Friday, October 27, 2006

ComScore: 109 Million People Conducted Local Searches in July

comScore Media Metrix defines "local search" as searches conducted by consumers on the local or directory (yellow pages) sections of leading search sites, as well as other searches identified as having local intent. By this definition, the firm found evidence that, in July of this year, 63% of US Internet users, approximately 109 million people, performed local searches online — a 43% increase compared to a year earlier in July 2005.
Local online advertising is projected to account for $1.3 billion in spending this year and increase by nearly 51% the next year, to $2.0 billion.

"Local search is experiencing strong growth as more consumers adapt to the 'always on' nature of their broadband connection, which enables them to quickly find information on local businesses," said Jack Flanagan of comScore. "With approximately 849 million local searches conducted by Americans in July, local advertisers have a sizable market that can be reached through leading search sites."

The amount of local searches is not only huge, the range is impressive, too.
comScore found that 41% of those conducting a local search were searching for something in their home area, as opposed to searching for information on businesses in locales that they intended to visit.

Among those searching in their home area, 59% indicated they were searching for a restaurant or something entertainment-related, such as a theater, theme park or an attraction for sightseeing. And 41% were looking for information on local services, including car rentals, dry cleaners and lawyers. Another 52% said they searched specifically for a business phone number or address.

As to where searchers went to search, Google garnered the largest share of local searches, closely followed by Yahoo!, at 30% and 29%, respectively. Microsoft captured 12% of local searches, followed by the Time Warner Network with 7%.

Considering the majority of the local searches are being conducted are done so within the major search engines and internet Yellowpages site, the question becomes how to ensure that your businesses site or information is include in the results of these locations.

Most of the major search engines and Internet Yellowpages will let you create a listing for your business totally free, but this can be a daunting and time consuming task, especially for businesses with multiple locations. With local search taking on a more prominent role in the way that consumers look for local companies and services, businesses now more than every need to take charge of their local listings in previously mentioned Internet search locations.
In response to American consumers changing behavior in regards to how they find local goods and services a new service was created called MyLocalProfile

http://www.mylocalprofile.com.MyLocalProfile give businesses the ability to create 1 company profile that will be pushed on a monthly basis to all of the major data centers that the search engines use to create the results found within their local searches. Very simply creating a listing with MyLocalProfile will ensure that the correct and most relevant information about you company will be included in all the major search engines and internet Yellowpages local results.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Inexpensive Advertising for the Real Estate Industry (part 2 of 2)

We established in the first article that online promotion of a real estate website can be difficult, confusing, and expensive. So what should real estate agents do to begin gaining internet traffic that can expand their client base and increase their sales?

There are several options that will work if an agent or mortgage broker is willing to spend a fair budget on marketing themselves online, or willing to wait for their organic search engine rankings to take hold. Even if you are incorporating traditional internet marketing techniques there are several inexpensive methods to further expand your ability to market yourself online to potential clients.

There are 3 quick and easy options that will jump-start your real estate related marketing within a month! Even if you currently have a good website and are utilizing search engine optimization techniques, these methods can still be valuable tools to improve your visibility and internet marketing.


1.Craigslist.com - If you’re a real estate agent and you haven’t discovered Craigslist, you are way behind the curve. Craigslist is a quick, easy and effective way to advertise your listings, your website, and business. Agents can post on a very regular basis for free, which includes free hosting for the property photos, inclusion of links to your website.
Another valuable aspect about using Craigslist is that your listing will more than likely get picked up by the search engines, and many other sites use postings in Craigslist to populate data for their sites such as HousingMaps.com. In less than 10 minutes you can get hundreds to thousands of prospective clients to view your listing, see all of your contact information, have you ad go out on many other websites and get another page indexed in the search engines, and it doesn’t cost you a dime!

2.MyLocalProfile.com – MyLocalProfile is a fairly new product that leverages the power of several prominent data providers that the major search engines use to backfill the their local listing information on their regular search results, and on their local search listings. MylocalProfile gives any company or business that has a physical location to create and control the information that is listed in the search engines pertaining to their business. This powerful tool gives companies the ability to update and change items such as their address, phone number, website address, company products, and many other listed items from one central profile. Another great feature about MyLocalProfile is that it creates a basic website that provides all their pertinent information. This is a valuable asset to local businesses that are not really in need of a fully functioning website such as a neighborhood coffeehouse to a local hardware store.


3.Real Estate Directories – Many real estate professionals may be unaware of this, but there are thousands of directories that will list your site absolutely free. This is beneficial for several reasons, most notably free traffic to your website, and increased links to your site (this is one element that can improve your search engine rankings). Taking this a step further there are a decent amount of directories that are specialized towards the real estate industry only. Most of real estate directories are free or less than 20 bucks to have your site listed.



Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your internet traffic. The opportunities I’ve laid out are quick, effective, and moreover inexpensive methods of driving traffic to your site. Spend even 1 hour a week implementing these quick results strategies and you’ll see viable results without committing thousands of dollars towards a seo campaign, or tens of hours trying to learn and optimize your site on your own. Even if you are implementing a search engine optimization campaign utilizing the above-mentioned techniques will still benefit your hunt to gain traffic quickly as your seo campaign develops.

Click Here To Read Part 1 of This Article

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Organic Search Conversions Nearly Match Paid Search

If you gathered the opinions of 100 paid search practitioners, and compared that to 100 organic search optimization experts, you'd find persuasive arguments for each method being superior at driving conversions. A new study from WebSideStory will justify the arguments of both sides.

