Content

Wikia Search To Close Up Shop

News.com reports that Wikia Search is giving up and closing up shop. Search Wikia launched an alpha release in January 2008, where Chris Sherman gave it a poor review. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikia, told News.com “It was going to take at least an another year to two before it’s usable by the public, and […]

Content

IAB: PPC And Search Gain In Q4, FY08 Online Ad Revs At $23B

According to data released yesterday by the IAB/PwC on Q4 and full year 2008 online advertising revenues, performance-based advertising and search gained while other segments declined slightly or were flat. Overall, online advertising grew 10.6% in 2008 to reach $23.4 billion. US online ad revenue in Q4 was $6.1 billion, up from $5.8 billion in […]

Content

Microsoft Kills Encyclopedia Encarta

Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has decided to discontinue their encyclopedia software, Encarta. Both the MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software will be shut down. Microsoft said: On October 31, 2009, MSN® Encarta® Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on […]

Paid social

Beware These Comment Saboteurs In Social Media

When using social news sites for search marketing, you are inevitably going to run into annoying people. Some, in fact, may be actively trying to undermine your credibility, to further their own agenda. You need to watch out for these troglodytes, and respond appropriately to maintain your own credibility. Here are the 10 worst kinds […]

Google

Google Ventures Into VC Business

Google has announced the launch of its new venture capital fund, appropriately named Google Ventures. “At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups,” Google says of its new for-profit effort. The New York Times reports that the group is expected to invest up to $100 million in the […]

Google

Turn Back Google’s Clock With Retro Links Script

Back in the day, when some of us old-timer SEOs used to walk to work in the snow (uphill both ways), we’d get to our desks, fire up our 14.4 modems, pop in a floppy disk, listen to our favorite songs on a Sony Walkman cassette player and optimize that meta keywords tag like there […]

Bing

Microsoft Releases Large Volume Of New Images For Maps

Virtual Earth, which has been somewhat in the shadow of Google Maps and Earth released a large volume of new images for Live Search Maps for a range of countries and cities around the globe. The imagery allows you to get in very close, so you can see how far your hotel is exactly from […]

Google

Google Expands AdWords Fav Icon Test

Earlier this month we reported on Google’s test of favicons in Germany and Poland in AdWords. Subsequently I was alerted by someone in email that this was happening in the UK as well. Dave Naylor noticed it today in the UK and has some screenshots. I was unable to find any conducting various searches on […]

SEO

March ’09 Yahoo Search Update

SEOs and Webmasters are noticing major shifts in the Yahoo Search results over the weekend. I reported the threads discussing the changes at the Search Engine Roundtable and noted that Yahoo has yet to post a “weather report” on this update at the Yahoo Search Blog. Yahoo promised that they would continue to provide “weather […]

Google Ads

Google Kills Video Ad Units After Poor Performance

The Inside AdSense blog announced that Google will be discontinuing the Google Video units. Google Video units launched in October 2007 but due to not living up to the expectations Google hoped for, Google is going to “retire” the feature by the end of April. In fact, many publishers were recently not happy with the […]

Google

Amongst Google Layoffs, Google Continues To Hire

Last week, Google laid off 200 sales and marketing employees but this does not mean Google is not hiring. Google layoffs don’t stop hiring efforts from Reuters reports Google has 360 job openings on their web site. A Google spokesperson has confirmed that Google is still hiring, amongst those layoffs. In fact, 30 or so […]

Google Ads

Google: Some AdWords Ads May Exceed Character Limit

Over the course of the past month or two, there have been several reports that Google is allowing AdWords ads to have extended character limits, above what is allowed in the guidelines. I reported this at the Search Engine Roundtable earlier this month, where Google told me “We haven’t changed our AdWords policy regarding the […]

SEO

Useless SEO Terms: Linkbait & SEO Copywriting

Back in the early days of search engines and search engine optimization it was an anything goes environment. Initially, SEOs stuffed reams of keywords into their page to get their pages to rank. Then when links became the driving force in rankings SEOs moved into link buying. The problem with all this is that it […]

Google

How Google Shot Microsoft After It Took A Knife To A Gunfight

Google’s a split-personality company. On the one hand, it wants people to believe that it could lose its customers at any time, lest it get viewed as a monopoly. But question its ability on the technical front, and the Big G will go off on you like nobody’s business. That’s what happened this week to […]

Apple

The Google Wonder Wheel & Other Search Refinement Features Get Live Test

Google Blogoscoped spotted an interesting test at Google allowing searchers to refine their search results in various ways, including clicking through a “Wonder Wheel.” There’s nothing particularly game changing, but the test is interesting if only for demonstrating how Google will react when competitors suggest it is “behind” in the search space. My separate post, […]

Google Ads

Google Expands AdWords Interface Beta Test

If you’re a Google AdWords user, you may be able to kick the tires on the new AdWords interface. Google has opened the beta it to more US advertisers, as well as to new countries (the UK and Australia) and new languages (Spanish, Japanese, French, and Brazilian Portuguese). When you login to your AdWords account, […]

