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Nov. 7, 2007 at 8:20am Eastern by Danny Sullivan
Search Month: October 2007 Search News, In Review
Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It's also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from October 2007, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics since our last monthly newsletter through today.
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Search Engine Land News
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Our Search Marketing Expo conference series continues on at a strong pace, with last month seeing events held in Denver on local and mobile search, New York on social media, and our first shows outside the US happened in Argentina, Chile, and Stockholm to great success. Phew!
We've got two more shows coming up this year, both next week. SMX Travel comes to Florida, while SMX London happens in England. The posts below give you more information about them:
- Sneak Preview: SMX Travel Coming To Orlando In November
- Travel & Hospitality Marketers: Last Call For SMX Travel In Orlando
- SMX London: A Sneak Preview
- Google's Mario Queiroz To Keynote SMX London
We hope to see many of our readers at the events above. In addition, we're hard at work on our first "big" three day show, coming to Silicon Valley, at Santa Clara Convention Center, next February 26-28. That will be SMX West, designed as a central gathering place and learning center for search marketers for all levels. It's not too late to pitch a session. More about that and the show in general (included our special pre-agenda pricing and quality guarantee) in the posts below:
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Top 10 Most Popular Stories: October 2007
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1) Mapping The Southern California Fires - I'm back home (my original home) in Southern California for vacation, and to welcome me back, the Southland is on fire. Ah, just like old times. As I was keeping up with the news, I came across some maps online from Google Earth, Google Maps, Virtual Earth, and elsewhere that I thought I'd share with others.
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2) Billboard Showdown: Google 411 Takes On Ask's Algorithm - I'm in the Bay Area this week, and driving down Lombard Street, I brought the car to a halt when I saw the two billboards above. Yes, that's one of the Goog411 billboards for Google Voice Search sitting on top of an Ask.com "The Algorithm" one. Sadly, there's doesn't seem to be room to squeeze in ones from Yahoo and Microsoft. Want to see them for yourself? Go down Lombard, just up from Gough. I've got another shot here, as well.
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3) Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google - More and more, I've been seeing people wondering if they've lost traffic on Google because they were detected to be selling paid links. However, Google's generally never penalized sites for link selling. If spotted, in most cases all Google would do is prevent links from a site or pages in a site from passing PageRank. Now that's changing. If you sell links, Google might indeed penalize your site plus drop the PageRank score that shows for it.
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4) Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links? - Seems like there is a PageRank update taking place now that seems to be impacting sites that sell links. Can't say that we were not warned about this. Danny Sullivan wrote "Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google" over two weeks ago, and now it appears many sites are getting hit with a drop in PageRank. Here is a list of some sites, including major publishers, who seem to have taken a hit overnight:
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5) Report: 7 Out Of 10 Americans Experience 'Search Engine Fatigue' - A recent report issued by Autobytel, based on findings from a poll of 1,001 US adults conducted by Kelton Research, examined "The State of Search" and how automobile shoppers interact with search engines in particular. Below I excerpt some of the general search findings from the report. The big takeaway is in the headline above: 7 out of 10 Americans experience what the report describes as “search engine fatigue.”
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6) Google Adds Sitelinks Control To Webmaster Tools & Much More - Google has informed us that today they are releasing a new update to Google Webmaster Central's tools. The new features include a way to manage your Google Sitelinks, more historical query statistics, an extension of sitemaps to support code search, an improved message center, and a warning that may help notify you of possible duplicate content problems.
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7) Did Dalai Lama Award Cause China To Redirect Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Search Traffic To Baidu? - Reports have been coming in that people trying to reach Google, Yahoo and Microsoft from within China or via Chinese ISPs are being redirected to Baidu. Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it's likely that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines. Back in 2002, when China was upset with Google, it similarly redirected traffic. From a Reuters article at that time:
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8) Google Logo Celebrates Sputnik 50th Anniversary - Fifty years ago today -- October 4, 1957 -- Sputnik became the world's first artificial satellite to go into orbit. Google is celebrating the 50th anniversary with the special logo above. Will other search engines do the same? So far, it's only Google among the majors.
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9) Social Media Marketing: The New SEO? - Fall is the time of year when we start to look at where search marketing is heading. Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future. To a certain extent, they are. Social media, and social networking in particular, create a back-and-forth conversation with your target audience, giving you the ability to virally market your website through the "buzz" that can be created. When something interesting, cool, or unique is being talked about in "all the right places," it can certainly provide a boost in website traffic.