The study looks at traffic and conversion data from 20 business-to-consumer e-commerce sites during the first eight months of 2006. Paid search had a median order conversion rate of 3.4 percent, while organic search results produced a conversion rate of 3.13 percent. The data set included more than 57 million search engine visits.

There are arguments to support both sides, Rand Schulman, WebSideStory's CMO, told ClickZ.

"On the one hand, because you control the message of paid search, you'd expect higher conversions. On the other side, because people value the 'editorial integrity' of organic, you'd expect higher conversions," he said. "Ultimately you need to do both. I think the eye-opener here is that neither side has a significant edge."

In the case of paid search, marketers have better control over the ad's message, the landing page and the ability to eliminate low-converting keywords. For organic listings, users often perceive them as "independent," which can increase click-throughs, but the lack of control of what the search result says, or what page it links to on the marketer's site can decrease conversions.

There are many factors on both sides of the argument, which ultimately balance each other out, according to Dana Todd, executive VP of interactive agency SiteLab and president of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO).

"Most visitors are not looking past the top three paid search ads, and the top three organic results. At that level of quality sites, you'd expect to see conversion rates that are close," she said.

In addition, organic search's higher volume of clicks, which tends to be 1.5 times higher than paid search volume, is balanced by the recognition by users that paid search ads are ads, which leads to a self-selection by users who have a commercial intent to their search, Todd said.

Organic Search Conversions Nearly Match Paid Search

iMedia Connection: Take the Risk out of Ad Networks

In recent months we have seen too many articles citing instances of brand advertisers using ad networks and finding their ads running next to inappropriate content, tarnishing their image. Advertisers need to ensure that their ads are running alongside content that is in keeping with and will bolster their own brand. Agencies need to make sure there are controls in place and that when buying through a network they won't end up fielding calls from an angry client who came across their ad on some questionable or inappropriate site.

Because of this, the industry has placed importance on advertising networks providing full site transparency to help solve this problem (and rightly so). But is this really the answer?

The reasoning behind requiring advertising networks to provide a complete site list is so that the advertiser and/or agency can review the list and eliminate any sites that they feel may contain inappropriate content. To begin with, some networks contain thousands of sites. In order to include this number of sites these networks have a large number of small sites which typically do not have their own sales force, making it easy to reveal an entire site list (as explained below). To be able to distinguish which of these sites are appropriate and which are not will be extremely time consuming. These small sites decide what content to publish, and at anytime can change their tone or direction, with you, as the advertiser, having little recourse. So, if you are working with a network that consists of thousands of small sites, there is no doubt you will have to monitor your buy very closely because networks that contain so many sites do not have teams in place to go through and examine each page of each site on a daily basis to guarantee their appropriateness.


Read the complete article here

Monday, September 11, 2006

Local Online Advertising to Grow 31%

Borrell Associates Inc. released a report, "Outlook for 2007: Pac-Man Pace for Local Online Advertising," which predicts local online advertising will grow 31 percent in 2007.

The report includes analysis of the two fastest-growing segments: local paid search advertising and email advertising. Paid search, already a $938 million category locally, will swell to $1.8 billion in 2007.

Email ad spend is estimated at $150 million this year but will grow to $233 million in 2007, according to the report.

"Media companies that figure out how to use the web as a database marketing tool are going to out-survive their local competitors. Finding prospects with a laser instead of a light bulb takes a lot of corporate re-engineering, but companies that have made the investment are starting to see the returns," says Colby Atwood, president, Borrell Associates.


Original article

Thursday, August 17, 2006

MyLocalProfile: Inexpensive Advertising for the Real Estate Industry

Part 1 of a 2 part series on local seach and the real estate industry


Most real estate agents and mortgage brokers have heard the stories of how some of their contemporaries are making a fortune from generate leads and eventually sales produced by internet traffic. Maybe at one point or another you (agent or broker) have wanted to get involved in the internet marketing arena, but had no idea where to start. Possibly you went as far as having your friends niece design you a website…now what?

Many people are exceedingly confused about how to marketing their site, compounded by the fear of being ripped off, resulting in never really doing much with their site. This is equivalent to having thousands of brochures or promotional materials created and spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on the design and creation, and then never sending them out. In its simplest form a website is just another promotional material just in a non-traditional format from print.

Your website is an interactive ad you have created, internet marketing is the distribution of advertisement (your website). Is there a point to spend time and money on an ad that hardly anyone will see?

I’m sure this is not the first time you have heard this or come to this realization. So, now the question becomes what are some viable options to promote my website and my service? There are many ways to promote a website, but most are expensive. Whether this is an expense of your time through doing research and implementation of your learned techniques, or paying a search engine marketing professional to do this for you, it will cost you. This can be a profitable endeavor, but it can be costly and may take up to 6 months to receive any relevant performance depending on a variety of factors that we won’t go into today.

Let’s say you happen to be an individual real estate agent or mortgage broker with a small budget, under $500, but you would still like to find a way to promote your site. MyLocalProfile (http://www.mylocalprofile.com) was created in response to this problem. Most real estate searches on the major search engines (i.e. google, yahoo, msn) contain a location descriptor in the search terms used. This produces the search engine's local results above any other organic website results.

An example of this would be someone in Miami Beach that is looking for a real estate agent. One of their search queries would be “real estate agent Miami Beach” As the picture below is a screen shot of the results that be would returned. I have highlighted the local results in an orange box for emphasis. As you can plainly see being listed in the local search engine results can be a very valuable.


end of part 1



Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Outsource SEO vs In-house SEO

SEO is becoming increasingly important to all who look to do business and use the Internet as a marketing tool. It is the path in which your market finds your offering. It has become almost a necessity for businesses to incorporate SEO in to their marketing plan. Many companies struggle with the decision on whether to hire a firm or conduct their SEO in-house. Unfortunately many companies lack the knowledge about SEO and assume it will be cheaper for them in the long run to hire someone "in-house". For some companies this may be efficient while others the overlooking the hiring of a professional firm to SEO can be costly. It is as critical to your business’ health as if you were to feel that you could heal a fatal disease yourself because you have access to the Internet and books instead of going to a highly trained physician. Now you laugh and say that would be absurd, but is the growth of your company worth the risk.

Knowledge Versus Cost Versus Time = Your Success

SEO is an ever changing business. Search engines change their algorithm frequently and new rules are put into place. One has to have the resources to find this information and understand how to implement the changes. An SEO firm is more likely to be aware of changes to search engine optimization protocols than an in-house individual. Many in-house individual will focus on developing and implementing your SEO strategies but typically remain in the dark about what goes on outside your organization due to they do not work with other scenarios. Outsourced SEO professionals must perform these same functions while constantly studying the industry, staying current with changing trends and familiarizing themselves with the latest SEO techniques. It is a part of their day to day business and necessary if they intend to compete in the marketplace and wish to survive.

What about cost? Surely the cost of hiring an individual is substantially less than the cost of hiring a company, right? This is a common misconception. Let’s look at it this way. You hire an E-Commerce Marketing Manager whose job is to develop and implements the strategic online marketing plan for an organization. Staying abreast of changes in the online marketing environment to best serve the objectives of the organization and adjusts plans accordingly. They may even be responsible for overseeing other aspects of the website such as the advertising and content components. In most cases the individual will be wearing many hats spreading them thin. His or her base salary according to Salary.com on average would be $85,703. That is $7141.92 a month and roughly $42 an hour. This is for one individual with hopes that they bear positive results. Let’s say they do not. It will take 3 to 6 months to start to truly see if the individual is an asset or not. That is $21,425.76 if you decide to let the individual go in just the third month. Not to include cost of taxes and benefits. And if successful, your company just paid $85,703 per year for SEO.

The average SEO firm charges anywhere from $5500 to $35000 to perform the same task with a staff of highly trained professionals in the area of link building, writing, optimizing, web development etc. Even on the high end you are getting a staff for the entire year for around what it cost you to hire an individual in-house for a quarter. And if it does not bear positive results and you decide to terminate the relationship you will only have lost less than $10,000 if prorated based on the $35000. in most cases you can even get some of that back. This logistically saves you time and money.

Would you agree that having one individual do the job of five is rarely a good idea? Would you feel it cost effective?

Time is another concern with in-house SEO. Will one individual be able to optimize multiple pages, write content, tags, build links, run reports and perform other SEO tasks in a timely fashion? One person can only do so much. Would you agree that time is money? Most SEO firms can do in a matter of days what might take an individual weeks to do. Many companies who use in-house SEO personnel spend more than necessary to get the same amount of work done in a longer amount of time. Once again you have one individual doing many task versus many individuals doing one task effectively.

In any case, is outsourcing the right move for you or your company? Whether you choose to outsource or not, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Read the full article and author bio:

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Mylocalprofile.com: Getting Listed Local Search Results Just Got A Little Easier

This July GDMI has unveiled a new localsearch product called My Local Profile(http://www.mylocalprofile.com).

My Local Profile is a new service developed to provide an intelligent means for local business and "brick and mortar" companies to obtain and/or manage their online presence. MLP was created out of the frustration that many have vocalized over the years about either not appearing in local search engines or Yellowpages results. In some instances companies would be listed, but have old or incorrectly information associated with their listings, causing lost business opportunities.

In MyLocalProfile you can create a profile for your business containing the following information: Company name, company slogan, address, phone number, email address, web site address, category headings, business description, products offered, services, payment methods, hours of operations, and years in business.

Once your business page is created, My Local Profile updates its directory and pushes the information to data providers/companies that all the major search engines receive data from to build their local listings that appear in their search results. This "data push" is done on a monthly basis which provides businesses with the ability to have new information or changes in their business updated throughout the internet in relatively short amount of time.


Here is an example of listing created in MYLP (MYLP Business Listing Example)

For more information go to Mylocalprofile.com

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Google Adwords Changes Algorithm For Quality Score On Landing Pages

Last week Google changed its algorithm for determining the quality score of landing pages being advertised in its pay-per-click program Adwords. This development had a major impact on the rankings and the cost-per-click price that advertisers are paying. This was done to improve the relevance of its paid search results, attempting to improve the user’s experience.

What is a Google's Quality Score?
Google's quality score is a rating number for how relevant your landing page is related to the keyword you are bidding on. The Quality Score is in place to keep the paid results in Google to be as relevant to the term searched as possible.


How does Google Determine the Quality Score of a Landing Page?
Google's quality score rating is a totally automated system that determines this number. Since there is no human involvement in this score, it is solely established by what Google's bot can read. If you do not have relevant text, H1, Meta tags, keywords, and descriptions on your landing page(s) your quality score has most likely suffered greatly.

Effects of a Low Quality Score
A low quality score will cause 1 of 3 things to happen within your ad campaign on Google.

1. Your ads will be pushed down on the results of the first couple of pages for each respective keyword.

2. You will see a huge spike in your cost-per-click amount (this is because lower rated pages need to spend more money to be listed).

3. Your keywords will become "inactive for search" which means that the combination of your quality score and maximum cost-per-click bid is not a high enough total score to even make paid search results.

How to Improve a Low Quality Score
A low quality score can only be improved by improving the on page relevance of your landing pages to the keywords you are bidding on. I personally would recommend creating at least 1 landing page for each Ad Group within your Adwords campaign. This may take some time, or money, but this action will lower your bidding cost and improve your paid results ranking which can easily save you thousands of dollars annually.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Online Travel Marketing on The Move

SmarterLiving.com's Krista Pappas talks with our news editor about the challenges of the online travel industry, search engines and metrics that matter.


Roger Park: Can you give me an overview of BookingBuddy and your role at the company?

Krista Pappas: BookingBuddy is a part of Smarter Living, Inc., an online travel network which publishes two sites: Booking Buddy and SmarterTravel.com, an online travel magazine. We consider ourselves to be a new breed of travel site that specializes in comprehensiveness, and we help consumers find great deals and easily plan the best itineraries for their travel needs. We currently have more than 130 commercial partners including Kayak, Starwood, United, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Hilton and Enterprise, who have chosen to partner with us as an alternative to higher cost channels.

As a senior vice president at Smarter Living, my role includes strategy for our products and the company's commercial relationships.

Park: What is the current state of online travel marketing?

Pappas: Because there has been an increase in the amount of web pages containing some form of user-generated content, it makes what people say about your brand and your product even more important. Marketing extends beyond just advertising online, as consumers are becoming more savvy and less loyal, and the internet allows them to quickly move on to a competitor if their experience with your brand and products does not completely satisfy their needs. Travel marketers need to work very hard to lead the way by finding ways to get people to talk positively about their brand and their product; making it critical that the experiences people have with the brands and products be positive and meet and surpass expectations.


Read the full article

Friday, July 07, 2006

Website Conversion Erosion

Test key pages regularly and conduct competitive analysis to combat declining website conversion rates.


Even the best landing pages and websites can experience an erosion of their conversion rates. Why does this happen? And how can you prevent it?

Nothing remains the same online. You may create a high-converting site or page and then notice over time that conversion rates begin a slow but steady decline.

There are a number of possible explanations. New competitors may have entered the market. Bidding for your PPC keywords may have risen steadily. Marketing support for the new page or site may have declined or lost its impact.

Here is an example of a site we tracked over a period of almost a year and a half. Although the erosion of conversion rates is not even, it is steady.

Read The Rest Of The Article

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Yahoo Has The Answers, Google Still Searching

GOOGLE MAY BE THE KING of search, but in one area at least, Yahoo is kicking Google's can around the block. The upstart Yahoo Answers has blown by the venerable Google Answers (venerable at least by Internet time, having been around since May 2002), and seems to be drawing rave reviews from analysts and users alike. The service launched in December of 2005, and had its 10 millionth question posted in May. When it comes to share of the online answer market, it has amassed about 10 times the traffic that Google Answers has in the past 6 months, according to Hitwise.

Everything Old is New Again

Posting questions online is nothing new. Ask Jeeves' AnswerPoint was around long before either Google or Yahoo, starting in early 2000. But it never took off, and was wrapped up in May of 2002 (ironically, the same week Google Answers launched). According to Ask head Jim Lanzone, "AnswerPoint wasn't a failure, nor a smashing success." At the time, Ask Jeeves had to focus on things like the continuing integration of Teoma and the launch of Smart Answers (Ask's version of vertical shortcuts, a la Google's Onebox or Yahoo's Shortcuts), and decided to pull the plug on AnswerPoint. Lanzone remembers that "the user base was actually pretty upset about it; they were a very small, but very loyal group." LookSmart also went down this path with LookSmart Live, born in 1999 but long since faded away.

When it comes to Yahoo Answers, success seems to lie at the convergence of a number of tried and true online concepts. First of all, the answer service depends on community. Unlike Google, there's no cost to the service. It relies on its community to answer posted questions, giving it a viral vitality somewhat like a wiki or forum. Coming from Yahoo, it's of course categorized and searchable, giving users the opportunity to tap into the existing answer base to see if their question has already been answered. And it provides the wisdom of the masses, giving its community the ability to rate posted answers, thereby vouching for the reliability of the information.


Read the full article

Monday, June 19, 2006

Netscape Relaunches with Blog Focus

Netscape has reinvented itself and aims to merge news reporting and blogs.

The new version of Netscape will be lead by Jason Calacanis, a seasoned dotcom news entrepreneur who sold his blog company Weblogs to AOL last year for $25 million.

"I don't think journalism is broken at all. But some things can come faster," Calacanis told Reuters.

Netscape, which was known as a popular web browser, was bought by AOL in 1999 and is now a unit of Time Warner.

The Netscape relaunch is seen as another attempt for Time Warner to generate more online advertising sales and subscriptions to the declining AOL internet service.

The new Netscape site will feature news stories grouped under categories such as top stories, world, local news, movies, health and sports

Thursday, June 15, 2006

MySpace Looking for Search Partner

News Corp.'s MySpace.com says that it plans to solicit bids for a partner to provide its online social network with search-based advertising.

