Posted by great scott!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Crawling & Indexing from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by randfish

I'm not always a fan of Guy Kawasaki's work, but really enjoyed his post on the OPEN Forum - A Dozen Don'ts for Entrepreneurs. I thought I'd take a stab at replicating it with some of my biggest warnings for those in our field.

For the list below, the word "clients" is interchangeable with "marketing manager" or "executive team" for in-house SEOs.

Your turn - any "don'ts" you'd recommend to fellow SEOs?

p.s. If you haven't read the whole Malcolm Gladwell vs. Chris Anderson with Seth Godin weighing in thing, it's pretty worthwhile :-)

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Posted by RobOusbey

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Posted by randfish

My good friend, Aaron Kahlow, posed an interesting question during the Online Marketing Summit yesterday afternoon in Portland, OR. Aaron asked:

If a client came to you with $1 million to invest in a single Internet marketing channel, which one would you choose?

Obviously, the question is a bit ridiculous (given that there's no additional detail provided), but it's designed to elicit an "off-the-cuff" response to a challenging scenario. The answer, of course, is "it depends" - and therein lies the rub. On what does it depend? Well... That's what I hope to answer with this blog post. My goal is not to solve the issue for an individual campaign, but from a very strategic level - asking questions like "where is the company today and where does it want to get to?" then applying those answers to the selection of marketing opportunities. Let's start by defining the macro-level channels themselves, then examine how we'd reach the right conclusions.

Internet Marketing Channels

Some of these may overlap - for example, viral content campaigns may simply be a means to an end of better search engine optimization - but as they can all be separate entities, engaged in for their own purposes, I've made them distinct.

Primary Variables to Use in the Selection Process

Although other factors should certainly play into the decision making, these three elements are excellent for narrowing down the options:

General Tiers of ROI, Effort & Cost by Channel

These are based on my personal opinions (though, based on conversations, they appear to reflect the experiences of many web marketers and internal marketing departments). 

I suspect there will be lots of contention about these, particularly from marketers who specialize in non-tier 1 activities. I do think that over time, activities like social media marketing and viral may move to tier 1, but as yet, I believe that companies haven't seen the same consistency or trackability in ROI from these as Tier 1 channels. The eMarketer research I showed this weekend certainly suggests that these newer investments may have a chance to prove themselves fairly quickly.

Formulas for Choosing the Right Channel

Once again, I'm using my own opinions and experiences, but you can use this same format to help with your own decisions, even if the ordering is somewhat different:

And of course, last, but not least, there's the strengths of your organization to consider. If you have amazing talent in these fields, that might sway you to lean more towards particular activities as shown below:

That wraps up my brief, high level summation of this tough question, and hopefully it can help some marketers and marketing departments to find the right paths for their organizations/clients.

I'd, of course, love to hear your feedback and ideas as well.

p.s. OMS Seattle is tomorrow, and I'll be speaking there in the afternoon - hope to see some of you there!

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Posted by MikeK@DanconiaMedia

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

It's been said here before: Press releases are much less powerful than they used to be for SEO purposes. While churning out news releases and submitting them to free sites may not do much, the medium can actually be more powerful than ever if used right. Convincing a single reporter or high-profile blogger to pick up your news is infinitely more beneficial than posting worthless releases all over the place and Digg'ing and StumbleUpon'ing them with your multiple accounts.

I have a somewhat unique perspective about news releases. Not too long ago, I worked full-time as a newspaper reporter, and my inbox was regularly inundated with press releases. Some of them caught my attention and were turned into lengthy stories. Others, however, failed to captivate me or my peers and, as a result, went nowhere.

Here are some tips on how to craft your releases in a way that increases the odds of them getting noticed by the media:

Get to the point. Make it clear from the get-go what your release is about. Don't try to be cute. I used to get releases all the time from PR people who buried the news or tried to get creative with their writing. Sometimes, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what some releases were even about. If you're looking for a creative outlet, press release writing is not the avenue. Try writing a short story.

At least pretend you're objective. Obviously, you have a vested interest in what you're writing about, but it's still important to craft your releases like down-the-middle news stories. Avoid unnecessary adjectives; most adjectives are unneeded. You don't want your release to read like an advertisement. Pick out the newsiest element and concentrate on that.

