SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 27, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Aug. 27, 2008 at 4:20pm ET
By Barry Schwartz
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See Related Stories In: SearchCap
FindLaw Hit By Long Arm Of The Google Law Over Paid Links
Toolbar PageRank penalties are nothing new to the SEO world, we see them all the time. But when Todd Friesen broke the news that FindLaw.com is marketing a new advertising service to sell links that will "help you increase your company's visibility, rank and penetration within natural search results on major search engines such as Google," as the FindLaw email said, the legal industry was somewhat shocked.
Back in October 2007, we reported that Google officially said that selling or buying links can hurt your PageRank and/or rankings in Google. We then saw the sledge hammer hit and sites noticed that their Toolbar PageRank scores dropped drastically. But even with all this publicity and all the official Google documentation, FindLaw.com managed to send out an email marketing blast to sell text links that are marketed to increase a site's rankings.
What happened? FindLaw.com noticed that their Toolbar PageRank score dropped from a 7 to a 5.
Aug. 27, 2008 at 1:12pm ET
By Barry Schwartz
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See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, Link Building: Paid Links, Top Story
Google Offers New Content Hub For US Presidential Elections Home Stretch
Many millions of people saw Hillary Clinton speak last night at the Democratic National Convention. If you didn't (and are interested) you can see the speech on YouTube. Indeed, Google has been doing various things in various places -- on Maps, YouTube, iGoogle and elsewhere -- to offer news, content, video and visualization tools throughout this US electoral season. Now the company has introduced an additional set of election-related guides and services, explained in this Google Blog post.
Aug. 27, 2008 at 12:16pm ET
By Greg Sterling
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See Related Stories In: Google: Maps & Local, Google: Other, Google: YouTube & Video, Top Story
Google Checkout Steps Up Promotion Through AdWords
Steve LaLonde spotted Google sporting new checkout badges for some Google Checkout merchants within the AdWords listings. I was able to reproduce it for a search on petco, a Google Checkout merchant.
Here is a side by side look at the checkout badges on AdWords. The $5 off version is the new version being tested, the other one is the normal checkout badget:
Aug. 27, 2008 at 8:29am ET
By Barry Schwartz
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See Related Stories In: Google: AdWords, Google: Checkout
AdAge: Microsoft Likely To Sell Avenue A To WPP
AdAge reported that Microsoft and mega-agency WPP have restarted talks that may result in the sale of Interactive agency Avenue A to the latter. Avenue A was part of the $6 billion deal for aQuantive that also included Atlas and the DrivePM ad network.
Aug. 26, 2008 at 6:33pm ET
By Greg Sterling
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See Related Stories In: Microsoft: Business Issues, Microsoft: General, Microsoft: adCenter
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 26, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Aug. 26, 2008 at 6:11pm ET
By Danny Sullivan
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Google Now Searching For Synonyms
Blink, and you might have missed it. Google's now doing synonym searching. It's something they quietly noted in a past Google blog post and one that comes up again today in a post that covers how Google uses experiments to improve the search interface.
Aug. 26, 2008 at 4:54pm ET
By Danny Sullivan
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See Related Stories In: Google: Search Customization, Google: Web Search, Search Features: General, Search Features: Query Refinement, Top Story
Sir, Would You Like Fries With Those Links?
Recently in several SEO forums I noticed a number of threads discussing ways to find and build "economical" links. The forum participants wanted to know how they could initiate "safe" reciprocal linking as well as "fast" submissions to free article directories. They reasoned these tactics were worth doing because both linking methods were "economical" and "easy" to use.
I understand some linking techniques can be expensive, tedious to implement and extremely time consuming, but tying your online business success to linking tactics deemed "easy", "fast" and "cheap" seems counter-productive. If you limit your linking to low-cost tactics or look at the practice as "link building" instead of "marketing for links" you're almost guaranteed to fail.
Aug. 26, 2008 at 4:12pm ET
By Debra O. Mastaler
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See Related Stories In: How To: SEO, Link Building: General, Link Week
Social Media Marketing ROI- Metrics and Analysis
When I attended South by Southwest 2008, I had the pleasure of attending a panel where four somewhat lost panelists were (with difficulty) trying to come up with metrics to measure success from a social media marketing campaign. I was a little annoyed when they concluded that there were no metrics available right now, and that someone would have to come up with a new way of measuring social media success.
While many people argue that the current metrics are no longer applicable, here's a look at how we can adapt the currently available methodologies and apply them to social media marketing campaigns.
Aug. 26, 2008 at 12:36pm ET
By Muhammad Saleem
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See Related Stories In: Let's Get Social, SEM Tools: Web Analytics, Social Media Marketing
Register for SMX East Now -- You Save $400
Register for SMX East today and get your ticket for the must-attend interactive and search marketing event of the year. You save $400 by registering now. SMX East will be held October 6-8 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.
SMX East will deliver...