MySpace plans to solicit bids from the top three internet companies: Microsoft Corp., Google, Inc. and Yahoo! Inc.

Currently MySpace says 80 percent of its sales come from remnant sales or bulk sales of unused ad space. Twenty percent of the total sales come from display ads. MySpace has about 85 million members but the company says they have not fully exploited the advertising sales opportunities.

"We've just scratched the surface of how to monetize it," says News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin.

News Corp. purchased MySpace last year for about $580 million.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Offline Conversion Tracking and SEM

I recently read a great article on Clickz.com dealing with the latest data on online consumer search and offline buying habits. A company called ComScore recently conducted studies for Yahoo, Google, and Performics/Doubleclick.

ComScore's March 2006 study found that 63 percent of people that were influenced by conducting online research made their respective purchases offline. In another study Shop.org found that 22 percent of all offline purchases were influenced by online research.

This data isn't a new shocking development or anything of that sort, but it does provide online marketers with a current look into the buying habits of consumers that use the online world to become informed on products and/or prices.

Whether you are an internet marketer like myself, or running small business this presents a major problem. How do I track the effectiveness of my online marketing campaign and ad buying if the majority of my results will be produced in the brick and mortar world?

I’m sorry to say there is no one definitive answer to resolve this problem. The type of product or industry you are primarily promoting will have some effect on the percent of offline purchase you will receive from your online promotion. There is no magic number you can multiply to your online sales and determine your offline ones.

Don’t worry I won’t leave you without some possible solutions to this problem. Here are a couple different methods you can use to determine the ROI of your online marketing efforts towards offline sales:


·Customer tagging: Look at purchases, then marry the online cookie with the offline customer number or credit card data.

.Offer codes: Unique offer codes can be provided for searchers to redeem via phone or in stores.

·Unique pricing: Unique online pricing can also become a tracking code of its own, so when a person requests that price, she must have seen the search landing page.

·Trackable phone numbers: Phone sales can be routed through a tracking system similar to the VoiceXML (define) systems used for pay-per-call systems. This is great for expensive or complex purchases.

·In-store surveys: Survey your customers.

·Anecdotal data: Ask your sales associates if people show up with printouts from the Web site.



These methods are not perfect, but they will definitely help obtain a reasonable idea how your online campaign is going in respect towards offline conversions. There will be improved data tracking solutions in the future as the internet continues its trend toward eventually being the most influential form of marketing.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Google Displays Love for Branded Ads

Google has reportedly, and quite quietly been testing out different media types through its AdWords system, until recently.

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt dropped the news that they were indeed testing alternative advertising display methods. This includes video ads.

There is a large market in the internet advertising arena, and a lot of the players are hungry to stand out. They will spend the money necessary to do so. Google knows this, and has been testing the effectiveness of these type of display ads across their network of publishers.

Its only a matter of time before these ad systems will be released into the marketplace, turning over a new leaf of innovative Google money making mechanics.

Read the full article: http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/06/google-displays-love-for-branded-ads.cfm

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Who is Better Off with One Dominant Player? (Google)

Does the idea that your online business relies so much on Google for its traffic let you sleep easy at night? It wasn't always this way, and it doesn't have to stay this way. Keep reading to see what one veteran online business owner thinks.

This is a very interesting time we live in right now, from a technology standpoint. It is truly a unique and enriching experience to watch a brand new industry rise from nowhere and see it evolve and change its shape right before your very eyes. Something close in terms of scope and impact might have been the revolution Henry Ford started with the creation of the assembly line, which permitted the mass production of automobiles. This led to a corresponding reduction in price, which made them available to far more people than just the very rich -- and the world was never the same. This is also true of the Internet which has changed not only all businesses on a global scale, but how we think and communicate; even how we evolve as human beings will most likely be impacted by the advent of the Internet. This is heady stuff.

One of the many reasons for the breadth and scope of the impact the Internet has had on society is its ability to place even the most obscure information at everyone's fingertips. Notice I said everyone's fingertips. I think that’s a very important point. It used to be that knowledge was in the hands of the few and privileged, and in most instances that factor by itself allowed them to maintain that status, until now. So it stands to reason that the cog behind this grand scale machine that is literally moving society toward a more enlightened path is the power of search. Literally, how we find stuff.

Read the full article here:
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/Who-is-Better-Off-with-One-Dominant-Player/

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

FI.com: Internet Ad Spend Poised to Overtake National Press

The internet will this year overtake national newspapers to become the third biggest advertising medium by spend, according to authoritative forecasts.

By the end of 2007, internet advertising will close the gap on regional newspapers, the number two medium, but will still be well short of television, the biggest outlet in the £12bn-a-year media advertising market.

The projection, seen exclusively by the FT, underlines the pace of growth in internet advertising and the challenge to businesses reliant on traditional advertising revenue.

Excluding internet spending, total media advertising would be in recession with television, national and regional press reporting revenue falls this year, it said.

The report comes from GroupM, a WPP holding company which drew on data from the group's media buyers, Mindsharre, Media-edge:cia, Mediacom and Maxus, which buy and plan more than 30 per cent of global media advertising.

It estimates the internet will take 13.3 per cent of the total media advertising market – excluding areas such as direct mail, public relations and market research – in 2006. National newspapers will take 13.2 per cent.

