Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Shpigler On How Yahoo! Should Deal With Microsoft

I just came across this extremely funny video - of Israel's Shpigler the Shark - from the Guardian. He offers some advice to Jerry Yang on how to negotiate with Microsoft. Here's a sample:

"Tell him: 'You have other options, go and buy a country ... let's see you monetise Liberia'". And on getting the biggest price - "negotiate each part separately ... tell him: 'I will give you Flickr for $2bn, in the end give him Yahoo Mail for $40bn and he will kiss you lips."

Yahoo!, Google and MSN Support Sitemaps Protocol

Whilst on John Battelle's site I saw an interesting article about a common agreement from the Search Engines on sitemaps:

In the first joint and open initiative to improve the Web crawl process for search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft today announced support for Sitemaps 0.90 (www.sitemaps.org), a free and easy way for webmasters to notify search engines about their websites and be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently, resulting in better representation in search indices. For users, Sitemaps enables higher quality, fresher search results. An initiative initially driven by Yahoo! and Google, Sitemaps builds upon the pioneering Sitemaps 0.84, released by Google in June of 2005, which is now being adopted by Yahoo! and Microsoft to offer a single protocol to enhance Web crawling efforts.

This could be certainly be good news for those struggling to be found on the search engines.

Danny Sullivan to Leave SEW

Just picked this up from John Battelle about Danny Sullivan leaving Search Engine Watch. He also makes some interesting points about companies making profits off their employees and not cutting them in on the action:

Man, do I know the pain he went through to make this decision. It's very hard to watch something you really love and worked so hard to build continue without you, but when you are not an owner in some way, it's harder still to understand why someone else is taking all the profits, and control, while you do all the work. I know Danny is a very reasonable guy, and the fact that he could not get the new owners of SEW to cut him in on the fruits of all his hard work means the folks running his ex-company are really not paying attention to where value is created in the media world these days.

Danny's 'official' version of events can be found over on his weblog Daggle.

Search Engine Strategies New York Roundup

If you missed Search Engine Strategies in New York, Search Engine Roundtable has got a complete list of all sessions including the keynote from Barry Diller.

v7ndotcom elursrebmem - The New SEO Challenge

If you're not aware, there is a new Search Engine Optimisation competition going on. It is being run by John Scott over at the V7 Network and its first prize is $4,000 plus an iPod.

The objective of the competiton is simple:

Get your site listed Number 1 on Google for the term: v7ndotcom elursrebmem by May 15th, 2006

This competition will obviously attract a lot of interest but I will be supporting Wolf Howl, who has promised to donate all money to the St Jude Center of Children - to help children with cancer. if you'd like to help to just copy this link into your website:

<a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/v7n/' >About v7ndotcom elursrebmem</a><br>
Using the web to help kids with cancer.

All the best Greg!

Technorati Tags: v7ndotcom elursrebmem

Danny Sullivan Rounds Up the Search Industry in 2005

In an article on Clickz - 2005 in Review: The Top Search Industry Stories of the Year - Danny Sullivan reviews some of the main Search trends and news stories of the past year. Most of the articles come from his own Search Engine Watch site or Clickz articles. Here are a few of them:

Click Fraud Suit Names Google, Yahoo and Other Search Companies
Proposed Search Engine Standard For Titles and Descriptions
Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny Caught In Link Selling Debate
NYT On Yahoo's US Gains and Google's Endless Betas

John Battelle Assesses His 2004 Predictions

Going back a year John Battelle, author of The Search - How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, made some predictions for 2005. Here is a brief list:

1. We will have a goat rodeo of sorts in the blogging/micropublishing/RSS world as commercial interests push into what many consider a "pure medium." I've seen this movie before, and it ends OK.

3. There will be two to five major new sites that emerge from "nowhere" to become major cultural influencers along the lines of the political bloggers of 2004.

4. Meanwhile, the long tail will become the talk of the "old line" media world.

5. Google will do something major with Blogger. I really have no idea what, but it's overdue. Six Apart will grow quickly but face a crisis in its implementation as its core users demand more features that are "unbloglike" like customer databases and robust publishing support tools.

6. Ask will continue to consolidate traffic by buying smaller search sites.

7. Yahoo and Google will both test systems that combine local merchant inventory information with search, so that merchants can use search as a direct sales channel.

9. Firefox will near 15% of total browser share. Firefox faithful will wonder why it's not much much higher. But MSFT will release a very good upgrade of IE, see #8.

10. A third party platform player with major economies of scale (ie eBay or Amazon) will release a search related innovation that blows everyone's mind, and has everyone buzzing about how it redefines what's possible in search.

