Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 30, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: OPA Study Reaffirms Display Ads Drive Search Search and display. One often hears how they work together, but there’s still plenty of skepticism out there, especially in the SEM community, about […]

Content

OPA Study Reaffirms Display Ads Drive Search

Search and display. One often hears how they work together, but there’s still plenty of skepticism out there, especially in the SEM community, about the value of display advertising. Indeed, during the recession search has prospered (relatively speaking) while display has suffered. But a new study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and comScore argues […]

Link building

Are You Link Building Or Just Keeping Up With The Joneses?

If there’s one link development tactic that has been used to death, it has to be “see who’s linking to your competition and get them to link to you”. There are tools galore to help you do this, software you buy and install on your desktop, or web based apps. It’s a fairly simple technique […]

Google Ads

Google Releases AdWords API v2009 (Beta)

The Google AdWords API Blog announced the new AdWords API v2009. The new API promises “more speed, scale, and flexibility to developers, at a lower cost.” The AdWords API v2009 will ultimately replace version 13, and there are “significant” differences between the two. The biggest additions include: Partial failure acceptance – We plan to support […]

Content

YouTube To Launch “Call-To-Action Overlay” Ads

TechCrunch reports that YouTube is adding a new ad type to its ad mix named “Call-To-Action Overlay” ads. These ads are very simple, they basically allow you to add a link to a third-party site, off of YouTube. The ad is a transparent background with an ad description and link to any site you want. […]

Paid social

The Toolbar Factor: Engagement’s Role in Social Voting

Since their infancy, social news sites have been trying to stay one step ahead of social media users trying to artificially promote content to their front page. Digg.com has been the center focus for spamming and gaming in social media because a front-page promoted story equates to thousands of visitors and hundreds, or even thousands […]

SEO

Yahoo News Was Top Destination For Michael Jackson News

Yahoo News was the web’s number one choice last week for information about the death of entertainer Michael Jackson. In a post on the Hitwise blog, Heather Dougherty shows a chart detailing how the major online News & Media sites fared: Late last week I wrote about how each of the major search engines handled […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 29, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Long Tail of Paid Search Account Effort If you spend enough time sitting at your desk in summer, you can go slightly insane. That aside, daydreaming sometimes leads to back-door […]

PPC

The Long Tail of Paid Search Account Effort

If you spend enough time sitting at your desk in summer, you can go slightly insane. That aside, daydreaming sometimes leads to back-door observations, studies show. Glancing out the window, it’s evident that it takes a lot of resources and coordination to run a neighborhood. Schools, crossing guards, street sweepers, garbage collection, public pool maintenance, […]

Ecommerce

Google Tests Dropping Off Country Specific Search?

The SEO Home blog has noticed that Google UK is now testing removing the radio button to only show “pages from the UK.” If you visit google.co.uk you may notice the radio button, but some are noticing that the radio button for that country specific option is now missing. Google UK With the Country Specific […]

Apple

Google: We’re Not Really That Big But If We Are, We Aren’t Bad

The NY Times offers a broad article about Google’s efforts to define, explain and clarify its place in the market in the face of increasing anti-trust scrutiny (Google Makes a Case That It Isn’t So Big). There are currently three Justice Department investigations pending that involve Google, concerning its Book Search settlement, overlapping directors with […]

Ecommerce

Funny: “Googling With Bing”

Monday’s can be rough for many people, so I thought I share with you a funny video named “Googling with Bing.” It basically is a Bing commercial, but they replace the word “search” with “Google.” See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor. Hat tip to TechCrunch for spotting this.

Local

Next Great Thing: Bing Draws On IYP Connection

Everyone seems to be chiming in with their reviews of Microsoft’s new search engine — oops, I mean “decision engine”. Can it compete with Yahoo? Will it become a verb like Google? Why’d they name it after the Chandler character on “Friends?” I don’t know if Bing will grow legs or if it’ll get lost […]

SEO

Riding The Rail: Plenty Of Time To Ponder Search

I’m going just a bit off topic this month. It may seem a stretch, but bear with me, there is a modicum of relevance to this column. You see, most of my ideas for Industrial Strength columns, as well as the bulk of my SEL column writing, take place on either the Capitol 523 or […]

Content

Google Thinks Michael Jackson Died At Age 65 In 2007

Oops. Bad, Google. Occasionally the service inserts direct answers to searches at the top of its results. It makes guesses at this, and in the case of michael jackson died, it’s making the wrong guess. Henry Elliss tipped us that Google’s showing that Michael Jackson died in 2007, at age 65. The problem? Google’s drawing […]

Ecommerce

The Bogus Google Give-Away

Here’s a new one on me. I just got an email telling me that I’ve won nearly $1 million from a “drawing” randomly selected from those searching on Google. Suffice to say, it’s a scam. I can assure you that Google’s done no drawing like this. Add the spam to those about missing fortunes in […]

Apple

Michael Jackson’s Death: An Inside Look At How Google, Yahoo, & Bing Handled An Extraordinary Day In Search