Read the full article here:
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto052920061706070914&page=2

Friday, May 26, 2006

The Keys to Podcast Advertising

The CEO of RadioTail outlines five tips for successful podcast advertising.

People can't seem to stop talking about podcasting-- and for good reason. According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast. Clearly, independent podcasters and media companies alike have attracted engaged, highly focused audiences of early adopters.

Advertisers have a tremendous opportunity to get their message out in this fragmented media landscape. But understandably, advertisers and podcast producers fear turning off users and losing their attention by botching the campaign. Unlike podcasting itself, podcast advertising shouldn't be just all talk. It's time for marketers to take action. Here are five tips for launching a successful podcast ad campaign.

Keep your message briefPodcast audiences have proven accepting of ad spots so long as they're short. In a recent Nikon ad campaign that ran across our podcast network, we did not receive a single complaint from listeners about a 15-second spot.


Short ads drastically decrease the incentive to fast-forward. Even Clear Channel is pushing "less is more" for its broadcast radio advertisers. Besides, brevity is the soul of wit. If you do need 60 seconds to pitch the benefits of your product, it would be better to do four 15-second spots throughout a podcast than one 60-second spot.


For The Rest Of The Podcasting Keys Click Here: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9614.asp

Thursday, May 25, 2006

New study argues that MSN Search gives the best search results.

Microsoft’s search engine has been prominent in the news lately.

Amazon and Alexa have started using Windows Live Search instead of Google for their web search results. Ask.com’s CEO Steve Berkowitz is to start working with Microsoft. Steve Ballmer is boasting about Microsofts’s gains vis-a-vis Google and Yahoo.

For the time being Microsoft Search is far behind Google as regards users, but that might change. Christopher Payne, who is responsible for Windows Live Search, says to Associated Press that “I think we’ll look back on this as the DOS era of search.” Hm.

We are familiar with Microsoft using big words. Therefore it is interesting to read a new report on search engine result relevance. The report is produced by Intralink, a search engine optimization and web marketing consultancy firm in Cincinnati.

The findings and the methodology used are found at Seoresourcecenter.com. Intralink has covered Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask.com, AOL Search, Gigablast and Wisenut but not the French search engine Exalead.

Intralink has checked on five criteria or variables, namely: “relevancy”, “freshness of content”, “failure rate”, “difficult search results” and “non-organic or extra features”.

Surprisingly the top score is given to MSN Search, ahead of Google (although not with a large margin). When it comes to “relevancy” Google is behind both MSN Search and Yahoo!
On the other hand, Google is the leader concerning “Freshness of content”, where both Yahoo! and Ask.com are performing surprisingly badly.

Does this mean that MSN really is better than Google? It is hard to say, as the margins of error are large. However, what the report may indicate, is that MSN is catching up quality-wise, which is important, as it was quality and relevance of search results that made Google the dominant player on the search engine arena.

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Right now Google is still king as far as search engine popularity and prominence is concerned. Competition between the search engines is a wonderful thing. Just like any other industry competition will help accelerate innovation and improvements, which should benefit the consumers.

I definitely think MSN will gain some major ground on Google over the next several years. Whether MSN is able to take users from Google, or does Yahoo start to see it's demise nearing. It seems like every several years a couple of the major search engines fall from prominence to the graveyard.

Look at what happened to Alta Vista, Hot Bot, AlltheWeb, Excite, WebCrawler, and InfoSeek. All of these search engines were popular and almost common household names, now they are either totally dead or spam filled wastelands that only uninformed surfers still use.

I don't think the battle of MSN and Google will result in a fate like this to Yahoo, but if Yahoo isn't ready to keep up they may be the real losers in the Search Engine Wars. Yahoo has been a solid SE for so long I think many people will stay loyal to it, but it's market share of searches may fall to around 15%.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Google Click To Play Video Ads Announced Today

Google has just announced the release of click-to-play video ads that will be shown on Google's content network. Advertisers will have the option of choosing to bid on placement by CPC or CPM. These ads will be supported by site and keyword-targeted campaigns.

Video ads will only appear on Google's content network and not on Google's search engine.

"We are offering a very, very non-intrusive ad product," says Gokul Rajaram, product manager for Google AdSense. "Only users who click on the ad see the video."

"Google's announcement today that they will offer video ads into their existing AdSense network is further recognition that for many categories and in many situations, consumers value a more compelling advertising experience than just text and static website information. The success of video ads will vary by category with some categories such as restaurants, spas and florists -- where a visual representation of the service or product can offer the consumer a more compelling reason to choose one provider over another -- benefiting the most. For other categories, the video might take the form of a personal message from the owner -- perhaps the roofing contractor -- who can make a more compelling case through the use of video than simply text. For yet other categories where price is the primary driver of choice -- selecting an auto insurance carrier for instance -- a video may do nothing to influence the consumers' decision," says Neal Polachek, senior vice president, The Kelsey Group.

Go to Google's Official Blog to Read More and See An Example Video Ad In Action: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/05/click-to-play-video-ads-for-adwords.html

Friday, May 19, 2006

Human Presence Online Builds Sales

Making a few simple changes to add a human presence to your sales and offer pages can increase conversions significantly.

All too often we write our sales and offer pages in strong copywriting language, believing that is the way to maximize sales.

However, our testing indicates that you can increase conversion rates further by adding a human presence to that page. You keep the strong sales element, but you put it in the voice of a person, and add credibility factors like a photograph and signature.