14. All year, Apple will be rumored to launch a video iPod, but it won't - it's still too early. By the end of 2005, we will just be starting to see traction in the video over IP market and its connection to search. Google will introduce Video search at some point in 05, but it will stay in Labs.

16. Perhaps most recklessly...I will finish my book

John Battelle was pretty close to the mark on most of his predictions. Take a look at how he fared in his article So, One Year Later, How'd I Do?

John Batelle on the BBC's Start the Week Programme

John Battelle, of Searchblog and author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, has been in London this week for the Financial Times Book of the Year Award. He has been quite busy meeting people and doing interviews and was invited on to the BBC's popular radio programme, Start the Week on Monday. You can listen to the broadcast on the Start the Week website. 

Search Engine For Sale

If you've ever wanted to buy a search engine, there's one going on eBay! It looks like the folks over at Jux2 are have taken this particular project so far and now want to sell up. Jux2 is a neat meta search engine, which does comparative searches on Google, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. According to Battellemedia, " jux2's founders' attention wandered to other projects, and they could no longer keep the service running."

Link: Award-winning META-SEARCH engine for sale: jux2.com

Rollyo - Your Own Personal Search Engine

Rollyo is a brand new search engine tool which allows you to create your own 'mini' search engine. Rolyo is powered by Yahoo! and only displays the results from websites that you have already specified. Rollyo allows you to create a 'Searchroll' :

"A Searchroll is a personalized search engine that provides results from a hand selected collection of trusted sites on any given topic."

Searchrolls can consist of up to 25 web domains and Rollyo allows you to create multiple searchrolls for subjects that interest you. One that I created earlier - Internet Marketing - only provides results from selected internet marketing and blogging sites. So, imagine you would like to display sports results from online newspapers, you would probably create a mini search engine that included: the The Times, El Mundo, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Figaro and Le Monde. Here is the pitch from the people at Rollyo:

"Ever wish you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust? With Rollyo, you can easily create your own custom search engines, and explore and save those created by others.

Rollyo puts the power of Yahoo! Search in your hands, by giving you the tools to create your own personal search engines - with no programming required. All you have to do is pick the sites you want to search, and we'll create a custom search engine for you."

I can see quite a lot of value in Rollyo as it could actually allow me to point supply visitors with search engine results that they are interested in, from sites that I have already pre-screened. I must check to see if there is a Rollyo script that I can bolt in to my own site.

Ask Jeeves CEO to be Keynote Speaker at SE Strategies in San José

According to SE Roundtable, Danny Sullivan has managed to get Steve Berkowitz, of Ask Jeeves, to be the keynote speaker at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San José, California. Here's what Danny Sullivan writes up on the Search Engine Strategies blog:

It's not on the agenda yet, but we've just confirmed that Ask Jeeves CEO and director Steve Berkowitz will be doing the keynote for our SES San Jose 2005 show. This will be in our keynote slot on August 9, the second day of the show. It's actually going to be a "keynote conversation," rather than the traditional keynotes that some shows have.

Technorati Tags: search engine | ask jeeves

Twingine - Comparing Yahoo! and Google Search Engines

John Battelle picks up on a post by Russell Beattie regarding Twingine, a Google/Yahoo! comparison search engine. Simply type in your search terms and Twingine will display your Google and Yahoo! results side-by-side within your browser.

It's quite interesting to see what he actually has to say about Yahoo! results:

I should be eating our own corporate dogfood more at work and doing my web searches at Yahoo! Search instead of Google but old habits die hard. Yahoo! Search is easily as good, but for some reason I've always got this nagging doubt in my mind of whether I'm seeing the absolute best search results or not. So I end up using Google a lot to ease my suspicions.

I have actually been thinking the same about the results that Yahoo! throws up. Recently, I have ended up down dead alleys with Google, whilst Yahoo! has offered me far better results. Why not try out Twingine and see what you think?

Search Engine Strategies London

I just came back from my first Search Engine Strategies conference in London. And I must say that I really enjoyed it. It  was good to finally listen to some of the SEO gurus - Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, Shari Thurow, Ammon Johns - instead of reading what they have to say. At the heart of most presentations was the simple idea that you need to focus on your target audience and use the language that they use; everything else just spins off this - page titles, web page introductions, web site navigation, etc.

For me the most enjoyable presentations came from Shari Thurow and Heather Lloyd-Martin. Shari was given her own slot to discuss Search Engine Friendly Design, whilst Heather shared hers with David Mill of MediaCo and discussed Writing for the Search Engines. I must say that it was quite refreshing to listen to 2 speakers who were not only passionate about their subject but were also able to instil some passion into the audience.

