B2B Marketing Teleseminar - Free online seminar Presented by: Stefan Tornquist, Research Director, MarketingSherpa and Gord Hotchkiss, President & CEO, Enquiro

Wednesday, September 12, 2007
2-3pm Eastern /11-12pm Pacific

• Who makes B2B purchasing decisions?
• How do they evaluate potential products and services?
• How do decision makers interact with online lead gen. forms? (a look at eye tracking data)

Business-to-business transactions represent the most complicated and
convoluted purchase decisions anywhere. Not only are these typically complex
long cycle purchases that require significant research, but they also involve a
number of people in each organization playing different roles. New research
focuses on what three types of business-to-business buyers are looking for: the
user buyer, technical buyer and the all-important economic buyer.

Register Now! for the B2B Teleseminar.

Labels: B2B

Labels: Facebook

As I suggested in a recent PPCHero.com interview (“Targeting Google Only Reminds the Consumer That Google is Number 1”), Ask.com made some bad promotional decisions with their “algorithm” campaign.

Even though they have dropped the algorithm message recently, they still need another basic marketing lesson. Telling the consumer you are not number 1, only reminds them they should use #1. Not you.

Clearly Ask.com is targeting Google in their latest ad. Ask.com needs to stop trying to be Google.

However, this is not to say that Ask.com can not be bigger then Google. They most certainly can, but not by trying to be Google. Google is Google, so Ask.com can not be Google. You can not go back and change the past. Currently, you have nothing to offer that they do not have already.

Consumers don’t remember #2 or # 3. Only #1.

A great marketing book is "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind". Authors Al Ries and Jack Trout ask some interesting questions:

“What’s the largest-selling book ever published? – The Bible” What’s the second largest-selling book ever published? … Who Knows? … If you didn’t get into the mind of your prospects first, then you have a positioning problem.”

Ask.com has a positioning problem. They have to find something to be first in. Otherwise, there is first place … and everyone else.

** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/

Labels: ASK, john ellis

Ever since I started blogging I have noticed that Yahoo! has provided abnormally low number of search engines referrals to my blog. Over the last 4 months, the number of Yahoo! referrals in relation to all search engine referrals to my blog has been 2% whereas Google's share is over 80%. So why is Yahoo! so low? Well, it could be because of the niche I'm in and my visitors tend to primarily use Google. Or is it because my blog is hosted on a blogspot sub-domain and Yahoo! assigns it very low relevancy in its search algorithm. I asked Matt Cutts his thoughts on this at the Google Dance at SES San Jose and he wasn't quite sure what the reason was and he hoped that Yahoo! wasn't purposely applying a low relevancy filter to blogspot addresses.

I ran a quick search engine ranking test for my top referring keywords for Google vs. Yahoo! and noticed that most of the top rankings were at Google and for more than 50% of the keywords my blog was outside the top 30 at Yahoo!

Keyword	Rank at Google	Rank at Yahoo
actionsource	3	>30
analytics comparison	1	3
clickdensity	18	>30
clicktracks	9	>30
david cancel	8	9
digg apps	4	>30
embed audio	12	>30
facebook vs orkut	2	>30
how google makes money	6	29
kpi	9	>30
manoj jasra	1	1
noindex nofollow	5	15
omniture actionsource	3	16
omniture flash tracking	1	>30
orkut vs facebook	3	>30
seo conference san jose	12	14
ses conference	8	>30
ses san jose	16	>30
ses san jose 2007	16	>30
troy bolton	15	>30
ultimate web analytics	1	2
web analytics	16	>30
web analytics and search marketing	1	4
web analytics blog	10	>30
web analytics comparison	1	1
websidestory	25	>30
webtrends	11	>30
yahoo api	7	>30
yahoo search api	5	20

Labels: Google, Yahoo

• What is the biggest advantage for an organization to bring Search Marketing In-house?
• What is the biggest challenge in accomplishing a transformation to In-house SEO?

Download Now!

The PDF also includes a bonus section: Links to 10 great In house search marketing resources. Below is a snippet from the In House SEO PDF.

"Often search engine optimization is an after-thought, if it is thought of at all. The biggest benefit for bringing search marketing in-house is that you have someone internal who can champion and represent SEO in the hallways, at meetings, and through relationship building. Also, it gives everyone in the company someone to reach out to for an immediate answer and/or involvement when the need arises." - Jessica Bowman, Business.com.

Special thanks to: John Ellis, Jessica Bowman, Jennifer Mathews Somogyi, Aidan Beanland, Rudy DeDominicis and Chris Smith.

Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

"ShopVogue.TV is an innovative concept and will change the face of online shopping as we know it,” said Greg Drew, CEO and president, WebTrends. “The unique design provides consumers with an opportunity to further engage with advertised brands, explore new product offerings, interact with other passionate consumers to learn about fashion trends and ultimately move from shopper to buyer. WebTrends provides ShopVogue.TV with the intelligence needed to effectively understand the consumers buying habits and improve advertisers’ retail campaign performance."

