SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 3, 2010

Posted by Barry Schwartz | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Wednesday 3 February 2010 4:50 pm

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Report: Digital Marketing Budgets To Increase In 2010

    Econsultancy and ExactTarget released a new report today that says digital marketing will account for 24% of overall marketing spend this year, and 28% of firms are shifting at least some of their overall marketing budgets from traditional to digital channels. The research was based on a survey of more than 1,000 companies around the world, [...]

  • Third Annual Doodle 4 Google Contest

    Google announced their third annual Doodle 4 Google contest today. In this year’s contest, the competition is around the theme, “If Could Do Anything, I Would…” The prizes include, the logo being features on Google.com on May 27, 2010, plus receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their [...]

  • Do Search Engines (Google) “Harm Minority Owned Businesses”?

    Yesterday WatchdogWatch.org, which monitors NGOs (”watchdogs”) found and blogged about a filing with the FCC in the larger context of its proceedings on net neutrality. The filing is by an organization representing minority owned media and business. The issue raised is whether the concept of “net neutrality” should be expanded to include search engines and [...]

  • Google Logo For Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post

    If you visit Google.com today, you will see a special doodle, aka logo, with a boy and a girl sitting on a bench together. The painting was one of Norman Rockwell’s most famous, which was on the front cover of the Saturday Evening Post on April 24, 1926. It was known as the [...]

  • Organic Search Strategies For Driving Traffic To Channel Partners

    B2B brands are often reliant on channel partners to sell products and services to end users. And while manufacturers and others offer traditional co-branding marketing tools, they often fail miserably at driving traffic to distributors, dealers, and other channel partners through B2B search marketing. Optimized channel partner landing pages, bulk uploads of locations to Google [...]

  • Shake Up In-House SEO By Adding Social Media To The Mix

    Mixing Social Media into your daily in-house SEO routine is not the easiest thing to do, nor is it simple to merely add it to one of your strategies. You already have enough on your mind to stress and worry about with regard to SEO, adding Social Media into the mix could make it a [...]

  • Bruce Clay’s Advanced SEO SMX West Dream Agenda

    Experienced SEOs understand the need for keeping up on changes in the constantly evolving search space. That’s why I’m so passionate about continuing SEO education and training. The upcoming SMX West conference taking place March 2-5 in Santa Clara, CA, is one such opportunity I recommend to fellow advanced-level SEOs. The advanced-level content that will be [...]

  • He Calls Google A Vampire, But Mark Cuban’s Mahalo Is Doing The Sucking

    Yesterday, Mark Cuban warned media owners in a keynote speech that Google is a vampire trying to suck them dry, giving them nothing back and daring owners to block it. This is the same Mark Cuban who is an investor in Mahalo, which touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views. [...]

  • Using Affiliates To Protect Your Brand With Paid Search

    If brand advertising using paid search is hotly competitive for you, your affiliates to help you win in the market. To determine if this strategy is right for you, evaluate the competitive landscape on your brand terms. A quick test: Do any of these statements apply to you?

    There are more than 3 advertisers [...]

  • SEMPO Invites Search Marketers To Take Its Annual Industry Survey

    SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, has launched its sixth annual “State of Search Engine Marketing” survey. Search marketing professionals — either in-house or at an agency — are welcome to participate, and you don’t need to be a SEMPO member. The study will project planned spending across the industry for search, advertising, and [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 2, 2010

Posted by Barry Schwartz | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Tuesday 2 February 2010 3:59 pm

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • “Inkbait”: A Case Study In Linkability

    In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), the tactic known as “linkbait” is one of the few link building tactics the search engines embrace, encourage and algorithmically reward. The reason for this is simple, linkbait generates editorial links which the search engines love. Knowing this and understanding the influence of universal search, the bounty placed on paid [...]

  • Why You Shouldn’t Trust Feeds For Social Updates

    Social Media is still a fresh concept for many companies and the resources allocated to these efforts are usually a slim as possible. However, cutting corners to save time could end up hurting you and your accounts down the road. One of the biggest time-saving items that can cause disunity and confusion when speaking to [...]

  • Katy Perry: I Googled Myself & I Liked It

    How did singer Katy Perry discover that Russell Brand was going to propose to her? Turns out that Perry googles herself on a regular basis and found out Brand had purchased a ring. Perry explained to reporters as she walked down the red carpet to the Grammys this week that she uses Google Alerts to track [...]

