Google Rolls Out Sitelinks Display For Forums

Sep 30, 2009 at 10:47pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Discussion forums are a popular way for people to find answers online, but forums often have multiple "threads" or conversations on the same topic. Now Google's listing forums in a new way to better expose relevant threads. In searches that bring up a forum listing, Google's now showing additional forum threads below the main listing, like this: The format is similar to Google Sitelinks, small links that sometimes appear below the main listing that shows at the top of a Google search results page or recently, within the description as well. Internally, Google calls this "forum [...]

Filed in: Google: Sitelinks

Google Improves Local Mobile Search, Links Maps & Mobile

Sep 30, 2009 at 6:47pm ET by Greg Sterling

In simple but still dramatic fashion, Google has upgraded browser based local search on mobile handsets. It has also tied Maps on the PC to mobile in a very effective way. And recognizing the limitations of keying in queries into a search box on a mobile handset, Google has taken a page from its Places Directory Android app and incorporated search/browse by category (with location awareness). These changes don't appear to be major at first blush, but they potentially are and make Google's browser-based local search on mobile devices much more formidable than it was yesterday. This is also G [...]

Filed in: Google: Maps & Local, Top News

SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 30, 2009

Sep 30, 2009 at 5:25pm 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: How To Get More PPC Traffic For Less MoneySearch advertising success is defined by relevance. The concept of relevance is broad, but logical: it’s the relationships between advertiser, keyword, ad copy and the landing page/ post click experience. So, how do we know if our relationships are strong, and our account is relevant? Simple: Quality Score for Google, or Quality Index for Yahoo. There are [...] FeedBurner Goes 301 All The WayThe Goog [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

How To Get More PPC Traffic For Less Money

Sep 30, 2009 at 5:16pm ET by Benny Blum

Search advertising success is defined by relevance. The concept of relevance is broad, but logical: it's the relationships between advertiser, keyword, ad copy and the landing page/ post click experience. So, how do we know if our relationships are strong, and our account is relevant? Simple: Quality Score for Google, or Quality Index for Yahoo. There are several components of Quality Score, illustrated quite nicely below: Three of the six components are controllable (keyword relevance, ad relevance, and landing page content); two of the components are byproducts (clickthrough rat [...]

Filed in: Google: AdWords, How To: PPC

FeedBurner Goes 301 All The Way

Sep 30, 2009 at 9:46am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google AdSense for Feeds (aka FeedBurner) blog announced that all of their links will be 301 redirected, as opposed to some that are 301 redirected. In summary, when you use FeedBurner to create and host your RSS feed, FeedBurner creates special links that are used to send the reader to your web site. Some users selected to use a 302 redirected link, as opposed to a 301 redirected link, to obtain better tracking. Google has made the decision to remove the 302 redirect option and make them all 301s. Why? The main reason is Google wants these URLs to become "more compatible with searc [...]

Filed in: Google: FeedBurner, Google: SEO, SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites

Yahoo Search Ads Now On iPhone & Android Mobile Devices

Sep 30, 2009 at 9:39am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog announced that your search ads will now automatically be displayed on iPhone & Android mobile phones. Yes, Yahoo said, this is an automatic opt in for all advertisers. Yahoo said, "As of today, your ads should begin appearing immediately on these devices for relevant searches, if they have not already." Yahoo boasted, if you didn't have your ads on mobile devices, then "we’ve done it for you." I assume there is an easy way to opt out, if you specifically do not want to show your ads on these devices? Here is a picture of the ads: There are also [...]

Filed in: Yahoo: Mobile & Go, Yahoo: Search Ads

Top Microsoft Execs Get A Pay Cut

Sep 30, 2009 at 8:28am ET by Greg Sterling

Appropriately top Microsoft executives, coming off  the "worst year ever" for the company, are sharing some of the pain. As PaidContent reports, the top executives at the company took a compensation hit based on the sales and revenue declines. Here are some of the numbers: CEO Steve Ballmer $1.265 million vs. $1.34 million a year ago CFO Chris Liddell: $3.5 million vs. $4.8 million COO Kevin Turner: $5.4 million vs. $8.6 million Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach: $6.2 million vs. $8.3 million The snark impulse is pretty strong and I'm trying not to write something v [...]

