Microsoft is formally launching its much improved MSN portal today. I wrote about the preview version and the wide range of improvements when it first came out in November. There are lots of interesting elements to the site, including the “local edition,” which is basically a collection of persistent Bing search queries presented in a […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 1 Most search advertisers have no question that testing ads is a good thing, and can lead to much higher performing campaigns. But […]
Most search advertisers have no question that testing ads is a good thing, and can lead to much higher performing campaigns. But is it possible to over-test and over-optimize, actually leading to worse results? The answer may surprise you.
At SMX West last week the halls were echoing with passionate cries about attribution analysis. It seemed as if all topics (other than the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal) had taken a back seat for a moment, and suddenly the most important thing to consider was attribution analysis, specifically whether or not you are giving too much credit to SEM and not enough to other media.
These days, local marketing can seem a lot more complicated to the average small business owner than it used to be—and for very good reason. With advances in digital offerings, small businesses are now confronted with a growing range of possibilities for their ad dollars. Moreover, owners are faced with the harder task of determining […]
SEMPO — the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization — has announced its 2010-2012 Board Of Directors. Officers will be elected from the board later this month. The board takes office as of March 18 and includes: Chris Boggs, Director, Search Engine Optimization, ROSETTA Massimo Burgio, Founder, Chief Strategist, Global Search Interactive Bruce Clay, President, Bruce […]
Postscript: See this article, FAQ: What We Know So Far About Google TV, for more information about the announcement of Google TV. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is testing a new TV programming search service with Dish Network: The service—which runs on TV set-top boxes using elements of Google’s Android operating system—allows users […]
Google has announced a new tool called Google Public Data Explorer that’s now available in Google Labs. The tool is a follow-up of sorts to last year’s announcement that a limited amount of public data would be used in response to certain Google.com search results. The Data Explorer tool includes data from the original three […]
I’m attending South By Southwest for the first time, later this week. I have to say, already I find SXSW to be overwhelming — and I’m not even there yet! To get myself organized as to how to attack this monster, I starting making a list of search-related sessions. I thought it would be useful […]
Yesterday two of your Search Engine Land writers were in Jerusalem, Israel. Vanessa and I were holding a SphinnCon event, basically a small Search Marketing Expo event, for the Israeli SEM community. The event was given a home by the Jerusalem College of Technology for 6 hours while 30+ speakers from both in Israel and […]
Techmeme is one of my favorite sites. It’s my morning “newspaper” that covers technology headlines from across the web. And now it’s joined by a new site just for media news, Mediagazer. I’m thrilled to see the new site arrive, even if it means more reading for me. Much of the “tech” news on Techmeme […]
For a non-European traveling to Europe Google Street View is a great resource. This weekend, for example, the NY Times ran a piece on the Italian region of Tuscany. I then went to Google Maps to investigate how much of the region was available via Street View — a fair amount. That enabled me to […]
Microsoft is about to roll out a “a multimillion-pound TV ad campaign” for Bing in the UK market, where it has less than a 5 percent share of searches. Google by contrast has roughly 90 percent. According to the Guardian: The ads feature ordinary people asking for information and receiving nonsensical, “speaking-in-tongues” answers; one early […]
Earlier this week, we discovered that Yahoo would be the default search engine on AT&T’s first Android handset, the Motorola Backflip. That’s a first as far as I know, an Android device that doesn’t present Google as the featured search engine. However, in the bad-news column for Yahoo, according to PaidContent, T-Mobile has now swapped […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: How To Speak At SMX Advanced Seattle 2010 Want to speak at our SMX Advanced Seattle search marketing conference this coming June 8 & 9? Our show that sells out every […]
Bing Maps has rolled out what Microsoft is calling its “largest amount of new imagery ever in terms of square kilometers.” Apparently that represents 6.7 million square kilometers. There’s new aerial and Bird’s Eye imagery across many countries on several continents. The full list is below. The Bing Maps World Tour shows the updates on […]
One more piece of news from the “Ask the Search Engines” session at SMX West on Thursday: Yahoo and Bing are in the midst of discussions to decide the future of Yahoo’s popular Site Explorer SEO tool. Yahoo’s Arnab Bhattacharjee told conference attendees that the two companies are now going through discussions on how to […]
During SMX West this week, Yahoo announced an update to its Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop tool for managing PPC campaigns. If you weren’t at the show to see it yourself, this Yahoo blog post details some of the upgrades that are now available: Bulk editing: Easily make mass changes to settings such as status, match […]
Crawling and indexing issues can really put a damper on your efforts to rank well for a variety of competitive and non-competitive terms. Solving indexing issues is definitely an important step towards increasing your keyword ranking footprint. And, the more real estate you own by solving those issues, means you’re taking the next steps in […]
More than a year since the three major search engines united to announce the canonical tag, neither Bing nor Yahoo formally support it. But that could be changing soon. Speaking during the “Ask the Search Engines” session at SMX West on Thursday, reps from both search engines said they’re in the process of supporting rel=canonical […]
