We all know that getting on the homepage of social media sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us and Netscape can drive tons of links and traffic, which is why we try and leverage these social sites on a regular basis. But are you leveraging them fully? Below, some tips not to overlook, such as the importance of good post titles to encourage relevant anchor text, the need to keep content concise, pushing your feed URL and content being king. Good Post Titles SEOs know that the titles of their articles should contain the terms they want to be found for. But those titles might not be the most attr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Social Media Marketing

When the search engines and auditing firms don't even agree on an overall industry rate of click fraud, I was bemused by a release I got today telling me that ABCSearch is now "validated as virtually free of click fraud" according to Click Defense. Virtually free to me means practically none. Like well below one percent, I would say. Turns out, virtually free for this validation means "an average of less than 5 percent potential click fraud across its entire PPC search network." In contrast, compared to the major search engines, "This represents a three-fold decrease i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Legal: Clickfraud

Via Boing Boing, LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US from The Tyee covers how Canadian psychotherapist Andrew Feldmar was denied entry into the United States after being pulled aside during a border crossing for a random check. One of those fancy explosive sniffing machines then get him stopped? Metal in his shoes? Failure to use the proper approved plastic bag for liquid items? No -- the screening tool employed was Google: The Blaine border guard explained that Feldmar had been pulled out of the line as part of a random search. He seemed friendly, even as he took away Feld [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Legal: Privacy | Search & Society: General

Directory assistance vendor PocketThis has rebranded as PhoneSpots and relaunched a new mobile ad "exchange." The company has been around since 1999 and pioneered the "send to mobile" feature now in widespread use on local search sites. PocketThis originally offered enhanced results (additional content and links) from directory assistance queries when users opted to receive them as text messages. Its relationships were primarily in Europe. Now the company has changed its name, greatly expanded its model and is announcing a partnership with AT&T's YellowPages.com. PhoneSpots will power the de [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines

China court orders Yahoo China to curb music links from Reuters reports Beijing's No. 2 Intermediate Court has ordered Yahoo China to remove "links to free Web sites offering music-downloads." In addition, Yahoo China has to pay 200,000 yuan ($27,200 US) "facilitating distribution" of this music. Yahoo China said they will be appealing this decision. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: Copyright | Yahoo: Legal | Yahoo: Outside US

Restaurant reviews aggregator BooRah, which describes itself as "the ultimate personalized review guide," has partnered with 4Info for SMS distribution of BooRah's content on the 4Info text messaging platform. Here's the announcement. Accordingly, users will be able to access BooRah's content using 4Info's service. 4Info is part-owned by newspaper publisher Gannett and seeking to position itself as a mobile platform for content publishers and as a mobile marketing channel for advertisers. Despite all the hype and discussion of mobile search on a WAP browser, text messaging has far more user [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines

Yahoo strikes deal to catalog lyrics online from San Jose Mercury News reports on Yahoo's announcement that they have partnered with Gracenote to provide the lyrics of over 400,000 songs. The general manager of Yahoo Music, Ian Rogers, explained that this partnership "fills a huge, gaping hole out there." Since many of the lyrics sites out there have not formed licensing agreements with the copyright holders of the songs, the lyrics may not be 100% accurate. Gracenote has negotiated deals with the thousands of publishers over the past two years. Yahoo will show ads next to the lyrics, shar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Search Engines: Other Search Engines | Yahoo: Partnerships

Pricing structures and rates aren’t secret in established service industries. Real estate agents get 3% to 6% of the house’s price; recruiters get 1/3 of total first year comp; trial lawyers take 33% of the settlement; list brokers charge 20%. While specifics vary, each industry has conventional pricing arrangements. Not so in paid search management. Not yet. Not only are rates kept under wraps, as an industry we’ve not even yet converged on the most appropriate structure for those fees. You might ask, "Why does the pricing structure matter? If client and agency deem the fe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search | Search Ads: General | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Outsourcing

I moderated the two mobile search panels at SES New York a couple of weeks ago, and was fascinated by how quickly the mobile search space is moving from a potential to a real opportunity for savvy search marketers. Mobile search is still in its infancy, but it's clearly on the verge of exploding, and search marketers who get in the space early are going to have a significant edge on everyone else. On Thursday, I'll be presenting the webcast Revving Up for Mobile Search Marketing through our sister site, Search Marketing Now. I'd like to extend a personal invitation to all search marketers to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: Mobile Search

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web: From Search Engine Land: Domaining & Subdomaining In The Local Space - Part 1: The practices of domaining and subdomaining have steadily grown into increasingly hot topics in the local search marketing space for the past few years. "Domaining" is the practice of buying domains mainly for their potential keyword value. Speculators purchase keyword domains with a view towards selling those properties at... Putting Search Into The Marketing Mix Many companies have yet [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