An extraordinary day of breaking news on Thursday led to record-breaking traffic spikes as people searched online for information about the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and, especially, Michael Jackson. And just like their counterparts in traditional media, the news divisions of Google, Yahoo, and Bing responded with sometimes extraordinary measures to ensure they were giving […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 26, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: AdWords Conversion Tracking: How To Optimize Your Account 10x Quicker Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could get data 10 times faster so you could make your bid & ad decisions […]

SEO

One Week Left To Pitch Sessions Ideas For SMX East

Want to speak at our SMX East SEM conference, happening Oct. 5 to 7 in New York? The very best way is to pitch a great session idea, and you have through the end of next week to do it. Use our Session Pitch Form to send in your ideas. The form will stay open […]

Google

Focus Group Study Offers Good & Bad News For Bing

TechCrunch yesterday reported on the results of a focus group conducted by NY design firm Catalyst Group comparing usability on Bing and Google. The study showed that in many instances Bing was preferred but that users already familiar and comfortable with Google would likely stay with Google. What’s partly interesting about this is that the […]

SEO

How To: Excel At Excel For SEM Applications, Part 3

In this continuing series (part 1, part 2), I’ve shared some tips and tricks specifically for the search marketing professional using Microsoft Excel. The feedback has been great (thank you!), so I’m going to expand these posts to not just include tasks associated with SEM, but into a mini-Excel training course for search marketers using […]

Google

Jeff Goldblum Is NOT Dead (Despite What Google Says)

I can’t believe I’m writing this post. But on a day when both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson have died, people are clearly ready to believe anything. And a rumor that Jeff Goldblum has passed away is making the rounds, unable to be squashed because all the sites talking about it keep crashing under the […]

Link building

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 25, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 26 People Who Mislead You On Twitter Earlier this month, I covered various ways people are spamming Twitter in my Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article. Since then, I’ve been diligently […]

Paid social

26 People Who Mislead You On Twitter

Earlier this month, I covered various ways people are spamming Twitter in my Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article. Since then, I’ve been diligently reporting some of the more annoying spam I see. Despite this, none of the reported accounts have been closed. So, it’s time for a public spam report — and some education […]

Content

AOL’s Truveo Relaunches As Improved Video Search Destination

According to comScore the average watcher of online video in the US took in 385 minutes-worth in April. And according to Nielsen, in May, “year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49 percent growth in time per viewer.” The leading video site is Google/YouTube by […]

Google Ads

Google Export Adviser Beta

Google has released a new tool for AdWords advertisers, focused on international (not US based) advertising. The tool is named Google Export Advisor and aims at helping businesses “reach new markets and grow internationally.” The tool combines the Google Keyword Tool, Google Translator and Google Traffic Estimator to come up with a neat way of […]

Google SEO

Google Gives Presentation On Search Engine Optimization

The Google Grants Blog posted that they have given a presentation in their D.C. office on search engine optimization. The presentation was to help educate a group of “issue campaign managers” on the principles of SEO. Galen Panger from the Google for Non-Profits team posted the 31 slides they presented to this group. Here they […]

Google

Google Wants Your Feedback On Webmaster Central

The Google Webmaster Central blog is asking SEOs and Webmasters to submit and vote on feedback at the Product Ideas for Webmaster Central. When you go to the products idea page, you will be asked to sign in to submit or vote on submissions. The more votes a submission receives, the more likely Google will […]

Paid social

Shopping Search 2.0: Finding Deals & Coupons On Twitter

It didn’t take long for commerce to move online when the WWW was invented in the early ’90s, and it hasn’t taken long for the same migration to happen as new social networks become important parts of our everyday lives. Don’t be surprised if, in the not too distant future, you find yourself using social […]

Google

Google Takes On Tourism With City Tours Experiment

City Tours is a new addition to Google Labs that puts Google squarely in the tourism business: Give it a city name, and Google not only suggests sites to see, but it also maps out a multi-day itinerary and proposes a minute-by-minute travel schedule for you to follow. And what’s really impressive is that City […]

Ecommerce

Cuil Maplines: A Good Idea That Needs Work

Cuil has announced an interesting new map-based tool called Maplines. On some queries, the Mapline shows in the right column of Cuil’s search results above the Timeline feature. What’s a Mapline. Here’s Cuil’s explanation: “Just as our Timelines show a concept across time, our Maplines show a concept across a map.” It’s an interesting idea, […]

Google Analytics

SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 24, 2009

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How Twitter Might Send Far More Traffic Than You Think Over the past year, I’ve seen many people report that Twitter can send tons of traffic to a web site. Certainly […]

Google

Google AdSense for Mobile Applications Goes Into Public Beta

Google had been testing AdSense on mobile apps for the iPhone and Android in a kind of private beta with roughly 10 partners, including Pandora, Shazam and Urbanspoon. Now the program is opening up to apps developers and publishers who meet some criteria (among them, a 3 month commitment, 100K+ page views). Google said that […]

Google SEO

Google’s Matt Cutts On “Over Optimization”

Matt Cutts of Google has been producing daily videos answering questions from the SEO community. Many of these videos have useful information for all levels of SEO. I wanted to share Matt’s most recent video and then point you to his other videos. The latest video is on “over optimization” where Matt answers the question […]

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