2008 May

Skweezer – New Adsense Alternative

May 30, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Skweezer, Inc. today announced a major upgrade to its Skweezer Ads service, which allows customers to serve ads to a wide variety of mobile, desktop, and other Web-enabled consoles through a single ad feed.
This latest release of Skweezer Ads includes innovations that are firsts for the online advertising community. One such innovation is a patent-pending algorithm that dynamically converts conventional text-based cost-per-click (CPC) ads into mobile-friendly ads complaint with standards set by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). Another key innovation is Skweezer Ads’ cut-and-paste code that detects a visitor’s device type, retrieves appropriate mobile or desktop ads accordingly, and optionally reformats and compresses the Web content for mobile viewing.

Skweezer Ads is now available to publishers through ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, or JavaScript code. This latest version of Skweezer Ads uses “short URL” for easier inclusion into Web sites, RSS feeds, mobile applications, and SMS messages.

The Skweezer Ads back office, located at http://reports.skweezer.com/, has also been updated and includes a new ad formatting wizard allows publishers to use a “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) interface to customize the way their ads look. Customers also now have the ability to create multiple ads feeds, or channels, for a single account. The signup process has also been greatly streamlined and is accessible at http://reports.skweezer.com/open/signup.aspx.

Skweezer Ads is an online advertising service that supplies both desktop and mobile ads in a single ad feed, automatically displaying the correct type of ad to each visitor. Skweezer Ads customers have the added benefit of being able to use Skweezer’s mobilization technology to automatically create a mobile version of their Web site, which is dynamically created whenever a mobile visitor is detected.

Skweezer Ads is the world’s first internationally-consumed mobile advertising service, having served mobile ads in over 175 countries since its release in 2004, and was voted Best Mobile Marketing Product in the 2007 Mobile Star Awards.

Filed Under: adsense

StatCounter Having Major Issues with Paypal

May 29, 2008 By Manoj Jasra 1 Comment

If you’re a user of StatCounter Analytics then you may have noticed the issues StatCounter has been having with their current payment system, Paypal. StatCounter seems quite furious in the lack of acknowledgement by Paypal to the issues StatCounter has been having, additionally StatCounter has described the following issues with Paypal:

The Paypal Handling Cart feature completely broke down
Cross border payments could not be made as the drop down country list did not work
Customers have been flooded with hundreds of duplicate subscription emails from Paypal
Payments from Paypal are no longer associated with the relevant subscriptions
Some customers have been and are being DOUBLE BILLED by Paypal
Merchants have not been receiving instant payment notifications or failure notifications
Merchants/customers are unable to cancel subscriptions

This really sucks for StatCounter because they are unable to invoice any new clients and are often invoicing current clients inaccurately.

These problems with Paypal have already cost us thousands of dollars. We continue to expend large amounts of time and resources on these issues – resources which we would much prefer to concentrate on improving the service we provide to you. We would be very grateful for your patience at this time as we wait for Paypal to resolve these issues.

Read the full story here: http://blog.statcounter.com/

Filed Under: statcounter, Web Analytics

comScore Acquires M:Metrics

May 29, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), today announced the acquisition of M:Metrics, Inc., the recognized leader in mobile measurement. The acquisition makes comScore the immediate leader in measuring the emerging and strategically important mobile Internet market and adds to comScore’s leading position in measuring PC-based Internet usage.

The transaction involves a cash payment of $44.3 million and the issuance of approximately 50,000 options to purchase shares of comScore common stock to certain M:Metrics unvested option holders.

M:Metrics offers three primary measurement products:

MobiLensTM, a syndicated monthly online survey that captures overall mobile phone usage, including device information, data usage, media consumption and demographic characteristics of a representative sample of more than 40,000 mobile device users. MobiLens is available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.
MeterDirectTM, the industry’s first on-device meter that passively measures the mobile Internet behavior and media consumption of more than 4,000 existing Smartphone panelists. The M:Metrics metering technology is compatible with more than 280 device models. MeterDirect is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.
M:AdTM, the first competitive tracking service for mobile advertising that continuously monitors clickable display advertising from a broad representative set of mobile Web destinations to reveal leading advertisers across a variety of market segments. M:Ad is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.

Going forward, comScore will increase the size of the metered panel and will offer measurement of combined Internet usage across both PC and mobile-based online access platforms. The combination of the two companies is expected to result in substantial operating synergies, cost savings and enhanced revenue growth by building a larger customer base, combining two highly productive sales forces, and leveraging comScore’s global panel and scalable technology infrastructure.

In connection with the acquisition, the co-founders of M:Metrics, Will Hodgman, president and chief executive officer, and Seamus McAteer, chief product architect, will join comScore’s management team.