Aug. 26, 2008 at 10:21am ET
By Search Engine Land
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See Related Stories In: SEM Industry: Conferences, SMX & SMN Alerts
MapQuest Introduces New (Beta) Look, Features
AOL's MapQuest remains the top brand in online mapping and is still the most visited mapping site, despite recent gains by Google Maps. However, as the "incumbent" MapQuest has been somewhat resistant to experimentation and slower to adopt new features. But this morning the site is launching what promises to be the first of many changes in the coming months that will make it more dynamic, more visually interesting and content rich.
Aug. 26, 2008 at 8:33am ET
By Greg Sterling
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See Related Stories In: AOL: MapQuest, Top Story
Search Illustrated: Organic Vs. Paid Overall Performance
A lot of times paid and organic search campaign results can look very different. Especially at launch, organic conversion cost will seem much higher as rankings and, consequently, ROI take time to appear.
This week's infographic demonstrates how organic search campaigns can show more cost-effective long-term performance:
Aug. 26, 2008 at 7:29am ET
By Elliance
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Google.com Finally Gets Google Suggest Feature
After being in testing for literally years, Google Suggest is finally coming to Google.com. This is the feature where as you start to type in the search box, related searches automatically appear below where you are typing.
Aug. 25, 2008 at 8:11pm ET
By Danny Sullivan
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See Related Stories In: Google: User Interface, Google: Web Search, Search Features: Query Refinement, Top Story
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 25, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Aug. 25, 2008 at 7:40pm ET
By Danny Sullivan
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Forming Good Title Tags for Local Businesses
If you're looking for a quick improvement in your local business site's rankings and don't have a lot of time, you can't go wrong with making some simple improvements to your homepage title tag. The text within the title tags is one of the top signals used by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines to decide what keywords are relevant to a page, and it's also one of the most frequently neglected parts of a site design. If you have a good title tag, you can rank at the top of the search results for users seeking your business — and a bad title can leave you in the dark.
Below are a few details on how to make better titles and get your pages to rank higher.
Aug. 25, 2008 at 1:52pm ET
By Chris Silver Smith
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See Related Stories In: How To: SEO, Locals Only, Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing
More Google StreetView Privacy Controversy
CNET rekindles the Google StreetView trespassing controversy that we've written about a couple of times in the past (here and here). Google has said publicly and in email comments to us that its policy is to photograph public roads and stay off private property.
The CNET article effectively argues that Google is willfully violating and disrespecting those property rights and expectations.
Aug. 25, 2008 at 1:14pm ET
By Greg Sterling
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See Related Stories In: Google: Critics, Google: Maps & Local, Legal: Privacy
Now Accepting Pitches For SMX London 2008
We’re now accepting speaking proposals for SMX London, taking place at the New Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden on November 4 and 5, 2008. We’ve got an all new agenda for the show.
Please note that the agenda is final for the show, and we will only consider pitches for specific panels. There are a limited number of openings, and we expect to fill them quickly, so don’t delay if you want to be considered.
Ready to pitch? Click over to our SMX Speaker Pitch Form and follow the instructions there.
Aug. 25, 2008 at 1:11pm ET
By Chris Sherman
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See Related Stories In: SEM Industry: Conferences
Whither DART Search?
SES San Jose 2008 is now in the books and another Google Dance -- that annual bash that provides us all with so much safe, clean YouTube fodder -- has come and gone. Among the various features and benefits -- upscale backyard barbecue fare, free beer, modified karaoke, dancing, and light shows -- is the most fascinating spectacle of all: Googlers meeting other Googlers. (Oftentimes, I ran across Googlers just sticking with their own little clique and talking among themselves, but what do you expect... it's a "campus".)
Google is such an enormous entity by now that it carries a real risk of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Overall, though, the company does a pretty good job of keeping its initiatives in sync.
But if Googlers are always needing to meet other Googlers for the first time, imagine the effort of digesting a large company in the digital ad space whose founding predated Google's by two years, and which brings to the table a variety of legacy technologies and platforms along with its own corporate culture. Googlers, meet DoubleClickers!
Aug. 25, 2008 at 1:04pm ET
By Andrew Goodman
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See Related Stories In: Google: Business Issues, Google: Critics, Google: DoubleClick, Paid Search
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 22, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Aug. 22, 2008 at 2:02pm ET
By Barry Schwartz
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See Related Stories In: SearchCap
Is Google Analytics Integrating AdSense Metrics Into Reporting Tool?
Amit Agarwal reports that Google Analytics will soon be adding Google AdSense data to the web analytics package. Amit managed to secure some screen shots of the AdSense related reports. The AdSense specific content seems to be found under the "Content" tab and includes:
(1) AdSense ad clicks per page
(2) AdSense Revenue generated per page
(3) CTR and CPM on a per page basis
(4) Also, a "Top AdSense Referrers" report that shows you which referring sites will generate the most ad clicks for you.
Aug. 22, 2008 at 1:44pm ET
By Barry Schwartz
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See Related Stories In: Google: AdSense, Google: Analytics
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