Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Size Does Matter: How Retailers Should Manage Campaigns For Big & Small Ticket ItemsBig retailers with a substantial store presence most often have a big online presence with thousands of SKUs. Apart from drawing consumers who might solely look online to buy products, they also help consumers in the earlier research phase of the buying cycle. Sometimes, the merchant will complete a transaction online that might have otherwise [...] Official: Go [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Big retailers with a substantial store presence most often have a big online presence with thousands of SKUs. Apart from drawing consumers who might solely look online to buy products, they also help consumers in the earlier research phase of the buying cycle. Sometimes, the merchant will complete a transaction online that might have otherwise happened in the store. An SEM manager for such a retailer is often faced with several campaign management questions. Should the merchant focus on drawing more volume from small ticket items or from sparse but high value big ticket items? If she is [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

As we expected, Google officially announced the launch of their new flight onebox. The new travel onebox will show up when you search for flight related keywords with destinations. For example, [flights from new york to san francisco] or [flights from new york or [flights to new york]. They all work to five you an expandable box of flight options from or to a location. Google is not currently using the search technology from the ITA acquisition but implied the ITA software may be used in future versions of flight search. This is currently available in 10 languages: English, Fr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: OneBox, Plus Box & Direct Answers | Google: Web Search

In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Foursquare Mayor T-Shirt: Yahoo Door Keychain: Google's Android USB Keychain: Google Hotel Billboard: Google Maps Bus Ad in China: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search In Pictures

Did you ever wonder what your favorite SEO's Twitter timeline looked like? Well, if you did, you can now peak in on someone else's timeline. For example, check out what Danny's timeline looks like by going over here. As you can see, Twitter added the ability to see what the 1,801 people on Twitter that Danny follows are "tweeting right now." Not only that, Twitter added a neat "Shuffle" feature to randomly jump to other Twitter user's timelines by clicking on the top right shuffle icon on that page: Meanwhile, Google announced the people widget for Gmail yesterday. That featu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Gmail | Twitter

In California it's almost impossible to stop a key employee from jumping ship to a rival company. The law heavily favors the employee's right to earn a living and typically won't permit the former employer to prevent the employee from working for a rival. California law does, however, protect "trade secrets" and will sometimes permit company A to block a former employee from working in an identical role at rival company B if trade secrets are implicated or at stake. This is the scenario at the heart of a lawsuit announced yesterday by eBay/PayPal against Google following the public intro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Employees | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile | Google: Wallet | Top News

If you ever need a topic to discuss at a social gathering, just ask everyone, "What do you find the most frustrating about using websites?" There are so many common complaints and issues raised by everyday Internet users and yet so many websites are still driving us crazy. Websites contain oversights. It happens to even the most esteemed companies and organizations who have an online presence. It happens to small businesses with small staffs and brand new websites. It happens by professional web developers and those still learning. Typically, navigation is the area where most end user [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Search & Usability

Google launched Street View on Thursday in India, the second most-populous country on earth. But "launch" may be a bit of an overstatement because, in a country that's also the seventh biggest in square mileage, Google is only taking photographs in one city: Bangalore. Google announced that it's using both cars and trikes to photographs the streets of Bangalore. The city is a smart first choice: It's a tech hub that's often referred to as India's version of Silicon Valley. Presumably, many in Bangalore will be familiar with and welcoming toward Street View photography. When the Street Vi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Outside US | Google: Street View

Move over Yahoo, there's a new display advertising champion in town, as of the first quarter of 2011. You may have heard of the company, as they've also been dominating the search advertising category.  According to a new report from research firm IDC, Google's net U.S. display advertising revenue share grew to 14.7% in the first quarter of this year, from 13.3% in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, Yahoo!'s declined from 13.6% to 12.3%. Microsoft declined to a 6.5% market share in Q1 and Facebook rose in prominence with 8.8% of the market. The figures are interesting as we watch Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Stats: Size

Find out how social media has become the key to optimizing for search. Free SMN Webcast, Wednesday, June 1 - 1 PM EDT Speakers: Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting Erez, Barak, Optify Sponsored by Optify Register now! [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Sponsor Messages