The practices of domaining and subdomaining have steadily grown into increasingly hot topics in the local search marketing space for the past few years. "Domaining" is the practice of buying domains mainly for their potential keyword value. Speculators purchase keyword domains with a view towards selling those properties at considerable markup, and/or using those domains to host relevant affiliate content links and/or contextual ads to derive profit from the traffic, clicks, and purchases resulting from the users who arrive at the sites by typing their URLs directly into browser address fiel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Local Search | SEO: Domain Names & URLs

Many companies have yet to get involved with search marketing. At Search Engine Strategies New York, panelists on the "Putting Search into the Marketing Mix" offered compelling reasons for including search as a fundamental component of a marketing strategy. The panel was moderated by Gord Hotchkiss, President & CEO of Enquiro, with speakers Curtis Dueck, Account Manager, Epiar, Bill Mungovan, Director of Search Marketing, Carat Fusion and Misty Locke, President & Co-Founder, Range Online Media. The overlying theme of the session focused on why a company should take part of their mark [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Conferences

I reported at Search Engine Roundtable about a WebmasterWorld thread that notes how Google has paid out over $1 billion to publishers for the first time. The amount -- $1.13 billion to be exact -- was paid out in the first quarter of 2007. That's up from $976 million from the previous quarter. The figures come out of Google's Q1 2007 earnings. Here is a chart illustrating how payment to publishers has grown. The red line represents the Google pay-outs to publishers, while the blue line is the revenue earned by Google: Not only did Google break the $1 billion mark, but Google is now also [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display | Google: AdSense | Google: Business Issues

Gary Price reports that Millward Brown Optimor's Brandz Top 100 has ranked Google the most powerful brand, based on the survey's own methodology of earnings times a "branded multiplier." The top 10 global brands are: 1. Google with $66.4 billion 2. General Electric with $61.9 billion 3. Microsoft with $55 billion 4. Coca-Cola with $44.1 billion 5. China Mobile with $41.2 billion 6. Marlboro with $39.2 billion 7. Wal-Mart with $36.9 billion 8. Citigroup with $33.7 billion 9. IBM with $33.6 billion 10. Toyota Motor with $33.4 billion Microsoft was ranked number three and Yahoo ranked at numbe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Popularity

Many have wondered if it's a conflict for Google to keep the search marketing-focused Performics division of DoubleClick as part of Google's planned DoubleClick acquisition, since it would seem odd for Google to own a firm with an interest in helping people rank well on Google. Kris Jones of Pepperjam has the latest statement from Performics on the issue. Stuart Frankel, president of Performics, says there are no plans to change the business. The key part of his statement: We have consistently and repeatedly communicated to our clients, publishers and employees that it is business as usual [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Acquisitions | Google: Critics | SEM Industry: Acquisitions | SEM Industry: Outsourcing

The Google Mac Blog was hacked this weekend, at least the second time an official Google blog has been hacked. It was restored fairly quickly. In somewhat related news, Chris Pirillo noticed Google Calendar users storing their private passwords in their public calendars. I noticed that the Google Mac Blog was hacked when I saw a post in my RSS feed that read; Yo! Yo! This is crazy.. I tried to register this and I could! :) - Vishal Philipp Lenssen has a screen capture of the hack. Back in October, the main Google blog was hacked just after Google had posted a notice discussing how serio [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Calendar | Google: Critics | Google: Security

Oh the irony: Google Earth ban in Sudan is due to US export restrictions from Ogle Earth reports that Google Earth can't be downloaded in Sudan to to US export restrictions. Knowledge of the ban comes right after a new layer has been added to Google Earth to illustrate and share information about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Darfur region. Ogle Earth said they received an email response from Google explaining the ban was due to US export restrictions. In accordance with US export controls and economic sanctions regulations, we are unable to permit the download of Google Earth in Sudan [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Earth | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Censorship | Legal: General

The new social media sites popping up in the wake of the Web2.0 revolution are providing us with unique opportunities when it comes to link building. Since I'm always on the look-out for resources that attract and target specific demographics, I've hit the linking jackpot on more than one occasion by developing promotions that take advantage of the services social media and networking sites offer. Many of the social communities operate on a member based platform much like their offline cousin the industry association. There are subtle differences of course but basically the social network [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | Link Week

This is a special message for our SearchCap newsletter readers and anyone who visits Search Engine Land, about Search Engine Land's first conference: Search Marketing Expo Advanced. It happens in Seattle this June 4th and 5th. As the date approaches, I've had some people ask me for more about what's different or unique with this show compared to other search conferences. Happy to indulge! Below, I'll share a bit more about the entire Search Marketing Expo conference series as well as 9 reasons to attend the first one, SMX Advanced. I could have done 10, but Search Engine Land readers know th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Conferences

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 Search History Expands, Becomes Web History Google's Search History feature, which was switched on as a default option for many Google searchers in February, has now been renamed Web History to reflect how it has expanded to track what Google users do as they surf the web. It's a huge move for Google and raises anew... Complaint Over Google-DoubleClick Acqusition Expected To Be Filed At FTC Today Google draws privacy complaint to FTC from News.com [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap