Search marketing & business
An interview with Eric E. Schmidt in BusinessWeek - Too Powerful? Us? Surely You Jest
Q. Some people feel that Google is now or potentially could become too powerful in that it has such sway over where people go online. People worry that Google could become the gateway, and by extension the toll gate, by which people reach the Internet.
A couple of threads from past few days speculating on how G may be basing evaluations on sites rather than pages from sites. The first, from WMW has Tedster musing ''brainstorm: How might Google measure the site, and not just a page?' ...
From Google Webmaster Central, via Dublin, via Germany - An update on spam reporting
In 2006 one of our initiatives in the area of communication was to notify some webmasters in case of a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines (e.g. by using a "particular search engine friendly" software that generates doorways as an extra). No small number of these good-will emails to webmasters have been brought about by spam reports from our users.
- By: 4Eyes - 29th Mar 2007
OK - a title likely to provoke knee-jerk reactions from all and sundry, but hold on a moment before cranking up those old cloaking arguments.
I think this is a whole different question.
For those that don't know, Google Optimizer is multivariate testing tool that allows you to split run test different versions of key parts of your page in order to improve conversion rates.
Via Dudiblog, when you load MSN UK, currently it suggests you search for The Apprentice BBC. It has been that way for over 4 hours today. Is the pre-filled search box a branded ad unit, or another sign of cluelessness at M$?
Danny reported on Yahoo!'s recent click fraud settlement. Advertisers get a chance to ask to receive credits to buy more click fraud.
Seth Godin has been barraged with email spam asking to exchange links:
Over the last few weeks, I've received several emails, all the same, all from real people at Reed. They baldly (and boldly) ask me to swap links with them as part of a scheme to move up the Google rankings.
Good travel related and click funnel research, including information about how shallow Travelocity's funnel is:
I was doing a "define" search on Google an noticed a new addition called related phrases appearing
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Hat tip to Matt
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/quick-legal-update
He left comments off on his site, so comment away here.
The suit was dismissed without leave to ammend, I think that means they have no case, and also got themselves sanctioned by the judge, whatever that means.
In SEO Niches and the Big Picture Shari Thurow hinted that eye tracking is overrated. Gord Hotchkiss replied, with the gloves off:
A recent SearchEngineLand post highlighted that nearly three-fourths of companies that outsource PPC are dissatisfied:
- Most agencies specialize in consumer search marketing and their services are inappropriate for your unique needs as a B2B company.
- The agency business model skews in favor of the largest spenders and under-serves the majority of B2B advertisers.
- Agencies will never understand your customers and your business as well as you, especially B2B firms that sell more complicated products and services.
- The need to coordinate with outsiders implies latency and information loss, meaning you lose the flexibility and agility to react quickly.
- Outsourcing means losing control over a critical portion of your demand generation strategy to outsiders who may have different incentives than you.
With Google firmly declaring it's intent to move towards personalized search today's move towards showing more sensitivity towards privacy sends them in conflicting directions.
There probably isn't much significant news in the WSJ piece, other than the fact they are writing about it.
[Topix], which is majority owned by media giants Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co., paid a Canadian company $1 million for the Web address Topix.com in January. Mr. Skrenta intends to switch his site over to the more popular .com Web address from .net soon to help eliminate confusion and increase credibility with consumers.
David Pasternack asks for trouble, doesn't he. See his latest post SEO contest reveals limits of SEO
Would you be so kind to reveal to your readers what SEO tactics you used to avoid plummeting down to page X of the search results or do they have to read about it elsewhere?
...you'd have to mix onions with it to be able to smell it."
Well, he didn't use exactly those words, but close enough. And We Needed Proof Alexa Is Terrible
The small, hands-on workshop with 'celebrity SEOs' seems to have a lot of traction. Today, Michael Gray announced SEO Class, to be held in New York City!
SeoDays have announced their first date. This time it will be a two day event to be held in London, 20th - 21st March 2007
http://www.seodays.com/
Some big industry names are running the gig, including David Naylor and Jennifer Slegg.
Generous Google filters out up to 10% of their revenue, while claiming that advertisers detect only 0.02 of clicks as being fraudulent:
Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's product manager for trust and safety, said in an interview that, on average, up to 10 percent of pay-per-click activity is invalid, and in some cases fraudulent, but that its computers automatically detect virtually all such problems, meaning advertisers pay nothing.
The percentage of invalid clicks actually identified by customers is 0.02 percent of all clicks, he said.
Is your Yahoo! Directory listing killing your organic search result clickthrough rate? If so, try using the NOYDIR tag:
