In many ways Europe and the US are similar, but there's one key difference that's essential for search marketers to understand, and that's the way Europeans and Americans look at privacy. Europeans value privacy over virtually everything else, even before freedom of speech. Not sufficiently recognizing this difference has caused Google to run afoul of European courts and governments on more than one occasion recently. Google's privacy issues Google is the largest search engine in Europe by far. Yahoo and Bing have a presence in Europe but have such a minor percentage of market share that [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Multinational Search

The home page of OpenOffice.org, the well-known Microsoft Office competitor, is missing from Microsoft's Bing search engine. While it sounds suspicious, the problem has nothing to do with Bing itself -- it's a technical problem on OpenOffice.org's end. Ian McAnerin noticed earlier today that OpenOffice.org doesn't show up in Bing on searches for [open office] and [openoffice.org]. He wonders if Bing is "allowing its results to be unduly influenced by either money or corporate policy." But, upon further digging with some help from SEL's Vanessa Fox, that's not the case. To be clear: Page [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | SEO: Blocking Spiders

Google Buzz is having a bad day. I reported earlier about the lack of search interest in Buzz, but there's a potentially more serious legal problem coming: A group of 11 lawmakers is asking the FTC to investigate whether Google Buzz violated consumer privacy regulations. BusinessWeek reported over the weekend that 11 members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have sent a letter to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. The Hill quotes the letter, which is critical of "Google's practice of automatically using consumers' e-mail address books to create contact lists for Buzz and then publicly dis [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Google: Buzz | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Legal: Privacy

Where's the buzz on Google Buzz? According to online ad network Chitika, the buzz is gone, dead. Chitika says this is true both in general web searches, as well as search activity across its network of 80,000 sites. Chitika's blog post explains more, with numbers from its own network: February 9th, 2010 – the day Buzz was launched – the search engines lit up with queries. The Chitika network saw about 1,500 searches that day for the term "Google Buzz," approximately 15 times the number of searches for "Twitter." However, those searches dropped off quickly – on February 10th, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Features: Analysis | Google: Buzz | Top News | Twitter

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Source: Google Ending AdWords Reseller Program (For Now)Following rumors over the past week or so that Google was shutting down its local AdWords reseller program, I’ve received two separate confirmations of this today from credible sources. Both confirmed that Google is indeed shuttering the current form of the program, which has operated for at least three years. One of the sources said [...] Google Aggressively Going After Alleged Leaker I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Following rumors over the past week or so that Google was shutting down its local AdWords reseller program, I've received two separate confirmations of this today from credible sources. Both confirmed that Google is indeed shuttering the current form of the program, which has operated for at least three years. One of the sources said that the program will cease at the end of this month (this week). The AdWords reseller program has been used by local media companies and several independent sales channels to help sell search marketing to small businesses in the local market. Conceptually it w [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Maps & Local | Top News

Last fall CNET got hold of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's deposition transcript in the Viacom-YouTube lawsuit (remember that one; it's still going). Among other things revealed in the document was the admission that Google paid almost three times more for YouTube than its own internal valuation of the site. In addition there were other depositions and documents revealed that showed YouTube founders knew copyrighted materials were being uploaded to the site. All this is very interesting to those following the case to be sure. The only problem is that this material was supposed to be "under seal" [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Critics | Google: Legal

The Google blog posted their weekly, "this week in search" announcing small but important changes released on Google search. They include expanding the search suggestions user interface internationally, adding more language support to real-time search, adding refinements to local search queries and introducing lists for bookmarks. On Google.com, Google used a boldface for search suggestions, moved the "Google Search" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" buttons in the box and removed the the result counts a while back. Now, this interface and behavior is the default behavior for all Google internation [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Outside US | Google: SEO | Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search | Top News

The term “Yellow Pages” has been a literal description of a business directory product and the name for the industry which has produced it for over a hundred years. Rapid evolution of internet media seems to be revoking the conceptual connection between printed pages which are yellow and sources for finding local businesses. So, is the “Yellow Pages” name itself becoming obsolete?

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Local Search

Finding new keywords usually involves examining some of your existing top performing keywords in all of the available tools and reports to find variations that you can use to increase the traffic your PPC ads generate. Conducting keyword research in this manner usually leads to choosing keywords that already have multitudes of advertisers. One of your goals in conducting keyword research should be to find entirely new themes of keywords—many of which will have little or no competition. Some of these themes will convert, while others will not, but this is a very low-risk strategy for expan [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

My last post focused on selling the benefits of SEO in a large enterprise. Once you have done that you will already have made great progress, but now you need to take the next step: getting your management team to understand what is means to pursue SEO, and how it affects the business at an operational level. You want to explain this as at a very high level, in 20 minutes or less, because you will not be likely to keep the attention of top executives if you take much longer than that. The goal in this post is to outline a strategy for overcoming internal objections and obstacles to effect [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Industrial Strength

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Does CEO Coffee Summit Equal Détente For Apple, Google?Gizmodo shows amazing pictures of Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt having coffee in a public place in Palo Alto, CA. Here is one of the shots from the encounter, which reportedly ended or moved when a crowd started gathering: While Apple and Google were close partners and even collaborators for several years Google’s Android [...] Facebook Nabs Google’s David Fischer & [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Gizmodo shows amazing pictures of Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt having coffee in a public place in Palo Alto, CA. Here is one of the shots from the encounter, which reportedly ended or moved when a crowd started gathering: While Apple and Google were close partners and even collaborators for several years Google's Android OS and most recently the Nexus One have strained relations between the companies and their CEOs to point where Jobs reportedly said: We did not enter the search business . . . They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We w [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Google: Mobile

We had two interesting employments changes at Google reported both at AllThingsD. First, Google lost their VP of Global Online Sales & Operations, David Fischer to Facebook. Then we learn that Google hired Oracle's 20-year executive, Amit Singh. Amit will be Google's VP of International Sales for Google's enterprise business. David Fischer will be the VP of Advertising and Global Operations at Facebook. Both Google and Facebook sent a statement about Fisher's job change: Said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said, "It’s a testament to Facebook’s expanding opportunities in advertising [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Employees

Performance measure on a CPA basis is usually is a limitation of tracking – the advertiser cannot associate true revenue with the conversion. Managing to an ROI, and moreover, managing to maximize profit margin for each keyword will open up new doors for PPC efficiency.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To: PPC

Brian Clifton (PhD) is an independent author, consultant and trainer who specializes in performance optimization using Google Analytics. Brian has been involved in web design and SEO since as far back as 1997, when he built his first website and started defining best practise to advise clients. From 2005-8 he was Head of Web Analytics for Google EMEA, defining the adoption strategy and building a team of pan-European product specialists from scratch. Recognized internationally as a Google Analytics expert, his latest book, the second edition of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics h [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General

It’s common for searchers to do a search, click on a result, then go back to the results page and select another listing or do a new search. Now Google’s fighting this "pogosticking" behavior, as it is known, with a new feature – "Get More" links that appear when a searcher comes back to the results page. This is unique. No major search engine has ever altered the results page once rendered, when someone comes back to it after being dissatisfied with a particular listing. To understand more, consider this search for [smiley html code]: Here, I’ve searched for smiley ht [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search | Top News

The savvy search marketer always explores tail terms to improve overall performance. If done right, tail terms can convert better than the head and can also be cheaper in terms of Cost Per Click (CPC). Hence, effective tail management lifts the performance of the overall campaign. When exploring the tail, marketers are always faced with the dilemma of risk and reward. Bidding on underexposed keywords aggressively might bring in a lot of conversions and uncover gems in your campaign. However, you could also end up spending a lot without any conversions. The question then is how to identify p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

I hadn’t seen my artist friend in nearly a year, nor was I even sure he was still painting. But there I was the other day, standing with him in his art studio, chatting about the new things he wanted me to add to his web site. Suddenly he led me to one large 80" x 64" canvas of swirling brush strokes that is his style. "This one is for you," he announced, "for all the help you’ve given me with the web site." As he, I and several others who were there stood in front of the large oil on canvas, it was clear each person was having a physical response to the painting. He named it "Nocka [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Search & Usability

I had a good chuckle over the news yesterday that Facebook apparently has caused an increase in syphilis (or not). So reported the Daily Telegraph, which turns around today to add that to a list of other things Facebook supposedly causes, such as cancer or a surge in rickets. Anything missing? How about asking Google, Yahoo and Bing. NOTE: A special welcome to our visitors from Facebook! For more stories from us on search, delivered via Facebook, become a fan of our Search Engine Land page! All those search engines automatically suggest things to search for, as you begin typing. The sugg [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook | Features: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News