Labels: Web Analytics, WebTrends

• Ease of implementation
• Ease of use and reporting
• Strengths of weaknesses of each analytics package
• Accuracy of data
• First party vs. Third Party Cookies
• Placement of JavaScript on page
• Which analytics tool to use for which type of website

What you will find in the Web Analytics Shootout - Final Report

Section 1: An executive summary of the report, key findings, and key takeaways

Section 2: Information about how the study was conducted, and its methodology

Section 3: An analysis of how the user deletion rates of third party cookies and first party cookies differ

Section 4: Comparative data showing:

• Visitors
• Unique Visitors
• Page Views
• Specific segments as defined per site for 2 sites

Section 5: A section on "Why Accuracy Matters"

Section 6: A detailed study of the effect that location of the JavaScript on the web page has on traffic data:

• Test results showing how JavaScript placement affects search results
• A discussion of what this means for web site owners and marketers

Section 7: A qualitative review of the major strengths and weaknesses of all of the packages we worked with during the study.

Labels: Web Analytics

Hitwise, announced last week that Google accounted for 64.35 percent of all US searches in the four weeks ending July 28, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22.131, 8.79 and 3.21 percent respectively. The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.52 percent of U.S. searches.

Percentage of US Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers
Domain	Jul-07	Jun-07	Jul-06
www.google.com	64.35%	63.92%	60.23%
search.yahoo.com	22.13%	21.31%	22.54%
search.msn.com	8.79%*	9.85%*	11.77%
www.ask.com	3.21%	3.42%	3.29%
Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 6/30/07; 7/28/07; 7/29/2006) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users. * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search. Please note that the search volume share reported for www.live.com in the Search Engine Analysis Report for the four week rolling period starting the week ending June 9, 2007 includes searches automatically generated from a promotion on club.live.com. Search volume data from July 9, 2007 onwards does not include automatically generated searches from this promotion.
Source: Hitwise

Labels: HitWise, Industry News

• From a cost perspective, both SES SJ and ad:Tech Chicago are priced similarly at around $1700 for a full conference pass.
• You'll find three times more exhibitors at SES SJ. I found that both shows are getting more and more companies who offer Sponsored Advertising as well as Affiliate Advertisers.
• I found the sessions at SES San Jose gave companies strategies that they could take away and apply to their own businesses. I found that at ad:Tech there were less strategic opportunities, many presentations simply discussed the status of their companies and the conference was much more geared towards future strategies such as mobile (which is good or bad depending on what you're looking for).
• From a networking perspective I noticed that it was easier to speak with people and discuss topics such as the conference, future bussiness opportunities, sessions and search marketing in general.
• If you're into "after conference events" then I think you would appreciate both the Google Dance/Webmaster Radio Bash at SES and the networking party at Fulton's on the River in Chicago. I do have to admit the SES events were geared more towards a younger crowd versus the Chicago event.

Labels: ad:tech, Search Engine Strategies, SES

In this multi-part series we're covering the sessions at Search Engine Strategies San Jose (from the ones we attended) which we thought provided the most value. Yesterday we attended a session called In House: Big SEO which included the following speakers: Jeffrey Rohrs, Bill Macaitis, Marshall D. Simmonds, Melanie Mitchell, and Bill Hunt.

The most useful takeaway was presented by Bill Macaitis, VP Online Marketing at Fox Interactive. Bill Macaitis provided a list of 20 ways to push SEO projects past existing in house/client related barriers. Below is Bill's list and I have also added descriptions as I saw fit.

• Define the Opportunity: Make sure your strategies are aligned with the goals of the company and the strategies are communicated to the appropriate stakeholders.
• Evangelize: When SEO succeeds, let your entire team know.
• Sell all Stakeholders: Get buy-in from stakeholders and educate them on the importance of SEO through metrics that matter to them.
• Find Allies: Get as many people as you can from your company on board with SEO.
• Small Wins: Rather than trying to accomplish everything, create small attainable goals.
• Money Words: Capitalize on the words that affect your bottom line.
• Education/Training: If your teammates "get" SEO, they will be more likely to buy-into strategies.
• Weekly Meetings: Keep teammates and clients informed of tasks/accomplishments with weekly meetings.
• Build Relationships: Internally you can better acknowledge teammates you require to help you succeed with SEO. For your clients, create relationships with more than one "champions" within their organization.
• Bribes: If you need IT/programmers to help you, take them out to lunch or give them small gifts.
• Face to Face with Clients: Build trust by meeting your clients face to face on a quarterly basis.
• Internal Competition: If you have 2 teams working on similar projects what better way to motivate them then to have an internal competition.
• External Competition: Show how your competitors are performing against you for metrics such as rankings/page views/back links, etc....
• Show past Successes: Teammates and Clients will appreciate the rewards for all the hard SEO work.
• Past Failures for Not Implementing: Make everyone aware of the failures as they relate to the bottom line of your company's goals.
• Ranking Reports: Many executive level individuals love to see how their site is performing for their favorite keywords; give them what they want.
• Prioritize Projects: SEO is not the only marketing task therefore it's important to assign priority to projects.
• Names on Projects: If individuals are assigned to specific tasks, they will be more likely to finish them.
• Deadlines: Time lines and deadlines are an absolute must in order for people to understand the importance of completing tasks.
• Accept No Excuses: Don't give up and be persistent because YOUR butt is on the line.
  