Speak English. I see releases all the time that are stuffed with industry jargon that most people do not understand. Don't assume that what you're writing about is a familiar subject for the people who'll read your release. Dumb it down. Assume your release will be read by the densest guy in the room.

Send it out manually. Instead of just dumping your releases into submission sites and hoping someone important notices, email it yourself to media outlets and bloggers you think might be interested in it. If you're publicizing a new product, send your release to newspapers in the company's area. If you can, find out which reporters cover the relevant beat and send it to them directly; that usually only takes a phone call.

Have good timing. If you're looking for coverage, sending your release out on Election Day or after hours on a Friday is goofy. Those are good times to release bad news you're obligated to report – any White House spokesman will tell you that – but it'll do you no good unless your story is wildly sensational. News outlets are typically more desperate for copy during the summer months and around holidays.

Act like a human. Interactivevoices' post about getting a link from CNN.com – the only PR10 news site – illustrated this perfectly. There's no harm in picking up the phone and calling reporters directly to see if they're interested in your story. For all you know, the only thing preventing your news from being published is an over-finicky spam filter.

Don't beg. When I was working as a reporter, I didn't realize why some sources were so hellbent on me including links in my stories. Now I know. If your link is relevant to the story, the reporter will probably include it. If not, you're still getting good publicity.

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Posted by randfish

(Intro: This post continues a series of personal growth focused entries. It doesn't have much direct, applicable SEO value, so feel free to skip if that's what you're seeking)

I've learned more in the last 9 months than at any previous time in my life - about myself, about this company and about the worlds of venture capital, entrepreneurship and startups. And, in the spirit of transparency (one of our guiding principles and an ideal I haven't been maintaining as well as I could of late), I want to share, to talk about where SEOmoz is today and why we've decided to explore additional capital opportunities. In fact, I feel compelled - because even if only 100 people, or 10 or just 1 learn something here they can apply to themselves, it will be worthwhile.

Segments in this Post:

A Brief History

Let's start back in August of 2007. SEOmoz was tiny - 8 people growing a business out of a 1,000 sq. ft. office in Seattle's University District (man, do I miss that place) and two people who believed it was going to be much, much bigger - Kelly from Curious Office and Michelle from Ignition. It's only in retrospect that I can really appreciate their foresight, because when they invested $1.1 million in the company that November, I was an SEO geek who wanted to use that funding to solve an SEO problem. My dream was to better understand the web's link graph and how the engines could use that to rank sites & pages. I should have been thinking about the problems faced by those wanting to do SEO and how a scalable, technology solution could be used to help them - like what Vanessa Fox did when she built Webmaster Tools inside Google (more on that later).

Our first round of capital raising was very unique, and for that reason, may be less applicable than other advice on the topic. Nevertheless, I'll try to share that experience and the macro and micro-economic factors that impacted it.

Investment Data via NVCA Press Alert

You can see that not only was 2007 the most active year for venture capital investment, but that Q4 of 2007 was a particularly high spike. It's probably not surprising that SEOmoz took its funding in this type of environment - possibly the best time to raise money from an entrepreneur's perspective since 2000. Why? Because when deal flow is very high, terms tend to be more entrepreneur friendly. Ours certainly were.

It's uncommon (though not unheard of) for a firm like Ignition Partners, with over a billion dollars under management, to put so little capital into a company. Between Ignition & Curious, the amount raised was $1.1 million, less than half the size of their next smallest public investment (Crunchbase has a list here, though SEOmoz's funding amount is inaccurately reported as $1.25 million, and the participants inaccurately listed as 1 - and Ignition does do some smaller deals that aren't listed). Quantity wasn't the only outlier - our valuation, the terms themselves (things like vesting, board structure, preferences, etc.) were very good and the deal closed quickly. Today's funding environment could be a very different story. As you can see from the charts above, the floor fell out in the VC markets last October, and although May 2009 may have been a step forward, entrepreneurs who seek capital today shouldn't expect  seed or series A rounds to look the way they did in November of 2007.