  • Does CityGrid From Citysearch “Answer” The Local SEO Problem?

    At one time local startups could reliably count on Google organic traffic to help build their own traffic and brands. Indeed, this is how Yelp gained visibility in its early days. And larger publishers, such as yellow pages sites, have relied heavily on SEO, as well, to drive traffic to their advertisers. However, recently that’s [...]

  • Google Gears Comes To AdWords: Browser Local Storage

    Tim Cohn reported that he was given a new option yesterday, after logging into his AdWords account. The new feature utilizes Google Gears, a browser plugin that allows you to download web-based data to your local hard drive, so you can work offline. The feature is named Browser Local Storage and it basically [...]

  • Google News Allows You To “Star” News Stories

    Google News has added the ability to allow users to “star” news stories. When a user stars a story (or technically, a cluster of stories), it:

    Lets Google know that you’re interested in that subject. Alerts you to significant updates by putting the headline in bold, so you can get more information. Allows you to follow your [...]

  • What Is A Link Worth? Part 1: Valuing PageRank

    This posting is the first in an occasional series that will attempt to quantify the value of links – in this case, by measuring the value of links in terms of other links PageRank (i.e. how many PR4 links is a PR5 link worth). A later posting will cover market pricing of links with statistics from the various paid link markets, and other postings will cover what links are worth in terms of effort and resulting traffic. By the end of this series, a complete model for valuing linking activities and determining their ROI should then be possible.

  • Why Coming In Second Can Be A Good Thing

    Sometimes being European can be very frustrating. Let me rephrase that: when it comes to internet, tech and search, being a European is very, very frustrating. Why? Because Europe always comes in second. Cool new things like Google’s Nexus phone, the iPad or even Bing are invariably launched in the US and Europeans have to [...]

  • Google Apps May Get Its Own App Store

    It’s no secret that what really sets the iPhone apart from other smartphones is its App Store. Google appears to be betting that an app store will help set Google Apps apart from Microsoft’s office and business software. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google might announce the Apps app store as soon as next month. [...]

  • The Latest On Google News Sitemaps

    Back in November 2009, Google News announced they were “in the midst of an exciting transition period” that included a change to the News Sitemap Protocol. News publishers have through April 2010 to modify their News Sitemap to accommodate the new format. What’s so exciting and transitional? I asked Google, thinking that they were changing [...]

  • Google New Local Ad Category Invades The “7 Pack”

    It doesn’t in any way affect a local business ranking in the so-called “7 pack” or on the subsequent Google Maps page. However Google is introducing a new local business ad (”enhanced listings“) that allows a business to stand out with an “enhanced” presence on the map or in the map-related listings on the SERP. [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 1, 2010

Posted by Barry Schwartz | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Monday 1 February 2010 4:07 pm

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • SEOmoz Leaves The Consulting Business To Focus On Software

    SEOmoz, the well-known, Seattle-based SEO agency, is getting out of the agency business. In a blog post today, CEO Rand Fishkin says the company will focus instead on SEO-related software and tools. SEOmoz recently launched Open Site Explorer and has offered a variety of SEO tools for several years now. SEOmoz also says it’s strengthening the [...]

  • AP & Google Reach A Deal – Sort Of

    Google and the Associated Press have reached an agreement allowing Google to continue using AP content. But whether this is a long-term agreement replacing the one that expired last month is unclear. And despite the agreement, AP stories won’t be hosted by Google News any time soon, it seems. Yahoo’s also struck a new deal [...]

  • Report: Google To Bring More “Transparency” To AdSense Revenue Sharing

    BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis was part of a “private meeting” in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum with Google CEO Eric Shmidt and a handful of other top Google execs. Jarvis reports that Google sales boss Nikesh Arora said that Google “would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in Adsense” (this is likely a [...]

  • US Appeals Court Allows Google Street View Trespass Lawsuit To Continue

    A couple called “Boring” (yes, that’s their surname) sued Google in early 2008 for taking pictures of its suburban Pennsylvania home. The claim was their house was on a clearly marked private road (“Private Road, No Trespassing”) and Google’s Street View mobile trespassed by entering and taking the images of their home. There was also [...]

  • 2000 In Review: AdWords Launches; Yahoo Partners With Google; GoTo Syndicates

    This article is part of a series, a review of the 2000 decade and search developments. Below, major events from the year 2000 in consumer search. For the complete series, see the introduction, The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009. Google Launches AdWords To me, the big story of 2000 was Google’s launch of AdWords. [...]