Labels: Search Engine Strategies, SES

An interesting session I attended at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose was 'In House: Big PPC.' This featured several search engine marketing professionals from large corporations. Fox Interactive Media, Intuit, Adobe and a couple of agencies were on the panel.

It was refreshing to learn that even larger, world-wide companies have the same struggles. Although, I thoroughly love my job and my company, there are many unique issues when combing multiple products and brands under one SEM account. It was refreshing to hear that the grass is not really greener on the other side.

For example, when asked about web analytics all three major corporation said they have mixture of various programs for different products and brands. They have product lines that had little or no web analytics. There was also very little combined reporting. They are all wishing, and in some cases working on a combine solution for all of their sites. However, that did not sound like that was happening very soon.

The goal for Fox, Adobe, and Intuit is to combine all search engine marketing efforts of all brands, product lines, and business units. The idea is to not have internal bid wars and messaging conflicts in search marketing efforts. However, one of the struggles was figuring out how to pay for search engine campaigns when all of these business units have their own budgets and accounting codes. There was no clear answer on this topic. They all acknowledge it is a unique, large in-house, problem. Again, that was oddly refreshing to hear that they struggle with that as well.

I also learned from Bill Macaitis, VP of Online Marketing & SEO/SEM at Fox Interactive Media, that he is hiring. He asked several times for contacts and business cards for those who may be interested. I wanted to pass that on to all my search marketing pals.

** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/

Labels: john ellis, pay-per-click, Search Engine Strategies, SEO In House, SES

WebTrends Inc., “Move to ML2” program* for current HBX Analytics customers who may be uncertain about future support for their existing investment. Under the program, WebTrends is offering current HBX Analytics customers up to a 100% license credit to switch from HBX Analytics to the newly announced WebTrends Marketing Lab™ 2 solution suite (ML2). “Move to ML2” offers existing HBX Analytics customers an enterprise-class solution that provides the intelligence to deliver unique marketing to unique individuals. The program includes a discovery workshop that details the process and benefits of moving to ML2.

“When we started LegalZoom, we never imagined the day that we'd be large enough to launch a major national television campaign,” said Eddie Hartman, chief of
strategy and co-founder, LegalZoom. “Fortunately, we switched to WebTrends
Marketing Lab just in time. Integrating WebTrends throughout our entire site has
given us insight into our customers' specific behavioral patterns that we couldn't get from other companies. The reliability and speed of their systems is head and shoulders above everyone else we'd tried. With the price of advertising rising every day, it's an investment that has already paid off considerably.”

WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 an integrated suite of business solutions that optimize site performance, build customer engagement and drive more effective and targeted marketing. Available through on demand hosted and software options, WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 delivers enterprise-class solutions that can be tailored to the needs of an individual site or line of business with industry-leading reporting, automatic optimization, and marketing intelligence that can grow as customer requirements demand. These solutions include:

• WebTrends Score™, a patented methodology for evaluating visitors’ online behavior by quantifiably measuring the level of engagement or interest they have in content, products and services.
• WebTrends Visitor Intelligence™, a full-featured, multi-dimensional (OLAP) reporting and analysis solution providing deep insight into the person behind the visitor to drive micro-targeted marketing and online experiences that increase engagement and build loyalty.
• WebTrends Dynamic Search™, the solution that leverages True Optimization™ to automatically monitor, measure, and tune the variables impacting the success of paid search advertising.
• WebTrends Analytics™, analytics solution with collaboration tools and performance dashboards that deliver insight across organizations to understand and improve how visitors interact with web sites and marketing initiatives.

“LegalZoom joins other customers adopting WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 including
leading financial services, retailers, and media companies seeking to take advantage of the solution suite that provides marketers with the insight to optimize online marketing and increase consumer engagement,” said Greg Drew, CEO and president, WebTrends. “These customers provide testament to the depth and performance of the ML2 solutions suite and our ability to offer a secure future in delivering business value across their organizations.”

Labels: HBX, Web Analytics, WebTrends

Continuing with the theme of providing the most value from Search Engine Strategies San Jose, here's what I found useful in Day 2. The session was called Personalization, User Data & Search and featured Jonathan Mendez, Richard Zwicky, Dave Davies, Gord Hotchkiss, Sep Kamvar and Tim Mayer.

• Gord Hotchkiss presented the findings from an eye tracking study in which they tested the introduction of personalized results in Google's organic SERP. The conclusion was more clickthroughs, time spent and fixations on the results. The takeaway here is the importance of optimizing your results to be included in Google's personalized results. This includes applying themes to your website, adding competitive comparisons (to keep users on your site longer), adding useful widgets to engage visitors and to promote back links through the viral affect.
  