Day three of SMX West 2010 is in the books, and that wraps up the main conference portion this year’s event. (There are in-depth training sessions on Friday.) We live-blogged today’s keynote, and a variety of bloggers and webmasters covered the rest of the day’s sessions and news. Here’s a recap of the SMX West […]
Online marketing firm OneUpWeb recently conducted an eye-tracking study about the impact of integrating real-time data into search results. The study involved 44 people divided into two groups: “consumers” and “information foragers.” The difference between the groups involved the tasks they were given: The first group was told to search for a product they might […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – The State Of The Search Union It’s day three of SMX West 2010, and we’re going to kick off with a group keynote conversation called […]
It’s day three of SMX West 2010, and we’re going to kick off with a group keynote conversation called “The State Of The Search Union.” The description hints that we’ll be talking about where the industry is today, and where it’s going in the future. No doubt the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be a big discussion […]
There’s no doubt that using keyword-rich text links will help your SEO efforts. However, if you’re a search marketing professional trying to convince your stakeholders to utilize the value of keyword-rich text links in your body copy, you’ve definitely encountered the following scenario at one point or another: You: “Since we’re focused on this set […]
Google is asking for user feedback and ideas for its Google Buzz product, and has setup an ideas forum using Google Moderator. After signing in with a Google account, users can submit ideas or vote on existing ideas from other users. According to Google’s blog post, this ideas forum will remain open until March 31st.
Following the process laid out in this column, you will have already worked with the advertiser to set up clear goals for your PPC account. And using last week’s advertiser interview, you now know some of the key specifics such as the key dates and milestones of the program, an initial list of top terms, […]
I’ve found it annoying that over the years, more and more people use SEM to mean paid search, as if SEM excludes SEO. That’s not how I defined SEM — search engine marketing — back 2001. I’d still like to see the original definition retained. But I might be swimming against the tide. Below, how […]
What’s search engine marketing? If you ask Wikipedia, it’s currently defined as the act of buying listings on search engines. That’s not how SEM started out being defined. It’s still not how I define it, though that might change, as my Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up? article explains. But in this […]
The second day of SMX West 2010 is in the books, and here are links to our own coverage of the day’s keynote:
Today at SMX West, Maile Ohye from Google confirmed that Google is indeed now crawling AJAX pages that use the standard proposed last Fall. The documentation is live on Google Code and you can also take a look at my recent article about how to implement the standard and its pros and cons. Maile mentioned […]
Google’s SearchWiki, which launched 16 months ago to a mix of fanfare and controversy, is a thing of the past. The ability to re-order, remove, and comment on search results has been replaced by a scaled-down version that Google is simply calling “stars” or “starred results.” According to today’s announcement, the Stars feature will allow […]
Speaking today at SMX West in Santa Clara, Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig, said that PageRank is overhyped and probably needs a new name. His comments came during the morning keynote session in a conversation with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. After being asked about search technologies that he thinks are […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research It’s day two of SMX West 2010 in a rainy Santa Clara, California, and we’ll be liveblogging today’s keynote […]
It’s day two of SMX West 2010 in a rainy Santa Clara, California, and we’ll be liveblogging today’s keynote session. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will be chatting on the big stage with Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research. We’re expecting some sneak peeks at future Google products and technology, so come […]
I’ve been at companies large and small, fat and lean. Whether the company is two people trying to build a business out of their home, or 10K+ employees at companies like PayPal and Yahoo, no matter what the size of the company, there are always going to be resource constraints. Don’t get me wrong, I’m […]
Google has announced a new and easier way to share ownership of verified sites in Webmaster Tools. Rather than having to upload multiple verification files or create multiple meta tags, there’s a new “Add a User” tool on the site verification page; it looks like this: There’s no confirmation involved — the new owner has […]
Time, they say, was invented to keep everything from happening all at once. Whether we’re performers, filmmakers or UX designers, time allows us to organize events and engineer an audience’s experience. Time is also a conversion lever that can be as powerful as messaging, placement, color or any other user experience factor—and as deserving of […]
Culminating an internal project that seems to have lasted for several months, Google has published a “Google SEO Report Card” showing the results of an internal SEO audit on the home pages of 100 different Google Products. The main verdict? Like many companies, Google’s web site is a mixed bag of good SEO tactics and […]
Many search marketers work with affiliates but fail to ask the question: Can your affiliates’ bad actions cause you legal trouble? The answer is probably. Among other things, your affiliates might get you into trouble for bidding on competitors’ brand name trademarks or making false offers, claims or endorsements without complying with FTC guidelines. Let’s […]