SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 31, 2008

Mar 31, 2008 at 4:52pm 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: Search Biz: Diller Keeps IAC Control; Googlers To Facebook; Google Earnings Downgraded & More IAC stays in Barry Diller's control. US government agencies look to Google's search hardware to find information. Google's hotel-industrial complex that's coming to Mountain View. Those darn declining paid clicks -- will they hurt Google's bottom line? Yahoo breaks out golden handcuffs to retain employees, while Google loses another... Will You Be Sued Over Yo [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

Search Biz: Diller Keeps IAC Control; Googlers To Facebook; Google Earnings Downgraded & More

Mar 31, 2008 at 4:49pm ET by Danny Sullivan

IAC stays in Barry Diller's control. US government agencies look to Google's search hardware to find information. Google's hotel-industrial complex that's coming to Mountain View. Those darn declining paid clicks -- will they hurt Google's bottom line? Yahoo breaks out golden handcuffs to retain employees, while Google loses another one to Facebook. And more in today's Search Biz! Remember that fight over who gets to control IAC, parent of Ask.com? Judge Sides With Diller Over Malone from the New York Times covers how big cheese IAC CEO Barry Diller is remaining in control. But IAC, Di [...]

Filed in: Search Biz

Will You Be Sued Over Your Ad Copy Usage?

Mar 31, 2008 at 1:44pm ET by Brad Geddes

Storus Corp just successfully sued another advertiser for use of a trademarked term in the ad copy. This is the first time that I have seen a company sue another advertiser directly without relying on Google as the intermediary for filing trademark exceptions. As PPC advertisers, this affects us dramatically. There are ads running on Google right now using the exact trademarked term. In fact, a substantial number of ads use various trademarked terms. From the people I talk to, the vast majority of them rely on Google to tell them which words they should not use. This case could s [...]

Filed in: Paid Search

Yahoo Takes A “Shine” To Women 25 To 54

Mar 31, 2008 at 9:54am ET by Greg Sterling

Perhaps the perfection of Yahoo's vertical strategy is its new blog-inspired site Shine. It's a broad mix of content from publisher partners such as Hearst Communications, Rodale, and Condé Nast. It also aggregates and links to third party content and is encouraging users to blog on the site. Unlike Yahoo content-specific sites like Food, Shine is a kind of meta-vertical and focuses on a key Internet audience: women aged 25 to 54. Yahoo is also cross-promoting other Yahoo verticals (Food, Green, Health, Tech) on the site. If it succeeds, Shine will be a dream come true for brand marketers. [...]

Filed in: Yahoo: Display Ads, Yahoo: Other

SEO Company, Fathom Online, Acquired By Geary Interactive

Mar 31, 2008 at 8:58am ET by Barry Schwartz

Geary Interactive has announced acquiring Fathom Online, an SEO company. Fathom was formed in 2002 and is based in San Francisco. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Geary is a full service digital marketing agency based in San Diego. Some of Fathom's employees are now working out of the San Diego office. Andreas Roell, president and CEO of Geary Interactive, said: Search engine tactics are the most popular element of a digital marketing campaign. In order to effectively generate search demand and convert customers’ search clicks, the campaign must also include a stron [...]

Filed in: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments, SEM Industry: Outsourcing

Google Dance Is Back? Plus Google’s First Live Chat Recap & Hyperactive Yahoo Slurp

Mar 31, 2008 at 8:45am ET by Barry Schwartz

Is the Google Dance back? Well, not really, but I am noticing Google Dance-like behavior from Google based on reading some of the feedback at a WebmasterWorld thread. The Google Dance refers to how years ago, a change to Google's ranking algorithm often began showing up slowly across data centers as they reflected different results, a sign of coming changes. These days Google's data centers are typically always showing small changes and differences, but the differences between this data center and this one seem to be more like the extremes of the past Google Dances. So either Google is prep [...]

Filed in: Google: SEO, Google: Web Search, Google: Webmaster Central, Yahoo: SEO

Local Store And Inventory Data Poised To Transform “Online Shopping”

Mar 31, 2008 at 6:04am ET by Greg Sterling

The neglected part of the local story is about products. Often local search is discussed exclusively in terms of finding service businesses or small businesses in one's own area. But an equally important, if less obvious, part of the "local search" phenomenon is shopping in the more traditional sense. I've written previous Locals Only columns about the widespread -- indeed dominant -- consumer phenomenon of research online-buy offline. Now a new study by Krillion and the E-Tailing Group sheds more light on this complex and important trend. The expressed purpose of the study, completed in F [...]

Filed in: Locals Only, Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing, Stats: Search Behavior

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 28, 2008

Mar 28, 2008 at 5:30pm 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: Search In Pictures: Google Shooting Range, Yahoo Asia Schwag, Google Pizza 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.... In The Trenches, March 28, 2008 In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to giv [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

Search In Pictures: Google Shooting Range, Yahoo Asia Schwag, Google Pizza

Mar 28, 2008 at 11:55am ET by Barry Schwartz

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. I am not 100% sure, but I think these are Googlers taking aim: David Filo of Yahoo at Yahoo India: Some really cool Yahoo Schwag from the East: Finally, it was recently Google Pizza night somewhere: [...]

Filed in: Search In Pictures

In The Trenches, March 28, 2008

Mar 28, 2008 at 9:55am ET by Josh Dreller

In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today's in-depth look, "What You Don't Know About Quality Scores May Kill You," and this week's free tips and tools. News from the search engines Google—AdWords & YouTube: Are you ready for April 1st? Google display URLs for new ads now have to match the destination URLS starting April 1. From the Learn More link you can read all about the new changes, which I suggest every SEM pro sh [...]

Filed in: Google: AdWords, In The Trenches, Microsoft: adCenter, Yahoo: Search Ads

In The Trenches: New Column From Search Engine Land

Mar 28, 2008 at 9:48am ET by Chris Sherman

Our newest Search Engine Land column, In The Trenches, launches today. In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. In today's debut article, Josh Dreller comments on news from the search engines, offers an in-depth look, "What You Don't Know About Quality Scores May Kill You," and describes this week's free tips and tools. Read on in In The Trenches, March 28, 2008. [...]

Filed in: About Search Engine Land, In The Trenches

Google Adds 13 Metro Areas To Street Views, Plus New API Support

Mar 28, 2008 at 9:20am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google LatLong Blog announced the expansion of street views to Google Maps. Google added 13 new metropolitan areas and Yosemite National Park. The 13 metro areas include Albuquerque, NM, Anchorage, AK, Austin, TX, Cleveland, OH, Fairbanks, AK, Little Rock, AR, Madison, WI, Nashville, TN, Rockford, IL, Richmond, VA, Spokane, WA, St. Petersburg, FL, and Tampa, FL. In addition, the Google Maps API blog announced that street views has been added to the Google Maps API. This will enable you to embed street views directly on your own sites or applications. For more help on implementing stre [...]

Filed in: Google: Maps & Local

SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 27, 2008

Mar 27, 2008 at 7:46pm 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: Drilling Into Google's Decline In Paid ClicksMore doom and gloom on the paid search side for Google. comScore is once again reporting a drop in sponsored clicks, something that also happened last month. After last month's fallout, comScore did a lot of further analysis shared at the Searchscape panel at our SMX West conference and online... Google Offers Robots.txt GeneratorGoogle's rolled out a new tool at Google Webmaster Central, a robots.txt genera [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

Drilling Into Google’s Decline In Paid Clicks

Mar 27, 2008 at 7:19pm ET by Danny Sullivan

More doom and gloom on the paid search side for Google. comScore is once again reporting a drop in sponsored clicks, something that also happened last month. After last month's fallout, comScore did a lot of further analysis shared at the Searchscape panel at our SMX West conference and online to ease concerns that it meant the sky was falling for Google and the US economy in general. comScore Paid Search Data & How The Sky Might Not Be Falling from us has more background on this. But how do things look for the second month running? I've done some drilling into the numbers, with lots of [...]

Filed in: Google: Business Issues, Search Ads: General, Stats: comScore

Google Offers Robots.txt Generator

Mar 27, 2008 at 5:39pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's rolled out a new tool at Google Webmaster Central, a robots.txt generator. It's designed to allow site owners to easily create a robots.txt file, one of the two main ways (along with the meta robots tag) to prevent search engines from indexing content. Robots.txt generators aren't new. You can find many of them out there by searching. But this is the first time a major search engine has provided a generator tool of its own. It's nice to see the addition. Robots.txt files aren't complicated to create. You can write them using a text editor such as notepad with just a few simple comman [...]

Filed in: Google: SEO, Google: Webmaster Central, SEO: Blocking Spiders

Privacy Policies And Search Engines

Mar 27, 2008 at 11:36am ET by Bill Slawski

A few weeks back, I started wondering about whether or not search engines might care whether or not a web site had a privacy policy. Is the content of a page less relevant or more relevant if there's a link on it to information about how any data collected about visitors might be used? Probably not. But it's possible that a search engine might consider that the source of content is more trustworthy, and more authoritative if it does include such a page. And that may make a difference... Many large commercial sites hand off the creation of a privacy policy to their legal departments, and [...]

Filed in: Small Is Beautiful

Details Posted On Google Webmaster Central’s Live Chat Session

Mar 27, 2008 at 10:25am ET by Barry Schwartz

I have more details on the Google live chat session that is taking place this Friday. Adam Lasnik posted the agenda, which starts at 8:45am (PST) this Friday and ends at 10am (PST). In short, Google will give an introduction, then do site reviews, then a topic on image search, followed by a short Q&A session. To try to have your site discussed in the site reviews section, you need to submit your details at Google Groups. Also, make sure to read the FAQs page to learn how to join the live chat, listen to the presentations, and submit questions in the Q&A session. [...]

Filed in: Google: Webmaster Central

Earth Hour: Google Shuts Out The Lights In Israel

Mar 27, 2008 at 10:13am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google Israel turned out the lights and flipped their white background color to black for שעת כדור הארץ (aka Earth Hour). What is ironic is that we reported in the past that Google argued that black uses more energy that white. (Although they participated in Lights Out San Francisco last October as a symbolic turning out the lights and noted then it was an effort to raise awareness about energy conservation -- not that turning the home black conserved energy itself.) In any event, Google will likely close the shades on Google.com on March 29th at 8pm, the time of Earth Hour in Ame [...]

Filed in: Google: Other

YouTube Insight: View Your YouTube Video Statistics

Mar 27, 2008 at 9:30am ET by Barry Schwartz

The YouTube Blog and Google Blog announced YouTube Insight, YouTube's new video statistics area. In short, additional statistics are now available to users who upload videos to YouTube. You can get stats on the number of views per day your video received, where those viewers are in the world, and how popular your video is compared to other videos in a given period of time. Let me drill down deeper into the stats and show you screen captures of the stats from my weekly video recaps at the Search Engine Roundtable. I took a video I published on March 7th named Search Buzz Roundup - RIP Ask. [...]

Filed in: Google: YouTube & Video

We Don’t Need SEO Standards!

Mar 27, 2008 at 8:00am ET by Jill Whalen

Last month I attended the SMX West session in Santa Clara entitled Is it Time for Search Marketing Standards? It was an interesting session, but I wasn't really sure where I stood on the issue at the time. Now that I've had a few weeks to think about it, I've come to the conclusion that not only would it be impossible to come up with standards that most would be happy with, I strongly believe that we don't need them at all. I have long been a proponent of performing SEO in such a way that satisfies all stakeholders, i.e., the client, the search engines, and the internet as a whole. My fee [...]

Filed in: 100% Organic, SEM Industry: Community, SEM Industry: Organizations, SEM Industry: Outsourcing, SEO: Spamming

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