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Is It Time For A New Compensation Model For Search And Digital Marketers?Pay for performance is certainly not a new concept. But a number of digital marketing industry pundits have publically suggested that attribution measurement should drive a new compensation model for publishers and search engines that’s based on the actual contribution they make to each conversion and dollar of revenue, rather than for the credit that [...] How Yelp Crushed C [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Pay for performance is certainly not a new concept. But a number of digital marketing industry pundits have publically suggested that attribution measurement should drive a new compensation model for publishers and search engines that’s based on the actual contribution they make to each conversion and dollar of revenue, rather than for the credit that would be given using the "last click" method of measurement. A lot can be said for the wisdom and fairness of such a compensation model given the ability of some attribution platforms to accurately and fairly calculate this credit. But gaini [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Credit Is Due

A fascinating study published last year compares the reviews and reviewers at three local business websites: Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo Local. And, in explaining how Yelp overtook the other two, it also hints -- in my opinion -- at how Google is trying to beat Yelp by using Yelp's own playbook. Citysearch and Yahoo Local were the two dominant websites for online business reviews early in the 2000s. Yelp has far surpassed both now and has the biggest review collection on the web; it reported passing 17 million reviews last month, and doubled its regular rate of reviews with about two millio [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Features: Analysis | Google: Maps & Local | Top News | Yelp

With the recent Google update of Panda attacks, now more than ever retailers need to focus on creating unique content that’s also high-quality. An easy way to get this content is to ask for help! Today, I’m going to cover how you can optimize customer product reviews to make more with your online store. By asking your customers to give you feedback on the products they buy, you get inside your customers’ heads and you get killer content for your product pages. Before my column ran last month, I was embarrassed that I didn’t have any reviews on the example product I was writing a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Search & Retail

This is an old, old issue, but one that keeps cropping up. People keep using nofollow. Why? Please, tell me why? The nofollow tag is bad, bad, bad for SEO campaigns. The only time you should use it? If you're selling links or doing something that could be interpreted as selling links, and want to avoid getting banned. The Story I'm not going to cover the entire tragic tale of the nofollow attribute. The short version: Google introduced this thing called the link rel=nofollow tag. They implied that the tag would keep authority (PageRank) on the linking page instead of passing it via [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO

Google's Commerce VP Stephanie Tilenius took the stage this morning in New York to announce what everyone was expecting: Google Wallet. She said that Google wants to create "tomorrow's best shopping experience" and "bring online and offline together" through an open payments platform. Google aspires to bring offers, payments and loyalty together at the point of sale to create a next-generation shopping experience. The capabilities are impressive; how quickly the public will adopt them is the question. Tilenius cautioned that this was the beginning of a long journey. She began by reviewin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: General | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile

Quality score can drive the success or failure of your paid search keywords, and the two best known impacts of quality score are the effect it has on text ad position and cost-per-click: Ad position is determined by Ad Rank which is calculated as bid x quality score. CPC is calculated by dividing the Ad Rank of the next highest advertiser by your quality score (and rounding up to the nearest $.01). But before fighting for position or even worrying about CPC, each keyword must earn eligibility into the real-time auction that takes place when someone enters a search query that Google de [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features | Google: AdWords | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate

The IAB announced this morning that online ad revenues were $7.3 billion in the US in Q1 2011. This is a 23 percent increase over the same period last year. In 2010 total online revenues were $26 billion according to the IAB. For the full year 2010 (graph below) paid search constituted 46 percent of total online ad revenues. If that's still the case it would mean that Q1 2011 search revenues are roughly $3.35 billion. Assuming about 25 percent growth overall this year, 2011 online ad revenues could reach $31 or $32 billion. That would mean 2011 search revenues would be nearly $1 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing: General | Stats: General | Stats: Spend Projections

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Ireland Greeting A Google Street View CarWouldn’t it be cool to know when a Google Street View car was planning on taking pictures of your office or home? Most of us do not have that luxury, but if you are Google you are privy to that information. All of Google Ireland staff stood outside cheering, holding signs, balloons and other items [...] Google Correlate: More Search Data to MineI love search data. Being able to mine through milli [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Wouldn't it be cool to know when a Google Street View car was planning on taking pictures of your office or home? Most of us do not have that luxury, but if you are Google, you are privy to that information. All of Google Ireland's staff stood outside cheering, holding signs, balloons and other items while the Google Street View car passed by and took pictures today. One Googler actually took a video of it happening today and here is that video: You'd think this was President Obama visiting. Related Stories: Cool Sights In Google Street View Dead Girl On Google Street View? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Street View