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10) Google's Tips On How to Write a Good Meta Description - The Google Webmaster Central Blog described what makes for a good meta description versus what makes for a bad meta description. Meta descriptions are a special tag that you place within the source code of your html page. They can be used by search engines for ranking purposes as well as for being displayed within the search result pages.
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AOL: Business Issues
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AOL Confirms Quigo Acquisition, Integration Into 'Platform A' - AOL confirmed that it had entered into an agreement to acquire the company for an undisclosed amount, which various parties speculated was $300 million. See also:
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AOL: Maps & Mobile
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MapQuest Rebuilds 'From The Ground Up' - MapQuest has launched a new beta site, which represents a new and rearchitected site with a host of new features and capabilities. See also:
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AOL: Video
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Truveo Launches Big International Expansion - After relaunching this August as a video search engine and consumer destination, AOL's Truveo is aggressively expanding on a global basis. See also:
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Ask.com
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IAC To Split Up, Extends Google Ad Deal Worth $3.5+ Billion - Today is a big day for IAC, Ask.com's parent company. First they announce they are breaking the company into five publicly traded entities, and then they announce they have extended their search ad deal with Google. See also:
- Ask.com Helps IAC Earn 40% Increase In Q3 2007 Media Revenue
- Ask Goes For More TV Product Placement
- Ask Introduces New Maps & Directions For UK
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B2B
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B2B Search Tips: More On Writing Killer Ads - It seems so obvious, yet many B2B marketers don't focus on the most fundamental element of any successful search ad campaign—the copy. I've found that writing great ads comes down to five simple principles. See also:
- Search Marketing for the B2B Technical Buyer
- Lead Management: When Conversion Is Not Enough
- Lessons From Baseball: How To Discover & Track Your “Quality Starts”
- Why Mobile Search Is Irrelevant To B2B Marketing
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Business & Revenues
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Google Top Worldwide Search Engine; Baidu Beats Microsoft - comScore has released new figures looking at the most popular search engines worldwide. Google tops the list, with nearly five times as many searches as nearest competitor Yahoo. But the worldwide list does focus attention on some non-US based search players like Baidu and NHN, which owns Korea's Naver. It also shows Asia-Pacific as the region with the most searchers and searches happening. See also:
- Comparing Annual Ad Spending from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
- Searcharazzi Alert: Interwoven to Acquire Optimost
- Changes At Natural Language Search Company Powerset
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China
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Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Grilled By Congress On China, Offers Apology - Jerry Yang, Yahoo's CEO, and Michael Callahan, Yahoo's General Counsel, stood before Congress to give answers on the information the company provided to China that lead to the jailing of journalist Shi Tao imprisonment. Yang offered a personal apology to Tao's family today. See also:
- Congress May Penalize Tech Companies That Cooperate With 'Internet Restricting' Governments
- Did Dalai Lama Award Cause China To Redirect Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Search Traffic To Baidu?
