SPONSOR MESSAGE: inLinks.com: The In Content Ad Leader. SEO’s – rank higher!

Nov 28, 2008 at 5:36pm ET by Search Engine Land

inLinks allows you to purchase links within the content area on web pages. You search for instances of your top keywords and replace those static keywords with a hyperlink back to your website. SPECIAL: get $100 in inLinks for only $1!  Just enter the coupon code: free100 at checkout.  Visit inLinks now! [...]

Filed in: Sponsor Messages

Baidu’s Search Ad Revenue Drops 10-15% After Paid Ad Scandal

Nov 28, 2008 at 8:22am ET by Barry Schwartz

Chinese internet giant sacks staff over paid for search listings from the Guardian reports Baidu has dropped the ads of four clients after finding out their medical licenses were false. According to the Guardian, this has resulted in Baidu's ad revenue dropping ten to fifteen percent, plus the release of several ad representatives who have allegedly helped these false medical practices gain top ranking in Baidu. Baidu's stock fell 60% on the news that Baidu allegedly allowed unlicensed medical services adverse for medical practices. Robin Li, Baidu's chief executive told Xinhua: Baidu [...]

Filed in: Legal: General, Search Engines: Baidu

The Biggest Web Site Usability Mistakes You Can Make

Nov 28, 2008 at 8:00am ET by Kim Krause Berg

When you built your first web site, didn’t you just want to promote it everywhere with big bold letters saying, “HEY EVERYONE! COME HERE AND LOOK AT MY WEBSITE! ISN’T IT GREAT?” Or, when you submit your web site to forums for web site reviews, what do you typically ask for? You may write, “Tell me what you think of my web site” or “Which color do you like better, blue or red?” or “Did I optimize for search engines properly?” The worst mistake you will make as a web site owner is to ask someone to “look” at your web site. It’s like the dreaded, “Do I look fa [...]

Filed in: Just Behave

Happy Thanksgiving & Programming Note

Nov 27, 2008 at 7:47am ET by Barry Schwartz

Happy Thanksgiving Search Engine Land readers! Today, in observance of the holiday, we hope to not write here today. So make sure to tune in tomorrow for today's search news and tomorrows. To give you something fun to look at, I'll post what I did at the Search Engine Roundtable, a collection of special Thanksgiving logos from across the search industry. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Google's Logo: Yahoo's flash logo: [...]

Filed in: AOL: General, Ask: General, Google: Logos, Microsoft: Bing, Microsoft: General, SEM Industry: General, Yahoo: General

Measuring The Effectiveness Of B2B SEO

Nov 26, 2008 at 7:55pm ET by Shellie Foriska

Many B2B marketers have difficulty justifying the value of search engine optimization (SEO) to senior level executives. Since SEO is a highly-efficient marketing channel with longer-lasting results than most mediums, establishing ROI is challenging yet critical. Here are a few suggestions on how to best integrate web analytics data with other tools to prove the value of SEO. Web analytics data is the foundation The cornerstone of any successful SEO program is accurate web analytics data. Don't have an analytics package? Google Analytics is a great free option that provides most of th [...]

Filed in: Strictly Business

Q&A With Paul O’Brien, Vice President of Marketing at Zvents.com

Nov 26, 2008 at 7:38pm ET by Duane Forrester

Paul O'Brien is an old-hand at the online marketing game, having honed his skills with brands such as Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.  I recently had an opportunity to chat with Paul, and it's always impressive to meet well-rounded, knowledgeable thought leaders like him.  If you think you have heard Paul's name before, it could be because you recently read Online Marketing Heroes, in which he's one of the 25 interviewed. How did you get your start as a search marketer? It is astounding to imagine, in this industry which evolves so rapidly, that some of us have been at this for a dozen [...]