  Sep Kamvar of Google confirmed that it is important to keep users on your site as long as possible, furthermore, widgets are an excellent way to engage users. Tim Mayer of Yahoo mentioned that it was important for your site to become experts on a unique subject and to use Delicious and Yahoo answers to help with this.
  
  
• Jonathan Mendez brought up another good point on how companies should offer personalized content on their sites by analyzing all parts of referring URLs (esp search engines) such as: Language, Silo, and keyword. Natural search engine parameters are very easy to decipher using standard server side scripting languages such as PHP or ASP so try serving up dynamic content based on the parameters in the URL.

On another note, if anyone found a Silver Canon A85 Digital Camera at the Google Dance, please let me know, thanks!

Labels: Search Engine Strategies, SES

CMS Watch, now offers certificate courses on Business Process Management (BPM) as well as Information Organization & Access (IOA), throughout North America and Europe.

Analysis and design of both process and content are the twin pillars of successful content technology implementations. Without these skills effectively in practice, technology alone cannot enable an enterprise to effectively manage business information and processes.

Developed by CMS Watch in conjunction with the AIIM Educational Advisory Group, these new courses bring together core concepts and best practices to give enterprises the proficiency to begin solving difficult information access and business process challenges.

The courses offer a strategic overview, including building a business case, leadership, and process/information governance. The BPM course then continues by covering the parts of BPM, such as Business Analysis, Flowcharting, Process Modeling, BPM Architecture and Technologies, the role of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Collaboration.

The IOA course covers the nuts and bolts of content audits and inventories, taxonomies, metadata, document and content modeling, search tools and techniques, text mining, the user experience of information access, social tagging, security and privacy, information organization standards, and findability.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, CMS Watch Principal, led the development of the BPM curriculum. "These courses offer a core base of knowledge to deal with information overload and process inefficiencies," said Pelz-Sharpe. "Investment in technologies without this base of knowledge and experience is much less likely to be successful."

Courses are offered as a 2-day Practitioner course or a complete 4-day Master course starting in September 2007. Workshops in Asia-Pacific are planned for 2008. Successful participants receive official Practitioner or Master designation from AIIM.

Training schedules, locations, learning objectives, and other workshop details can be found at http://cmswatch.com/Training/.

Labels: CMS Watch

• Bill Tancer of Hitwise mentioned that in the late 90's portals such as Excite and Yahoo used to be people's homepages, in the early 2000's the homepages changed to search engines and today it's Social Networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. This should make everyone aware of the importance of having a presence in Social Networking spaces, whether it's through groups, advertising, web applications or gaining an understanding of end users.
• Compete.com's Jeremy Crane showed that women tend to use Google less than men and tend to use ASK, Yahoo and MSN more often than men. He also said Seniors also tend to spread out their searches across the big 4 search engines. The takeaway here is that it's in order to gain the best returns it's important to segment your online campaigns/advertising to your target audience.

All 4 players offer industry leading rating and analytical information services which can potentially allow you to offer a more focused strategy to your audience.

Labels: Search Engine Strategies, SES

By 'this week' I actually mean 'last week.' In no particular order, here are some articles/posts worth checking out:

• The Long Tail Is Dead -- Long Live the Long Tail - Kevin Newcomb at Search Engine Watch
• Greg Stewart: This Just In, Google Recruits Local Sales Force
• ASK Enquiro: Website Usability: How Can You Improve It?
• Tamar Weinberg: How Should You Handle High-Performing Keywords in Google AdWords? for SE Round Table
• SEOBook: What Is The Advantage Of A .Org Domain Name?
• Unofficial SEO: What Is The Advantage Of A .Org Domain Name?
• Eye Tracking Video: Capture Everything - Web Analytics World
• Google Analytics: Your success stories wanted

I will be reporting live on the best takeaways from Search Engine Strategies San Jose this week, so stay tuned for daily updates from the conference.

Labels: Industry News, Must Reads

"The distillation of our thinking, our philosophy, our advice and our tricks will be available through a subscription only website. Content within the site is exclusive material and is guaranteed to be timely and accurate. The tutorials will explain exactly how to get something done, walking you through the appropriate tools (and of course, we're vendor neutral). In addition, subscribers can hire Market Motive for direct 1:1 advice." - CTO, John Marshall

Some of MarketMotive's services include:

- An Internet marketing audit which covers:

• Search engine performance and site optimization
• PPC and paid advertising
• Web analytics implementation
• Email and customer communication system
• Web site conversion systems

- Speaking
- Premium Content (training material)
- Hands on assessment and implementation of Web Analytics, Email Marketing, PPC, Conversion Analysis and PR

Labels: Industry News, Web Analytics

First off, sorry for the title. It's what I have heard often in my house from my daughter … and wife.

Friday August 17th is a big day in our house. It's the premier of High School Musical 2 on Disney Channel. Do the names Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay or Ryan ring any bells?

Now from this point in my post I have probably lost some of you. Trust me there is a marketing lesson here for all of us.

High School Musical 2 will break many Nielsen ratings this week. The soundtrack will be #1 on Billboard's Album charts soon. This is a phenomenon that you need to know about. You need to know how this became a hit. You need to know how to use these tools to market your product.