Another discussion I found interesting was entitled Integrating Search Into Other Marketing. Marshall D Simmonds , VP of Enterprise Search Marketing for the New York Times, told the audience how his team tries to bring together the different divisions within the company - IT, Marketing and Finance - to work together om an integrated approach to marketing. It was interesting to hear him say that writers are more or less being taught to 'unlearn' their previous copywriting skillls in order to dael with both search engines and the online audience and that they now have to think very carefully think about how to introduce their keywords into headlines, page titles, content and anchor text.

All in all a good event.

SEMPO Survey on Search Engine Marketing

Here's an interesting report that I came across on the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation (SEMPO) research page.

The State of Search Engine Marketing 2004 (pdf)

The survey was undertaken to look at, amongst other things, the size of the search marketing industry, where advertising spend was going and to identify key industry trends. The data came from interviews with 31 leading industry experts, secondary research and online surveys with 288 search engine advertisers and SEM agencies. Here are some of the highlights of the report:

• Brand awareness is advertisers' top objective for SEM programs
• ROI is outpacing inflation
• SEM is poaching budget from shopping directory listings, web advertising, email
  and print ads
• Senior executives consider SEM a high business priority at 50% of advertiser
  respondents
• Advertisers plan to increase their SEM spending 41% on average in 2005
• Most advertisers plan to manage the majority of their SEM spending in-house

This report makes interesting reading both for those looking to justify Search Marketing spends and for those looking for industry trends

 

Search Engine Strategies Comes to London

From the 1st to 2nd June people in the London will get the chance to see some of the biggest names in Search Engine Marketing at the Search Engine Strategies 205 Conference. Search Engine experts like Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, Shari Thurow and Ammon Johns will be in attendance - holding SE clinics and moderating sessions. Speakers from Google, Overture, Ask Jeeves, Jupiter Research and Espotting will be giving seminars and many of the major Search Engine Marketing companies and consultancies wil have stands at the event.

Here is a sample of some of the sessions being held:

Day 1 Search Engine Strategies

• Creating Compelling Ads & Landing Pages
• The European Search Landscape
• Search Engine Friendly Design
• Integrating Search Into Other Marketing
• Search Term Research & Targeting
• Ad Management Case Studies

Day 2 Search Engine Strategies

• Buying Search Engine Advertising
• Understanding & Influencing Searcher Behavior
• Dynamic Web Sites & Server Issues
• Meet The Crawlers
• Auditing Paid Listings & Clickfraud Issues

Though entry prices are not cheap (1 day registration starts at £350), it should be fun and obviously a great opportunity to learn and network.

Snap Search Engine Offers Great New Tool

Whilst looking through John Batelle's excellent blog, Search Blog, I came across an interesting post about a new feature on the search engine Snap. As you start typing in the search box, a a list of specific word matches starts appearing as you write. It's really quite neat and could prove useful for those looking to optimise their website content or even blog headings! Given that my other weblog is about Madrid (Mad About Madrid), I thought I'd check out some of the words - I am now trying to figure out how I could write a couple of posts related to "madrid skateboards" and "american school of madrid"!!

Search Engine Strategies New York

I know it's late but some people may be interested in popping along to the Search Engine Strategies New York event which opens on Monday 28th, February. The event is organised by Danny Sullivan, the leading search engine authority, and looks like it will be the biggest event to date - 1,300 conference attendees have so far signed up, with over 100 exhibitors. On his blog he says that Jerry Yang, Yahoo! co-founder will be joining him for a keynote speech, whilst top names from the big search engines will all be there. If you can't make it, try out the Search Engine Watch SEM Related Organizations & Event forum where event details will be posted.

A9 Launches Online Local Yellow Pages (with photos)

A9 has just launched a new search product, in partnership with Yellow Pages, which gives users the opportunity to get address details, view maps and even photographs of business addresses. Coupled with the ability to view books (through Amazon), a search engine (results enhanced by Google) and image search (enhanced results by Google).

According to an article in Business Week - Amazon Elbows Into Online Yellow Pages:

Few of A9's individual features are unique, but they're wrapped together in a package that Sherman thinks will be appealing to people who want a more visceral connection with businesses in their local communities. Search on "sushi," for instance, and the site -- which knows where visitors live from their Amazon account or deduces it from their network address -- brings up a list of nearby sushi joints along with a map showing where they are. They also can click a button to call the business using a free Internet phone service.

Here’s what A9 had to say about the process of capturing the images:

Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

Currently 10 US cities have been mapped with 20 million images with plans to roll it out across the entire US.

Russell Beattie on the other hand had this to say about the new technology in an article entitled A9: "Never been done before?"

My bullshit meter went off when I was watching the A9 video about how they added photos to their yellow pages search, and how something like this had "never been done before." Uh, yeah. That's wrong.

