march 2008

This post is from from my other blog here

This post is from from my other blog here

The wait is finally over- Google now has video ads in their search engine result pages.

Just last month, Google's vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer gave us the first hint that video ads might be on the way and advised that the approach would be "delicate" which it certainly is. Video ads are only appearing on a very few selected queries as plus box results accompanying normal text ads.

An example is shown below for the BlackBerry.

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A recent post on the Google AdSense blog indicates a Google crackdown on AdSense publishers who 'blend' the Google Ads into their own content. This has been regarded as one of the most effective ways for publishers to increase their click through rate, but has been placed on the naughty list by Google.In extreme cases, some AdSense publishers have managed to blend their Ad units into page content, so that it's almost impossible to distinguish from actual content.Common ways of doing this have been making AdSense look like navigation, or placing ad units amongst other groups of links. Google issued the following rules in their blog post.Google's reasoning for these guidelines is that the above techniques may cause readers to lose trust in your website (and the Google advertising platform) and not return.If these guidelines are going to effect you, share your thoughts below.

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In a move that's been a long time coming, YouTube have finally released a video analytics tool for all users of the site. The statistics tool lets users see the number of views their video has received and where in the world these views come from for a given date range. The look and feel of the stats package should be very similar to anyone currently using Google Analytics.While YouTube is a fantastic platform for hosting and distributing online video, I've always felt it lacked the kind of reporting that you would get from hosting the video yourself. The new analytics tool should help to solve some of these issues.While the analytics tool is only new, the stats themselves go back quite a while, for one of my earlier videos the stats go back to the 1st of April 2007.I've taken some screenshots below:Views by Country:

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Google has added yet another handy feature to the Google Webmaster Tools. Now website owners can easily create Robots.txt files and control which web pages search engines see and "don't" see on their sites.

For those of you unfamiliar with Robots.txt files, Wikipedia explains them:

release post highlights, not all robots obey the conventions of the Robots.txt protocol, but rest assured most of the major search engines do, which is where most of your website crawling will come from.

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A new report out by Nielsen Online shared a common tale that Google again dominated the share of searches in Feb 2008. But a little reverse engineering of the stats highlights an important fact for online marketers.According to the report, Google carried 4.5 billion searches in Feb 2008, 58.7% of the market in the United States. It was trailed by Yahoo! and MSN (as usual) with 17.6% and 11.2% respectively.Missing out on podium positions were AOL, Ask.com, My Web Search, Comcast, AT&T, Dogpile and Next tag, with the chart below highlighting their respective share of the US market.

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On Friday, the official Google AdWords blog announced a new feature: demographic bidding. Basically, demographic bidding allows advertisers to target ads to users of a particular age group, gender or a combination of those factors.Advertisers can use demographic bidding on contextual or placement targeted campaigns. The feature is restricted to certain sites in the content network such as MySpace and YouTube because Google uses the demographic data available on these sites to target your campaign.For example, say you sold men's hats and want your ads to be seen by 18-30 year old men. You could use the demographic bidding feature to eliminate wasting ad impressions on 18-30 year old females, or decide to raise your bids and increase the frequency with which they are shown to your core group of 18-30 year old men.Overall I think demographic bidding should help to extract some more value out of the content network for advertisers who may have overlooked it in the past. If you're targeting a very specific niche it could also help to improve your conversion rates or reduce your cost per sale.If you're a serious online business, you should already be using Google AdWords to drive new sales. If your not, but want to get started, try our Easy Search Advertising service which can have your online advertisement up and running in only 48 hours.

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points out that as an ISP, Google would control a huge amount of personal information which could be integrated to influence search results.Business owners should keep their eyes on this one, as free wireless internet for all = the need for an advanced internet marketing strategy.

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Now that the European Commission has finally approved Google's DoubleClick acquisition, what will Google do? In case you were unaware, Google's lengthy $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, means they now own the SEO firm, Performics.So now Google owns a firm that can help businesses improve their ranking on Google. Confusing? Yes. Conflict of interest? You bet. When Google went public they made it clear they had no intention of operating a paid inclusion or ranking solution, by issuing the following statements in their IPO: So I guess we will hear an answer from Google in the next couple of months about their plans for the company, lets hope they do the right thing.