Disney targeted a relatively small audience and it exploded into a huge success. Through their very specific messaging, they allowed the audience to spread the word themselves.

With the first High School Musical there was very little advertising, outside of the Disney Channel. That would have been a waist of money. They knew they could not spread the words as easy as their audience could.

Now you don’t have to like the movie. I realize it's not for everyone, but you do have to appreciate the marketing efforts that made this the hit that it is.

For details on the steps they took to market this product, read my prior post: Disney used PyroMarketing to push High School Musical

** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/

Labels: john ellis, marketing

Below is a very cool Eye Tracking video by Enquiro Research, it shows scanning activity on iGoogle, the creation of heat-maps from eye tracking scan patterns and last but not least, Eye Tracking within video (that's right eye tracking can be done on animations as well).



For more information visit: http://www.enquiroresearch.com/. Enquiro Research will also be at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, booth #333.

Embed the video onto your site:
<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7920579456645118310&hl=en" flashvars=""></embed>

Labels: Eye Tracking

• Diagnosis
• Study design
• Panelist recruitment
• Conducting of the Eye Tracking Study with 60 panelists
• 2 possible scenarios (e.g. your conversion vs. your competitor’s)
• Data analysis
• A written report with specific recommendations
• Presentation and consultation on results
• All raw data, posted on a secure website, including aggregate heatmaps, gaze plots and participant session movies burned onto DVD

Optional Add-Ons

• Exit Survey during the study to capture the subjects’ impressions of your site
• Enquiro presentation at your company
• Progressive time-sliced heatmaps

For more information visit: http://www.enquiroresearch.com/ or check Enquiro Research out at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, booth #333.

Labels: Eye Tracking, Search Engine Strategies

“Releasing our data via desktop widgets makes it easy for digital enthusiasts to stay informed about key online trends as they happen. They also serve as a gateway to access a full archive of online statistics and other publicly available Hitwise data sources such as the Hitwise Analyst Blogs and our Data Center.” said Tessa Court, chief marketing officer for Hitwise.

Labels: HitWise, Widgets

• Local IP Exclusion: Have you blocked local IP addresses as well as your vendors' so that their activity doesn't get included within your results? If your site receives tens of millions of page views monthly this won't have a huge impact, however for websites that receive only 1,000-10,000 page views, this will skew the data.
  
• Sub Domains: Not all analytics solutions automatically track activity on a sub domain of a website, so make sure you either have activated the sub domain in the code or in the analytics admin area. Here's how you do it in Google Analytics:
  

  _uacct = "ACCOUNT NUMBER HERE";
  _udn = "DOMAIN HERE";
  urchinTracker();

• Email/Download Links: Contact forms and newsletter email registrations aren't the only way to measure the number of leads and conversions. Don't forget to apply appropriate tracking for links to emails and downloadable collateral. Here's an example of how to track a link in Omniture's SiteCatalyst:
  

  a
  onclick="s_linkType='o'; s_linkTrackVars='s_events'; s_linkTrackEvents='event#'; s_linkName='Contact us email@domain.com'; s_events='event#'; s_lnk=s_co(this); s_gs(reportsuite);" href="mailto:email@domain.com">email@domain.com
  /a

• Development vs. Production: During the publish from the development to the production environment make sure you're referencing the correct attributes and files on the production server.
  
• Paid Search: Analytics providers often don't automatically attribute Paid keyword referrals to PPC unless there is an admin setting turned on or the referring URLs have appropriate parameters appended to them. Forgetting to setup Paid Search tracking can result in the inflation of natural/organic search referrals.
  
• Tagging Error Pages: Error pages are part of your site as well and a great way to determine if there are any navigational issues throughout the website, so make sure they're tagged.
  
• Internal search: Want to know what users are looking for on your website? Without being able to identify the internal search queries, this task becomes increasingly difficult. EpikOne has a useful post on how to track internal search queries using Google Analytics.
  
• QA and Testing: This should be an obvious one not to forget but after a long implementation, QA and Testing often don't get integrated into the implementation plan.

There you have it, 8 items to permanently add to your checklist for a proper web analytics implementation.

Download the Checklist - PDF!

Labels: Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation

Thanks to SEOMoz, I found the coolest Simpsons application called Simpsonizeme where you can create your very own Simpsons Character. Simply upload a 640X480 picture of yourself, choose your gender, age, facial features and voila...you have your own Simpsons character. It is a perfect example of a great link baiting application. You can change various features about your character, buy Simpsons gear, download your character, email your friends, all through a very intuitive interface. Below is my Simpsonized character.

Labels: Link Bait

If you're constantly checking out the various Google Blogs for new posts using your RSS feed reader or manually browsing to them then I recommend you check out this new Yahoo Pipe I created.

I basically took 20+ popular Google Blogs, grabbed their RSS Feeds and added a simple sort by date operator. The result was a quick way to see the latest news from various Google blogs in one quick snapshot. Some of the Google Blogs I added to my Yahoo Pipe included: The main Google Blog, Google Analytics Blog, Google Adsense Blog, Google Finance Blog, Google Gmail Blog and about a dozen more.

