april 2008

This post is from from my other blog here

This post is from from my other blog here

Google's User Experience Group (UX), which is responsible for interface and visual design for Google's various web properties and projects, were asked to define the principles behind a Googley User experience.Google shared the UX's Googley Principles on their Official Blog, in what might seem like a warm and fuzzy corporate PR exercise - however pay attention - there are some important lessons for all website owners.The Googley Design Principles Are:

This post is from from my other blog here

This post is from from my other blog here

There have been reports over the weekend that Google have been testing a new layout for their AdWords sponsored links. The listings now show the display URL above the description, in contrast to the traditional format.AdWords listings have always followed the same format shown below:Google AdSense blog.

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Click Fraud has reversed an upwards trend to fall for the first time in Q2 2008, with the overall click fraud rate dropping 1.8%. Click Fraud occurs in pay per click advertising when a person or script imitates a regular web user by clicking on an ad in order to cost the advertiser money.The graphs below indicate the overall click fraud trends according to Click Forensics:Easy Search Advertising program. Your campaign is run by advertising professionals who live and breathe online advertising to ensure you get the best return for your money!

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No one likes 'bad clicks' in their pay-per-click campaign and Yahoo! for quite some time has been throwing out these bad clicks on your behalf.

Now however they have gone one step further and announced a new reporting feature that enables advertisers to see which clicks Yahoo! has deemed to be invalid.

Named the "Click Filter Report" it is available in Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts by selecting the report under the "Traffic Quality Reports" section in the Reports Navigator.

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basic optimization package. Its combination of on-page meta tag optimization and link building has been designed to improve your ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Best of all, its currently on sale for only $47.99.If you'd like to share your thoughts on this update with other users, simply leave a comment below - we'd love to know what you think.

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If you're still using the basic statistics software provided with your website hosting - it's time to get real. The online landscape is becoming increasingly competitive and today's webmasters should be using a detailed statistics package to learn how visitors are finding and using their website.Of course there are a whole range of different stats you need to be tracking, but I wanted to talk about one of the most important - conversion tracking.Google Analytics

Both these programs require you to install some code on the pages you want to track and provide an easy way to measure conversions.

This post is from from my other blog here

This post is from from my other blog here

Anyone who uses the internet to generate sales or leads knows that search engine and online marketing means nothing without conversions - which is why Google launched "Google Website Optimizer" in 2006.Over 12 months later, and Google Website Optimizer has lost its beta tag, and been given full release status with its own website.So what does Google's Website Optimizer offer for website owners and online business operators?Online marketing is all about testing and refining, and Google Website Optimizer allows you to test elements of your website or landing page to determine which designs and copy work best.Google Website Optimizer, especially given its free!

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Last week, Yahoo! announced the acquisition of IndexTools Analytics Business, a hosted website analytics service, in an effort to compete with Google Analytics and Microsoft's AdCenter Analytics (built on the Gatineau platform).IndexTools provides "accurate, insightful and timely data to help you make informed business decisions about the performance of your website and online marketing campaigns."The Index Tools product page proclaims: "IndexTools provides the most cost effective Enterprise Web Analytics solution on the market today - Period!"Given that Yahoo! is now offering the service free to Yahoo! customers, it's extremely cost effective - but does it stack up against Google Analytics or Microsoft's AdCenter Analytics?Let's look at the feature set as documented on the site:Advanced Merchandise ReportingTrack the individual products your customers purchase, add to their shopping cart, and preview. Define categories for your products, and create custom reports. Update your reports to reflect cancelled orders or changes to order amounts by sending API requests to the system.Perform cross-sell analysis to see how often ...

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If you have been considering using online video for your local business, then now is as good a time as ever!

Google have announced that they have added the ability to include YouTube videos into Google Maps and Local Business Listings.

The news was broken by Julia Li, Google Maps Strategic Partner Manager in the LatLong blog and she gives us an example of a bakery in San Francisco which has already taken up the feature. The example is shown below:

Local Search Listing, which will not only have your business listed in Google Local, but also 45 other local search engines including Yahoo! Local, Yellow Pages & more.

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Salesforce, a leading CRM solution provider has announced the release of Salesforce for Google Apps, which will see Google's range of communication and collaboration tools integrated into Salesforce's various customer management applications.The integration of Google Apps into Salesforce is a lot more than a gimmick move by the CRM leader. It's serious vote of confidence in the Google toolkit, which has been viewed by many in the enterprise market as not apt for serious business use.As Google aims to dominate Microsoft in markets other than search, the support by Salesforce will help Google make inroads into the application marketplace - a vital alliance for the development of Office 2.0.According to the Salesforce release post:"Salesforce for Google Apps is a simple, yet powerful combination of Web-based business applications that streamline communication and collaboration and have the power to change the way you work.With Salesforce for Google Apps, you can now run your favorite desktop applications and your Salesforce applications side by side by accessing Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs all seamlessly from within Salesforce."If you're a Saleforce user, or considering it, watch the video below to see how the Google Tools are integrated into the CRM application.Now realistically, Salesforce isn't an application that many small business owners will consider using given the costs. But Salesforce's adoption of Google's productivity tools, should be an endorsement that encourages small business owners to consider Google Apps in place of traditional software offerings such as Microsoft Office.This is a serious coup for Google, as it will give the market that Microsoft has dominated for years a real shake up. Google isn't the only company offering a suite Office 2.0 services (web based business productivity tools), but it's by far the best known.The biggest obstacle to Google App enterprise usage (or other equivalents) is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of security, fear of compatibility. Salesforce's integration will be hopefully encourage more businesses to have a second look.

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Yahoo!'s Shine, provide a strong targeting opportunity for the right products and services.

This post is from from my other blog here

On Friday, the Google webmaster central blog announced that the Google search spider will now attempt to fill out web forms to uncover new links and content. Google claims that the technology will help to uncover the "invisible web" that's been hiding from search engines for many years.The invisible web is a collection of webpage's that have traditionally been hard or impossible for search engines to index. This can be for several reasons including pages that aren't linked from other pages, sites that require a registration/login and content that is generated dynamically. Because these pages are either unlinked, or require some sort of form action to access, spiders such as the Googlebot have been unable to retrieve them.Now, Google has introduced a new way to find these pages by completing web forms on high quality websites. From the Google blog post:G-Boost is a great way to get these tricky pages indexed by Google in only 7 days and comes with a full money-back guarantee.

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Easy Search Advertising. You'll have your campaign fully managed by an experienced professional, who is always on top of the latest news and developments relating to your search marketing program.

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Feel free to let us know if your Google ads have been showing up Yahoo! search results.

This post is from from my other blog here

Its official: there was an eruption of search volume last month!

March saw the biggest month-over-month increase in total search volume since July 2007 with total queries increasing over 6% and surpassing the 9 billion mark according to Compete.com.

What is surprising however is that Google was the underperformer this time, with its market share actually dropping by more than 1/2 a percent.

Let's take a look at the stats...

merger with Microsoft will be just what the doctor ordered to turn around this market share decline.

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Microsoft have just released a letter to the Yahoo! Board of directors, telling them to either agree to the acquisition or get ready to face a proxy fight. The letter is a written ultimatum to the company to respond to their offer, after many weeks of inactivity.A full copy of the letter is below:

While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we've seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo! management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo!'s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter ...

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Google AdSense have just launched "next" and "previous" buttons next to their AdSense display ads. The buttons give users a choice of which ads they see by presenting an entirely new set of ads each time the next button is clicked.After first bring picked up by some users in December last year, the Inside AdSense blog officially released the news on the 2nd of April. According to the Inside AdSense blog:All ads cycle when the arrow buttons are clicked presenting the user with 2 or 4 new ads using the examples above. Publishers won't generate earnings when users click on the arrows, but they should help to improve overall earnings by giving the user more ads to choose from. When users click on the buttons, they begin interacting with the ads and are more likely to find the specific offering they're looking for, which can lead to higher earnings for you.

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The Yahoo! Spin Doctors have been building the hype around the new advertising platform that Yahoo! hopes will "transform the online advertising industry by dramatically simplifying processes for advertisers, agencies, ad networks and publishers".AMP! by Yahoo! is a new advertising management platform that Yahoo! refers to as a stock market for online ads - be they search, display, local, mobile or video.Yahoo!'s announcement comes remarkably well timed given Google's recent private beta launch of Google Ad Manager - which provides publishers with a free web based ad management solution.If the analogy can be drawn; AMP sounds like a combination of Google's AdWords Platform and Google Ad Manager (which covers more media options and functionality than its AdSense service).It's debatable whether AMP! will provide Yahoo! with any short term ad market penetration given its initial roll out is scheduled for Q3 2008 - and even then, only to its members of its newspaper consortium.Hilary Schneider, EVP, Global Partner Solutions, Yahoo!, shared this well versed marketing rhetoric in the AMP! press release:"AMP! from Yahoo will enable advertisers and publishers to connect with each other and their exact target audiences across the increasingly fragmented Internet, in a way that's not possible with current solutions. We believe AMP! will deliver a faster, easier, and more automated and integrated way to create, buy, and sell advertising and do so across a transparent global marketplace. And with the time saved, the industry can better focus on developing great creative."For a preview of the new ad platform, check out the video below:While AMP! looks good, and promises a host of great features for its 4 core audiences (advertisers, publishers, ad networks and agencies), we'll have to wait until the end of this year to see if it lives up to the hype.

This post is from from my other blog here

This post is from from my other blog here

here including additional myths and truths and also some further developments from the Google News team.

This post is from from my other blog here

local search listings.