Photo from: the news from venice, california, part two – a flying couch (on vimeo) on Flickr

There seems to be a lot of “important” search engine marketing news this week. If you haven’t caught all the news in the past week, here are the headlines that impressed me. (I was particularly excited about More “Goals” for Google Analytics).
MGM “Get Rewarded For Your Sins”. This is the link you want: Top Rated Sins

TV Season Premieres Spur Continued Gains in Online Video Viewing as September Attracts Record Viewership – comScore, Inc

…more than 168 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month. Online video viewing continued to reach record levels in September with nearly 26 billion videos viewed during the month, as Google Sites accounted for more than 40 percent of videos viewed online by Americans.

Anchor Weighs in on Click Fraud

Anchor Intelligence has just released its Q3 09 click fraud data—and it’s down, contrary to what Click Forensics reported for the same period. Anchor saw worldwide click fraud drop almost four percentage points from Q2, to 23.2% of all clicks in Q3.

Are There a Lot of Dumb People Using Google?

Let this be a reminder to all web site owners. If the most popular–and easiest to use–web site in the world has to point out the obvious, you shouldn’t take for granted that your visitors will know how to use your site.

Google October 2009 Toolbar PageRank Update

There seems to be a Google Toolbar PageRank update going on right now.

Google Launches Comparison Ads, Starting With Mortgages

Google’s now officially announced “Comparison Ads,” starting with a way for mortgage advertisers to have their products compared against each other but which may expand to other products in the future.

More “Goals” for Google Analytics – Search Engine Guide Blog

A few days ago in the Twittersphere, it’s been mentioned that Google Analytics is now starting to add the number of “goals” to 20 (four groups of five), up from four only.

The Cost of Larry Johnson’s Gay Slur on Twitter: $213,000

Johnson was suspended for the gay slurs he directed at a Twitter heckler earlier in the week, a comment he apparently repeated in the Chiefs’ locker room.

Blocking Google Sitelinks Can Take Two Weeks Or More

You can block Sitelinks within Google Webmaster Tools by clicking on the “block” button on the right of each Sitelink

Got Multiple Listings in Google’s Local Business Center? Don’t Delete Any

The only time you want to remove the listing from Maps is when the business is permanently closed OR you never want it to appear on Maps. If there are duplicates in your account, keep them.

Bingahoo Delayed a Month or Two (or More)?

The deal that was originally supposed to be signed off on October 27th

Confirmed: Google to Roll Out Music Search – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Google says two out of the top ten searches in the U.S., according to Insights for Search.

Google News Finance Optimization

Adding these elements, along with the title change, should dramatically help you show up in Google Finance for that specific company.

Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About DMOZ (ODP)

Debra Mastaler wrote has an excellent interview with the man in charge at DMOZ (Open Directory Project) at Search Engine Land named DMOZ: A Solid Directory Or The Great Pumpkin Of Search?

Google Analytics Offers Proof of Individual Qualification – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

If you’ve passed the Google Analytics Individual Qualification test and need to prove it to your clients or your company, Google is helping validate your awesome web analytics prowess. Now, you can create a link to your web-published test record.

Google Now Treats 410 Status Code As “More Permanent” Than 404 Status Code

Google is now treating the 410 as “more permanent” than the 404. Yes, this is a minor change but it is likely an important change for webmasters to note.

Google Experimental Search

Sign in to Google and do a search. If there’s relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called “Results from people in your social circle.”

Bye Bye, Beacon

Facebook will officially end Beacon, and pay $9.5M in damages, according to Read Write Web.

Photo from: News go up on Flickr

Hi all,

Here are the latest headlines for you to check out. I think the two that really jump out at me this week are Twitter on Bing and Aardvark.

Oh, and if you had a really sweet site on GeoCities… yeah… that’s gone.

Enjoy!

46% of Local Searchers Visit Businesses In-Store – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)
Geesh! Facebook Sure Gets A Lot of Pageviews

Facebook accounts for 25% of U.S. online pageviews.

YouTube Lets Marketers Think Global or Act Local at WaWa Hoagiefest – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

What were the results? Their campaign:
– Generated interest and awareness of the Hoagiefest 2009 promotion;
– Drove over 500,000 unique visitors to the campaign microsite;
– Received CTRs 500% higher than typical rates from other placements; and
– Achieved a cost of $7 per hour of site interaction time.

Social Sites Send Fewer, but More Loyal Visitors than Search

Studying 33 million uniques across its publisher network last month, Chitika used the criterion of four or more visits over the course of a week to indicate a loyal visitor. They found that Facebook and Digg had the best loyalty rates

Flickr! It’s made of people! « Flickr Blog

People in Photos lets you add a member to a photo, find photos of people you know, and manage which photos you’re in.

Google’s Social Search for You and Yours

There’s a new Google product called “Social Search” that is launching soon in Google Labs. This is a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people.

Google Also Getting Access To Twitter – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.

Bing Twitter
AT&T Activates Citizen-Shills to Oppose Net Neutrality

It appears that proponents of net neutrality–and AT&T’s detractors–have jumped on a single line of the wordy memo:

We encourage you, your family and friends to join the voices telling the FCC not to regulate the Internet. It can be done through a personal email account by going to www.openinternet.gov and clicking on the “Join the Discussion” link.

Astroturfing – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Astroturfing is an English-language euphemism referring to political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but designed to mask its origins to create the impression of being spontaneous, popular “grassroots” behavior.

Yahoo Revenue Down 12%, Net Income Up 244%

Even with lower revenue, they ended up with a substantially higher net income

Aardvark Launches Website: Social Search Meets Answers Site Mashup – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Here’s how it works.

Type in your question and wait for a response. People in the Aardvark community will answer it. You’ll get an email when they do. You can also answer other people’s questions.

Yahoo! Search Blog » Blog Archive » Site Explorer Update: Brand New Dashboards, Now With More SearchMonkey

We’ve also included Yahoo! Search keyterms and Delicious bookmark information for this page. Site Explorer gives you a great way to explore all sorts of metadata about your pages, whether it comes from SearchMonkey, Delicious, or our term extraction code.

Google Analytics Unveils 7 Major Updates – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Motion Charts This takes your data and visualizes it using colors and bubbles.

Goodbye GeoCities: Yahoo Shuts Down GeoCities Today

Yes, if you have not moved your content, images, videos and sites to a new platform – they will likely be forever gone and forgotten.

Every Thing You Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask: Iran Launches Qur’anic Search Engine – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

An Iranian search engine dedicated to Islamic teachings and records online for Qur’anic websites was launched this week

Photo from: good news? on Flickr

Hi all,

There appears to be a lot of interesting news this week. Here it is in all its glory:

Yahoo Site Explorer Adds Key Terms, Delicious Activities, Delicious Tags & SearchMonkey Objects

The new data is on the summary page and includes:

* Key Terms
* Delicious Activities
* Top Delicious Tags
* SearchMonkey Objects

Google Confirms Higher Click Through Rate As Result of Ads Position To Free Listings

We changed the maximum width, decreasing the spacing between the search results and the right hand side ads on wide screen. With that it increased the click-through rate on the right hand side ads and I think we did that some time around the second week in August.

Yahoo! Dropping Paid Inclusion Program at End of Year – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Yahoo! will exit Search Submit at the end of 2009.

Google Gives a Thumbs-up to Reputation Management

Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business. If you can get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of harm that that negative or embarrassing content can do to your reputation.

Sorry, Yahoo, You DO Index The Meta Keywords Tag

The test was simple. I placed a unique word in the meta keywords tag on the home page of Search Engine Land. This word — xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk — generated no results on Yahoo when I looked earlier this week. Today, when I searched, it brought back the Search Engine Land home page. Thus, Yahoo indeed indexes the content of that tag.

Google is Finally Killing PageRank

We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.

Quickly Share Private YouTube Videos

They are required to have a YouTube or Google Account, but you don’t need to know what their account name is – you just send them the URL.

comScore Releases September 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings – comScore, Inc

In September 2009, Americans conducted 13.8 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 64.9 percent search market share. Microsoft Sites grabbed 9.4 percent market share, representing a slight gain versus August.

Inside AdWords: New AdWords Bidding Tutorial

Bid Simulator takes some of the guess work out of cost per click (CPC) bidding by estimating the number of clicks or impressions you could have received if you had used a different maximum CPC bid.

LinkedIn Reaches 50 Million Users Worldwide – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

This morning, LinkedIn reached the milestone of 50 million members. CEO Jeff Weiner says that about 50% of the users are from the U.S. and the other half from the rest of the world.

Comcast, Black Arrow Join To Test Dynamic Ad Insertion in VoD – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Previous ad insertions had been static, where the ads had to be placed into the content before hand, the new technology allows the ads to be inserted on the fly.

Search Ad Spend Up 10% in Q3 2009, Per SearchIgnite Report – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

The data shows that U.S. search spend flat year-over-year but up 10% quarter-over-quarter

Google Agencyland

Google AgencyLand is a free learning and resource platform to help agencies and third-party partners stay current on digital media, and plan, execute, and manage advertising campaigns using Google solutions.

Photo from: Imagination.vg on Flickr

Here are the latest SEM headlines. You should be aware that there are some mildly goofy things going on with the SERPs at Google. So, you might read up on Will Google’s Penalties Hurt or Help Google Remain Relevant? For all you SEO techies, brush up on Trailing Slashes. You should also be aware that Google Sidewiki now ranks in the search engine results. And you might want to try Eye Tracking Without The Eyes. It’s free and looks cool. Last but not least, the meta keyword tag is finally officially totally completely dead.

Here are all of the headlines I thought you might find of interest:

Will Google’s Penalties Hurt or Help Google Remain Relevant?

Looking at the Google results, for standard queries, simply did not satisfy many SEOs and SEMs.

Some Social Media Stats for Your Weekend

Experian® Hitwise® announced today that Facebook accounted for 58.59 percent of all U.S. visits among a custom category of 155 social networking Web sites in September 2009.

Trailing Slashes: Root Domain Same Page But File Names Can Be Different Pages

The root, slash or no slash are the same. However, file names are different when you add or remove a slash. Keep that in mind when you create pages.

HTML Sitemap vs. XML Sitemap: Google Says HTML Comes First

When Matt from Google was asked if you had a choice, which one would you pick, he picked an HTML Sitemap because both users and spiders can chew on it.

YouTube Now Serving More Than a Billion Views a Day – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

“Today, I’m proud to say that we have been serving well over a billion views a day on YouTube.”

There are more videos being watched on YouTube than there are searches being conducted on Google in the United States.

Google Sidewiki and SEO — Relevant to Each Other? – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Brand managers, brace yourself: Individual Google Sidewiki comment “pages” can gain search engine rankings of their very own.

Eye Tracking Without The Eyes – AttentionWizard.com Beta – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Recent advances in the study of computational attention and human visual processing now offer a new and exciting alternative. Computer algorithms can be used to simulate where people will look during the first few seconds of interacting with your site and create a detailed attention heatmap of your landing page.

SiteTuners.com has recently announced the launch of a FREE private beta program (limited to the first 5000 sign-ups) for it new AttentionWizard.com visual attention simulation tool.

FTC Confirms Bloggers Need Not Fear the $11,000 Fines

Richard Cleland: “That $11,000 fine is not true. Worst-case scenario, someone receives a warning, refuses to comply, followed by a serious product defect; we would institute a proceeding with a cease-and-desist order and mandate compliance with the law. To the extent that I have seen and heard, people are not objecting to the disclosure requirements but to the fear of penalty if they inadvertently make a mistake. That’s the thing I don’t think people need to be concerned about. There’s no monetary penalty, in terms of the first violation, even in the worst case. Our approach is going to be educational, particularly with bloggers. We’re focusing on the advertisers: What kind of education are you providing them, are you monitoring the bloggers and whether what they’re saying is true?”

Yahoo Drops The Meta Keywords Tag Also

It is official, no major search engines use the meta keywords tag for ranking purposes in their search algorithms.

Picture from: Weekly World News #001 on Flickr

Here are the latest news headlines I found interesting in the Web marketing world.

Enjoy!

Display Ads Experiencing Sharp Decline in Clicks, comScore Finds – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Clicks on display ads have seen a decline. In the 2007 study, 32% of internet users clicked on ads. In 2009, just 16% clicked. 8% of the Internet user base accounts for 85% of the click

Google Adds New Search Options

You can filter your results now by:

* Past hour
* Specific date range
* Shopping info—whether you want to see more or less
* Pages you’ve visited (or not)
* Sources, including blogs, books and news

Bloggers Face $11k FTC Fines For Not Disclosing Paid Endorsements

the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

Social Media Press Release Blown Away in Hail of Bullets – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

And one of her findings jumped off the page. She said, “Don’t use formatting. Many portal sites don’t accept it. (For the technical folks, we’re talking about XHTML.) Ditch the bullets, the itallics and bold type. It complicates the code and makes it more difficult for your release to be syndicated. ”

Corliss added, “Use social media and multimedia elements in your PR strategy, not your press releases.”

Twitter Blog: Soon to Launch: Lists

The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.

AdSense for Feeds: A small yet noteworthy change to our item stats link serving

As of today we are changing this to be a “301 Permanent Redirect” because we’ve looked at the traffic enough to tell that there some benefit to changing this to a “301 Permanent Redirect” – in that some search engines that index the feeds themselves will consider these to be additional links that should be used in determining the popularity of your site.

66% Americans Don’t Want Ad Tracking…or “2 for 1″ on Coke 12-Packs

66 percent that said tailored ads were “not OK,” an additional 7 percent said such ads were not OK when they were tracked on the site. An additional 18 percent said it was not OK when they were tracked via other Web sites, and an additional 20 percent said it was not OK when they were tracked offline.

It’s Froogle, No It’s Google Products, No It’s Google Base, No It’s Google Merchant Center
The Google Merchant Center will replace Google Base for those who submit products through Google Base.

So what is Google Base for? Well, anything else that you want to submit data to Google. Other data includes upload real estate, jobs and vehicles.

Picture from: Today’s News is Tomorrows History on Flickr

Here are the headlines the made an impact on me. I hope you find them of interest as well…
Microsoft Windows 7 House Party: Public Relations Disaster or Video Marketing Triumph? – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

If you create something so bad that it goes viral, is it a public relations disaster or a video marketing triumph?

Google Hot Trends Now in Google Search Results

The goal is for Google to show this hot trends box in the search results for any trending topics.

Udorse: Turn Your Web Photos Into Product Placements – Advertising Age – Media Morph

HOW IT WORKS: From Facebook, Udorse pulls people’s pictures and those shared by friends; it’s now working to extract photos from other social-media networks like MySpace and LinkedIn.

Click anywhere in the picture to tag the item you want to endorse, fill in a short endorsement form, and if the brand you enter is a Udorse partner, you pocket a proceed from the brand if your friends take an action the brand has agreed to pay for.

120.5 million viewers watched nearly 10 billion videos on YouTube in August 2009 – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

161 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month, the largest audience ever recorded.

New Study: One Word Describes Affiliate Marketing via Social Networks – Craptastic!

Only 2% of US online buyers have purchased products through social networking sites.

Forrester says that we shouldn’t rely on social networks to drive purchases anytime in the next five years!

Google’s New Keyword Tool Unveils Mobile Search Volume

Advertisers seem to be really excited about Google breaking out the mobile search volume from standard search volume.

Google Maps, Whereis Direct You To Advertisers

In the coming weeks Google will put logos for fast food chains, coffee shops, hotels and travel agents on its popular maps site.

Social Media Ad Spend on the Rise

Consumer activity on social networking and blogging sites accounted for 17 percent of all time on the Internet in August 2009, up from 6 percent a year ago, Nielsen estimates. At the same time, it believes ad spending on social networking and blogging sites grew 119 percent, from an estimated $49 million in August 2008 to $108 million last month. Expressed as a percentage of total U.S. online ad spend, ad expenditures on social networking sites climbed from 7 percent in August 2008 to 15 percent last month.

Linking To Affiliates? Better Nofollow Those Links or Google Will Penalize You

So, if you have affiliate links that you have not nofollowed, you better nofollow them. If you don’t, well, then you join the ranks of sites link the one in the thread or like this site. Yes – before you all comment that we don’t nofollow our paid links, I admit it, we don’t.

Digital Media: Microsoft to Test Looking Glass Platform – Advertising Age – Digital

The idea is to connect social-media-monitoring tools to the rest of a marketer’s organization — customer databases, work orders, customer-service centers and sales data. Looking Glass will pull in a variety of feeds from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr and work with third-party data sources as well

Google Sidewiki Enables Comments for Every Web Site – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

A new Google Toolbar feature allows web users to read and comment on any and every web site. The feature is called Google Sidewiki and is available for the Firefox and IE versions of the Toolbar.

Photo from: News anchor on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Hi all,

Here are the latest happenings in the SEM news world.

I thought’s I’d try a summary of the most important and interesting articles.

I’d like to point out Kate’s post, Paid Search Site Targeting and Exclusion. That’s a good find. You can now bulk verify Google Business listings in, AdWords Agency Blog: Signed, sealed, bulk verified. DoubleClick is Now Integrated With Google AdWords so you can do more with display media. And AdCenter has a New Image Ads Pilot. Anyone who likes to live on the bleeding edge of Web marketing might want to give that a try.

Here are all the headlines I found interesting:
Community Sherpa

CommunitySherpa provides a turn key solution to building and managing a social media marketing program for apartment communities, residents and prospects. CommunitySherpa takes the risk and complexity out of social media marketing, creating a new kind of Internet Marketing presence for your property management company. We will improve your visibility on Google, increase your web traffic, enhance your resident retention and turbo-charge your referral programs.

Pricing:
The monthly maintenance fee for the one-year base program is $350; fulfillment begins on the contract start date, and the customer is guaranteed that the full program will be up and running within 45 days. The program continues for 13 months from the contract start date.

Google Lets You Tell Them Which URL Parameters To Ignore

A new feature has appeared in the Site Configuration Settings Sections of Google Webmaster Tools. The setting, called Parameter Handling, enables site owners to specify up to 15 parameters that Google should ignore when crawling and indexing the site.

Paid Search Site Targeting and Exclusion

Yahoo Search Marketing began sharing this same information, as well. Their report is named the Ad Delivery Report.

DoubleClick Now Integrated With Google AdWords, Impacts AdSense

The DoubleClick ad network will be directly integrated into AdWords. This expands the content network, which means AdSense publishers should see more ads, hopefully higher paying ads.

AdWords Agency Blog: Signed, sealed, bulk verified

Business owners can now verify bulk uploaded listings as well, provided that their bulk uploads satisfy the following requirements:

Online Video Streams Increase 41% in August 2009 – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

The number of videos watched increased 41% last month compared to August of 2008. Unique viewers were up 18% and vids per viewer were up 19.6%.

Yahoo Site Explorer Adds Top Queries Report

The new tool is named “Top Queries” and it basically shows you the top ten searches you come up for a specific day, week or month. It shows the number of views and clicks you received for those top queries. In addition, it shows you your top URLs as well.

Confused About Bid Simulator? Let Google’s Chief Economist Explain – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Last month, Google launched Bid Simulator in AdWords. The idea behind the simulator is to calculate whether or not spending more or less would be more cost-effective.

Facebook Hits 300 Million–and Cash Positive

They’re now at 300 million members—you know, roughly the population of the US. But unlike the US, Facebook has also entered the world of “free cash flow positive.”

87% Won’t Allow Google To Manage Their AdWords Accounts

Just take a look at the pie chart, 87% said no, they would not allow Google to manage their AdWords campaigns. That is out of about 150 responses from our readers.

Twitter Hires exGoogler, FeedBurner Founder Dick Costello as COO – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Twitter has hired Dick Costello, former Google executive and FeedBurner founder, as their new COO. Costello left Google in July.

Help Us Test Our New Image Ads Pilot in the U.S. – adCenter Blog – Microsoft Advertising Community

We’re excited to announce a pilot for our new Image Ads offering in the U.S. – and we’re looking for small to mid-sized businesses to test it out with us! Image Ads are display ads that can be purchased on a CPC or a CPM-basis. These ads currently run on our Content Ads network, including top MSN sites.

Bing Launches Visual Search Into Beta – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Bing is introducing a new beta feature: Visual Search. This will not replace text-based results. Instead, you can choose to use it or not from the Bing home page or from results. It’s rolling out to US users initially.

Photo by: Marketing News on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

There were a lot of really interesting headlines in the Web marketing arena this past week. It seemed like every story I encountered I wanted to tell you about.

Here’s to the ever evolving Web marketing industry….

Social Media Marketing & Women | SageRock Blog

When broaching an online campaign within the social space, your message must be more than just “Hey, come to our site and buy stuff.” Instead, target the right audience, reflect thought, necessity, and personality, and never run a campaign for the sake of running a campaign.

WordPress Enters Real-Time: 7.5 Million Blogs Reach Twitter Speed

With updates as fast as Twitter, RSS could see a renaissance in terms of usage and innovation. We could be seeing new apps and developers using RSSCloud to make news instant. Real-time conversations are possible in RSS as well, meaning we could see a whole new form of blogging really soon.

Affiliate Marketers to Courts – Kill the Amazon Tax!

This started in May 2008 with New York, and quickly spread to California, Minnesota, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Hawaii, and other states. Affiliate marketing advocates were successful in stopping the laws from passing in most states, however Rhode Island and North Carolina have passed similar laws to New York.

The question is whether the vendors must collect that tax on behalf of the state. Generally, only those companies that have a physical presence — like an office or store — in the state where the purchase is made are required to collect the tax.

The new law is based on a novel definition of what constitutes a presence in the state: It includes any Web site based in the state that earns a referral fee for sending customers to an online retailer.”

Job Seekers and Social Media: Not So Perfect Together

The findings were more likely to get candidates rejected than hired: 35% of HR professionals said social networking content had caused them to eliminate a candidate, while only 18% reported deciding to employ someone based on a profile.

Facebook Goes A-Twitter with @ Tags, With a Twist – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Now, Facebook is jumping on the @ bandwagon. If you want to reference another Facebook member in your update, use the @ symbol and start typing in their name. The twist is that the @ symbol won’t appear in the update, but it will hyperlink the name of the person you’ve tagged.

If Your Domain Includes “Google” the Search Giant is Coming For Ya!

Just ask Absolutee Inc which registered googlewebmarketing.com hoping to convince us all that it was the go-to place for, well, Google web marketing. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t think that Google might have something to say about it.

Google’s Sitelinks Within Search Result Snippets

Well, now it seems like Google is trying to put these types of links directly in the search engine snippet (i.e. the description in the search results, under the page title).

Would You Allow Google to Manage Your AdWords Account?

Google has a whole fleet of staff ready to help you set up and continue to maintain your Google AdWords account. And they do it for free. The issue is, at least according to the stories in the thread, they don’t manage the accounts as effectively or as smart as you would yourself or as a professional PPC management company. At least, those are the overwhelming opinions in the thread.

Facebook Lite Lights Up in US and India

The new service is designed for slower connections and to help foster the immense international growth that Facebook is experiencing.

Connect Propelled Facebook Past MySpace

The number of websites participating in Facebook Connect has grown quickly to over 15,000 websites (globally) including CNN.com, NBC.com, ABCNews.com, Hulu, WashingtonPost.com, The Huffington Post, and others.

Get Your Google Voice Messages Directly in Gmail – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Now, Google has updated the alert so that you can play the message directly in your Gmail acocunt. In order to access the new feature, you need to turn on the Google Voice Player in the Gmail Labs tab.

Google – Internet Stats

This Google resource brings together the latest industry facts and insights. These have been collected from a number of third party sources covering a range of topics from macroscopic economic and media trends to how consumer behaviour and technology are changing over time.

Google Makes Search Bigger With Larger Search Box

The box is bigger, the text when you type is bigger and the search suggestions are bigger.

Google Base Feeds Can Now Include YouTube Video Demos for Product Search

The Google Base Blog announced that Google Base data feeds now support a new YouTube attribute that allows you to define if the product has a video demo on YouTube.

Have a Facebook Page? Post on Tuesdays

Perhaps even more important than when to post is when not to post: if you’re trying to get people to click, don’t post on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.

Blogging Small Businesses have 55% More Traffic, 97% More Inbound Links – Search Engine Guide Blog

A recent study by Hubspot found that among their small business customers, those that blogged had 55% more traffic and 97% more incoming links than non-blogging small businesses.

Warning: Marketers Are Watching Your Children

Not every software provider is engaging in the practice, but EchoMetrix Inc’s Sentry and FamilySafe brands are called out in particular. Because the software “listens” to the instant messenger conversations of kids, it’s able to package that information for marketers interested in learning of the latest trends of this young demographic.

Longer Domain Registration Does Not Increase Google Search Engine Rankings

A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates — how could we compare domains with expiration dates to domains without that information? It seems that would be pretty hard, and likely not worth the trouble. Even when we do have that data, what would it tell us when comparing sites that are otherwise equivalent? A year (the minimum duration, as far as I know) is pretty long in internet-time .

Study Exposes Difficulty in Measuring Twitter Influence – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

So, who has the best influence? Is it the person with the most ReTweets? Is it the person with the most responses to an average Tweet?

Photo by: Daily News Papers on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Here are the latest headlines from the last week in the Web marketing arena:

Google Domestic Trends – Google Finance

Google Domestic Trends track Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy. Changes in the search volume of a given sector on google.com may provide unique economic insight.

Fox Juices ‘Fringe’ Re-Runs with Twitter Twist – PC World

The network will introduce this week “tweet-peats” — an on-screen scroll of Twitter messages from cast and producers that will appear during the episodes.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt On The Future Of Search: “Connect It Straight To Your Brain”

So I don’t know how to characterize the next 10 years except to say that we’ll get to the point – the long-term goal is to be able to give you one answer, which is exactly the right answer over time.

Bad Neighborhood – Link Exchange Tool

This tool will scan the links on your website, and on the pages that your website is linking to, and flag possible problem areas.

20% of Online Advertising is on Social Networks

More than one in five of all online ads are served on social networks. MySpace still leads the pack with 9.2% of all online ads, and Facebook is a close second with 8.2%.

Digg adds nofollow to some links

We’ve added rel=”nofollow” to any external link that we’re not sure we can vouch for. This includes all external links from comments, user profiles and story pages below a certain threshold of popularity.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Tips for News Search

After careful note-taking throughout our conversations, the News team and I compiled this presentation to provide [the first person to post a comment on this post that they read this gets a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate] background and FAQs for all publishers interested in Google News Search.

NFL (No Fun League) Policies Around Social Media Expand

The NFL didn’t just stop with the league itself, though. The organization also said that media attending games will be prohibited from providing game updates through social networks

eZanga Launches Display Advertising Offering – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Search and online advertising company eZanga has added display advertising to their offering. With the new addition, search marketers can maximize their paid search campaigns by implementing a corresponding display campaign.

“Research has shown that exposure to both search and display ads from the same advertiser results in a 22 percent increase for conversion rates over search alone,” said Richard K. Kahn, CEO of eZanga.

Global Search Numbers: That’s A Lot of Zeros

According to comScore the number of global searches in July of 2009 topped 100,000,000,000 (that’s 100 billion for the calculator crowd). The actual number is around 113,000,000,000 (ok, that’s 113 billion), which represents a hefty 415 increase over July searches from 2008.

SpotMixer and Google Pair to Offer Self-Serve Online Video Ads – ClickZ

SpotMixer and Google also announced a YouTube contest in which small- and medium-sized businesses can win $25,000 worth of national TV advertising by submitting ads built with SpotMixer. The “TV for All” contest submission deadline is October 5, and winners will be announced on October 30.

Cup of Joe: The Fact of The Matter Is, I am Pretty Drunk Right Now

This is a great story about a great marketer. You will kick yourself if you don’t watch it.

U.S. Online Video Market Soars in July as Summer Vacation Drives Pickup in Entertainment and Leisure Activities Online – comScore, Inc

In July, Google Sites continued to rank as the top U.S. video property with a record 8.9 billion videos viewed, making up 42 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8 percent) followed by Microsoft Sites with 631 million videos viewed (3.0 percent).

In July, ScanScout Network ranked as the #1 video ad network with a potential reach of 80.1 million viewers, or 50.6 percent of the total viewing audience. Tremor Media ranked second with a potential reach of 71.1 million viewers (44.9 percent penetration) followed by YuMe Video Network with 68.1 million viewers (43.0 percent).

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet | Politics and Law – CNET News

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

Bing Offers Up Image Optimization Tips – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Wondering how important image search is? Schwartz addressed that very question as a panelist at the Image Search session at SES San Jose a few weeks back. He shared image search data from comScore for June 2009. Over 60 million searches produced more than 1 billion image searches.

Local Listings Come to Google Street View

Google is taking its local listings right into Street View now. The initial results look much the same, with the link for Street View—but now, when you go into Street View the local business listings and markers appear on the street-level photographs.

Search Engine Ranking Factors | SEOmoz

Every two years, SEOmoz surveys top SEO experts in the field worldwide on their opinions of the algorithmic elements that comprise search engine rankings. This year features contributors from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, the Ukraine, the Dominican Republic and many more.

Google to Offer Mortgage Quotes

“LendingTree recently learned that Google imminently plans to launch a loan aggregation service in late August or early September of this year that would compete with LendingTree,” the complaint says. “Lending Tree has also learned that Mortech intends to make its pricing engine services available for use with Google’s new service and will send information related to mortgage loan offers to be displayed to consumer on Google’s Web site.”

360i Report Outlines How Google Caffeine Differs from Old Google – Search Marketing News Blog – Search Engine Watch (SEW)

They came up with the following conclusions:

1. Domains and rankings will fluctuate.
2. The index size of single keyword search relevance will increase, meaning more competition.
3. Long-tail becomes more relevant.
4. Caffeine is faster. You’ll get results (SERPs) in half the time, on average.
5. Universal (aka Blended) results will increase
6. Social media listings will increase, primarily due to a lift in YouTube listings.

Social Media Gives Execs the Willies

Despite the head nodding about how it can help their business, the upper echelons of executives are just plain scared of what social media can do to their companies. As a result they are not really getting involved despite the recognition of the potential upside.

In Its Finance Site, Yahoo Leaves Google in the Dust – NYTimes.com

When serving financial news and information, for example, Yahoo draws 17.5 times the traffic of Google, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Is Sentiment Analysis Reliable?

I’m not entirely against sentiment analysis–70% accuracy is better than 0%–but I continue to be concerned that businesses are lulled into a false sense of security by it.