SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 31, 2008

Jan 31, 2008 at 6:13pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Internet Yellow Page Video SEM: Worth The Effort? Informational videos are a excellent way for local businesss to get positions with the natural search engines, through the trend toward blended or universal search results which mixes video in with traditional results. Videos are also becoming an attractive way to bring in leads, sales and new customers from... Video Search: New Column From Search Engine Land Our newest Search Engine Land column, Video Sea [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

Google Revenues Up 51 Percent, Social Networking Monetization “Disappointing”

Jan 31, 2008 at 6:11pm ET by Greg Sterling

Google posted Q4, 2007 revenues that represented 51 percent growth vs. 2006. Quarterly revenues were $4.83 billion, compared with $3.21 billion a year ago. However, earnings and revenue per share fell short of analyst consensus estimates. The headline that everyone is repeating is that social network monetization is not performing as well as hoped by Google (interpreted chiefly as MySpace traffic). Below are more revenue numbers, slides, and selected highlights from the Q&A portion of the call. First, more details from the press release: Revenues - Google reported revenues of $4.83 billion [...]

Filed in: Google: Business Issues

Internet Yellow Page Video SEM: Worth The Effort?

Jan 31, 2008 at 2:57pm ET by Grant Crowell

Informational videos are an excellent way for local businesses to get positions with the natural search engines, through the trend toward blended or universal search results which mix video in with traditional results. Videos are also becoming an attractive way to bring in leads, sales, and new customers from viral and social marketing. While most search engines and marketers have adopted a "wait and see" attitude with local video products, the major internet yellow pages have taken the initiative, offering some interesting opportunities for search marketers to jump in early when competitio [...]

Filed in: SEO: Video Search, Search Ads: Video, Video Search

Video Search: New Column From Search Engine Land

Jan 31, 2008 at 2:53pm ET by Chris Sherman

Our newest Search Engine Land column, Video Search, launches today. Video Search looks at how search engines index videos, and explores the unique search engine optimization techniques that can make videos visible in search results. Our video search columnists are: Grant Crowell, CEO and Creative Director, Granttastic Designs Bob Heyman, Chief Search Officer, Mediasmith Eric Papczun, Director, Natural Search Optimization, Performics Sherwood Stranieri, Director, Natural Search, SMG Search In today's debut article, Grant Crowell looks at the fledgling effort by Internet Yellow Pages sites [...]

Filed in: About Search Engine Land, Video Search

Report: Click Fraud Up 15% In 2007

Jan 31, 2008 at 1:25pm ET by Chris Sherman

Click Forensics, the company that maintains the Click Fraud Index, a network that monitors and reports on data gathered from more than 4,000 online advertisers and their agencies, has released its most recent quarterly report on click fraud. The company found that the overall industry average click fraud rate rose to 16.6 percent for Q4 2007. That’s up from the 14.2 percent click fraud rate for the same quarter in 2006, and 16.2 percent for Q3 2007. The major search engines have typically disputed the findings issued by Click Forensics, claiming the numbers don't account for discounted cli [...]

Filed in: Legal: Clickfraud

Google’s Marissa Mayer On Social Search / Search 4.0

Jan 31, 2008 at 12:13pm ET by Danny Sullivan

VentureBeat has a nice Q&A with Google's Marissa Mayer on how the search engine is considering using social data to improve its search results -- what I've described as "Search 4.0" as a generational jump in my Search 3.0 article from earlier this year. Some highlights below: Social search is hard, in that many searches are sensitive, so letting people in your network know what you are looking for raises serious privacy issues.   Google might try doing more with labeling or tagging results as a way to implement social search. Marissa talked about the existing Google Co [...]

Filed in: Google: OpenSocial, Google: Web History & Search History, Google: Web Search, Search 4.0, Search Engines: Social Search Engines

Making a Good Impression With About Us Pages

Jan 31, 2008 at 10:01am ET by Bill Slawski

Sipping on a cup of coffee on a Wednesday morning in the lounge of the local bowling alley last summer, surrounded by shop keepers and insurance salesmen and other small business owners, I hand out my business card. Most of these merchants have actual places I can visit, while all I have are pages they can stop at. It's a meeting of the local Main Street Association, and most of the attendees are located on Main Steet. I'm less than a block from Main Street, but I might as well be miles away. I have no receptionist. I have no sales counter. There's no waiting room or window display or [...]