Filed in: Microsoft: Business Issues, Microsoft: Employees

Report: Most People Don’t Want Online Tracking Even If It Means Relevant Ads Or Savings

Sep 30, 2009 at 8:10am ET by Greg Sterling

Get ready marketers: a credible new report with sweeping implications from the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley is likely to be the nail in the coffin of self regulation of online advertising. Specifically I'm talking about behavioral targeting, which largely concerns online display advertising but does marginally touch search at Yahoo and Google. The NY Times discussed the report, released today: The study’s authors hired a survey company to conduct interviews with 1,000 adult Internet users. The interview, which lasted about 20 minutes, included questions like “Please tell [...]

Filed in: Google: Legal, Google: Web History & Search History, Legal: General, Legal: Privacy, Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting, Yahoo: Legal

The B2B Content Equation

Sep 30, 2009 at 6:59am ET by Andy Komack

B2B Internet marketers often struggle mightily with website content. From an SEO perspective, content is a key component in any successful search program (more keyword opportunities, longer tail terms, freshness to encourage more frequent crawls, internal cross-linking opportunities, inbound link building materials, etc.). The most common obstacles to content generation that B2B marketers express are time and money. It would be too simplistic, and perhaps even inaccurate, to make the following statement: Time + Money = Content Even if it were as simple as combining some amount of [...]

Filed in: Strictly Business

Think Search Before You Name Your Next Product

Sep 30, 2009 at 6:00am ET by Marty Weintraub

When naming products, it's always prudent to investigate potential online marketing challenges and pitfalls before launch. Failure to do so may preemptively damage your marketing team’s ability to cast an appropriate branding net. Traditionally due diligence surrounding the naming process involved trademark search, category and creative considerations. Now that’s no longer enough. Crucial naming decisions must also include rigorous SEO, social, reputation and paid search analysis. Here’s a checklist of factors to take into consideration to assure your product name is search-friendly [...]

Filed in: Brand Aid

SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 29, 2009

Sep 29, 2009 at 4:59pm 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: Shashi Seth, Another Ex-Googler, Lands At AOLAOL announced today that it’s hired former Google employee Shashi Seth as its Senior VP of Global Advertising Products. While with Google, Seth was head of monetization for YouTube. Most recently he was the Chief Revenue Officer for Cooliris. AOL’s addition of Seth is the latest in a series of hirings from the search industry — [...] Google Broadening Wave Access With GMail-Like Rollout [...]

Filed in: SearchCap

Shashi Seth, Another Ex-Googler, Lands At AOL

Sep 29, 2009 at 4:16pm ET by Matt McGee

AOL announced today that it's hired former Google employee Shashi Seth as its Senior VP of Global Advertising Products. While with Google, Seth was head of monetization for YouTube. Most recently he was the Chief Revenue Officer for Cooliris. AOL's addition of Seth is the latest in a series of hirings from the search industry -- and Google in particular -- going back to March when Tim Armstrong left Google to become AOL's Chairman and CEO. Armstrong was one of Google's longest serving executives, and AOL credited him for helping to "build one of the most successful media teams in the histor [...]

Filed in: AOL: General, Google: Employees

Google Broadening Wave Access With GMail-Like Rollout

Sep 29, 2009 at 11:00am ET by Greg Sterling

As we previously reported, starting tomorrow Google will widen access to its innovative communications platform Wave, offering 100,000 new invitations to use the service. Many of these people in turn will be allowed to invite others to join as well, reminiscent of how GMail propagated. (It's wise for Google to allow these new users to invite friends and family because you effectively can't use Wave without contacts on the system.) Those who will gain full access tomorrow will apparently be developers, early users who provided feedback and some Google Apps customers. My earlier blog post pro [...]