  • Can Google Kill Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6?

    On Friday afternoon, Google announced they will be discontinuing their support for “very old browsers.” They said, they will stop supporting Internet Explorer 6, commonly referred to as IE6, on many of their applications. Starting on March 1st, Google Docs and Google Sites will no longer be officially supported on IE6. Google [...]

  • The Google Decade: Search In Review, 2000 To 2009

    The 2000s were notable as the first full decade of consumer search. The first decade ever where you could try to sum up what happened in search, as a consumer product. And what happened, in a word, was Google. In the 1990s, Google barely existed. If search were a religion, it was polytheistic. There were a [...]

  • Six Odd Tactics For Getting Ads Into Google Maps

    As usage of Google Maps grows, marketers are increasingly drawn to the promotional potential found there, and some innovative ways of insinuating ads into the interface have evolved. Here’s a breakdown of some of the strangest tactics that have been dreamed-up for getting messages in front of Maps users.

  • Broad Match + Negative Keywords = A Profitable Long Tail

    It’s common to hear advice that you should use long tail keywords and that you should be careful when using broad match. After all, broad match keywords do not convert higher than either phrase or exact match. The problem is that often these two pieces of advice can be contradictory. If you start using keyword phrases with [...]

  • Overcoming The SEO Challenges Of Huge Online Commerce Sites

    Ecommerce sites featuring product catalogs present interesting search engine optimization challenges. Typically, these sites will carry large volumes of products, organized into various groupings. Let’s take a look at a snippet of the Zappos home page as an example.:

    Notice in the left menu the neat categorization of the shoes category of products on [...]

  • Apple CEO: Google Wants To “Kill The iPhone”

    According to a hearsay report in Wired, Apple CEO Steve Jobs allegedly said the following at an internal town hall meeting for Apple employees coinciding with the launch of the iPad: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t [...]

  • Irony: You Need A Map To Find Google Street View On The iPhone

    We came to a strange realization on Friday at SEL headquarters: Google Street View is terribly unintuitive on the iPhone. As Danny Sullivan suggested, you practically need a map to find it. For those of you with an iPhone or iPod Touch who know how to use Street View already, move along — there’s nothing [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 29, 2010

Posted by Matt McGee | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Friday 29 January 2010 4:23 pm

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Good Bye Winter, Hello Santa Clara. PPC Marketer’s Dream Agenda

    I suppose the next best thing to dreaming about leaving the cold New Hampshire winter is to actually do it! Can’t think of a better way to toss off winter blahs than with a few days at SMX West. [...]

  • Yelp Ratings Appear In Google AdWords

    I received a screenshot in email of an AdWords ad for a San Diego auto repair shop that featured Yelp ratings (and a link to the Yelp review) in the AdWords copy. Here’s a screen of the ad: [...]

  • Microsoft Earnings Beat Estimates Online Services Post Loss, More On Bing And The iPhone

    Microsoft had a “blow out” quarter in which it saw $19.02 billion in revenue, a 14 percent increase from $16.63 billion in the same fiscal quarter a year ago. This was largely about the success of PC OS Windows 7. That’s the story: people like it and are buying PCs. Everything else is a bit [...]

  • Goojje, A Google China Knockoff

    The Chosun Ilbo reports a new Google China has launched, a knockoff, named Goojje.com. It was made in response to Google saying they may have to shut down their Google.cn search engine a few weeks back. It is a basic search engine, not affiliated with Google in anyway. It does however play on the [...]

  • Google Mobile Image Search Gets Popular Images

    The Google Mobile Blog announced that Google has added to their images home page on Android, iPhone, Palm and other smart phone devices a new user interface. When you visit Google Images on those devices, you now see “popular images” and a link to browse more popular images. Here is the home page: [...]

  • Click To Conversion Time (Part I): What This Metric Can Tell You About Your Clientele

    An often-overlooked metric is the time taken from the first click on an ad to the final conversion of the keyword. That is, the total conversion time for a keyword in a given campaign. While this metric may seem relatively unimportant to ROI (for instance), it can help you understand your clients and also help [...]

  • The Algorithm Chasers

    When the Fort Hood, Texas shooting rampage hit the news, a small staff of news folks were trying to determine which words to use for their online news stories on the topic. The goal was to get Google News to find and rank their article higher than their competition. They struggled with the difference of the [...]