Here's a segment of what the output looks like (minus the brief summaries):

• Online ad-serving tests
• You can always go back to where you came from with DragZoomControl v1.1
• Site maintenance on Saturday, August 11th
• A simple way to get more storage
• Finance in iGoogle
• Publishers go Dutch with newest AdSense forum
• Finding fresh results
• Is black the new green?
• Google Checkout back-to-school offers
• Upcoming change to the top ad placement formula
• Save time (and money) with Checkout back-to-school shopping
• Google search privacy: Plain and simple
• ExtMapTypeControl 1.1: A Smarter Traffic Button
• Historical NTDOY
• Perspectives about the news from people in the news
• Google Apps Provisioning PHP Client Library
• V9 Sunset Extended to September 10
• AdWords system maintenance on August 11
• AdWords Downtime, August 11th
• Let's get this roadshow on the...er...road
• At eTail East this week
• Joining OIN
• AdWords Seminars coming to Philadelphia & Vancouver
• REMINDER: Version 9 Shutdown on August 20
• Introducing AdWords Editor 4.0 for Windows
• Some great Gmail video responses!
• Google Conversion University Attendees: Thank You!
  

Labels: Google, Yahoo

Over at SearchEngineLand, Gord Hotchkiss has written a very detailed post on what a search engine results page could look like by the year 2010. For this 'Future of Search' post, Gord got insight from the top Search/Usability Experts in the field:

• Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best-known usability guru
• Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of user experience and interface design
• Michael Ferguson, one of the architects of Ask’s unique user experience
• Larry Cornett, the VP of search experience at Yahoo!
• Justin Osmer, Product Manager for Microsoft Live search
• Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Searchengineland and always thoughtful industry observer
• Greg Sterling, another industry analyst who always has interesting insights, particularly in the local and mobile world
• Danny Sullivan, the Go To Guy of search

Here's a small snippet of the post, with Marissa Mayer's thoughts on the Semantic Search Engine and the Future of Search in 2010:

But it’s not just search engine results pages that Marissa sees a higher level
of interaction with. She sees a deeper or more interactive experience with all
webpages by being able to annotate and markup pages for future
reference.

Marissa: I think that people will be annotating search results
pages and web pages a lot. They’re going to be rating them, they’re going to be
reviewing them. They’re going to be marking them up, saying “I want to come back
to this one later”. So we have some remedial forms of this in terms of Notebook
now, but I imagine that we’re going to make notes right on the pages later.
People are going to be able to say I want to add a note here; I want to
search…Google… something there, and you’ll be able to do that.

The following topics where covered in the 'Future of Search' post:

• The look of the search results page
• Does search become our own personal portal page?
• Search as a social experience
• Smarter search engines
• Personalization
• Is Google holding a number of personalization cards up their sleeve?
• Will usefulness become part of a search algorithm?
• Contextual search
• The semantic search engine?
• More hands-on experience with greater functionality
• Stratification of user functionality

Read the full story here. Also check out Gord at Search Engine Strategies San Jose later this month.

Labels: Google, SEM

According to Appsaholic, here are the the top 10 most Viral Facebook Apps:

Application	24 hours ago	Now	Viral Growth
Naughty Gifts	94,852	149,644	58%
Nicknames	30,026	42,530	42%
Bumper Sticker	16,045	21,176	32%
Premier League Picks	12,464	16,236	30%
My Purity Test	52,755	67,589	28%
Mobsters!	10,914	13,403	23%
What I'm Listening To	13,369	16,214	21%
Tattoos	89,846	107,692	20%
M.A.S.H.	25,212	30,181	20%
Define Me	26,063	30,905	19%

Labels: Facebook

Labels: Yahoo, Yahoo API

Google just announced they are “improving” their top ad placement formula, which should eliminate advertisers buying their way to the top of the paid rankings.

Find the original post here: Upcoming change to the top ad placement formula

These new changes take affect “within the next few weeks”.

Google will use actual cost-per-click, along with max CPC bid and quality score to calculate the top position. Although, Google has been using quality score for some time now, this new formula will emphasis it even more. (Another reason to avoid bid management software.)

These new changes give the advertiser a better opportunity to reach the top spot.

Although I appreciate the effort, as an advertiser, I am not sure how much this really affects me. As I have stated before, it is often the better investment to avoid the number one position. Unless this change will bring in a higher quality visitor, I can not see this really affecting my changes anytime soon.

Again, it is not to say it is not a good move by Google. Anything that will give all advertisers a fair chance is an excellent move. Ideally, this will prevent some advertisers from buying their way into the top position and that's a good thing.

** Find more articles from John W Ellis at www.JohnWEllis.com

Labels: adwords, Google, john ellis, pay-per-click, ppc

Over the last week you've probably heard about the collaborative Gmail video project where people around the world can submit a 10 second video of themselves along with a Gmail "M-velope" and after submission Google will add the videos to its master Gmail video (with some editing and music overlay). I love this idea and have seen some very unique responses, here are some of the latest ones that were posted on the Gmail Blog.