SEOmoz was also helped in this deal by an important factor I think every startup should consider - WE DIDN'T NEED THE MONEY. We were already profitable and growing, already had a brand name in the industry and had attracted interest from multiple investors. I think that every entrepreneur who's considering startup-dom should think about establishing those goals before they go for institutional capital - a profitable, growing company with a product that's on the market and a brand name that's well known makes you:

This psychology is so powerful that I can't imagine doing it any other way. If I wanted to build a travel portal to take on Kayak.com, I'd start a great travel site (maybe even just a really interesting blog), build up some brand recognition, use advertising or low-cost premium features to drive revenue and only after those numbers made for a compelling story, approach investors. I'd use that same formula even for a capital intensive business - start with cool ideas, great writing and valuable resources, become a hub for your industry, show web traffic and positive interest, then go fundraise.

We started as a consulting business - in fact, SEOmoz is on a .org TLD because when I started the site, there wasn't even a business behind it (even the name "moz" comes from the ethos of open sharing pioneered by folks like DMOZ & the Mozilla foundation). Gillian and I were running a website design & development shop and learning SEO because our customers needed it and we had no other choice. Eventually SEOmoz got so big and popular as a blog that it made sense to conduct business under that name, and a few years later, we realized consulting wasn't the right way for us to scale this incredible community around us. Those decisions - made much more by accident than grand vision - gave us the credibility and the story that made investors excited.

And yeah, it didn't hurt that Q4 of 2007 was probably the best time to raise money in the last 8 years.

How Outside Capital Helped

Taking the outside investment proved to be an excellent decision, and, to be honest, even in today's market, I'd still consider raising money if I were in the same position again. Outside capital made me a better entrepreneur, focused our company more seriously on the things we needed to do and made us more accountable and metrics-driven. Some companies feel that pressure internally and can build those processes without external help. We needed that external pressure and it's been remarkable. I'll try to detail some of the big ways investment has helped us:

There are probably a dozen more ways that venture capital investment has helped SEOmoz, and I'm certain that many of them will be immeasurable and possibly even invisible. All of this isn't to say that VC doesn't have it's downsides - there are a few, and it pays to be aware of them:

As you can tell from my opinions above and my previous advice to myself, I'm a big proponent in spite of these potential detractors.

2007-2009 Growth 

This company looks very different than it did just 2 years ago, and I've been lax in sharing the kinds of numbers and data about the business that was once a signature of my blogging (see 2006 and 2007 financials, for example). While there's a lot that I'm obligated not to share, I'm going to go right up to that line - not just because I think it will make this story more interesting, but because it's part of our guiding principles.

Full-Time Employees

It's tough to build this chart, because the number of full-time folks fluctuates even inside a single year, but I've done my best to approximate the annual averages.

PRO Members

PRO membership has really taken off in the last 6 months - and while we doubled membership from 2007-2008, we were able to do that in just the first 6 months in 2009.

Revenue

Sadly, while I can't share exact numbers, this chart does give an accurate concept of where we are. 2009 is shaping up to be a very exciting year. Although I also can't show margin numbers, I will say that from Nov. 2007 to Nov. 2008, SEOmoz burned capital (approx. 3/4 of the investment we took). Starting in Dec. 2008 and continuing each month through to June 2009, we've been profitable and rebuilt a respectable cash reserve (of course, if you ask Sarah, we still need to sweat every penny of it).

Visits to the SEOmoz.org Website 

Traffic is growing nicely as well, though what this chart doesn't show is that 2009 has been virtually devoid of the types of "linkbait" that were a hallmark of the site in 2007 (and much of 2008). We've found that while those efforts can produce great traffic boosts and link growth, we need to focus on conversion rate optimization and the PRO membership product before we return to viral content generation.

A (Not-So) Short Story that Led to a Decision

Last October, just after we launched Linkscape, SEOmoz started fielding between 2-4 calls per month from venture capital firms seeking to place investment. These are exciting, flattering and fun calls to get, and in those initial conversations, the focus makes for an ego-padding chat. It's pretty easy to see why these investors were so interested - no, not because SEOmoz itself is all that awesome (they didn't even know much about us when they called) - it's because of the potential market for SEO:

Via eMarketer's Search Spending Swells Worldwide & Online Marketing Effectiveness

SEO is at or near the top for four different categories:

VCs love this stuff, and they love it even more when the market as a whole appears to be big and growing:

_ Data Source: SEMPO State of the Market Surveys

A predicted spend of just over $2 billion on SEO in 2009 suggests that SEO may finally be earning some respect, just as the growth in PPC spend slows its acceleration rate. Richard Zwicky's SEM analytics company, Enquisite, is an example of this market shift commanding respect. Enquisite's raised over $11 million in venture capital in the last few years (including a series B round of $8 million in February) . His favorite mantra is the disconnect I wrote about last october:

PPC: 88% of all SEM spend VS. SEO: 11% of all SEM spend

PPC: 10% of all search clicks VS. SEO: 90% of all search clicks

Markets don't stay this inefficient for long.