  • Google’s Proposal For Crawling AJAX May Be Live

    In October 2009, Google proposed a new standard for implementing AJAX on web sites that would help search engines extract the content. Now, there’s evidence this proposal is either live or is about to be. Read on for more details on the proposal, how it works, and why it might be past the proposal stage. The [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 28, 2010

Posted by Matt McGee | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Thursday 28 January 2010 4:18 pm
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
  • Ballmer Blogs His Thoughts On Google, China Both current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and former CEO Bill Gates have recently spoken out critically about Google’s stance on doing business in China. (See my previous posts, Ballmer Critical Of Google’s China Decision and Like Ballmer, Bill Gates Dings Google On China.) Now, Ballmer is putting his thoughts in writing … well, electronic writing [...]
  • Bing Debuts In-Depth Stock Pages Bing has announced a new “Stocks and Funds page” that offers in-depth information for users following or doing research related to stocks and finances. A sample page looks like this one for Apple: [...]
  • Google Formally Introduces “Clickable Phone Numbers” In Mobile Search Ads Today Google is formally launching functionality that enables a “clickable local phone number” to appear in mobile ads. In other words a phone number appears as part of the ad copy and consumer-users can simply tap the number to initiate a call (see image below). It’s a call for the price of a click on [...]
  • SMX West Early Bird Expiring Saturday – Register Now! The Early Bird Rate for Search Marketing Expo – SMX West expires in just two days (Saturday, Jan. 30) Register now and get 3 days of exception content and invaluable industry connections for only $1245. Join us in Santa Clara, CA March 2-4 for the most compelling search marketing conference on the West coast. Our [...]
  • 8 Opportunities To Optimize Content Beyond Local Listings Not to beat a dead horse, but as I said in my last column, I think 2009 was truly a watershed year for local search. Between Google’s introduction of the generic 10-pack, its beta test of local listing ads, dramatic improvements to Bing’s Local Listing Center, and numerous partnerships throughout the industry— all of these [...]
  • Google Updates Google Book Search After Apple iPad Launch Less than 24 hours after Apple announces the Apple iPad, Google announces improvements to the Google Books home page. The improvements include: [...]
  • 7 Do’s & Don’ts For Working With A Technical SEO During A Redesign In the past few months, I’ve been the technical SEO consultant to 6 companies who have been in the process of redesigning their websites. The companies range in size from a one-person show to a world-reknowned Boston hospital, and everything in between. All of the companies were smart enough to know they needed expert SEO [...]
  • Survey: Only 42% Of Americans Have Googled Themselves Although the phrase “Google yourself” has become part of our culture, a new survey suggests that less than half of Americans have actually done it. The numbers come from a December survey commissioned by Microsoft on the subject of online reputations. The survey polled about 2,500 consumers and recruiting personnel in the US, UK, Germany and [...]
  • A Paid Search Glossary Before we really start diving into the specifics of managing a paid search account, it is important to cover some standard industry jargon. You may want to bookmark this post as a resource for any terms you may need to go back and reference. [...]
  • Google Maps’ Search Suggestions Get Personal Google has announced that it’s now personalizing search suggestions that appear on Google Maps. It’s an odd announcement to me, because I’m almost sure my maps search suggestions have been personalized for some time now. One thing that I haven’t seen before, though, is the explicit notice beneath the suggestions that things have been personalized. [...]
  • How To Improve .EDU Link Requests Using Academic Metaphors As a web marketer who is requesting high-quality links from the gatekeepers of academic sites, understanding the lingo and professional culture of the academic world can greatly improve your success rate. Academic environments can be a bit more formal and regulated than web or business world. When you get through to a blogger or .com [...]
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SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 27, 2010

Posted by Barry Schwartz | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Wednesday 27 January 2010 3:56 pm

From Search Engine Land:

  • Finally! Yahoo Search Weather Report : January 2010

    The Yahoo Search Blog dusts itself off to announce a search update happening right now. The last “weather report” Yahoo announced was in September 2009 – typically, Yahoo would announce these updates monthly. We actually expected this to be announced. I was tracking a WebmasterWorld thread where SEOs were noticing ranking changes at Yahoo [...]

  • Google Social Search Goes Live, Adds New Features

    Google has begun the rollout of its Social Search product, a way of seeing customized search results based upon the people in your social network. Social Search has been an opt-in Google Labs experiment since its debut in October, but will be available as a beta product in the “next few days” to all users [...]