Filed in: Google: Gears, Google: General, Google: Gmail, Google: iGoogle

Google Launches Merchant Center For Google Base Users

Sep 29, 2009 at 10:30am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Base blog announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. This is the location for you to "upload your feeds, check on the status of your items, and get information on the performance of your listings." The Merchant Center is replacing Google Base for those who submit products to Google. This new portal is designed around product listings and submitting data for product listings. Transitioning between Google Base and Merchant Center should be very easy, Google said they would automatically show your existing data feeds, items, FTP settings and other data in the new [...]

Filed in: Google: Base, Google: Product Search

Shopping Engine Wize Relaunches To Align Product Research With Word Of Mouth

Sep 29, 2009 at 9:06am ET by Greg Sterling

What amazes me is that in more than a decade no "brand" has really emerged in shopping search. What do I mean by "brand"? I mean a site that's top-of-mind for consumers, trusted and that they navigate to directly for products and product information. One could say that the exceptions to this are Amazon, eBay (probably) and CNET in the consumer electronics category. But there are literally dozens and dozens of shopping sites that have been playing the search arbitrage game or trying their best to rank for product-related searches. But they're not really building any "brand equity" or long-term [...]

Filed in: Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines

6 Discovery Methods For Finding Ideal Linking Partners

Sep 29, 2009 at 7:05am ET by Julie Joyce

One of my link builders recently had the brilliant idea of putting together and sending out a questionnaire designed to gather information how the other link builders in our agency perform their daily link building tasks. We've always worked on the assumption that each link builder will naturally be drawn to using certain specific tools and techniques. We've also found that overall, our clients benefit from working with link builders who all do things a little bit differently from everyone else. If someone gets stuck, so to speak, there are many other favored methods that can be tried. The [...]

Filed in: Link Week

Cadbury Campaign Blends Earned And Paid Media

Sep 29, 2009 at 7:01am ET by Ciarán Norris

One of the greatest marketing success stories of the last couple of years has been Cadbury, the British chocolate maker - which, at nearly 200 years old, could be forgiven for failing to grasp modern technologies to promote its brands. However, helped by some great creative work by London shop Fallon, they've had huge success by creating ads that people love to share. First there was The Gorilla, which racked up millions of views and countless Facebook groups on its way to driving up sales by 9%, as well as a number of interesting spoofs, including a memorable one for Wonderbra which you mi [...]

Filed in: Let's Get Social

How To Get Into Baidu, The World’s 2nd Largest Search Engine

Sep 29, 2009 at 6:00am ET by Bill Hunt

ComScore’s announcement in early July that Baidu had become the second largest global search engine caused a fair bit of chatter in the industry as well as getting the attention of global marketers. ComScore further reported that Baidu had more than 8 billion searches and 145 million unique visitors in June meaning Baidu’s market share in China is nearly 76% to Google China’s 19.8 percent. After this announcement, and the recent changes announced by Baidu, those of us with connections in China received a flood of calls and emails from agencies and companies asking how they can get in [...]

Filed in: Multinational Search

Take That, Twitter: Google Hot Trends Integrated Into Google Search

Sep 28, 2009 at 6:45pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Twitter and real time search continues to attract buzz, and Google's reacting by positioning its "Hot Trends" information in a place where more people will see it, within Google's regular search results. Starting around 3:45 Pacific Time today, those searching on topics that are spiking or "hot" in popularity should see a new Hot Trends OneBox near the bottom of the search results page and just above the related search area, similar to below: Here's another example: "The idea behind the [Hot Trends] OneBox is to not only provide you with search results as you'd want but al [...]

Filed in: Features: General, Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers, Google: Trends, Top News

Meet The Google OneBox, Plus Box, Direct Answers & The 10-Pack

Sep 28, 2009 at 6:12pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's "normal" listings show the title of a web page, a description of it (also called a "snippet") and the web page's URL. However, Google also has other listings that appear within search results that are designed to give access to some of its specialized search tools (such as news search), to allow more information to be shown than a standard answer provides or to show answers directly within the search page. Here's a short overview to these alternatives. OneBox Results OneBox results are when Google shows information within a special unit, often with images associated with [...]

Filed in: Features: General, Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers, Search Features: Query Refinement, Search Features: Shortcuts, Top News

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