SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 17, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
More from Search Engine Land: Page 3
Google AdSense Ads Making Their Way To iPhone Apps?
Venture Beat noticed that the Urbanspoon iPhone app has what looks like Google AdSense ads on them. I immediately downloaded the Urbanspoon app and went to a restaurant review and saw a similar ad. Here is a screen capture: I am pointing to the small lowercase G, which looks much like Google’s second favicon, which […]
Twitter Adding Advertisements?
Last night, there was some buzz and commotion over Twitter adding ads to the web interface. The screen shot provided here shows how Twitter is promoting Twitter Search, so technically, this might not be an advertisement but it shows how Twitter may be able to monetize the interface with text ads. I personally always envisioned […]
Rules Of Linking Engagement As The Web Turns Twenty
After working in a profession for many years you might logically assume you don’t need to spend as much time learning still more about it. Take bowling. If you’ve been bowling for twenty years, do you still need lessons, or are you close to being as good a bowler as you’re ever going to be? […]
Making Sense Of All The Data: Google, Hadoop & Cloudera
The article, Hadoop, a Free Software Program, Finds Uses Beyond Search, explains the very interesting history behind Hadoop. What is Hadoop? It’s distributed computing software that enables data mining and analysis on a huge scale. It also, apparently, is an open-source version of proprietary software developed by Google to process and analyze massive volumes of […]
Despite The Hype, Twitter Isn’t A Mainstream Social Marketing Tool
Every so often a site comes along that, in the amount of hype it generates, blows away everything that has come before it. Not so long ago it was Second Life, then Facebook came along and now Twitter is scattering all before it in a blizzard of press-coverage that many of its start-ups peers would […]
How Many 301s Are Too Many?
Google’s Matt Cutts talks about multiple domains and 301 redirects in one of the recent videos uploaded to the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel. The question essentially asks if Google views the redirecting of many domains toward one domain as a sign of suspicious activity. Matt’s answer is that there are many companies — Google […]
Google Puts Ads On Hosted News Stories
The monetization of white space across Google properties continues with an announcement this afternoon that Google is showing ads on hosted articles in Google News. Google’s announcement seems to indicate that the ads will always show beneath the story. Here’s an example from a story currently listed on the Google News home page: Will Money […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 16, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Yahoo Search Marketing Adds Enhanced Targeting Features
Yahoo has added several enhanced targeting features to its search marketing advertising solution. The features include enhanced geo-targeting, ad scheduling, demographic targeting, and added bid adjustments based on those targeting features. In addition, Yahoo has improved the content match technology to make the ads more relevant to the publisher’s content. The new features are available […]
comScore: 63 Million On Mobile Internet, 35 Percent Using It Daily
Metrics firm comScore released mobile internet usage data earlier today. It indicates significant growth in the numbers of people accessing the internet from their mobile phones vs. a year ago. The company says that today there are just over 63 million mobile web users in the US and 35 percent of them are online via […]
Picasa Gains Google AdWords Ads
Google Operating System reports Picasa is the latest Google property to be monetized with Google AdWords ads. If you conduct searches for pictures in Picasa’s web albums, you will find the ads at the top of the image results. For example, a search on my iPhone shows ads for AT&T, Blackberry and ZapBangDone.com (an iPhone […]
Evaluating Paid Search Performance In A Down Economy
Is it time to fire your paid search managers? Many online advertisers are seeing their first-ever year-over-year declines in PPC performance. Because of this, and the general need to find something, anything that will generate more sales cost effectively, PPC programs are coming under serious scrutiny from corner offices. We welcome this scrutiny, and hope […]
Privacy Concerns, Online Ad Targeting On Apparent Collision Course
Call it the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of online advertising: consumers and publishers are increasingly at odds over online ad targeting and behavioral targeting (BT) in particular. While that may be a hyperbolic characterization, the majority of US internet users appear uncomfortable with online tracking and targeting at a time when publishers and search engines are […]
Local Search Means Business
A new comScore study released by the Yellow Pages Association provides interesting insights about local search and how consumers are using it to seek products and services online. According to the comScore study, local search grew 58 percent in 2008, significantly outpacing the 21 percent growth in overall U.S. core web searches during the same […]
WeFollow – New Twitter Directory From Kevin Rose
One of the problems with Twitter is knowing who to follow in particular areas. Now Kevin Rose has launched WeFollow, a nice directory of people organized into categories. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great start and well worth visiting. At the site, you’ll see the top five people in popular categories such as celebrity, […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 13, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Search: Too Boring For Branding?
I’m not a big fan of TV. But my wife and I decided to cancel our satellite TV service effective next week, so I’ve found myself watching more TV than ever recently, trying to squeeze the most out of my remaining days. I guess Cinderella was right: You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s […]
Microsoft Shutting Down adCenter Analytics Beta
Microsoft said it was closing its adCenter Analytics beta program: Our team would like to sincerely thank you for your participation and your invaluable contributions to the program. Our objectives at the outset were to serve the needs of small and midsize self-service customers, as well as evolve the Microsoft strategy to address the Web […]
An Insider’s Look At Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool
Google’s free search based keyword tool has given advertisers access to Google’s data to help leverage the relationship between organic and paid search campaigns. Last year, before the release of Google’s search-based keyword tool, my Google rep sent me a very insightful report on one of my clients. It compared, side by side, the keywords […]
Preview Of Microsoft’s Kumo Home Page?