Filed in: Small Is Beautiful

Vote Now For SMX Search Bowl’s Search Marketer Team

Jan 31, 2008 at 9:29am ET by Danny Sullivan

The nominations are in, and now it's time for search marketers to vote on which two people should represent SEMs against the major search engines in the SMX Search Bowl search trivia contest, which happens at our SMX West three-day search conference next month in California. The nomination round happened last week, and now SEOmoz has a voting form up. Cast your vote! Below, more about the contest and the finalists. SMX Search Bowl will have teams from Ask, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo competing against each other and a search marketer team to test their knowledge of search and search mar [...]

Filed in: SEM Industry: Community, SEM Industry: Conferences

New “Show Search Options” Broadens Google Maps

Jan 31, 2008 at 8:37am ET by Greg Sterling

As the Google LatLong Blog reports, Google has added a new "show search options" link beside the main search box in Google Maps. This is a very interesting development for several reasons. It's a pull-down menu that allows you to narrow or expand results for the same query and more easily discover non-traditional content in Google Maps. The new menu allows you to see: everything, locations, businesses, and, significantly, user-created content. Here's the conventional search box on Google Maps: And here are the new expanded options: I can now use the same query to more easily navigate b [...]

Filed in: Google: Maps & Local

Google’s Founders & CEO Promised To Work Together Until 2024

Jan 31, 2008 at 7:35am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google CEO, Co-Founders Made Long-Term Promise from the Wall Street Journal reports Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, said they would work together until the year 2024. Google spokesperson Jon Murchinson told the Wall Street Journal that the "informal pact" between the three top Googlers was made one month before the Google IPO in August 2004. The pact was that they would all work at the company for "at least 20 years." This pact adds to the feeling that the company culture at Google is not about cashing out, at least not for Page, Brin, and Schm [...]

Filed in: Google: Employees

5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success

Jan 31, 2008 at 7:12am ET by Jill Whalen

Are you still measuring your SEO success by the rankings you obtain? If so, you need to stop—right now! Here's why: 1. Rankings are constantly fluctuating. You might check rankings one minute, then check again a few minutes later and see different results. 2. Search results are sometimes geotargeted. The search engines know where you're located by your IP address, and if they want they can (and I believe they do) sometimes point you to pages that are closer to where you are searching from, as they assume those results might be more beneficial to you. 3. Personalized search. If y [...]

Filed in: 100% Organic, SEM Tools: Web Analytics, SEO: General

SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 30, 2008

Jan 30, 2008 at 3:29pm ET by Barry Schwartz

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 Universal Search: 2008 Edition It's just over a half-year since Google launched Universal Search, its method of blending results from its own various topically-focused or "vertical" search engines. Since that time, the system has evolved. In particular, Google Universal Search now fills more than just 10 spots on the page, while shopping and... SMX West: Preview Our Upcoming Conference In Sight & Sound Search Engine Land's first three [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

Google Universal Search: 2008 Edition

Jan 30, 2008 at 10:32am ET by Danny Sullivan

It's just over a half-year since Google launched Universal Search, its method of blending results from its own various topically-focused or "vertical" search engines. Since that time, the system has evolved. In particular, Google Universal Search now fills more than just 10 spots on the page, while shopping and blog search results are among new resources being included. Below, a look at these and related changes. The Big Picture: Comparative Ranking & Blending With Universal Search, Google promised that two major things would happen: Comparative Ranking Blending Before Un [...]

Filed in: Google: Maps & Local, Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers, Google: Universal Search, Google: User Interface, Search 3.0

SMX West: Preview Our Upcoming Conference In Sight & Sound

Jan 30, 2008 at 10:26am ET by Danny Sullivan

Search Engine Land's first three day search marketing conference -- SMX West -- is only about a month away. Thinking about going? We've got a great program lined up, and I've just finished a podcast giving those interested an audio preview of what to expect. Check it out here (MP3 file). It runs for 37 minutes. Our Meet SMX: The Search Marketing Expo Conference Series video is now also available for those who want a more visual preview of what to expect. It runs about 4 minutes, and you can view it here on YouTube or using the embedded player below: For more about SMX West, check out som [...]

Filed in: SEM Industry: Conferences

Visualize Earthquake Data In Google Earth

Jan 30, 2008 at 10:24am ET by Greg Sterling

The US Geological Survey and Google are now making global earthquake data available in Google Earth as one of the layers under "Places of Interest." According to the USGS: USGS and Google signed an agreement to publish historic earthquake data from the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) catalog as a "built-in" layer, accessible directly from the Google Earth viewer . . . The new layer includes historic earthquakes since 1900, and USGS real-time earthquakes are now accessible as a hyperlink from within Google Earth. If the layer is checked, users will see a sprinkling of dots across the [...]

Filed in: Google: Earth, Search Engines: Government Search Engines

Scientologists Google Bombed Or Not?

Jan 30, 2008 at 8:56am ET by Danny Sullivan

Just days after the one-year anniversary of Google's Google bomb fix, a new Google bomb may have gotten through -- dangerous cult, bringing up the Scientology web site, as shown above. But is it really getting past the fix? Considering one of the targeted words is being used on the page itself, it's hard to say. Both WebProNews and Google Blogoscoped have short stories on the listing. But as I noted in comments at WebProNews, the fix was designed to prevent pages from being Google bombed to the top if they do NOT use the words they are being bombed for on them. For example, "miserable [...]

Filed in: Link Building: Link Bombs

Search Engine Reputation Management: Setting & Managing Expectations

Jan 30, 2008 at 8:44am ET by Jessica Bowman

The euphemistic phrase "reputation management issue" describes what happens when you have a problem arise in search engine result pages. Whether it's the result of an algorithm change, bloggers, or social media sites jumping on negative news or other negative linking bandwagons, reputation management issues are a major pain for brands. When this happens, frustrations can run high, and you bear a lot of weight on your shoulders to fix the crisis, keep the unfavorable sites at bay, and make clients happy. One of the key things you need to master quickly when this occurs is setting and managin [...]

Filed in: Brand Aid

Yahoo Earnings Mixed, Company To Go Through With 1,000 Job Cuts Amid Uncertain 2008

Jan 30, 2008 at 8:40am ET by Greg Sterling

Despite the hopes of many and rumors that Yahoo would post "strong" earnings, Q4 2007 [...]

Filed in: Yahoo: Business Issues

SEMPO State Of SEM Survey, SEOmoz Industry Survey, & SEMMYS Need Your Help

Jan 30, 2008 at 8:20am ET by Barry Schwartz

There are three surveys underway right now for the search engine marketing industry looking for participation. SEMPO and SEOmoz are both running surveys to collect data on the search marketing industry, while the SEMMYS are a more fun look at search marketing articles up for awards. SEMPO's 2007 State of the Market Survey is open and taking your responses up until February 1st. SEMPO's surveys are used throughout the industry and beyond by analysts, editors, internally by SEM companies, and more. You can win an iPhone and free tickets to an SES event if you complete the survey. Please ma [...]

Filed in: SEM Industry: Awards, SEM Industry: Community, SEM Industry: General, SEM Industry: Organizations

The Big B2B PPC Mistake

Jan 30, 2008 at 8:02am ET by Brian Kaminski

It’s been said that the three rules of marketing are brand recognition, brand recognition, and brand recognition. Given that, marketers spend considerable funds and resources to ensure that people recognize their brands and connect with them. In other words, brand matters. Yet, when it comes to PPC marketing, the importance of brand gets a little fuzzy—especially for B2B marketers. From my experience, branded keywords tend to play a relatively small role in the PPC efforts of many B2B marketers. In fact, the number of B2B companies actually leveraging their brands in PPC appears [...]

Filed in: Strictly Business

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