Bing

Microsoft Willing To Raise Bid, But How Much Is Enough?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft’s directors are collectively willing to authorize the company to raise its bid for Yahoo to up to $33 per share but perhaps not to the levels that Yahoo has signaled it wants to be acquired. If such a sweetened bid did occur it would put further pressure […]

PPC

Outsourcing To Increase SEO Throughput

Even with budgets getting tightened, your SEO program may be kicking, but the head count you requested to keep the program moving upward may not get approved. When this happens, it’s time to look at a Plan B for increasing throughput without adding staff. Many people I talk to think a superstar in-house SEO team […]

PPC

Will Yahoo Create An Open Ad Profile?

Yahoo’s mantra these days is openness. To that end, Yahoo may create the ability for users to view their ad profiles — the data that’s being used to target them with advertising on Yahoo and its extended network. Yahoo EVP Jeff Weiner, who spoke at the Economics of Social Media conference in LA yesterday, suggested […]

Google

Google Ocean To Complement Google Earth, Maps, & Sky Soon

Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans from News.com reports Google is working on a new mapping system to map the Earth’s oceans. The tool might be named Google Ocean and will complement Google Earth and Google Sky. News.com says Google Ocean will contain 3D oceanographic maps with underwater topography, search features for spots and […]

Local

Google Adds Street Views To Step-By-Step Driving Directions

The Google LatLong Blog announced that you can now see street views turn-by-turn (when available) when you are seeking out driving directions via Google Maps. For example, when driving from the Empire State Building to Times Square, you can see that Google has street views available for every turn. A camera icon next to each […]

Paid social

Twitter Wrote This Column For Me

By now you have probably seen a bunch of talk about Twitter. And after all of this talk you might be still thinking: OK, so what the heck is Twitter really and why should I care? How is it going to help my business at the end of the day? Rather than writing this column […]

SEO

Yelp For Business: New Tools Allowing Local Businesses To Speak For Themselves & More

As the phenomenon of local business ratings and reviews becomes more “institutionalized” and important, efforts are popping up to help businesses cope and/or take advantage of the trend. Merchant Circle is one business in the local space that has positioned itself as a platform for SMB “reputation management” as well as marketing. Local search provider […]

Google

The Art Of Opportunistic Linking

A couple weeks back I wrote a LinkWeek column here titled “Your Site’s Manifest Linking Destiny“. At the end of that column I closed with the following thoughts…

Google Ads

Google Showing Ranking Scores On AdWords?

This morning I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that several webmasters began noticing three values being displayed under some AdWords ads that might reveal some details on how Google may rank AdWords ads. The scores include the “Pscore,” “mCPC,” and “thresh.” Danny and I took guesses at what each might mean and the mCPC […]

SEO

Microsoft Live Mobile Adds Product Search, “Find My Location”

Microsoft has introduced enhanced mobile product search at m.live.com. It shrinks down the content from the desktop product search into a bite-sized mobile presentation. You get images, reviews, product specifications, and features. These things don’t come up for every category; however, it’s a very nice presentation of information, and the available categories should grow rapidly. […]

Content

Search Illustrated: Inside The Search Algorithm

The Algorithm. If an SEO had a nickel for every time that phrase was mentioned in a day… Over time we’ve become more comfortable with the main triggers that affect search rankings. But, it’s leveraging the sum of all factors that can really give you an advantage over the competition. This week’s infographic explores the […]

PPC

What Yahoo’s New Minimum Bid Means To You

Yahoo recently announced that they are moving away from a $0.10 fixed minimum CPC to a variable minimum bid. However, there are some differences in how Yahoo calculates minimum bids compared to AdWords. These differences are important to note as you switch between these PPC engines so that each account is properly optimized for each […]

SEO

WWW2008: Search Research Paper Roundup

A variety of interesting research papers on search have come out of WWW2008, the 17th International World Wide Web Conference. Some I’ve blogged already. Below is a rundown on those and some other papers that may be of interest. For the attention-challenged, I’ve also included my now patented "Twitter" summary for some of the interesting […]

Google Ads

Google AdSense Ads May Become More Behaviorally Targeted

Bill Slawski analyzed a newly published patent application by Google named Rendering Advertisements with Documents Having One or More Topics Using User Topic Interest Information. In short, the patent application documents methods Google can use to make Google’s contextual ads, AdSense, more behaviorally relevant to the user based on Google Toolbar data. Of course, this […]

Google SEO

Sitelinks On A Google Minus 60 Result: What Does It Mean?

Last week, I covered an interesting observation at a Google Groups thread, where some individuals noticed Google Sitelinks showing up for a site in the 60th position. At the end of the thread, I noted that Googler JohnMu told the webmaster that he may want to join the -60 penalty thread for more help. Yesterday, […]

Ecommerce

Google Product Search Gets More Useful

I’ve personally never found Google Product search all that useful, but hopefully that will change now. Google Operating System reports that Google Product Search has undergone a redesign of some sort. In the past, Google Product Search just showed you results but did not group stores offering to sell the same product with reviews and […]

Bing

Stay Tuned: Will Microsoft Sweeten The Deal?

The NY Post is reporting that despite public statements from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and CFO Chris Liddell, the offer on the table is final and that though Microsoft might “walk away” from Yahoo, there may in fact be a new and improved offer to Jerry Yang and his fellow Yahoo board members through “back […]

PPC

Click Fraud Rate Declines Slightly, Says Click Forensics

Click Forensics released their statistics on the click fraud rate for the first quarter of 2008, showing a click fraud rate of 16.3 percent. That number is down from the previous quarter, which was 16.6 percent. Compared to a year ago, when the click fraud rate was 14.8 percent, we are up. Click fraud on […]

Ecommerce

YOS: Rewiring Yahoo From The Inside Out

Yahoo’s relatively new CTO Ari Balogh expanded upon Yahoo’s “open” initiatives in a keynote speech to the Web2.0 conference yesterday. There’s a very extensive discussion, including a video of the keynote, on the TechCrunch site (additional coverage in Search Engine Journal). The SearchMonkey beta is the first step in executing on the strategy, which will […]

Content

YouTube Adds Search Suggestions To International Sites

Google Operating System spotted that YouTube is now offering search suggestions on their international sites. For example, if you go to YouTube UK and starting typing in a search phrase into the search box, YouTube will begin to offer you suggested results, much like Google does at Google Suggest.

Bing

Microsoft Adds RSS To Live Search News

The Live Search Blog announced the much requested addition of RSS to Live Search News. A little over a week ago Microsoft launched Live Search News, and one of the biggest feature requests off the bat was an RSS option. 9 days later, Microsoft has added the RSS icon to all the pages, including the […]

Content

US Court Learns SEO, Decides META Keywords Don’t Matter

Court Says Keyword Metatags Don’t Matter–Standard Process v. Banks by Eric Goldman uncovers a recent case between Standard Process, Inc. v. Banks that shows that the court has ruled that the META keywords tag is “immaterial.” Goldman said this is the first time the courts ruled based on knowledge of how the META keywords impact […]

SEO

In The Trenches, April 25, 2008

In The Trenches is a weekly spotlight of tips, tricks and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. Today: News from the search engines, today’s in-depth look, “Geo-Targeting On The Engines,” and this week’s free tips and tools.

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