The LiveSide blog posted a screen shot of one example of how the Kumo, Microsoft’s possible new brand for Live Search, home page might look like. Here is that picture: Very similar to how Live.com works, but it simply reads “Kumo” instead. In other home page news, Yahoo has been testing a new home page […]
Google’s Advice On Using The New Canonical Tag
A month ago, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced they will be supporting a new canonical tag that allows you to tell search engines that page X is a duplicate page to page Z. In a way, it is a 301 redirect, without the physical redirect. The tag is incredibly powerful, as are 301 redirects and […]
Google Tests Favicons For AdWords In Germany And Poland
We were alerted that Google appears to be testing favicons in Germany and Poland for AdWords advertisers. Here are a few screens: A number of advertisers in the US have informally reported higher CTRs using the Google Checkout icon. (One discussion I had with an advertiser in the UK last week said he saw an […]
The Rise Of Help Engines: Twitter & Aardvark
Back in 2000, there was a little-remembered but amazing survey that I love to cite showing how search engines had, in only a few years, topped the list of information resources consulted. They’d even pushed past family and friends. Now the times are changing, as family and friends have themselves become easily searchable resources. The […]
How We Search With The Twitter “Help Engine”
Is Twitter a search engine or not? There’s been plenty of discussion and debate about this recently. I’d say yes, in a way. It’s clear to anyone who watches a twitterstream that people put out questions to Twitter similar to how they use search engines. But if anecdotal examples aren’t enough, a survey I conducted […]
Aardvark “Help Engine” Opens To Wider Use
In private testing for the past few months, Aardvark is now opening its doors to more searchers today in conjunction with the South By Southwest conference. Also known as Vark, Aardvark is a “help engine” that allows people to send questions to friends and friends of friends and receive fast responses. My companion piece, The […]
Google Exec Tim Armstrong Named New AOL Chairman & CEO
One of Google’s longest serving executives, Tim Armstrong, is departing the company to become AOL’s new chairman and CEO, replacing existing chair and CEO Randy Falco. From the AOL release: Tim Armstrong, Google Senior Vice President, has been named Chairman and CEO of AOL, LLC, Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes announced […]
Twitter’s Traffic Growth & The Rise Of Social Search
There’s a lot of stats and analysis today about Twitter’s traffic, how it compares to other social search sites, and who’s benefiting from all the traffic Twitter can send. It seems no one argues that Twitter is on the rise, but just how high it’s risen is still up for debate. Let’s start, appropriately, with […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 12, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Yahoo SearchMonkey Accepts Videos, Games & Documents – No Application Required
It just got a lot easier for non-developers to take advantage of the enhanced listings that Yahoo SearchMonkey offers. Yahoo has announced that flash video, games, and documents can now be embedded into Yahoo search results with only a few lines of code — you don’t have to create a special SearchMonkey app. Video is […]
URL Rewrites and Redirects: The Gory Details (Part 2 of 2)
Welcome back from Part 1, where I discussed in detail how to implement URL rewriting with Apache’s mod_rewrite module — complete with example rewrite rules, the more common regular expressions and how to use them. If you recall, I was just starting to get into rewrite rules for 301 redirects using the [R=301] flag. (Incidentally, […]
Act Like A Cybersquatter To Capture Your Long-Tail Brand Traffic!
If your company has a major brand, domainers who exploit cybersquatting have likely already targeted your business. Their practices are often looked down upon, but if their dark powers weren’t effective, they wouldn’t make money. Still, you can learn the same black magic and turn it into good and profit for your company. In this down […]
Google Improves Image Search For iPhone & Android
The Google Mobile blog announced they have made improvements to Google Image Search’s user interface and features for the iPhone and Android mobile devices. You can now see up to 20 images on a single page and when you click on the details of that image you can view a larger thumbnail, visit the web […]
Google Explains How Search Ads Rank & Cost
The Inside AdWords Blog posted a video from Google’s Chef Economist, Hal Varian. The video shows how Google prices and ranks search ads in the AdWords system based on quality and bid. This is a really basic overview of the AdWords model, but I personally find the video to be incredibly easy to understand and […]
Google Voice: Next Generation Telco?
Maybe that headline overreaches a little but not entirely. For those that have been wondering whether Google’s GrandCentral acquisition, which the company made in mid 2007 and thereafter seemed to neglect, would suffer the same fate as Dodgeball or Jaiku . . . wonder no more. Using the GrandCentral infrastructure, and currently only available to […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 11, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Despite Fixes, Google Maps Still Vulnerable To Spam
Although Google Maps is now going on 5 years old, it is still in its infancy. It has become a powerful tool for local marketing yet Google’s policy of “launch early and iterate” has created a tool that has been open to an ongoing number of abuses. Recently Google announced that they had closed a […]
Fortune 500 Still ‘Largely Invisible’ In Natural Search, Study Says
Companies listed in the Fortune 500 are getting better at SEO, but continue to be “largely invisible in natural search.” That’s the key takeaway from “Natural Search Trends of Fortune 500 Q4-2008,” a study released today by SEO technology/services company Conductor. Conductor analyzed close to 90,000 primary paid keywords on which corporate- and consumer-facing Fortune […]
Do SEOs Really Need Direct Industry Experience To Be Effective?
Have you ever heard this before? “We like everything you have said so far, and your proposal looks great, but the only concern we have is your lack of direct experience working in our industry.” Perhaps a better question would be, “Is direct industry experience really necessary to be an effective SEO? Lee Odden, CEO […]
Don’t Damage Your Brand With The Wrong Keywords!
In search, keyword selection is paramount as it can help drive the right audience to your door. Choosing the right keywords can also enhance brand awareness. But despite the importance of keyword selection—and the fact that it helps lay the groundwork for every paid or organic search campaign—marketers commonly make mistakes with the process. So what […]