The Impact of Call Tracking for Smart Marketers & Agencies
“Death of Detroit would wallop ad world” …”… nightmares of a blue Christmas” Shocking! Tell us something we don’t already know! Turning a few more pages I see, “As site traffic slows, online marketers tighten their holiday budgets.”
And that’s when I calmly fold-up my recent copy of Advertising Age and call my dentist to schedule that long avoided Novocain-free root canal! I mean really, all this doom and gloom is probably enough to send some folks home early for the holidays to hang out with the relatives they have successfully avoided all year long. But I’m an opportunist, so the timing couldn’t be better!
There has to be an opportunity here, right? We’ve heard a lot of noise in the trades about the fall of online display advertising in favor of performance-based advertising. The good news is that lower budgets and fewer advertisers can actually mean less competition. For smart local advertisers and their agencies, that is something to cheer about! Literally it means more business leads for less money and a higher return on investment, if campaigns are executed properly.
Dec 1, 2008 at 6:03pm ET 
By Ari Jacoby Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Locals Only
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 1, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Dec 1, 2008 at 5:06pm ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
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SearchBiz: Google’s Balancing Act, Mr. Schmidt Goes To Washington (?), Yahoo’s Next CEO, Autonomy Jumps The Highway, Black Friday Mixed & The Gift Of Smut-Free Free Internet Access
There’s lots of news today and from over the US holiday weekend. Much of it concerns Yahoo and Google, as it often does in this column. The big buzz generated over the weekend was from the UK’s Times Online report that there was a tentative deal reached between Yahoo and Microsoft to buy the former’s search business for $20 billion.
Dec 1, 2008 at 4:53pm ET By Greg Sterling Jump To Story & Comments
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Live Search Launches Instant Cashback For eBay Purchases
Microsoft just announced Live Search instant cashback rewards. This instant reward currently only applies to items purchased at eBay. If you make a purchase at eBay, using Live Search Cashback, you should see the rewards instantly in your PayPal account. Yes, you won’t have to wait 60 days to see the money.
Clearly, having instant cashback rewards with all their partners is something we would love to see. But for now, having eBay give you instant cash back is really nice to have.
Dec 1, 2008 at 2:41pm ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Microsoft: Live Search, Microsoft: Marketing
Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback Goes Dark On Black Friday
Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback program was reportedly down much of the day on Black Friday. This caused major concerns for customers who were excited to get large discounts on the day. In addition, TechFlash reports many customers purchased items from HP, expecting to receive 40% cash back rewards from Microsoft, only to see 3% show up after purchasing.
Between Microsoft’s Cashback having major uptime issue and not giving the rewards expected, Black Friday turned out to be a big bust for the program.
Dec 1, 2008 at 2:07pm ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Microsoft: Live Search, Microsoft: Marketing
Paid Search – Tips On Closing The Loop
Although paid search is far more trackable than many media - even online display advertising - many paid search campaign managers have difficulty tying detailed paid search data to actual sales. This is particularly true with long-sales-cycle campaigns, high touch lead generation campaigns, and campaigns that are designed to drive phone sales. Often, such campaigns track the cost of a lead or another metric that doesn’t necessarily tie them back to actual sales figures to get a sense of true conversions. This poses a problem in that uneven lead quality can lead to poor decisions in bidding, keyword selection, and so on.
In this article, I will discuss several ways companies can effectively attribute sales (or close the loop) in lead generation and phone sales campaigns.
Dec 1, 2008 at 12:57pm ET By Mona Elesseily Jump To Story & Comments
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SEO & The CMO: Why Analytics & Communication Is Crucial To Success
How many times have you heard the question from a key decision-maker: “So, after we do this optimization, what will our rankings be?” The answer is complex, and requires much more than simply “better than it was before” for your reply to be meaningful to the CMO tasked with moving the needle on a billion dollars in sales. Rankings are certainly one tangible way to measure SEO’s success, but at Agency.com we are working to move clients away from focusing on rankings and towards focusing on positive results that can be more accurately measured.
In today’s search environment, placement is completely dynamic and state-dependent. Everyone is looking at different data centers for starters. Add in search history, geotargeted results based on IP and universal search, and then compound that with Google’s SearchWiki, and pretty much everyone is going to get measurably different results when looking for the same terms.
Dec 1, 2008 at 12:26pm ET By Jonathan Ashton Jump To Story & Comments
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Google Image Search Now Trying Text Ads Instead Of Image Ads
When Google started officially placing ads on Google Image search, they used banner or image ads. I am now seeing reports that Google is going towards a text ad format.
Michael Gray noticed, as did the folks at AccuraCast.com that Google is now placing three text ads in Google Image Search. In the past, Google placed one image or banner ad in the image search results, either at the top or at the bottom.
Dec 1, 2008 at 8:31am ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Google: AdSense, Google: AdWords, Google: Images
SEMPO Wants Your Input
SEMPO is launching its 5th annual State-of-the-SEM Market Survey, and if you’re a practicing search marketing professional, they’d like to hear from you, whether you are a member of SEMPO or not. Last year, close to 900 respondents answered the SEMPO survey, and the results always paint a fascinating portrait of our industry. This year, obviously, the focus will be on the economy and how it has (or hasn’t) had an impact on the industry.
Not sure you want to take the time? As an incentive, SEMPO is offering an iPod Touch and a free pass to SMX West, or one of the SES conferences. Ready to play? Take the SEMPO survey here.
Dec 1, 2008 at 8:00am ET By Chris Sherman Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In SEM Industry: Stats, Stats: Spend Projections
Good News: SMX West Agenda Up December 6. Bad News: Pre-agenda Price Expires December 5.
It’s time to reserve your seat for Search Marketing Expo — SMX West, February 10-12, 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Act now and get an All Access pass for only $995. You can be confident that SMX West will deliver all the content, keynotes and community you need to drive more traffic to your web site and make more online sales. We guarantee it!
Dec 1, 2008 at 12:00am ET By Search Engine Land Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In SEM Industry: Conferences, SMX & SMN Alerts
Baidu’s Search Ad Revenue Drops 10-15% After Paid Ad Scandal
Chinese internet giant sacks staff over paid for search listings from the Guardian reports Baidu has dropped the ads of four clients after finding out their medical licenses were false. According to the Guardian, this has resulted in Baidu’s ad revenue dropping ten to fifteen percent, plus the release of several ad representatives who have allegedly helped these false medical practices gain top ranking in Baidu.
Nov 28, 2008 at 8:22am ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Legal: General, Search Engines: Baidu
The Biggest Web Site Usability Mistakes You Can Make
When you built your first web site, didn’t you just want to promote it everywhere with big bold letters saying, “HEY EVERYONE! COME HERE AND LOOK AT MY WEBSITE! ISN’T IT GREAT?” Or, when you submit your web site to forums for web site reviews, what do you typically ask for? You may write, “Tell me what you think of my web site” or “Which color do you like better, blue or red?” or “Did I optimize for search engines properly?”
The worst mistake you will make as a web site owner is to ask someone to “look” at your web site. It’s like the dreaded, “Do I look fat?” question. There’s never a safe answer. For starters, someone may look slim standing up, but resemble the Buddha when sitting on a couch. You need to assign tasks to get honest answers to these tough questions.
To understand if your web site is meeting its usability requirements, ask people to take it for a spin and try it out—and more specifically, to see if they can answer the following questions:
Nov 28, 2008 at 8:00am ET By Kim Krause Berg Jump To Story & Comments
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Happy Thanksgiving & Programming Note
Happy Thanksgiving Search Engine Land readers! Today, in observance of the holiday, we hope to not write here today. So make sure to tune in tomorrow for today’s search news and tomorrows.
To give you something fun to look at, I’ll post what I did at the Search Engine Roundtable, a collection of special Thanksgiving logos from across the search industry.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Nov 27, 2008 at 7:47am ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In AOL: General, Ask: General, Google: Logos, Microsoft: General, Microsoft: Live Search, SEM Industry: General, Yahoo: General
Measuring the Effectiveness of B2B SEO
Many B2B marketers have difficulty justifying the value of search engine optimization (SEO) to senior level executives. Since SEO is a highly-efficient marketing channel with longer-lasting results than most mediums, establishing ROI is challenging yet critical. Here are a few suggestions on how to best integrate web analytics data with other tools to prove the value of SEO.
Web analytics data is the foundation
The cornerstone of any successful SEO program is accurate web analytics data. Don’t have an analytics package? Google Analytics is a great free option that provides most of the data points you need for SEO measurement. The information derived from your analytics tool is instrumental in determining the success of your optimization program - and this data can also reveal critical areas for future improvement.
Nov 26, 2008 at 7:55pm ET By Shellie Foriska Jump To Story & Comments
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Q&A with Paul O’Brien, Vice President of Marketing at Zvents.com
Paul O’Brien is an old-hand at the online marketing game, having honed his skills with brands such as Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. I recently had an opportunity to chat with Paul, and it’s always impressive to meet well-rounded, knowledgeable thought leaders like him. If you think you have heard Paul’s name before, it could be because you recently read Online Marketing Heroes, in which he’s one of the 25 interviewed.
Nov 26, 2008 at 7:38pm ET By Duane Forrester Jump To Story & Comments
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SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 26, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Nov 26, 2008 at 5:13pm ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In SearchCap
SearchBiz: MSFT’s Online Struggles; More on Yahoo-AOL; Cuts At Technorati
Fortune magazine asks why Microsoft can’t make money online, and shares some striking numbers: The company’s Online Services unit, which includes Live Search, aQuantive, and the MSN portal, lost $480 million in the quarter that ended September 30th — 80% more than the same quarter a year ago. Ouch!
Why the struggles? The article suggests that Microsoft is trying to do too much online, and that, by being so late to the search game, it’s playing an impossible game of catch-up to Google:
Nov 26, 2008 at 4:03pm ET By Matt McGee Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Search Biz
Crappy MP3 Sites, Comment Spamming & Enough Already
In covering search marketing for the past 13 years, I’ve tried not to be judgmental about certain marketing tactics some people might undertake. Search engines have “rules” that they themselves knowingly allow others to break. Arguments erupt over the idea that any type of marketing is “manipulation.” But at some point, enough is enough with some tactics. And today, I’m done. I’m calling bullshit on anyone who is link spamming or creating crappy nonsensical content sites.
Seriously, enough. You’ve wasted enough of my time, and you’ve wasted enough time of people all over the web. I’ll give you a personal illustration of this below. Sure, I’ll skewer Google along the way.
Nov 26, 2008 at 2:20pm ET By Danny Sullivan Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Features: General, SEM Industry: Community, SEM Industry: General, SEO: Spamming, Top News
Yahoo Launches “Vertical Lens” Search Through BOSS
Yahoo announced an expansion to the BOSS technology named “vertical lens” technology. In short, this allows developers build their own vertical search engines using Yahoo’s search technology, through BOSS. This new technology is replacing Yahoo’s old Search Builder tool.
TechCrunch is one of the first to deploy a “vertical lens” on their site. TechCrunch’s solution searches technology-focused articles on both TechCrunch.com and across Yahoo’s web index. So this helps improve TechCrunch’s internal site search, and also give searchers other relevant search results that are not found on TechCrunch’s domain. Here is a picture that shows how TechCrunch implemented this BOSS technology:
Nov 26, 2008 at 12:00pm ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Yahoo: Search, Yahoo: Search Builder
comScore: Yahoo Still Major Player In Japan
comScore has released metrics on search market share in Japan. Overall, in September, Japanese searchers searched 5.9 billion times, with an average of 96 searches per user.
Yahoo is beating Google out in searches, with over 3 billion searches conducted on Yahoo properties. Google properties counted for just under 2.3 billion searches. Yahoo has a 51.2% market share in Japan, while Google has 39% share, while Microsoft has a 1.5% share with 90 million searches.
Nov 26, 2008 at 11:47am ET By Barry Schwartz Jump To Story & Comments
See Related Stories In Stats: Popularity, Stats: comScore
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