to Yahoo.

The first Data-Intensive Computing Symposium held at Yahoo's campus this week will bring together leading industry and academic experts from all aspects of data-intensive distributed computing.

The symposium is part of a larger effort to explore opportunities for research and application of large-scale computing to benefit applications ranging from machine translation to genomic medicine.

So who in the world are CRL and Tata?

Tata Sons Limited--founded in 1868--could be the poster boy for The Big Switch, a brilliant book by SES keynote speaker, thought leader, and Mike Arrington BFF Nick Carr on the transformation of corporations and computing leading up to the Age of the Internet and beyond Google.


Tata Sons Limited has reinvented itself to keep pace with global changes in technology. The privately-held company, founded in 1868, provides voice and data-based business outsourcing services through one of its subsidiaries.

Tata, through its subsidiaries, provides solutions for projects in water supply and wastewater, industry, power, and chemicals; identification of land, project conceptualization, designing, construction, marketing, and management of residential and commercial complexes; financial consultancy services, financial planning, investment banking and strategy consulting services.

The company also engages in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas.

Tata companies include Tata Chemicals, Indian Hotels, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Tea, TACO, Tata Technologies, Titan Industries, and Tata Communications.

That's a lot of computing power to put in the clouds. The Yahoo/CRL effort promises to leverage CRL's expertise in high performance computing and Yahoo's technical leadership in the Apache Software Foundation's Hadoop, an open source distributed computing project. The benefit: enables scientists to perform data-intensive computing research on a 14,400 processor supercomputer.

The first ever Hadoop Summit (sponsored by Yahoo! and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), funded by the National Science Foundation), brings together Hadoop developer and user communities to discuss current projects and future directions of the cloud computing environment.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:15 AM | Permalink

Is Twitter the New Google Alternative?

When searchers can't find something on Google, they might turn to another search engine like Yahoo, Windows Live or Ask. Or they might turn to one of the growing answers sites.

But lately, more and more people are turning to Twitter.

Yes, Twitter.

Brian Clark, author of the popular Copyblogger.com, turned to Twitter when searching for software recently. "I'd been looking for a photo editor, and Google wasn't really giving me what I need. [I'm] not sure any other search engine would have either."

Clark was looking for was direction on which product to choose. "What I needed was a personal recommendation, either from someone I knew and trusted, or by consensus from multiple people."

He's not alone. Lisa Creech Bledsoe, director at Calvert Creative, a social media consulting firm, has been using Twitter for both business and personal use. She's finding that Twitter offers her something that the search engines can't: human interaction.

"Because I deliberately cultivated a Twitter community of my industry peers, I knew they could give me the answer quickly. I can also 'refine' my 'search' on Twitter because I'm talking to actual people, as opposed to posing questions to an algorithm," said Bledsoe

Human feedback is what Wendy Piersall needed recently when launching the process of rebranding her site, eMoms at Home. Her reader base had expanded beyond moms, and she wanted her site to reflect that.

"I just needed real input from real people, which obviously Google can't provide like that," said Piersall. "It was more important to determine what our readers thought of this word -- that's when I turned to Twitter."

Twitter has certainly not replaced Google. Instead, Piersall finds that the two complement each other. When Piersall was looking for a new word that reaches her audience, she needed to research what was already out there. "I certainly first Googled it to determine how [a] word is already being used by other companies/sites."

Lisa Creech Bledsoe shares that sentiment. "Searching for the right information isn't necessarily an 'either/or' situation (either I use either Google or Twitter), it's sometimes a 'both/and.'"

But where are Yahoo, MSN, AOL or Ask in this discussion? A recent comScore report showed that Google has increased its dominance over the search landscape. And that is reflected in Bledsoe's search behavior. "I use Twitter for search and for business reasons all the time now, and I go to all four major search engines when I'm doing research for my clients, but interestingly, I rarely use Yahoo, MSN, or Ask.com for personal use."

Some of the major search engines are expected to begin adding more social media elements to their sites. Until then, Twitter and other social sites, may well be on their way to being the Google alternative.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:38 AM | Permalink