US presidential candidate Rick Santorum pulled off a surprise last night, winning caucuses and primaries in three states. So what's with Bing listing an anti-Santorum web site first in its results in a search for his last name? Does Microsoft have some type of liberal agenda! Wait, you didn't realize Rick Santorum has a "Bing problem" that's exactly the same as his well-documented "Google problem," where a search for "santorum" lists a web page defining that word as the by-product of anal sex above Santorum's official web site? He does. In fact, Santorum's had his Bing problem for months [...]

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Anyone involved in online marketing has an innate sense that mobile is a big deal. We're never more than an arm's length from our phones, and we have a curious tendency to do everything on them. I once sat in front of a dark, Netflix-enabled flat-screen, watching Netflix on my iPhone. It was just easier, and I had it on, and I could switch back and forth with Facebook, and... ok, maybe I have a problem! In any event, our personal fascination with mobile phones shouldn't dictate our work decisions. And one question that needs deciding more and more these days is around mobile search: [...]

Related Topics: How To: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search

GMS Local, an initiative from GroupM focused on local search and local digital strategies, recently conducted a survey of national marketing executives (mostly in the retail sector) about their localization strategies and tactics. The survey was fielded in September and November 2011. What the agency found was considerable enthusiasm for local-digital marketing. Yet there was also a surprising lack of sophistication in many of their tactics. GMS Local found that most of the respondents spent more on local vs. national advertising and more generally on digital than traditional media marketin [...]

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Super Bowl 46 kicks off on February 5, 2012 at 6:30pm EST on NBC. Amazingly enough, I found this information by searching on Google and clicking on the second result: nfl.com. Amazing because every year, football fans flock to search engines searching for the start time, and until now, organizations like the NFL, the playing teams, and the broadcasting station didn't show up at all in search results because none of their sites answered the question. Seem crazy? 2009  Results: In 2009, start-time related searches were among the most popular the morning of the game, but neither the N [...]

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“2012 will be the year of the tablet,” said Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman in a recent Search Insider column. With the figures he’s seeing, it’s hard to disagree with him. According to Goldman, 7% of all online sales Kenshoo saw over the holidays came from a tablet, and “Of the sales transactions completed via mobile, over 83% of the revenue was driven through tablets, and overall tablet conversion rate was 2.72%, more than 3x higher the conversion rate for mobile phones. Additionally, the average order value from tablets ($149.84) actually exceeded that of desktop computers ($146.0 [...]

Related Topics: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEO: Mobile Search