In a recent test for a new research partner we tested two offer pages. The changes made to the text were minimal. On the new page we simply made minor changes to have the text written in the first person. We then added a photo of the writer, listed his qualifications and added his signature towards the end of the page.
Here are the results:



The version of the page which included the author's photograph, qualifications and signature improved conversion by 40.7 percent.
As we have noticed elsewhere in previous tests, the addition of a genuine human presence to a page builds confidence, reassures the reader and often increases conversion rates significantly.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Yahoo! and OMD Study Reveals Online Research Plays Critical Role in Consumers' Offline Purchases

NEW YORK, May 11, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Internet's greatest impact on shopping is assisting consumers in the decision-making process, regardless of whether purchases are made online or at retail stores, according to a study released today by leading global Internet company Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) and worldwide media communications specialist OMD.

According to the study, a large majority of consumers look online for information as a core part of the purchase decision process for products of all kinds. In particular, the Internet offers a collaborative environment where consumers turn for advice and the experience of others in weighing brands, discovering alternatives and distilling prices, as they weigh their purchase decisions.

Released today, the "Long and Winding Road: The Route to the Cash Register" is the first research study to examine how cultural shifts brought about by the proliferation of technology have radically altered the way consumers make purchasing decisions. The study found that the Internet, along with related technologies like camera phones and text messaging, have given consumers a new kind of "social empowerment" as they gather information before they shop. More than two-thirds of shoppers across several product categories still make the bulk of their purchases at physical retail locations -- yet nearly two-thirds (62%) use a combination of online and offline sources to gather information before they buy.

"The Internet is far more than just another point of purchase; its biggest impact lies within the awareness and consideration process," said Wenda Harris Millard, Yahoo!'s chief sales officer. "The widespread adoption of social technologies gives marketers an even greater opportunity to continuously engage consumers and make connections across traditional and new media advertising, helping to build brand mindshare and increase offline sales."
The Role of Online Research

The research shows that the Internet is crucial to consumers as they follow various paths on their way to making a purchase. The Internet serves as a price leveler, has helped create a communal shopping experience, and is where consumers turn for trusted sources of information and dependable customer reviews.

Read the full article http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=196082

Friday, May 12, 2006

Google Trends Gives Users Access to Google's Search Data

This has been a busy day for Google. In addition to Google Co-op and a new version of Google Desktop Search, the company has also launched a test version of Google Trends.

In essence this search tool gives you information on how popular a specific topic (or — rather — a specific query) is among Google searchers. You can enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over time.

In Google’s words Google Trends “analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.” Google then shows you a graph with the results.

Google Trends will also tell you how frequently a topic has appeared in news stories featured by Google News and how this popularity varies in different parts of the world.

“For the first time ever, Google is making it possible to sift through billions of search queries from around the world to see what people are thinking about,” says Marissa Mayer, Google vice president of Search Products and User Experience.

Google Trends will also be useful for search engine marketing experst trying to find out what users really are searching for.

Google Labs are also testing a new notebook service: Google Notebook lets users clip text, images, and links from the pages they’re browsing, save them to an online “notebook” that is accessible from any computer, and share them with others. (The link is not working at the time of writing)

New Local Search Engine GenieKnows.com

GenieKnows.com formerly a PPC only search engine has recently launched a local search feature. It is free to add a local search listing to GenieKnows, which also has PPC availability within the local search feature.

"We are excited to add local-search capabilities to our already proven core search service. With the addition of local search capabilities, our users now have the option of searching the entire web or targeting a specific geographic area with their searches," says Barbara Manning, CEO of IT Interactive Services.

The global online local search marketing is set to grow from the 3.4 billion in 2005 to nearly 13 billion by 2010. Local search is quickly becoming a major advertising medium, and we should see many other small search engines adding local search capabilities in the near future.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Study: Companies Undervalue SEM

iProspect released a study that found search engine marketers perform an average of five other job functions in addition to search engine marketing.
Website design is the most frequently cited non-SEM function also performed by search marketers (58 percent), with email advertising being the second most reported additional function they perform (57 percent), according to the study.

iProspect says that the findings suggest that companies are not serious about investing human resources in the management of search engine marketing.
"While this finding was troubling -- given the complexity of the medium and the quality of the results it delivers -- it may only be reflective of the limited pool of experienced search engine marketing talent available in the marketplace, and the need for some organizations to develop this skill set internally," says Robert Murray, president, iProspect.

Microsoft Opens adCenter for Business

Business owners and buyers and sellers of all things, take note: Microsoft is now officially open for business in the U.S. -- to sell advertising. On Thursday, the software giant announced the formal launch of Microsoft adCenter.

Offering pay-per-click ads for all Microsoft online properties, most notably MSN Search, this move puts Microsoft squarely in an arena dominated by its new archrival Google.
Previously, Yahoo's Overture service had been providing the pay-per-click ads for Microsoft. And in recent months, a beta version of adCenter had been handling an increasing volume of Microsoft's ad business.


Click Here for the full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20060504/tc_nf/43131

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Google Sitemaps: The Newest Way To Monitor and Manage Your Domains In Google

The purpose of the Google Sitemaps project is enabling webmasters to inform and direct the Google spiders through their website. Sitemaps provide crawlers with information about the website’s structure as well as data about its pages, which leads to, according to Google, an improved indexing process.