My old apartment in Madrid. That's from a yellow pages service called QDQ in Spain. You can pan and zoom and walk around all of madrid, with photos on all sides every 10 meters.

I can vouch for that, here’s an article I wrote in February of last year: Photographic Street Map. Still, I think it's a very cool new addition to A9 - I'd just like to know when those trucks will start rolling out across Europe!

Original Source
A9 Debuts "Yellow Pages" - Now *That's* Local (John Battelle's Searchblog). Incidentally, it is well worth reading his article in Business 2.0.

Google Hires Firefox Programmer

In a move that is sure to fuel speculation that Google is planning to launch its own Internet browser, it was announced this week that Google has hired the lead programmer, Ben Goodger, of the Firefox browser. Here's what they had to say on Wired:

Among other clues pointing to browser interest at Google are the registration of the gbrowser.com Internet address, the hiring of some key programmers, and sponsorship of a Mozilla programmer meeting. Even without a browser, Google is involved in significant competition with Microsoft. Both companies are working on desktop search tools, and Microsoft is pushing its MSN Search service as an alternative to Google.
(Google snaps up top Firefox programmer)

Microsoft to launch its new Search Engine

It looks like Microsoft's eagerly awaited Search Engine will be launched on the 11th November. With revenues from paid search advertising totalling $5 billion a year, Microsoft is going to try and dent the market shares of the 2 main players, Google and Yahoo. Industry experts, however, believe that it will be at least 2 years before they can make any inroads on Google. Though nobody is really sure what it will look like "a technical preview seen by Times Online appeared to have been based on the clean lines of Google, rather than the ad-and-offer-heavy Yahoo site."

Microsoft squares up to Google (Times Online)
At Last, a Microsoft Search Tool (New York Times)

Visit the Google University at Internet World North

On the 3rd and 4th November, Manchester (UK) will host Internet World North, which bills itself as "the only event in the North of England and Scotland for the internet professional". The event features Google University which offers attendees the chance to learn more about using Google Adwords and is delivered by Google experts. Other seminars include:
Effective Email Marketing - How to optimise email marketing to get maximum results
Michelle Hocking, Retail Director, Cheetahmail
Achieving ROI with a Content Management system
Nigel Jackson, CEO, Immediacy
CASE STUDY - How to Effectively Run A Search Campaign - Building Your Business With Search Advertising
Ian Carrington, Head of B2C Vertical Market Group, Google
In order to get in to Internet World North, you must register and the same applies for Google University and other seminars.

A9 - Amazon's new Search Engine - Awesome!

Amazon has just launched the latest search engine, called A9, which provides users with search engine results and results from Amazon's 'Search Inside the Book™' technology. This technology provides users with results from Amazon itself and in some cases displays results from a given page in a book. The search engine results come from Google, which also provides sponsorhip links and Google Adwords. Much like Google and Yahoo! users can download the A9 toolbar:

The search toolbar features some nifty tools:
1. Search facility (Google and Amazon products)
2. The standard pop-up box blocker
3. Diary - so that you can leave notes on sites you have visited
4. Site history

One of the best tools is the site info button (a possible must-have toy) for Internet Marketers, which gives you information on where people who have visited the site you are viewing have also gone to (it uses Alexa technology) and some basic site stats. On viewing the Seth Godin blog, I was able to pick up the following site information:

At first glance this looks like a wonderful tool - anything that can utilise Google's search technology with enhanced features such as books and 'site info' can't be bad at all.

Googlemania! - getting the lowdown on Google

Wired magazine this month offers visitors the chance to read articles from the March edition, which ran a special feature on Google, called Googlemania! The feature contains the following:

• Surviving IPO Fever
• It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World
• How to Speak Google
• Google's Open Source Idea Lab
• I'm Feeling Lucky
• How to Kill Google
• 4 Scenarios for the Future
• Redesigning the Interface
• The (Evil) Genius of Comment Spammers
• Google vs. Gates

Google hits 6 billion!

Google now has just over 6 billions items listed on its databases. The figure breaks down as such:

Microsoft eyes up Google!

Search Engine Watch has an interesting link, entitled Gates On Google : We WILL Catch Them!, which takes you to Webmasterworld. Many of the contributors make some interesting observations and predictions on what the future holds for Google and MSN. Let's just hope that some of them will never come true!

Will Yahoo! drop Google?

I read an interesting news article today which said that Yahoo! may be about to drop Google as its supplier of search results and will look to Inktomi to fill the gap. One Internet pundit reckons that companies may see their search engine traffic drop by up to 50%. So now may be the time to look at investing in Inktomi's Search Submit inclusion programme.

Search Sands Shift as Yahoo! Prepares to Drop Google