Filed in: In House

SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 26, 2008

Nov 26, 2008 at 5:13pm 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: SearchBiz: MSFT’s Online Struggles; More on Yahoo-AOL; Cuts At TechnoratiFortune magazine asks why Microsoft can't make money online, and shares some striking numbers: The company's Online Services unit, which includes Live Search, aQuantive, and the MSN portal, lost $480 million in the quarter that ended September 30th -- 80% more than the same quarter a year ago. Ouch! Why the struggles? The article suggests that Microsoft is trying to do too [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

SearchBiz: MSFT’s Online Struggles; More on Yahoo-AOL; Cuts At Technorati

Nov 26, 2008 at 4:03pm ET by Matt McGee

Fortune magazine asks why Microsoft can't make money online, and shares some striking numbers: The company's Online Services unit, which includes Live Search, aQuantive, and the MSN portal, lost $480 million in the quarter that ended September 30th -- 80% more than the same quarter a year ago. Ouch! Why the struggles? The article suggests that Microsoft is trying to do too much online, and that, by being so late to the search game, it's playing an impossible game of catch-up to Google: "Microsoft may have been noodling on the web since the 1990s, but it was only four years ago that the [...]

Filed in: Search Biz

Crappy MP3 Sites, Comment Spamming & Enough Already

Nov 26, 2008 at 2:20pm ET by Danny Sullivan

In covering search marketing for the past 13 years, I've tried not to be judgmental about certain marketing tactics some people might undertake. Search engines have "rules" that they themselves knowingly allow others to break. Arguments erupt over the idea that any type of marketing is "manipulation." But at some point, enough is enough with some tactics. And today, I'm done. I'm calling bullshit on anyone who is link spamming or creating crappy nonsensical content sites. Seriously, enough. You've wasted enough of my time, and you've wasted enough time of people all over the web. I'l [...]

Filed in: Features: General, SEM Industry: Community, SEM Industry: General, SEO: Spamming, Top News

Yahoo Launches “Vertical Lens” Search Through BOSS

Nov 26, 2008 at 12:00pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Yahoo announced an expansion to the BOSS technology named "vertical lens" technology. In short, this allows developers build their own vertical search engines using Yahoo's search technology, through BOSS. This new technology is replacing Yahoo's old Search Builder tool. TechCrunch is one of the first to deploy a "vertical lens" on their site. TechCrunch's solution searches technology-focused articles on both TechCrunch.com and across Yahoo's web index. So this helps improve TechCrunch's internal site search, and also give searchers other relevant search results that are not found on Te [...]

Filed in: Top News, Yahoo: Search, Yahoo: Search Builder

comScore: Yahoo Still Major Player In Japan

Nov 26, 2008 at 11:47am ET by Barry Schwartz

comScore has released metrics on search market share in Japan. Overall, in September, Japanese searchers searched 5.9 billion times, with an average of 96 searches per user. Yahoo is beating Google out in searches, with over 3 billion searches conducted on Yahoo properties. Google properties counted for just under 2.3 billion searches. Yahoo has a 51.2% market share in Japan, while Google has 39% share, while Microsoft has a 1.5% share with 90 million searches. Japan is the second largest market for searchers in Asia, China leads Japan with 12.7 billion searches for September, com [...]

Filed in: Stats: Popularity, Stats: comScore

Meet Pegman: Google Makes StreetView Bigger, Easier To Use

Nov 26, 2008 at 10:26am ET by Greg Sterling

Who knew that the little "man" that helps users navigate StreetView is called "Pegman"? As much as I'm a fan of StreetView, there was always something a bit awkward about maneuvering the little man on the map to launch the StreetView image window. But Google has now made a number of improvements that make it easier to use Pegman himself and StreetView in general. Initiating StreetView no longer involves clicking a button in the upper right of the map. Instead Pegman is integrated into the upgraded navigation module, which now more closely resembles the one in Google Earth, in the upper lef [...]

Filed in: Google: Maps & Local, Top News

SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 25, 2008

Nov 25, 2008 at 5:45pm ET by Matt McGee

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: SEMPO To Ring NASDAQ’s Bell SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, has been invited to ring the opening bell at NASDAQ headquarters in Times Square on December 1st. There doesn't seem to be a news release about it yet, but SEMPO's Dave Williams shared all the details on SEMPO's Facebook group: Three Ways to Kick Up Your Local Marketing In Time for Black Friday & Cyber Mond [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

SEMPO To Ring NASDAQ’s Bell

Nov 25, 2008 at 5:25pm ET by Matt McGee

SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, has been invited to ring the opening bell at NASDAQ headquarters in Times Square on December 1st. There doesn't seem to be a news release about it yet, but SEMPO's Dave Williams shared all the details on SEMPO's Facebook group: "SEMPO was recognized by NASDAQ as being highly influential in the tech community, and you have the opportunity to be there on this historic day. Our chairperson, Dana Todd will be on hand to represent SEMPO at the opening, and would love to have local members join us for this exciting event." RSVPs are [...]