The acquisition agreement was signed, and the acquisition was closed, today, May 28, 2008, having been approved by the comScore Board of Directors and M:Metrics stockholders. The transaction will be accounted for under purchase accounting rules.

comScore is expecting the M:Metrics business to be profitable on an Adjusted EBITDA basis by the end of the fourth quarter of 2008, and to be a significant positive contributor to Adjusted EBITDA in 2009. M:Metrics’ revenues are currently forecast to be approximately $11 million to $12 million for the full year 2008, and will contribute $6.5 to $7 million to comScore’s reported revenues for 2008 post-closing. The acquisition also enables comScore to lower its future tax payments by realizing a cash benefit of up to $7 million through the utilization of up to $20 million in M:Metrics net operating loss carry forward (NOLs).

Filed Under: comScore

Gmail: Use IMAP over POP for Mobile

May 28, 2008 By Manoj Jasra 1 Comment

Gmail Help Center Guru, Sze-jun Tsai has posted a very useful post on the Gmail Blog about configuring your Gmail account on mobile devices using IMAP rather than POP. Sze-jun mentions how frustrating POP can be due to it’s limitation to communicate only one way rather than 2 way like IMAP. Sze-jun also provides a simple graphic which explains the benefit of IMAP over POP

IMAP vs. POP Gmail

There are two ways your devices and clients can communicate with Gmail:

A one-way communication path (POP). Your device asks us for data and pulls it from our servers — but that’s it. Things you do on your device have no effect on the server. If you read a message on your phone, then log in to Gmail, you will see that same message marked as unread. It may start to feel like Groundhog Day.

A two-way communication path (IMAP). Unlike with POP, your devices talk back to our servers and sync your changes automatically with IMAP. When you sign in to your Gmail account in a web browser, actions you’ve taken on your email client or mobile device (like putting a message in a ‘work’ folder) will also appear in Gmail (your message will already have a ‘work’ label on it). This all happens automatically once you set up IMAP, so you don’t have to read or sort all your mail twice. This is really helpful when accessing Gmail from multiple devices.

Enabling IMAP

You can retrieve your Gmail messages with a client or device that supports IMAP, like Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail.

To enable IMAP in Gmail:

Sign in to Gmail.
Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
Select Enable IMAP.
Configure your IMAP client and click Save Changes.

Supported IMAP client list

Once you’ve enabled IMAP in Gmail, just configure your mail client or wireless device to download Gmail messages. To learn about configuration settings, click the name of your mail client or wireless device below.

Mail Clients

Wireless Devices

Filed Under: Gmail

SES Toronto 2008: Interview with Jill Whalen on SEO Donts, Myths, and Scams

May 27, 2008 By Manoj Jasra 2 Comments

Search Engine Strategies (SES) will be held in Toronto, Ontario next month featuring a number of our industry’s thought leaders. A topic that sprung my interest was on day 2: “SEO Don’ts, Myths, & Scams” featuring the CEO of High Rankings, Jill Whalen. To get some insight before SES Toronto, I was able to catch up with Jill Whalen to ask her a few questions on the topic of SEO Don’ts, Myths, & Scams. Below is how our conversation went:

[Manoj]: On the topic of SEO scams, is this something that is still rapidly growing?

[Jill Whalen]: I wouldn’t say that it is rapidly growing, but they are definitely still out there. We get people on our SEO forum all the time asking about the cold calls they get from companies who claim they can place their website in the number 1 spot for $50 and things like that. What they are actually doing is either reselling sponsored ads at a premium and you’re showing up in the sponsored section, or in some cases, they get you to download their special toolbar, and then they can show you whatever results they want to show you. This scam is less prevalent today than it used to be as people are more leery of installing 3rd party software these days.

The latest SEO scam is companies who instead of working hard to help you create something worth linking to, make up entertaining but fake news, and the post it on your website as real news, in order to gain links to it. In the media’s frenzy to re-print and discuss just about any news they can find, they rarely bother to check sources anymore, and freely link to the original made-up story. The tactic apparently works (at least temporarily), but at what cost to the website’s credibility? Google’s Matt Cutts has recently weighed in on this issue and stated that the tactic does fall outside of their Webmaster guidelines.

[Manoj]: What myths do you consistently come across in the search marketing industry?

[Jill Whalen]:One of the most interesting is the myth that your Google AdWords can affect your organic rankings. About half the people who believe this myth think that running a Google AdWords campaign will hurt your organic rankings, while the other half believe it will help your organic rankings! In reality, Google is smart enough to keep their paid and organic results completely separate.

Another myth I consistently run across is that frequent respidering of your website will somehow increase its organic rankings. If you are adding new content on a regular basis, then of course it’s important for Google to respider your site often so that they will index your new stuff. But if you aren’t adding new content, it’s not necessarily a problem; you certainly don’t need the spider to index the same content they already have indexed. Rankings don’t suffer because of a lack of spidering (unless you have some other technical issues going on). Some of the best-ranked pages haven’t been changed or added to in years.

[Manoj]: If you were to prioritize a list of SEO Don’ts, what would be your top 3 in terms of biggest impact to a site’s online strategy?