Labels: Gmail, Google

Hitwise, today announced the launch of its new Election 2008 Data Center, providing online usage data surrounding the 2008 US presidential election. This new feature to the Hitwise Data Center highlights which candidates are the most visited online and which candidates generate the highest volume of searches. This sample of Hitwise data is publicly available to political enthusiasts, marketers, bloggers, academics, and the media.

“As the Internet continues to evolve as a major communications channel for
candidates and a platform for the public to research issues, we are delighted to
share insights on how American Internet users react to political campaigns and
policies online as the election unfolds,” said Tessa Court, chief marketing
officer, Hitwise.

Hitwise Election 2008 data is based on the online usage and search behavior of how more than 10 million US Internet users interact with more than 1 million websites across more than 160 industry categories.

The Hitwise Election 2008 Data Center is located on the Hitwise website at:
http://www.hitwise.com/political-data-center. The data updates every Tuesday and RSS feeds are available on the following topics:

Top Presidential Candidate 2008 Websites
Top Democratic Candidate 2008 Websites (see table below)
Top Republican Candidate 2008 Websites (see table below)
Top 10 Presidential Candidate 2008 Search Terms
Top 10 National Political Websites
Top 10 National Political Search Terms
Fast Moving National Political Websites
Candidate of the Month
Election 2008 Blog Articles

Labels: HitWise

VisiStat, Inc. announced the release of their newest innovation, VisiStat Mobile™ 1.0, the first real-time Web statistic reports accessible by cell phone and mobile handheld devices.

VisiStat Mobile™ is a logical extension of the VisiStat reporting suite, where, for the first time, Website performance management is now available anywhere, anytime, anyplace there is cell service. Built specifically for mobile devices, VisiStat Mobile™ has reports optimized for the smaller screen size, interface and load times. It also allows for hassle-free, at-will switching between devices, and a convenient URL (visistat.mobi) for instant handheld access.

View Web Stats anytime, anywhere on an iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm or any handheld PDA. VisiStat Mobile™ brings Web analytics to portable telecommunications.

Labels: Mobile, VisiStat, Web Analytics

Web Analytics World would like to present another Free PDF available for download. In this version we asked some of the top analytics experts what topics surrounding web analytics their clients found most troublesome. Along with the issues the experts provided solutions to help remedy the pains. Whether you're an analyst looking for a second opinion or a web analytics user looking for expert advise, we recommend you download this PDF.

Download Now!

Topics Covered:

• How to choose the right web analytics
• Accuracy and Quality of data
• How to measure rich media
• How to get client buy-in
• What to do after implementation
• How to fully leverage web analytics
• Reporting vs. Analysis

Analysts offering their insight and wisdom included:

• Eric Peterson
• Anil Batra
• Jason Van Orden
• Justin Cutroni
• Marshall Sponder
• Gary Angel
• Akin Arikan
• Dennis R. Mortensen
• Avinash Kaushik

If you find this PDF valuable consider sharing it with your colleagues or linking to this post. We contentiously plan on releasing free PDFs in the near future so if your organization is interested in sponsoring the next version send me an email: mjasra@gmail.com

Special thanks to sponsors of this version: IndexTools and ASK Enquiro.

Labels: Industry News, Web Analytics

• According to Hitwise, ClubPenguin.com was the 131st most visited website in the US for June 2007



• US traffic to ClubPenguin.com increased 329% comparing June 2007 versus June 2006.



• Among a select group of virtual world websites (see attached), ClubPenguin.com received the third most visits for June 2007.

Labels: Industry News

• Acquisition costs are rising and conversion rates are decreasing
• The power switch from Push to Pull Marketing
• The change from mass marketing to personalized marketing

There are so many factors to consider when behaviorally targeting users - so which ones should you consider? The factors and metrics are completely site specific, however below are a few factors that you should consider when developing profiles for your various visitor segments:

• Referring Sites
• Referring Keywords
• Internal Search Queries
• Pages Viewed (type/category of content)
• Preferred method of communication: Email vs. Phone vs. Webinar
• Purchase Patterns based on seasonality
• Demographics: Age, Sex, Education, House Hold Income, Marital Status
• Recency
• Frequency
• Products added to cart
• Time Zone
• Time of Day on website
• Offline Influencers: TV/Radio/Magazines

Resources for Behavioral/On Site Targeting:

- Omniture TouchClarity
- WebTrends Marketing Lab 2
- BlueLithium
- Anil Batra: Behavioral Targeting 101
- Kefta
- Clickz: Target Behavior on the Site Level
- Avinash Kaushik: The Promise & Challenge of Behavior Targeting (& Two Prerequisites)
- Offermatica

Labels: behavioral targeting, on site targeting

As I gear up for my speaking engagement at BarCamp Nashville on August 18^th, I began to wonder if this concept could be the future of the Online Marketing conference.

BarCamp is promoted as the un-conference. It’s a spin off of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only un-conference. However, the BarCamp philosophy takes “open-sourcing” to a whole new level.