  • Yahoo Gains “Default” Search Deal With Ubuntu

    One small search victory for Yahoo: a new default search deal with Ubuntu, the free Linux-based operating system. According to Ars Technica: Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, revealed today that it has established a revenue sharing agreement with Yahoo. As part of the deal, the Firefox Web browser that is shipped in [...]

  • AT&T Planning To Launch Yelp-Like Site Buzz.com

    Forbes covers AT&T’s forthcoming local recommendations site Buzz.com. It aims to be a place where people can get and share recommendations about local businesses. Despite my headline and that of the Forbes article it’s not going to be a reviews and social networking site like Yelp. Rather it may be more analogous to AlikeList or [...]

  • 6 Common Mistakes In B2B PPC Advertising

    B2B marketers often preach about how B2B marketing is unique, and that advertising to businesses is very different from consumer focused advertising. And while there is truth in that argument, B2B marketers should be wary that leaning on their “uniqueness” too heavily can adversely impact their PPC campaigns. Granted, there are a number of ways in [...]

  • The 2010 In-House SEM To-Do List

    While it may feel like 2010 is already whizzing by, now is a good time to take a step back and think about the big to-do list items for in-house search marketers this year. We’ve all got a list of million little search optimizations that need doing, but here are some larger tactics to think [...]

  • Conversion Optimization Is The New SEO

    Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. As we begin a new decade in search, we face a parallel truism: great search marketing is 1% about getting the click and 99% about what you do next. Starting here in 2010, conversion optimization is the new SEO. To be sure, SEO is still important [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 26, 2010

Posted by Barry Schwartz | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Tuesday 26 January 2010 4:01 pm

From Search Engine Land:

  • Yahoo’s Q4 2009 Revenues Down Only 4%, Search Ads Down 15% YoY

    Yahoo announced their fourth quarter 2009 earnings just minutes ago. They reported better than expected earnings, with a decline in revenue of only 4%, year over year. Most of that decline came from a 15% drop in search ad revenue from Q4 2008 compared to Q4 2009. But Yahoo’s search ad dollars [...]

  • Google Acting Like A Carrier, Being Treated Like One By The FCC

    Google, which to some eyes increasingly looks and acts like a VoIP/mobile carrier, is now effectively being treated like one by the US FCC. Today the regulatory body sent out requests for information to wireless carriers about the adequacy of their consumer disclosures associated with early termination penalties, which can be several hundred dollars in [...]

  • Is Celebrity Tweetvertising Worth Paying For?

    Last January, I wrote about finding The Value of a Facebook Fan, which effectively took the number of fans a brand has on Facebook, multiplied that by the average number of friends a Facebook user has to determine the number of impressions each brand would receive from each users network, and then applied an average [...]

  • 20 Metrics To Effectively Track Social Media Campaigns

    Before I actually go into the different types of metrics you can set up to prove social medias value, I want to state the obvious. You should not only have analytics on every page of your site, but also make sure you add it to all your viral marketing campaigns in order to track the [...]

  • Collecta Widget Brings Real-Time Search Results To Any Site

    Collecta has announced the availability of a new widget that allows any webmaster/blogger to show real-time search results on a web page. The widget builder is available now at widget.collecta.com, and includes several customization options including widget title, header background image, and even use of an external CSS file. It appears that the size of [...]

  • Disabling The Google Toolbar Doesn’t Stop Google From Tracking You

    Ben Edelman uncovered evidence that even if you disable the Google Toolbar, Google may still be tracking your web browsing behavior. Edelman documents how he disabled the Google Toolbar within the preference, then visited a web page and captured how Google was sending browsing data from the toolbar to Google’s servers. Edelman first [...]

  • Google Trying To Remain In China, Even If Search Engine Doesn’t

    Last week on Google’s Q4 earnings call Google CEO Eric Schmidt seemed to “walk back” some of Google’s prior strong statements about leaving China if it cannot operate in an unfiltered way there. In response to a financial analyst question he said the following: We have made a strong statement we wish to remain in China. [...]

  • Linking Food For Thought

    This week, I’m stepping away from my usual article format and instead, address several linking related questions and comments I haven’t seen discussed as much across the link building blog/twitter/feed o-sphere. I welcome your feedback, comments, opinions and answers. People will tell you that one of the better ways to spot link targets is to study [...]