[Jill Whalen]: Most of the SEO myths that are out there are fairly harmless — whether you do them or not, they won’t impact your site one way or the other. “SEO don’ts” on the other hand, are a different animal and can very well impact the profile of your website in the search engines. There are so many don’ts that it’s difficult to prioritize them, but here are 3 common ones:

Don’t stuff your page full of keyword phrases at the expense of its readability. SEO copywriting has nothing to do with keyword stuffing. While keyword stuffing may actually increase rankings (temporarily), if your pages read poorly they will be less likely to convert for you.
Don’t set out to deceive search engines. They want the best, most relevant pages for the search query at hand. Don’t fake having the best, most relevant content — actually have it!
Don’t design your website in such a way as to make it invisible or unspiderable to the search engines. Unfortunately, a lot of website designers still haven’t figured out how to create crawler-friendly websites, which puts those sites at a huge disadvantage right out of the gate.

[Manoj]: How important is SEO Education and Training in regards to better understanding SEO Myths and Scams. Additionally, can you recommend some good SEO training resources?

[Jill Whalen]: Because SEO myths are so prevalent, SEO education and training is crucial for people who are trying to learn how to optimize their websites to obtain more targeted search engine traffic. Unfortunately, people have to be careful which courses they choose because some are the biggest spreaders of SEO myths to begin with! So while the students may think they’re getting a good education, in reality, they’re just learning a bunch of myths that won’t help increase their targeted traffic — or worse, might even hurt it.

Today, there are some good, trustworthy SEO training resources available, however. I would be remiss not to mention our own High Rankings SEO Training which is held in-person on a monthly basis at our office just outside of Boston. The classes are limited to 6 people per class, and each is customized to the needs of the students, using their own websites as examples.

In addition, seminars such as Search Engine Guide’s Small Business Marketing Unleashed are also invaluable, and are a good way to start learning search marketing without all the confusion and myths. Then there are the larger conferences such as Search Engine Strategies and Search Marketing Expo, both of which I am a frequent speaker. These larger shows are especially helpful if you are already entrenched in search marketing and/or if you’ve previously attended a smaller class or have taken some online courses. They are also excellent vehicles for networking with your peers in the search marketing industry.

There are a number of good online search marketing educational opportunities offered as well, such as SEMPO Institute’s certification courses and Marketing Motive’s membership site. High Rankings also offers search marketing training videos based on one of our training seminars.

[Manoj]: Finally, what is your favorite part of SEO?

[Jill Whalen]: That would be the puzzle aspect of it. I love looking at any website and figuring out exactly what it needs to make it be the best it can be for search engines and users. Every site is unique and needs a different combination of tactics to help it succeed. Finding the right mixture and then seeing it all come to fruition with increased targeted sea
rch engine traffic is truly an amazing experience!

About Jill Whalen

Jill is the founder of the popular High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum, now celebrating its fourth year. She is also is the host of the High Rankings Advisor, a free search engine marketing email newsletter, and the author of The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines. Regularly quoted in national and industry publications, Jill is frequently called upon to speak at conferences worldwide

Filed Under: Search Engine Strategies, SEO, SES

Site605 Claims to be Superior to Mahalo

May 26, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Site605.com (http://www.site605.com/) announced that it is working with highly-qualified volunteer editors (like Wikipedia) along with machine-learning techniques to make available an extensive online informational resource that will serve the top sought-after search phrases. Site605 will have 750,000 such resource pages by end of the year. The company uses algorithmic techniques to create the initial pages, and has human editors fine-tune them and review them for quality.

“With our novel approach, Site605 has already provided resource pages for about 100,000 top search subjects, twice the stated goal of Mahalo,” said Bob Chandra, co-founder of Site605. “While one person can write 10 informational webpages from scratch in a day, one could review and edit 50 pages in that same time. It turns out that computers do a fine job of producing an initial resource pages. Then, people complement the process by reviewing those pages for quality and modifying them acordingly. So this is the introduction of the human-edited Web as opposed to the purely human-authored web seen on Mahalo or machine-authored results you see on Google.”

Today, Site605 previews its service online, displaying resource pages from Earth Day to Eight Belles, displaying relevant links, news items, and blog posts on the various topics. The company relies on volunteers to review the content to ensure quality standards are met.

“The intention is to provide people with an informational resource on a vast array of subjects and to create a model that will scale across hundreds of thousands of search subjects, not just thousands”, says Chandra.

Site605′s algorithmic approach combined with qualified editors utilizes the best of both worlds and pioneers a man-machine hybrid model for intelligent web results. The site differs from Mahalo in that its pages are not meant as encyclopedic information or summaries, but rather as a set of “quicklinks” to learn more about the particular subject. “Bottom line is that the Infinite Monkey Theorem model doesn’t scale,” says Chandra “If you throw more monkeys in the room, just as you’re not likely to get Shakespeare, you won’t get anywhere near the totality of head search queries. Site605 has something better; merging the algorithmic intelligence of Google with the high-quality volunteer efforts of a site like Wikipedia.”

Filed Under: mahalo

This Weeks Must Reads in Search Marketing

May 23, 2008 By Manoj Jasra 2 Comments

Regardless of the short week up here in Canada, due to Victoria Day, there was tonnes of great news stories floating around. Below are this week’s must reads in search marketing.