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We recently reported on Google's new search in search functionality where Google offers users the ability to search a site within its SERPs (search engine results page).Search in search is aimed at helping searchers get to their desired information more directly from Google's results. The concept sounds great in theory, with searchers being able to filter through a site's content direct from the results page.Well it's great until it presents competitor sponsored listings when displaying the internal search results from a particular site.SeoSmarty highlighted the competitive issue that the new search in search functionality presents. They used the example of a search for Virgin Holidays to Florida.Conducting the search "virgin holidays" in Google presents a "search in search" listing for Virgin Holidays as the top organic listing and only one sponsored listing for Virgin on the right hand side, as the term is protected by trademark.Now if the user then types in "Florida March" using the "search in search" box, Google displays a myriad of listings from the Virgin Holidays site, but also displays PPC ads for competitors related to the search. it seems that the ads are only visible to some viewers, so either Google is testing not displaying the ads, or it depends where you conduct the search.

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Yahoo! seem hell bent on regaining market share whether acquisition discussions come to fruition or not, and they're turning to traditional media to make their mark.Listeners in the San Francisco bay area have been hearing new Yahoo! adverts across the radio airwaves. Elinor Mills shared some ad content through cnet News Blog.One of the ads starts with: "Search engines like Google get you lost in all the links, but not Yahoo search," before highlighting the new-ish search suggestions offered by Yahoo! The ads also see a renewed use of the Yahoo! Yodel that was key to their marketing years ago.Raj Gossain detailed the reasoning behind the ad campaign by stating:"The rationale is we feel like we've built a better mouse trap and, quite frankly, we wanted to remind users that there really is a choice in search engines...We've got a better, simpler, easier-to-use mouse trap."Yahoo! has also been heavily promoting their search offerings through Australian television, via their relationship with the Seven Television network. Viewers are greeted with a range of post program snippets directing them to the Yahoo!7 portal for additional TV show extras. And again, the Yahoo! Yodel is making a resurgence.Time will tell whether this use of traditional media marketing will help them recover much of their lost audience, but from a Yahoo! advertisers point of view, at least their testing new ways to drive higher traffic.

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The Annual Search Engine Strategies - New York conference has recently drawn to a close, and one of the panels was focused on providing some Search and Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners.The panel, made up of Stoney DeGeyter, Matt McGee and Jennifer Laycock, detailed some great advice for the prudent small business operator in today's online marketing landscape.Stoney DeGeyter, a leading proponent of "destination search engine marketing", encouraged website owners to drive visitors to pages within their sites that best matched their searches. It seems obvious, but many small business operators fall into the trap of sending everyone to the homepage, where visitors get lost or distracted - neither of which are good for conversion.He also highlighted the importance of addressing purchasers at every point in the buying process. Whether they're researching, making final product comparisons or ready to buy, your site should be designed to take them through to the purchase irrespective of their place in the process.Covering your bases through cross sells was also raised a key strategy. By presenting related products, it can help business owners maintain the attention of a buyer that isn't necessarily sold on the product they initially visit - potentially saving the sale.Jennifer Laycock, Editor in Chief at Search Engine Guide, then discussed the importance of "you" in marketing small businesses, recommending business owner involvement in online community to gain buyer attention. The social aspect to small business marketing helps owners to overcome bypass budget constraints to reach their marketplace.Matt McGee, SEO manager at Marchex, reinforced the value of communities, encouraging business owners to explore unconventional approaches offered by the social web. He highlighted the value of participation in networks such as Yahoo! Answers and lists offered through Google and Yahoo! groups to build reputation, but warned against abuse through spamming.In the highly competitive online space, the underlying message behind the three panelists recommendations are -

1. Understand your market and tailor your marketing to stand out from the competition
2. Participate in the growing convergent media environment to build reputation and connect with customers.

Thanks to David Utter from WebProNews who seems to be the only person to have shared the insights from the Small Business Blitz session at the conference.

This post is from from my other blog here

This post is from from my other blog here

It's not often that documents from inside Google are leaked on the internet, and when they do webmasters tend to pay a lot of attention. The Google Quality Raters Guidelines recently surfaced on the web giving an insight into what Google considers SPAM and how they evaluate the quality of search results.The handbook gives details on how Google rates the accuracy of their own search algorithm and what pages are classified as SPAM. According to the handbook, Google classifies webspam under the following categories:

2. a way to track FedEx orders,
3. a user forum,
4. the ability to register or login,
5. a gift registry, or
6. an invitation to become an affiliate of that site
Reading the guide gives an insight into the inner workings of a Google search and I thoroughly recommend all webmasters read it.