  • Duplicate Content: The Biggest Challenge To Successful International SEO

    Duplication is the bane of projects eeeking international seo success. It catches them first, invisibly creeping up and throwing their results to the wind. Why does this happen to so many – what is it that tempts them into the duplication trap? And do modern methods work?

  • Like Ballmer, Bill Gates Dings Google On China

    Bill Gates doesn’t get the fuss everyone’s making over Google’s recent threat to stop censoring search results in China. “They’ve done nothing and gotten a lot of credit for it,” Gates said Monday during a visit at The New York Times. “What point are they making?” Mr. Gates asked. “Now, if Google ever chooses to [...]

  • No Feed, No Problem – Google Reader Now Tracks (Mostly) Any Website Change

    The Google Reader blog announced you can now track changes to any web page, even the ones without RSS feeds. How does this come in handy? Well, let’s say you want to track when Google changes their webmaster guidelines. All you do is copy the URL into Google Reader and click on [...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 25, 2010

Posted by Barry Schwartz | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Monday 25 January 2010 3:58 pm

From Search Engine Land:

  • Playing Games With Customers: Is Foursquare The Future Of Local Search?

    Congratulations! You are now the Mayor of Search Engine Land! If that sounds familiar you are one of the growing number of people using/playing Foursquare, a mobile app that uses the location of your mobile device to encourage users to “check in” wherever they might be in exchange for points and recognition like becoming the [...]

  • Five Quick Tips For Success On Google’s Content Network

    According to Google’s recent quarterly earnings report, the company earns about 34% of its revenue from AdSense, placing contextual ads on its content network partner websites. This proportion has stayed steady year over year. It certainly reflects overall growth, but some might be surprised at how conservative the pace is. One of the reasons for this [...]

  • One Week to Save on SMX West – Register Now!

    The Early Bird Rate for Search Marketing Expo – SMX West expires Saturday, January 30th. Save up to $350 on your All Access ticket by registering now! Here’s why:

    More than 150 of the world’s most knowledgeable speakers will present at SMX West. They’re selected based on ability AND willingness to share the tactics and strategies [...]

  • Twitter Testing Local Trends

    Lisa Barone has screen captures of Twitter testing a localized version of Twitter Trends. Twitter Trends shows you what Tweet topics are currently hot and trending on Twitter. The local trends version does all that but breaks it out by region, country and city. Here is one of the pictures from @LisaBarone:

    You can see [...]

  • Science Fiction Writer Le Guin Launches Petition Against Google Book Settlement As Opt-Out Deadline Looms

    Renowned science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin has launched a petition to “exempt” the US (US authors) from the terms of the Google Book Search Settlement. The text of the petition says that “Ireland, India, South Africa, and New Zealand (countries with active publication in English) protested the settlement and have been [...]

  • Dress Up Ask Jeeves In The UK

    Ask UK (uk.ask.com) has a new game where you can dress up the lovable Jeeves character. Just search for [want to dress up jeeves] at Ask UK and you will be presented the opportunity to place khakis on the famous butler. You can dress up Jeeves at uk.ask.com/dressupjeeves. UTalkMarketing.com reported “Gieves and Hawkes together with [...]

  • Factery Labs’ New Fact Engine: Just What Real-Time Search Needs

    Not a month goes by without someone launching a new real-time search engine; but after trying out most of them, there are few I use on a regular basis. Factery Labs is about to change that with today’s launch of its real-time fact engine at 1:00 pm ET. Where other real-time search engines focus on [...]

  • Enterprise SEM: Q&A With Zappos’ Darrin Shamo

    Zappos.com, the online retailer with legendary customer service, has been on a meteoric rise during the last few years. After achieving revenues of over $1 billion in 2008, Zappos was acquired by one of the biggest players on the web in late 2009: Amazon.com. Behind Zappos’s amazing customer service and great brand, lies a sophisticated [...]

  • Some SEO Advice For Bill Gates

    What do you get for Bill Gates, the richest person in the world? How about a little free SEO advice for his new blog? It could use some. Bill, I went looking for your blog today on Google. Sorry, like many people, I have a habit of using that search engine first. What did I find [...]

  • Satellite Images Of Haiti Earthquake From Google & Bing Maps

    Both Google Maps and Bing Maps offer ways to see the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti. Below, a look at how to see before and after images, taken by satellite. Plus, several 360-degree ground level videos you can view. 360-Degree On-The-Ground Video Immersive Media has released a number of 360-degree view videos of someone actually [...]