Like many conferences, BarCamps are organized through the web. But unlike other conferences, that is where the organization stops. There is no model, no format and no standard to follow. They have very little rules, but even those are flexible. Anyone can initiate an event. BarCamps, like BarCamp Nashville, consist of presentations scheduled each day by attendees, mostly on-site, using white boards, napkins, or whatever can be found.

Could the un-conference idea be the future of the Online Marketing conference?

This would eliminate unnecessary vendor presentations. The casual atmosphere, and possibly even alcohol, will encourage a “true” open exchange of ideas. We could all open the doors to our “tricks and techniques”. Everyone could present on any topic. The audience will dictate the demand. If they like the topic they will listen. If not they move on.

I realize tradition in the search engine marketing world is to keep ranking tips secret. But for a fun event, with limited people, why not truly “open-source” all online marketing ideas?

Who wants to present the first Search Engine un-Conference?

** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com

Labels: john ellis, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, SEM Conferences

In the pre-tagging days of web analytics when dinosaurs roamed the landscape, log files weren't the only way to collect data. Packet sniffing or network-based data collection, popularized by Accrue Software,was also available. Proponents argued that packet sniffing was superior because data collection becomes "hands off" once the collection appliance is installed between the router and network switch. There are no tags to maintain, nor log files to administer.

If you'd like to look into this method of data collection, there are a few solutions out there that merit your attention. Read my post on CMS Watch to find out which ones deserve a look.
_________________________________________________
Posted by: Phil Kemelor VP, Strategic Consulting Services - Semphonic
Analyst - CMS Watch Web Analytics Report
Author - The Executive's Guide to Web Site Measurement and Testing
Blog - CMS Watch Analytics Channel

Labels: Accrue, CMS Watch, packet sniffing, Phil Kemelor, Web Analytics

This session featured Jack Philbin (President, Vibes Media), Bob Wesley (CEO MobileLime), Dean Macri (Founder/CEO Cielo Group) and Brook Pitts (Senior VP, Marketing Innovation - Bank of America).

What started out as a very dry session turned out to be a very insightful lesson on ways to create conversation and user engagement using the power of mobile. 2 of the most interesting uses of mobile campaigns were mentioned by Bob Weasley and Dean Macri.

Mr. Weasley described how his company partnered with Grocery stores such as Albertson's to enhance shoppers' experience. Initially there was a framework setup so that shoppers could be tracked (through their mobiles) as they walked through the various sections. Shoppers were also given the ability to scan and bag items instantly. Based on the person's shopping behaviour and where they were located in the store they were served related promotions/advertisements. Dynamic advertising can also be served based on the weather as well as the season.

Mr. Macri spoke about a campaign his organization ran with their client BMW. Print ads with short codes (short number sequences which replace long URLs) were placed throughout various airports trying to entice users to find out more information on BMW's vehicles. Once users entered the short code they were given a program which streamed videos regarding a specific type of BMW series. Users with older technology were offered pictures instead. Finally, users were given the location of the nearest BMW dealership at which they could make an appointment to visit a show room. The campaign was measured by the number of users "clicking in" using the short code, the types of videos/pictures viewed most, dealer popularity and appointments booked.

The session concluded with some brief lessons learned, here's what the speakers said:

• The mass market is not completely up to speed on mobile advertising yet
• Mobile advertising is a very uncluttered environment
• In 2007 it is important for agencies to test and learn (otherwise you will lose ground)
• Consumers want to go beyond text messaging
• Mobile advertising should be kept simple
• You should always try to create strategies that add value for the end users

Labels: ad:tech, Mobile, Mobile Advertising

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, kicked off ad:Tech Chicago 2007 by taking a page (literally) out of his book: The Long Tail. One of Chris' main objectives that he was trying to get across was that the era of the "Blockbuster" model has ended. As the Internet continues to provide limitless commodities of products to everyone, people are far less likely to purchase mainstream products/services. In today's world people have more selection than they ever did before and enjoy selecting niche products/services. Anderson also made a great point in that selling products cannot be sold to a global, one size fits all market but rather have to be sold using niche or very segmented markets.

"What happens to the combined copy of all the millions of items that may sell
only a few copies equals or exceeds the value of the few items that sell millions each?"

Chris provides some great examples which proved his theory on the long tail:

• Since spring of 2000 there has been a rapid decline in the number of music albums that achieved gold status (or above) because of the Internet and it's capability to share vast genres of music.
• The decreasing number in attendance for a movie's second week: The Internet makes the sharing of conversation around movie reviews instant which can lead directly to less visitors attending movies on the second week.
• An online company like Rhapsody offers 1.5 million different music tracks vs. a typical Walmart with only 55,000 Tracks. Companies such as Rhapsody receive 40% of all music sales because of this.
• The highest rated TV show in the 50's was I love Lucy, however nowadays you cannot single out one show as "top rated" because people have been given so many choices of TV programming to watch.

I really enjoyed Chris Anderson's keynote and look forward to reading his book, The Long Tail.

Labels: ad:tech, Industry News