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Facebook
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Facebook To IPO In 2008 (It'll Have To) - I see that Facebook is "years away" from going public, said founder Mark Zuckerberg last week. I also see Facebook will have more than 700 employees next year, in 2008. So, like Google and Microsoft, it'll be forced to IPO against its will sometime next year, if those employees all have options (as they likely will). See also:
- Live Search Almost Certainly Coming To Facebook
- Microsoft Makes $240 Million Investment In Facebook
- Facebook Raises $500 Million More
- Google Checkout Googler Benjamin Ling Checkouts to Facebook
- The New Drama: Google vs. Facebook
- OpenSocial: Led By Google, Social Networks Band To Take On Facebook
- Rumors of Impending Facebook Music
- Google News Launches Facebook Application
- Facebook Opens Application Pages to Indexing By Search Engines
- Facebook Tripartite Ad System Launched: Facebook Pages, Social Ads & Beacon
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Google: AdSense
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Google AdSense To Launch Code Free Ad Changes - The Inside AdSense blog announced that they will be releasing a new ad management solution to enable code-free ad changes. Currently, if you want to change your AdSense layout to a different color, format, channel, or whatever, after you make that change in the AdSense console, you need to copy and paste new AdSense code into your site. In the future, all you will need to do is make the change in the AdSense console and the changes will be automatically applied to your live ads. See also:
- FeedBurner Integrates Google AdSense Into Monetize Console
- Got "Google" In Your URL? Sorry, No AdSense For You
- Google Adds Validation Periods to Google Referral AdSense Ads
- Google AdSense For Video Goes Mainstream
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Google: AdWords
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Secrets Of Google Quality Score Revealed!!! (Not.) - The nice folks from Google were in for a visit a week or so ago. One of the topics on the day's agenda was Ad Quality. If you read extremely closely, much of what they presented in their briefing is also described at the AdWords help center (see What is a 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated?). They also presented some new angles and dispelled a few myths. Here are some of the key takeaways on Quality Score (herein abbreviated "QS"). See also:
- Google AdWords Adds More Detailed Quality Score Explanations
- Google Made 20 "Improvements" To AdWords In Q3 2007
- Judge Rejects Google's Motion To Dismiss American Airlines Suit
- Google AdWords Manager Defined Spend (MDS)
- Google AdWords Lets Advertisers Choose Date & Number Preferences
- The Mysteries of Ad Quality Revealed (Yet Again)
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Google: Apps
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Google Analytics Adds Site Search Reporting & Event Tracking; Urchin Software Also Updated - Google announced today at the eMetrics Summit in Washington, D.C. new features for Google Analytics, plus a much desired beta release of Urchin software. See also:
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Google: Business Issues
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Google: As Open As It Wants To Be (i.e., When It's Convenient) - In two weeks, we've had two "open" initiatives from Google: OpenSocial, to free social networking data from behind the Facebook walled garden and the Open Handset Alliance, to free cell phones from a myriad of complicated mobile OS platforms and carriers who want to restrict features. I've seen some people writing about open as the new black, with Google showing its fashion sense by dressing in the latest color. But lest anyone think that Google's wardrobe is being replaced with an all-open line-up, it's worth remembering that recently, open mainly fits Google when it's behind competitively in a space. Let's consider the places where staying closed is what suits Google best. See also:
- GOOG Cracks The $700 Threshold, Partly On Mobile Speculation
- Google Now Worth More Than Wal-Mart, IBM
- Another 'Google is Big Brother' Story
- Search, Ads And Apps: The Google Q3 2007 Results
- Google Analyst Day Roundup: Search, Ads, Apps, And The Big Dashboard
- Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, Confident DoubleClick Deal Will Be Approved
- Google's DoubleClick Acquisition Likely to Be Approved
- Australia Gives Google OK On DoubleClick Deal
- Larry Page & Sergey Brin Video Interview
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Google: Gmail
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Gmail Now Supporting IMAP Protocol - It appears that Gmail is now supporting the IMAP protocol as of today. See also:
- I Have The New Version Of Gmail, Do You?
- Gmail To Increase Email Capacity With New Counter Algorithm
- Google Adds Security & Space To Corporate Gmail Users
- Google Ordered To Pay $14,000 In Germany Over Gmail Trademark
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Google: Employees
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Karen Wickre: Mother Of The Google Blog On Google's Official Blogging - When Google launched the Official Google Blog back in 2004, it started as sort of a ho-hum event. There wasn't anything particularly gripping, and some wondered if the company should be more edgy with its posts. Since then, Google has launched more than 70 additional official blogs over the years. Some have gotten edgy; a few even have comments, but most important, they've turned into an essential communications vehicle for the company. A few weeks ago, I sat down with Karen Wickre, who aside from her formal title at Google of senior manager, global communications & public affairs, is who I'd best describe as "mother of the blogs." Karen is ultimately responsible for how they all work, and she shared some insight on how Google makes use of blogging. Will the big three of Google -- Larry, Sergey and Eric -- ever blog? Will comments come to the main Google blog? Will Google's blogging replace press releases? Read on. See also:
- Google Grouplets: Shared Groups Of 20% Time
- Google Finally Opens San Francisco Office
- Google Seattle Celebrates A Birthday And Opens A New Office
- Court Reinstates Google Age Discrimination Suit
- Ullah, Google's Director Of Corporate Development, Quits
- Google Checkout Googler Benjamin Ling Checkouts to Facebook
- Google's Alumni Reveal Reasons for Departure
- Google Employee #53, Charlie Ayers (The Google Chef) Profiled On MSNBC
- Make That Google Jets: Google Founders Add a Boeing 757 to Their Fleet
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Google: Maps & Local
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YouTube Comes to Google Earth; Pity YouTube Itself Doesn't Offer Geosearch - I just posted a bunch of videos to YouTube yesterday of skating down the boardwalk in Newport Beach. Maybe one day they'll show up in Google Earth. That's because Google Earth is now showing video clips that have been geotagged to particular areas, according to Google's LatLong Blog. See also:
- Google Maps Adds "Community Maps" to Default Map Searches
- Google Maps Now Offers User Profile Pages
- Google Earth and 3D Warehouse Opened Up to 'Game Developers'
- Google StreetView Rolling in Rural Indiana
- Some Google Maps Indexing Confusion
- Search For Google Maps Coupons
- Google Transit Now in Google Maps
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Google: Mobile
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Google's Android Arrives: Not Gphone But An Open Source Mobile Phone Platform - After literally years of anticipation, rumor, and increasingly aggressive speculation about a Google Phone, Google has formally announced that the Gphone cometh -- sort of. Today, the company has gone public with news of an open source mobile operating system called "Android," named after the company Google acquired in 2005. Backing Android is the Open Handset Alliance, a group of over 30 companies all pledging to contribute to the project. Below, a detailed, comprehensive look based on a pre-briefing with Google and from today's news conference. See also:
- Google's Android Day Two: Here Come The Bears
- Google Mines Mobile Queries, Finds Longer Strings, More Searches, And More Clicks
- GOOG-411 Is Out of Beta
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Google: PageRank Decreases
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Google Updates PageRank Again? Adjusts Paid Link Penalty? - Andy Beard reports that Google seems to have made their third PageRank update this month. This one appears to have reversed some of the downgrades in PageRank seen by some sites. See also:
- Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google
- Google's PageRank Update Goes After Paid Links?
- The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup
- Survey Says: No Sites Gained & Many Lost PageRank
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Google: Reader
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Google Reader Now Reporting Subscriber Figures - Earlier this year, iGoogle started reporting the number of readers putting a blog on their personalized home pages at Google. Now Google Reader is doing the same, showing how many readers a blog has within Google's dedicated feed reading service. More on this below, especially how in contrast, FeedBurner/Google Feedfetcher report a combined figure for iGoogle plus Google Reader, as well as some top blog lists that are being assembled. See also:
- Are Google Reader Stats Correct? Can We Trust Feed Stats in General?
- Google Reader Says It Does "Dailyish" Update Of Subscriber Counts
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Google: SEO Issues
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Let Google Know The Geographic Location of Your Site - For years, webmasters have wished for a way to tell search engines the country that should be associated with their sites. Starting today, Google Webmaster Central is offering a solution for those geographic woes. See also:
- Google Adds Sitelinks Control To Webmaster Tools & Much More
- Confirmed: Google Sitelinks Grow To Eight Links
- Consolidating Sitemap Files With Google
- No, Buying Ads Still Won't Help You With Google's Free Listings
- Google's Tips On How to Write a Good Meta Description
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Google: Searching
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Google Book Search Improved(?) - According to the Google blog "Inside Google Book Search", some changes have been made recently to Google Book Search, so I took this as my cue to go and visit to check these out. To say that I was disappointed is to put it mildly, and if you don't have time to read my entire posting I'll summarize by stating that it's another example of Google taking a great idea and working on it half-heartedly and trying to make developments without solving the basic problems. See also:
- Google Releases G.cn For Chinese Users
- Google To Re-Design Products For Chinese Users
- Blog Searches Now Included In Google Web History
- Google Health To Launch In Early 2008
- Google Fixing Search Typos with URLs
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Google: Social Media
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Jaiku Bought By Google - Google has bought Jaiku, a Twitter-like service for quick or short blogging. We’re joining Google from the Jaiku team shows their excitement for the news. Because Google acquisitions usually lead to a mad rush of user sign-ups, Jaiku has decided to limit the number of new users who can sign up. If you are a Jaiku user already, you may want to read the Google FAQ they posted today. See also:
- Google's International Headache: Orkut
- OpenSocial: Led By Google, Social Networks Band To Take On Facebook
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Google: Video & YouTube
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Google to Launch YouTube Piracy Filter Today - Google has released its YouTube video ID tool to help prevent content piracy. See also:
- Viacom Will Still Sue Google, Despite YouTube Piracy Filter
- Viacom May Want To Work With Google In Future
- Viacom And Google Reprimanded By Frustrated Judge
- Preview YouTube's New Video Browsing Page
- Google And Nielsen Partner For TV Ads Demographic Measurement
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Google: Other
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Google & IBM Team Up on 'Cloud Computing' Research - Google announced they have teamed up with IBM to "provide hardware, software, and services to augment university curricula and expand research horizons." Google and I.B.M. Join in ‘Cloud Computing’ Research from the New York Times explains the two companies are building out a 'cloud computing' environment to help students obtain the technical training required to work at companies like Google and IBM. Universities to pilot this program include Carnegie-Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. See also:
- iGoogle Gets New Themes; Google China Gets New Home Page
- Google Groups Coop Subscribed Links Under "Search Add Ons"
- Google Translate Drops Systran For Home Brewed Translation
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In House SEM
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The IT Group: Friend Or Foe Of In-House Search Marketers? - The battle lines are drawn. On one side stands our plucky heroine: the redheaded stepchild of the corporation, the search marketer. Armed only with her knowledge and expertise, she stands, all alone. On the other side stand the massed hordes of the IT department. Armed with their "best development practices," their coding standards documentation, and their knowledge and expertise, speaking in their arcane language of such strange topics as struts, asp, and refactoring. In the middle stands the prize—the corporate website. And conventional wisdom says that only one side can have control over the prize and only one group can win. See also:
- SEOs Should Understand Network Infrastructure
- Big SEO: Automate or Die Trying
- Training: Heart & Soul of In-House SEO/SEM
- Raising The Organizational Visibility Of The Search Marketing Function
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Link Building
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Five Ways Link Builders Hurt Themselves - In the wake of the mass hysteria over Google's recent PageRank decreases, devaluing of certain links, and the resulting rankings drop many people experienced, I'd like to offer some perspective and advice. See also:
- Is It Time To Change Your Linking Attitude?
- The Worst Way To Ask For A Link
- Fall Cornucopia of Linking News
- When Link Building Is Pointless
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Local Search & Maps
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Survey: Search Now Top Resource For Local Information - Local SEM firm WebVisible and Nielsen last year surveyed U.S. consumers about their local search behavior. There were some very interesting and striking findings. For example, 51% of users were doing category searches for local businesses without a geographic modifier. Today findings from a second wave of that survey were released. The second survey is broader and addresses a range of issues, including consumer attitudes toward advertising in general, use of the Internet vs. traditional media for local information, and offline purchase behavior. See also:
- Internet Now The Primary Local Medium
- InfoSpace Sells Mobile Services Business--What Next?
- Local Search Site Judy's Book To Shut Down
- Everyscape 3-D Mapping To Give Google, Microsoft A Run For Their Virtual Money
- How Sputnik Changed Local Search
- Grayboxx Now National in the U.S.
- Farecast Offers Hotel Search
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Local SEM
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The hCard Microformat & Local Search Optimization - Last year in a blog post on tips for local SEO, I recommended using the hCard microformat as a component of local search engine optimization. I believe I was first to recommend this, and I was happy to hear a few different speakers at the SMX Local & Mobile Conference a couple of weeks ago recommend this too for local SEO. However, I could see there was some minor confusion from some attendees as to how widely it's adopted, which search engines support it, and whether local info sites should be using it—so, I thought it'd be worthwhile to provide a brief update to answer these questions. See also:
- SMX Local & Mobile Recap
- Search Illustrated: Multiple Local Optimization Strategies
- Zillow Direct Ads Turn Site Into Dynamic Ad Platform
- Superpages Rolls Out Video Advertising Nationally
- Online Moms: Where Local, Social, And Vertical Worlds Collide
- Search Illustrated: Geo Targeted Keyword Strategies
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Microsoft: adCenter
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Microsoft Says Search Ads Will Shift Elsewhere - Microsoft's Senior Vice President, Brian McAndrews, says that the search ad business will shift towards display ads in the next several years. See also:
- Microsoft Now Serving Digg's Ads
- Microsoft's Web Analytics Product Project Gatineau Now In Private Beta
- Microsoft adCenter Adds Instant Editorial Reviews & More
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Microsoft: Business Issues