  • Ballmer Critical Of Google’s China Decision

    At a conference in Houston on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke critically of Google’s recent decision to stop censoring its search results in China. Paraphrasing some of Ballmer’s statements, Forbes says Ballmer called it an “irrational business decision” on Google’s part. Ballmer suggested that Google’s decision to no longer filter out internet searches objectionable to [...]

  • Google Founders To Sell 10 Million Shares Over Five Years

    According to an SEC filing late this afternoon, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin “each intend to sell approximately 5 million shares” — over a period of five years. This is not a reaction to any particular development in the market or perception of the outlook for Google; rather this is part of a [...]

  • The Pitfalls Of Budget-Constrained Bidding

    The downsides to overbidding on keywords are both plain and painful: low-quality traffic at a high cost-per-click (CPC) and a limited budget quickly blown away with little to show for it. But bidding too little, or just not properly accounting for budget constraints, also has consequences, some subtle and some more obvious. Here we will consider some lessons that will help you to avoid the pitfalls of budget-constrained bidding.

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 22, 2010

Posted by Matt McGee | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Friday 22 January 2010 4:05 pm

From Search Engine Land:

  • Google Adds More Answers & Info To Search Results

    Google has announced a pair of changes to its search results pages that make its search results pages more informational and give searchers information they’re looking for without having to click away from Google.com. [...]

  • comScore: US Has Most Searches; China Slowest Growth; Google Tops Worldwide In 2009

    Which countries generate the most searches? comScore has just published a look at this, and the US once again is ranked tops. China maintained its second place position but showed the lowest growth of any country in the top ten. Google remained the top search provider worldwide. And globally, searches grew overall by 46 percent. Here’s [...]

  • Search In Pictures: Google China, Yahoo Character & Google Pillows

    In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

  • Bing Maps Challenge: Try Silverlight Version, Maybe Win $100

    Microsoft wants people to download (or update Sliverlight) so they can use the new and improved Bing Maps. To create that incentive, as well as to get people to explore the new Bing Maps, Microsoft is offering chance to win a $100 gift card as part of the “Bing Maps Challenge.” [...]

  • Bing’s Stefan Weitz: Rethinking The Search Experience

    Way back when, in the dying weeks of 2009, I asked the question, “Where does search go from here?” It seems that everyone agrees we’ve barely scratched the potential that is web search, but what might that scratch reveal? What will our searching look like in two years? In five years, or even in ten [...]

  • Google’s Matt Cutts On 2010 & Looking Back At 2009

    Matt Cutts of Google posted two videos. One was a short video answering a question on where he thinks Google and search will be in 2010. The other was a long video, re-creating his presentation on the “state of the index” from his presentation given at PubCon in late 2009. Here are [...]

  • Know Where You Are…To See Where You’re Going

    I test a lot. Different ideas and techniques pour out of my brain; to be honest, some of them are utter crap. I learned the hard way not to take leaps without testing the takeoff and landing first. One step that seems to be overlooked when people are starting to test their own websites is developing [...]

  • Don’t Let Your Analytics Deceive

    If John F. Kennedy were an internet marketer, I think he would say, “Ask not what your marketing can do for your site. Ask what your site can do for your marketing.” Kennedy understood the idea of cause and effect in his original quote: that people make a nation effective, and not the [...]

  • Google 4th On Forbes’ Best Companies To Work For List

    Google has placed fourth in Forbes Magazine’s ranking of the Best Places to Work 2010. That’s the same place the company ranked in the 2009 list. In explaining “what makes it so great,” Forbes says: [...]

  • SPONSOR MESSAGE: US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009-2014 Predictions for SEM, Social, Mobile, Video and More!

    In this independent report, Shar VanBoskirk, Vice President at Forrester Research, explains the factors behind the decline in traditional marketing and shows the reasons why current marketing professionals are investing in interactive marketing efforts. It is predicted that by 2014 interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend.

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 21, 2010

Posted by Barry Schwartz | Search Feature News,SearchCap | Thursday 21 January 2010 4:13 pm
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
  • Google Beats Estimates With Very Strong Q4: $6.67 Billion Google posted a very strong Q4, given the recession, with $6.67 billion in revenues. This beats financial analyst general consensus estimates. Here are some top-level highlights from the earnings release: Revenues – Google reported revenues of $6.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 17% increase over fourth quarter 2008 revenues of $5.70 billion. Google [...]
  • Google’s Sergey Brin Writes About His Relief Mission Visit To Haiti Google co-founder Sergey Brin is back from a relief mission to Haiti and has written his impressions of the situation there. He writes about the relief effort (and even shares some suggestions for things that could be done differently) and the scene in Port-au-Prince, but says the people of Haiti are “the real heroes.” Despite tremendous [...]
  • PageRank Sculpting Leaves NoFollowed Tags Behind Six months ago, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that NoFollowed tags no longer work as a tool for sculpting PageRank and that he would not recommend PageRank sculpting in general. Despite the passage of time and much discussion in forums and on blogs, many website owners are still confused about the importance of optimizing how PageRank [...]
  • Things To Consider Before Starting Your Next Conversion Rate Optimization Project Five years ago, few people paid any attention to conversion rate optimization. Today, everyone is jumping on the conversion optimization bandwagon. I believe that there were two main factors that changed search marketers perceived value of conversion optimization: Google Website Optimizer. In October 2006 Google announced the release of its website testing tool, Google Website Optimizer. [...]
  • Another Person No One’s Heard Of Tries To Trademark SEO HuoMah Blog discovered that yet another person is trying to claim a trademark on the term SEO, search engine optimization. Clinton Cimring of a company called “Search Engine Partner” filed a trademark application with United States Patent and Trademark Office on January 5, 2009. The filing claims first use SEO as a trademark was [...]
  • Why Facebook PPC Is Crucial For Branding & How To Sell Your Boss On Christmas Eve, December 24th, Facebook garnered 7.56% of United States internet traffic market share, whereas Google had 7.54%. Subsequently on Christmas Day, December 25th, Facebook’s piece of pie ballooned to a whopping 7.81% while Google dropped a bit to 7.51%. The day after Christmas, December 26, Google regained its stature as most visited site [...]
  • In The SEO Game, It’s All About Strategies And Systems When it comes to SEO, folks tend to think of me as super-tactical (perhaps because, when presenting at conferences, I cram so many tips and tricks into my infamous 80 slide PowerPoints when I have only 10 minutes to present!) But in actuality, I’m really very strategic. My new title at Covario (now that Covario [...]
  • What’s For Dinner? Bing Mixes Recipes Into Search Results Bing is now giving special placement to recipes in response to some food-related searches: Bing pulls from a number of popular recipe websites (delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com.com, etc.) to bring you correlating recipes that you can sift through by holiday, meals, ratings, and my personal favorite, convenience (with a 10 month old at home, quick is key) [...]
  • How To Get Customers And Keep Them Coming Back Brand advocacy, reputation management, loyalty and reward programs are all the rage now, as consumers have unprecedented opportunity to broadcast their complaints as well as their satisfaction with businesses, specific purchases and customer service. What customers say is vitally important to the public perception of a business. While advocates and reputation managers may work to [...]
  • The YouTube Music Discovery Project YouTube has launched the YouTube Music Discovery Project. It is a new tool they are testing, which helps you search for music and create YouTube playlists based on that query. You basically enter an artist’s name into the search box, hit “Disco” and it then returns results which you can add to your [...]
  • Facebook To Cut Some Microsoft Ads paidContent.org is reporting Facebook and Microsoft are scaling back their ad relationship. Microsoft powered much of Facebook’s display ad network. Facebook is no longer using Microsoft for their international display ads but might also drop them in the U.S. as well. Back in 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, and made [...]
  • 44% Of Google News Readers Only Scan Headlines? Maybe Not! A new report saying that 44% of Google users fail to click from Google News to newspaper web sites got some buzz this week. However, after a closer look at the report, I don’t see it providing the damning evidence that Google really is a content vampire, as some news publishers have [...]
  • Bing As iPhone Default Search Engine Part Deux I expressed skepticism yesterday that Bing would become the default search engine on the iPhone. Rather, I speculated, it would be added as an option (as it should be) on the device. But CNBC has some additional information that asserts default search status on the iPhone is a real possibility for Bing. But take the [...]
  • A Brief History Of Paid Search Advertising If you’re just getting started with paid search, it’s helpful to know a bit of history of how pay-per-click advertising got started and why it has become such a major factor in the success of online marketers.
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