Google Sitemaps is a great way to analyze whether Google has indexed all your pages on all of your domains. Furthermore you can monitor the Page Rank on all of your domain and see all the search terms in Google that resulted in traffic to your domain pages. In Sitemaps you can now also see what your position is on the search results for terms you received clicks from.

I will have future articles on Google's latest creation in the very near future as I start to test using sitemaps for several of my domains. Sitemaps has the possibility to be a major development in the way Search Engine Marketing professionals address managing and updating their sites within Google's search engine.



Check out Google Sitemaps for yourself(it's still in beta)

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Click Fraud Less Than Expected, Monitoring Firm Says

Click fraud comes in two major forms: competitive and network. The former is when a competitor clicks on a business's ad to drive up the cost of the advertisement, and the latter is when a third-party site hosting the ad manufactures phony clicks in order to get more money from the search engine.

Click fraud has become a hot topic and a fear of many online advertisers because of the popularity of the pay-per-click advertising model and the already increasing prices due to competition.

Click fraud Index is a company that monitors click fraud and they discovered in their research that click fraud numbers thought to be 20% to 35% were greatly exaggerated. The average click-fraud rate across search-advertising industries is 13.7 percent, which is substantially less than the industry-expected 20 percent to 35 percent. The firm also reported that click fraud was far less on tier one search providers, such as Yahoo and Google, than on tier two or tier three providers. The first category had a rate of 12.1 percent, while the remaining two were 21.3 percent and 29.8 percent, respectively.


Read the full article: http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/186700511

Politics and Cartoons? The New Wave of Campaign Viral Marketing

Yes you are reading the title correct, the newest craze right now in political advertising is spoofing your opponent in an online cartoon. Cartoon viral campaign ads have really taken off in the past couple years due in part to the widespread popularity of a spoof cartoon in the last political election called "Jib Jab". This form of marketing creates a buzz, and often gets picked up by local media. Additionally, the cost of cartoon viral marketing is very cheap once the masses find out about them and start emailing them to their friends.


Read the full article and watch some of the cartoons here: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,70707-0.html?tw=wn_index_24

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Podcast Advertising On The Rise

A new report out by PQ Media forecasts a huge growth in alternative media most notably Rss Feeds, Blogs, and Podcasts. According to PQ Media podcast advertising will grow to over $327 million annually in advertising by 2010, while blog advertising will rise to $300 million within the same time frame. Additionally total spending on user-generated online media is expected to grow to over $750 million by 2010.

"Blog, podcast and RSS advertising are being driven by some of the same factors boosting the growth of the overall alternative media sector: continued audience fragmentation, the perceived ineffectiveness of traditional advertising, and the elusive but coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic," says Patrick Quinn, president of PQ Media. "Blog, podcast and RSS advertising have demonstrated an ability to reach younger demographics as well as influentials, and the media tend to be highly engaging. These are attractive trends to brand marketers that are focused on return on investment."

Read the full article http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9146.asp

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Local Search to Grow from $3B to $13B by 2010

The Kelsey Group recently released a new forecast for the global online search market, which includes Internet Yellow Pages, local search and wireless. Based on their research they project the market to increase from the $3.4 billion it brought in last year to nearly $13 billion by 2010. Additionally The Kelsey Group projects a 30.5 percent growth rate over the next four years for the global online search market.

Yellow Pages revenues are forecast to increase by only 1.5 percent to reach $28.4 billion over the same time period. The Kelsey Group does not believe that IYP's will take the market share away from traditional Yellow Pages advertising, but possibly from sources such as classified ads.

Read the full article: http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3585511

Housingmaps.com combines Google's maps and Craiglist's real estate listings

Housingmaps.com is a nifty little website that takes the real estate listings in Craigslist, and overlays them as clickable points on the area related Google map. Housingmaps makes sorting through the apartment or real estate section of craigslist much more efficient, especially if you are looking for an apartment in a specific area. Additionally, Housingmaps displays the price, address, photos, and contact information of a listing from Craigslist while showing the user the exact position on the respective area map.

Hackers have also meshed Google Maps with sites like the photo-sharing service Flickr, Yahoo's traffic notifications, city transit maps and others. This merging of powerful data and programs to create useful daily online programs is a trend that is likely to increase in popularity. At some point I fully expect the larger companies to start merging their services legitimately, but until then there are useful simple sites like Housingmaps.com.
Check out the full article here: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,67514-0.html

Friday, March 24, 2006

A couple important local search statistics

A hot search marketing topic of late seems to focus around local search. Here are some local search statistics... If you are interested in learning more about local search visit us on the web at www.gdmi.net.

Quick Stats
- There are approximately 300 million searches per day for information on the Internet (Nielsen/NetRatings 2005)

- 60% of activity online is one way or another “related to local content” (Google 5/03)- For every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, another five or six are going to offline purchases that are influenced by online research (MIT Technology Review, April 2005, "E-Commerce Gets Smarter“)

- 97% of Internet users in the U.S. gather shopping information online, and of those consumers 51% explicitly characterize their behavior as “Shop Online, Purchase Offline” (NPD Group)

Internet users are looking for “Local" businesses”
- 117 million Internet users accounted for over 3.7 billion searches conducted on the Internet in the month of August 2004 (comscore qsearch, 01/2004-4/2004)

- 25% of ALL commercial Internet searches are conducted by users looking for local merchants (Kelsey-Bizrate 2004)- 35% of ALL searches are “local” (DM News)

Note: That means that there are over 300 million local merchant searches per month (Q1 2004)