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Microsoft Makes $240 Million Investment In Facebook - Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, and the companies will expand their existing advertising partnership. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States. See also:
- Live Search Almost Certainly Coming To Facebook
- Microsoft Has Huge Quarter, Online Not As Good
- Microsoft's Ballmer: Bidding On 700 MHZ Would 'Alienate The Telecom Industry'
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Microsoft: Maps & Mobile
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Microsoft Releases Upgrades for Maps, Local, and Mobile - Microsoft is now rolling out and include feature and content enhancements for maps, local, and mobile services. The biggest news is the introduction of a new voice search product called "Live Search 411," built on Tellme's content and voice capabilities. In addition to local business listings, the service provides movie show times, weather, and airlines information. See also:
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Microsoft: Searching
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Microsoft 'Unlocks' HealthVault Search Site And Personal Records Database - As part of its push into four strategic vertical search segments, Microsoft has unveiled "HealthVault," which aims to be part medical search engine, part repository of personal data and health information that can be selectively disclosed to doctors and other interested parties. See also:
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Paid Search & Contextual
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Landing Page Testing: How Much Is Too Much? - Your landing page is a key part of any successful paid search campaign, and by now, the value of testing and optimizing your landing pages has become accepted wisdom. However, many testing methodologies—especially multivariate testing—are complex and are only appropriate for sites that get hundreds of conversions a day. Small- and mid-sized companies simply do not have the volume required to achieve statistical significance in a timely fashion except using simpler A/B testing approaches. In this article, I will share a new formula and Landing Page Test Calculator that will tell you how many test versions your landing page can support, and therefore which test methodology is right for you. See also:
- Confessions of a Lapsed Analyst: Joey Metallica Goofs Off, Gets Rich Faster
- Are You Endorsed By The Search Engines?
- AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo Sued Over Competitive Bidding Patent
- Global Search Usage & PPC Statistics
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Privacy
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Want To Opt Out Of Behavioral Ads? AOL Says It Is Your Choice - AOL has announced today a new tool that will enable AOL users to opt out of targeted or personalized ads. See also:
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Searching
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Social Networking Through Search: Hakia Helps You Meet Others - Hakia, a natural language search engine, has just added a new spin to search: social networking. Their new Meet Others feature lets you connect with others who are searching for the same things you are. Since Hakia processes queries differently than old school search engines such as Google, you aren't just matched up with people who typed in the exact query you did -- you're matched with a larger set of searchers that Hakia thinks are looking for the same things you are based on natural language processing. See also:
- New York Times Adds BlogRunner To Technology Section
- Getting On Top Of Techmeme
- How We Navigate Our Online Landscape
- Some Big Ideas for a Friday
- Taking On ARF, Engagement, Interruptive Advertising... And Whatever Else You've Got!
- The Politics of Book Search: Some Research Libraries Decline to Offer Books to Microsoft, Google
- With Dogpile Beating Google In Satisfaction, Owner InfoSpace Needs To Reinvent Itself, Be Risky With Metasearch
- Report: 7 Out Of 10 Americans Experience 'Search Engine Fatigue'
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Search Marketing Industry
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Online Ad Revenues Reach $10 Billion In First Half Of 2007, Search Remains Largest Single Category - The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released online advertising figures for the second quarter and the first six months of 2007. For the first time, revenues exceeded $5 billion in a single quarter and first half revenues reached $10 billion, compared with $7.9 the previous year. See also:
- Black-Hat SEOs Are Worthless, Shady Criminals
- SEM Firm ReachLocal Closes Massive Funding Round
- Washington Post Buys a Search Engine Marketing Firm
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Search Marketing Tactics
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Understanding Search Usability - In my opinion, the vast majority of SEO professionals do not give a hoot about user-centered design (UCD), or, more accurately, usage-centered design. Nevertheless, they use these terms during a sales pitch or a conference presentation because it sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? In today's article, I hope to dispel some of the common misconceptions about search usability, and to show how important search usability is to the SEM industry. See also:
- Closing The Loop: How Search Can Inform Your Overall Marketing Decisions
- Search Illustrated: Traffic Bumps
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SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search
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10 Useless SEO Worries (Part 1) - I often feel sorry for small businesses. I do. Too often they don't have the funds, time, or resources to investigate things as thoroughly as they should. Unlike larger businesses with deep pockets, small business can't hire first-rate, high-end SEOs to do all the right things for them. All too often they have to rely on the free advice on blogs, forums, and social networking sites—and then do all the worrying themselves. If they are in a slightly better position, they might be able to pawn off some of that worry to an SEO which they have not fully vetted, and who may end up taking their campaign in the wrong direction. But that leaves them with entirely new things to worry about. See also:
- The Search Engine Unfriendliness Of Web 2.0
- Why Many Web 2.0 Developers Are Search Morons
- Search Illustrated: Keyword Research (Part 1)
- Search Illustrated: Keyword Research (Part 2)
- Search Illustrated: Keyword Research (Part 3)
- Website SEO Health Check Tool
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Small Business
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Search Windows Of Opportunity: Topicality, Regionality, Seasonality, And The Small Business - There are opportunities that small businesses have that large businesses might not even considering touching, or that they may not have the ability to respond to quickly enough. The aerospace industry uses the term "launch window" to describe the right combination of time and location for a rocket to be launched so that it will successfully go into space, and to a specific destination. The term has been adopted by the business community and changed to "window of opportunity." There are efforts that a small business might launch that can take advantage of windows of opportunity, and I wanted to explore a few of those within the context of internet marketing and search, specifically pointing out three areas to think about; topicality, regionality, and seasonality. See also:
- Which Google Products Should a Small Business Use? (Part One)
- Which Google Products Should a Small Business Use? (Part Two)
- Offline Conversion Tracking: The Missing Metric
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Social Media
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OpenSocial: Led By Google, Social Networks Band To Take On Facebook - As expected, the much-discussed Google social play turns out to be an alliance with other companies to "open up" social networks and their data to developers. TechCrunch and the New York Times both have early news of an expected announcement tomorrow on how Google, along with partners like Ning, Linked In, Friendster, and others, will introduce a set of common APIs -- called OpenSocial -- to be used for getting data from and writing applications for social networks. See also:
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Social Media Marketing
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The Social Media Marketing KISS - We all know what the KISS acronym stands for: keep it simple, stupid. In this article I want to talk about how this applies to creating content for social media marketing, namely linkbait. You see, users from social news sites have very short attention spans while browsing these sites. They're generally there to read multiple news stories and articles, and they don't want to spend an enormous amount of time on any one story. Thus, it's important to keep content in a simple format so these users can digest the information as quickly and easily as possible. See also:
- Social Media Marketing: The New SEO?
- The Importance Of Keeping It Up: Have Hosting Viagra!
- How To Shout On Digg Without Getting Shot Down
- New List: Sites With Most Cumulative Diggs
- Facebook Tripartite Ad System Launched: Facebook Pages, Social Ads & Beacon
- SelfServe HyperTargeting Ads From MySpace Launching Today
- BuzzLogic Introduces "Conversational Ad Targeting" On Blogs
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Social Media: SMX Social Media Show
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The Big SMX Social Media NY '07 Roundup - The first SMX Social Media conference is now wrapping up. The only session left is a clinic, which normally is not covered. Below is a list of all the coverage, stories, blogs, and so on that I have found that discussed the conference and/or covered sessions. See also:
- Live Blogging: Social Media Marketing Essentials
- Live Blogging: Linkbait: Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
- Live Blogging: Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
- Live Blogging: A Marketer's Guide to Social Bookmarking and Tagging
- Live Blogging: Keynote Q&A: Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
- Live Blogging: Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
- Live Blogging: Evangelist: The Marketer's Role in SMM
- Live Blogging: Micro Communities
- Live Blogging: Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing
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Video & Image Search
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Hotly Debated Video Destination Hulu Launches In Private Beta - TechCrunch and Techmeme offer lots of discussion and long posts about the NBC Universal and News Corporation joint video venture and challenge to YouTube: Hulu. The site is not yet open to the public but many of the videos it will be streaming can be seen today on distribution partner AOL. There are both full-length shows and movies being distributed via the site itself and its partner network, which includes Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace, AOL, and others. See also:
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Wikipedia
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The SEO Value of Featured Pictures at Wikipedia - My last article about Wikipedia—An Untapped SEO Opportunity: Image Link Love From Wikipedia—prompted an Orwellian mantra: instead of "four legs good, two legs bad," people have started saying "images good, text bad" and wondering why the difference. The short answer is the Wikimedia Foundation created a white hat opportunity for SEO to generate outgoing links via image uploads.
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Yahoo: Business Issues
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Yahoo Beats the Street: Revenues Up, But Earnings Down - Here's the earnings release. They slightly beat the street. Revenues were up, but earnings were down. Search monetization and traffic are improving. Henry Blodget live blogged the earnings call with some good detail and quick analysis. Yahoo shares are up about 10 percent in after-hours trading. See also:
- Report: Yahoo Search Gaining
- Yahoo Setting Up Shop Next Door to Microsoft's Headquarters
- Yahoo's VP Of Sales Strategy, Jacki Kelley, Leaves Yahoo
- Yahoo's Chief Marketing Officer To Leave Yahoo
- Yahoo's Ex-CEO, Semel, Sells Off 750,000 Yahoo Shares
- Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Grilled By Congress On China, Offers Apology
- Alibaba IPO Reportedly As Big As Google's
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Yahoo: Flickr
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Flickr Wants To Show You The World Through Pictures - At Web 2.0 Summit this week, Flickr previewed a feature that will provide a new way to browse photos based on geographic location. They are making over their map explorer and introducing new Places Pages that will make it easier to see what's going on around the world through pictures. See also:
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Yahoo: Paid Search
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Block Domains Feature Now Live in Yahoo Search Ads - Earlier this month, Yahoo told us they will be launching a block domains feature. The block domains feature enables advertisers to specify which domains, subdomains, or URLs they do not want their ads displayed on. As I reported this morning, the block domains feature is now live. For more information, see the Yahoo help page. See also:
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Yahoo: Searching
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Yahoo's Paid Shortcuts Now Labeled As Sponsored - Back in July, our Yahoo Shortcuts For Sale? article covered how Yahoo was selling some of its Yahoo Shortcuts units without -- to us -- enough disclosure. Looks like Yahoo's seen the light and now is using a "Yahoo Sponsored Shortcuts" label on these. Scott Hendison spotted the change here. Thanks, Yahoo! See also:
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Yahoo: SEO
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Yahoo To Fix Site Explorer Link Counts - We reported earlier about Yahoo Site Explorer not showing all link data. Yahoo has just posted an update for us on that topic. Yahoo says to "disregard any counts for inlinks reported by Site Explorer from October 11 through next week." Yahoo is rolling out fixes for the tool over the weekend and throughout next week. See also:
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Yahoo: Other
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Check Out My Yahoo Kickstart Profile & Get Yours - Today, Yahoo launched their new social networking site geared towards college students and alumni named Kickstart. We first wrote about it over here, where we described that this service will help college students looking for jobs connect with alumni who already have jobs and might be hiring. There is more coverage of the Kickstart launch at Techmeme. I decided to give it a try. See also:
- Yahoo! 360 Quietly Slips Away
- Yahoo To Partner With Mobile Operators In Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong & Malaysia
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Fun, Weird Stuff & Other Things
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Top Countries To Search On Sex, Hitler, Viagra, Jihad & Hangover - Sex, Nazi, burrito and Viagra: Who Googles what? from Reuters reports on keywords released by Google by country. Reuters ordered the list by country that is most likely to search on certain words. See also:
- Searcharazzi: The Googlers (Definitely) Do Not Wear Prada
- Yahoo Sued Over Public Art Modification
- Pics From Inside Digg Labs (Humor!)
- Google, Yahoo, Ask.com Do Halloween Logos & Themes
- Google Logo Celebrates Luciano Pavarotti's Birthday
- Search in Pictures: Halloween, Yahoo Bouncing Stools, & Googlebox
- Search In Pictures: Matchbox 20, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, & Yahoo Parachute
- Search in Pictures: Google Halloween, Yahoo Hack Day, Google Surf Board
- Search in Pictures: Yahoo Foozapalooza, Google Rubik's Cube & Danny Sullivan at Yahoo
- Ask.com Teams With Dell To Create Custom Servers That Save Energy
- Google Goes Dark For Lights Out San Francisco
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Awwww...
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Congratulations, Elisabeth Osmeloski & Matthew Ostrander - Elisabeth Osmeloski is well known within the search marketing industry, especially for having started and run the Search Engine Watch Forums for three years. Today, she tied the knot with Matthew Ostrander. Best wishes from all of us here at Search Engine Land! Pictures of the event.
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By Danny Sullivan
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