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Check out these stats:

Online Conversion Rate for Search Engine Terms by
Number of Keywords

Source: eMarketer, Inc. 2005

I know this is in no way comprehensive or particularly detailed in my analysis. But here are some links to online spider simulators that I’ve recently found.

http://www.searchwho.com/sw5-spider.html
- interesting info here

http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php
- pretty minimal

http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
- quite comprehensive

http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/
- this is layed out really well. Very stylized and informative

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-simulator.shtml
- a little jumbled with the information.

I searched these out because I often use the Lynx Viewer here:
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html to see what a prospect’s site would look like from a purely text format. You now need to upload a file on the server that confirms that you are in control of that site. I can’t do that in many cases because I’m using the viewer in the proposal stage of our relationship. So this all lead me on a journey to find some other tools.

- enjoy.

Google has successfully acquired yet another internet property. This time it was Dodgeball.com. Haven’t heard of Dodgeball? Don’t feel bad most people haven’t. Dodgeball takes text messaging to the extreme by allowing you to send a single message out that will go to all of your friends, friends of your friends (if they are within a certain radius of you) and up to 5 of your secret crushes (again, if they are with a certain area of you). Sounds like a great way to plan an impromptu party, right? Well, it’s only available in 22 cities in the US right now, but if we know Google, they’ll try to expand it and quickly.

The buy sort of makes sense. Google has already has a SMS service so this would just take that and add more functionality. Heck, this could even integrate into gmail. It seems like its a fun technology. I can’t wait until it comes to my area.

Dodgeball.com

This book comes highly recommend by Chris Sherman of SearchDay fame. It looks interesting and will likely go on my reading list:

Call To Action: How to Improve Your Conversion Rate

I’ve been reading a great book, Web.Studies edited by David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley. It is provides research and studies done on the web as a form of communication instead of a technology. I just finished the first section of the book and it presented an interesting website, www.touchgraph.com. TouchGraph creates a map of sites based on the “related” function in Google. This could be a great source to locate new places to find links. If you want to see this data a different way, just type in “related:yoururl.com” in Google, but personally, I think seeing a graph is easier to understand then a list from Google. As I come across more worthwhile resources in the book, I’ll be sure to pass them on.

Web.Studies

TouchGraph

Now I don’t know exactly what this person said about SEO Inc, and I don’t know anything about there company or their practices. But now I do know something, they have spread a viral wild fire discussing themselves in light of them trying to push a small guy around with their lawyers.

This is going to have good and bad consequences for SEO Inc. On the good side, they have instantly shot up on the awareness scale. “All publicity is good publicity.” The bad news is, they look like they are pushing around a little guy and his right to be heard.

If they know what they are doing and this is actually a marketing stunt, good for them. If they did this by mistake, they better be having a PR triage meeting right now to figure out how they are going to present themselves.

Here’s the blog post about the ceast and desist:
SEO Inc Sent Me a Cease & Desist

And here are the Google results for their name:
Google Search: SEO Inc
Man oh man. I want to take a Tums just thinking about how they’re handling all this.

Now I don’t know exactly what this person said about SEO Inc, and I don’t know anything about there company or their practices. But now I do know something, they have spread a viral wild fire discussing themselves in light of them trying to push a small guy around with their lawyers.

This is going to have good and bad consequences for SEO Inc. On the good side, they have instantly shot up on the awareness scale. “All publicity is good publicity.” The bad news is, they look like they are pushing around a little guy and his right to be heard.

If they know what they are doing and this is actually a marketing stunt, good for them. If they did this by mistake, they better be having a PR triage meeting right now to figure out how they are going to present themselves.

Here’s the blog post about the ceast and desist:
SEO Inc Sent Me a Cease & Desist

And here are the Google results for their name:
Google Search: SEO Inc
Man oh man. I want to take a Tums just thinking about how they’re handling all this.

This is pretty cool. It lets you get a feel for what search engines see when they see your web site.

Fredrick is at it again with another facinating article. Maybe we are just thinking about similar things. I’m always curious about when people actually do your most wanted response.

Today, we wait at least a month, sometimes two, in many verticals before changing PPC ad campaigns. If we increase campaign spending today, we must wait until all potential conversions generated by that adjustment are reflected in the campaign’s performance. Depending on the vertical, this can take as long as 90 days.

If you’re engaged in PPC advertising and adjusting spending or optimizing your campaign based on week-old data, you may be leaving money on the table. The higher the consideration for your product, the larger the conversion lag is likely to be.

Also, Fredrick is serving up different toll free numbers based on the url string of the page. So he controls how the leads are coming in at any degree of detail he would like. Excellent idea!
Search Advertising and Conversion Lag Times