Filed in: SEM Industry: General, SEM Industry: Organizations, Top News

Three Ways to Kick Up Your Local Marketing In Time for Black Friday & Cyber Mondays!

Nov 25, 2008 at 5:02pm ET by Chris Silver Smith

The economic Grinch is threatening to steal Christmas this year, but there are some things local businesses can do to avoid getting coal in their stockings this holiday season. Here are three tips for punching up your online local marketing presence, just in time for Black Friday and the Cyber Mondays to follow. For brick-and-mortar stores, everyone knows that the biggest holiday shopping day is typically "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving when many start their gift shopping, helping propel retailers firmly into the black. For online retailers, the greatest shopping frenzy hi [...]

Filed in: Features: General, Google: Maps & Local, How To: SEO, Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

SearchBiz: MSN Staff Shuffles; GOOG Gains; eMarketer On 2009 Ad Spending

Nov 25, 2008 at 4:16pm ET by Matt McGee

AllThingsD and paidContent.org are both reporting on staffing changes at MSN. AllThingsD calls it a case of "musical chairs," and that seems pretty accurate based on a memo sent out by Greg Nelson of the Global Media Group. Nelson himself is now under Satya Nadella, Senior VP of Search, and Erik Jorgensen, Corporate VP of MSN. Yusuf Mehdi and Brian McAndrews are now Senior VPs of Online Audience Business and Advertisers & Publishers, respectively. Those are just a couple of the changes at MSN; it's a holiday week, so there will be no quiz on all the changes in the morning. GOOG gained almos [...]

Filed in: Search Biz

Cyberchondria: When Web Search Makes You Sick(er)

Nov 25, 2008 at 3:07pm ET by Matt McGee

Those muscle twitches you get probably aren't a sign that you have ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka "Lou Gehrig's Disease"). But if you're using search engines to diagnose what ails you, there's a chance you'll come to that conclusion. In a new paper, Microsoft investigates cyberchondria: "... the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web." Microsoft researchers Ryen White and Eric Horvitz studied a 40-million page sample of search results (from Live Search) and surveyed 500 Microsoft employees abo [...]

Filed in: Microsoft: Other, Microsoft: Other Search, Search & Society: General, Search Engines: Health & Medical Search Engines

Why Social Media May Not Be Right For You

Nov 25, 2008 at 2:14pm ET by Ciarán Norris

I was recently asked whether, if I had to make the choice, would I choose to work in just SEO or social media. Without any hesitation I answered SEO. In the current climate it’s obviously more accountable and seems a more obvious choice to me for brands looking to make reduced marketing budgets go further. (Although the Financial Times makes a very good argument that brands should actually invest in marketing during a recession rather than reduce spend). Luckily I don’t have to make a choice but I think it highlights something that we in the digital marketing industry are often guilty of [...]

Filed in: Let's Get Social

MapQuest: “We’ve Come Out Of Hibernation”

Nov 25, 2008 at 1:54pm ET by Mike Blumenthal

I recently had the opportunity to interview two senior level executives from Mapquest to find out what the longtime provider of online mapping services is up to. Despite perceptions, MapQuest is actually a more popular mapping destination than Google or Yahoo's map sites, and the company continues to innovate and push out new features and services, with a renewed level of energy in recent months. What follows is my Q&A with Mark Law, Vice President of Product Development and Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President & General Manager, MapQuest, Inc. Can you share the highlights of your [...]

Filed in: AOL: MapQuest, Features: General, Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines, Top News

Nielsen: UK Mobile Web Growing “8x Faster” Than PC Internet

Nov 25, 2008 at 12:47pm ET by Greg Sterling

Nielsen released some UK mobile usage data yesterday that are very interesting on a number of fronts. The highest-level findings reflect that in the UK the mobile internet is growing much faster than the PC internet (8x) and that the average age of mobile users is younger than online. There are now more than 7 million mobile internet users in the UK according to Nielsen. That compares with more than 40 million in the US. The mobile internet audience is about 20 percent the size of the UK online audience. In the US, where the raw numbers are much larger in both categories, the proportion [...]

Filed in: Features: Analysis, Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines, Stats: NetRatings, Stats: Popularity, Stats: Search Behavior, Stats: Size

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