Content

Celebrities, TV, & Taxes: Hottest Search Terms In February

Compete.com says we spent a lot of time searching for information about entertainers, TV, and taxes during January. The terms “rihanna” and “chris brown” are Nos. 1 and 3 according to their data, with “irs.gov,” “hulu,” and “american idol” rounding out the top five. On the flip side of the coin, “circuit city” and “peanut […]

Google

Google Blog Search Fixing Blogroll Indexing Bug

As Barry Schwartz points out today on Search Engine Roundtable, the Google Blog Search team is rolling out fixes to how it separates blogrolls from actual blog posts. Back in December, we wrote about Google’s switch to full-text indexing for Blog Search, but that led to problems identifying blogroll links as part of blog posts. […]

PPC

Danny Sullivan’s SEO & SEM Q&A Session Via Twitter

Last week, I took questions via my Twitter account (@dannysullivan) about SEO issues and more broadly about search marketing overall. I thought it would be useful to compile them into a post. Here you go! Question: rebecca_morrow what’s the best thing to say to clients who don’t want content on their home page? Answer: tell […]

Microsoft

Long Time Yahoo Search Scientist Jan Pedersen Joins Microsoft

The Yahoo-to-Microsoft defections continue with news today from paidContent.org that Jan Pedersen is the new chief scientist for Live Search. This one isn’t exactly a defection, because Pedersen comes to Microsoft from Amazon’s A9.com. But he was Chief Scientist and VP, Search and Advertising Technology Group, at Yahoo prior to that. And before his Yahoo […]

SEO

Yahoo Not Focused On MSFT Sale, Rather On Mobile & 141 Home Page Variations

Three intertwined stories appeared today about Yahoo. The first from Dow Jones Newswires picks up on a Thomas Weisel report about the company, following a meeting between analysts and CEO Carol Bartz. Ironically the report (as described) is highly positive but it sent shares down because it suggests that a Microsoft-Yahoo deal is not going […]

Google

Google To Cut 200 Sales & Marketing Staffers

Google has just announced plans to cut almost 200 people from the sales and marketing teams around the world. According to the announcement, the affected employees will be given time to find new positions at Google and/or help in locating a job elsewhere. They’ll also give severance packages to those who leave the company. Says […]

Google

Google Pushing Hard(er) To Get Webmaster Products Adopted

I was setting up a new domain last year, something I’d done countless times and could do with my eyes closed, when my hosting provider suddenly started pushing several Google products on me. Did I want to use Gmail for my domain? Did I want to use Google Apps for Domains? Well, no, but thanks. […]

Ecommerce

Yahoo – But Not Yahoo Search – Headed To TV

Yahoo is making a move onto television screens with the Yahoo Widget Engine (YWE), but its first iteration won’t include a Yahoo search box. The Yahoo widgets are Internet-based applications that can be used on Internet-connected TVs and controlled with the TV’s remote control. Samsung has just introduced a TV that integrates the Yahoo Widget […]

Display

Ask.com Shows Display Ads On Home Page

If you visit Ask.com today, you may notice that they have ads for their sister sites. Here is a picture of Ask.com with a Match.com ad, an IAC property. Currently, Ask.com is the only “search engine” to have display ads on their search home page. I’ll leave my negative thoughts to myself this time.

Google

What Israeli SEMs Want

A month ago, I wrote about my meet up with Google Israel, from my trip to Israel about two months ago. This week, I am back in Israel on a sponsored Blogger Delegation to meet with Israelis and see their way of business and life. Today, I had free time and used it to meet […]

Local

March Madness Strategies For Small Businesses

Some of you may know that around this time every year, I come down with a serious case of NCAA Tournament fever.  During the month of March, when people ask for my phone number, I respond “65-32-16-8-4-2-1.”  Assuming clients are able to get a hold of me somehow, all of my doodles during phone calls […]

SEO

Are The Search Engines Really Indexing Flash?

It seems that once a year for the past five years or so, a search engine representative will stand up at a conference and announce that they are now indexing Flash. Website designers jump with glee, and SEOs lament that all the work they did educating their clients on why they need to curb their […]

Content

Can Hulu Sustain Its Success Without Engaging Community?

At first, online video service Hulu appeared to be a futile response to the rising tide of online user uploaded and user generated content—after all, Hulu is a group of major broadcasting networks backing a platform to publish their content online and regain control of their distribution networks. Hulu was declared doomed, and bound to […]

Ecommerce

Yahoo Closes The Cabin Door On FareChase

FareChase, Yahoo’s discount travel search engine, is shutting its doors today. An alert on the FareChase web site indicates that today is the service’s final day, and encourages users to instead use Yahoo Travel. In her first conference call back in January, new CEO Carol Bartz said “everything’s open for examination” when it comes to […]

Google

Google Voice Search & My Location Now On Blackberry

Google has announced the addition of voice search and My Location on the Google Mobile App for Blackberry. The new Blackberry additions are features that have been available on the Google Mobile App for iPhone since November. The My Location feature lets you search without needing to input a city name or some other geographic […]

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