No wonder investors have jumped at opportunities like those Richard presented with Enquisite and others like Conductor ($10 million raised in April), Marin Software ($13 million raised in April), Optify ($2.75 million raised in Oct. '08) and Yield Software ($6 million raised in June '08). And no wonder they were calling up SEOmoz, hoping to learn more about us and see if there was an investment opportunity.

Despite these inquiries, our board meetings in October & November were very operational and tactical. We were at the tail end of turning around from cash flow negative to positive, and there were some high stress moments, capped off by a working "product" meeting in early December. At that roundtable, I presented some concepts for SEOmoz's future product direction and got shot down. And thank goodness I did.

The problem with entrepreneurs like me is that our creativity, emotional attachments to technology and love of product "coolness" can sometimes get in the way of making things that real people find really usable & useful. When that happens, it's even more essential to be surrounded by smart, secure people who feel up to the challenge of challenging you.

After the meeting ended, I spent a lot of time thinking strategically about where we needed to go. That thinking ended up in dozens of notepad pages, and I've shared a few below:

My goal was to get to the core of the "SEO Problem" with a software product, and luckily, I didn't have to go that road alone. Adam Feldstein, a longtime friend of mine, joined SEOmoz in January and we spent an entire week together in the mozplex's meeting room, diagramming a product evolution we've come to call "Turbomoz" internally (much as we did when Linkscape was called "Carhole").

Adam and I presented a walkthrough of our new plan in early April to a packed room, including the SEOmoz board and several internal folks. The feedback was terrific - they loved not only the product itself, but the simplicity, the design, the intuition behind it and the potential to reach a lot more of the market than just the intermediate-to-expert level SEOs that make up the majority of our members today. An early version of "Turbomoz" is set to release in late September.

A few weeks later, I headed to Boston, where I got to spend a lot of time with a great friend and mentor, Dharmesh Shah, the founder of Hubspot and blogger at OnStartups. Dharmesh and I talked a lot about our two companies - how they're growing, what the economic downturn has impacted, where we see opportunities and what makes a startup successful. It was a tremendous learning experience, and something I can't recommend enough to others. If you're currently running a business and can find someone with a similar model who's willing to exchange information and ideas, do it. Being a CEO can be a very lonely job - even close friends and family won't be able to empathize in the same way another CEO can. Many cities even have startup support groups (although they're not usually called that, exactly).

My visits with Dharmesh inspired me to be more self analytical and more self critical. If there are things in the business that aren't working, places where opportunity isn't being executed upon, and chances to make a difference, I owe it not only to myself, but to our investors and, most importantly, to my employees to make the change. As the late King of Pop said, "start with the man in the mirror."

Just a couple weeks later, I landed in San Francisco. If you haven't read the back-and-forth between Silicon Valley vs. Seattle VC/entrepreneur/tech startup, check out Glenn Kelman (Redfin's CEO) comparing the two, Michael Arrington responding & Glenn firing back. There's a grain of truth to the staments they make:

Sure Seattle is beautiful (Kelman talks about lakes and outdoor stuff a lot in his post). And if you want to have a balanced, healthy lifestyle, that’s a great place to do it. If you don’t think you have what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley, maybe Seattle or other mini-tech hubs is the place for you. But the best of the best come to Silicon Valley to see if they’re as good as the legends that came before them. It’s a competitive advantage to be here. And if you aren’t willing to take advantage of every possible advantage to make your crazy startup idea work, perhaps you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.

The "valley culture" of depriving oneself of everything else except work really does exist, and it's easy to become both enamored and afraid of it very quickly. But I also agree with Glenn that:

So even though all of us in Seattle would probably concede that Silicon Valley is generally better for startups than anywhere else, that doesn’t mean that we have to agree with Michael that Silicon Valley is always better, or better in every way. For starters, people in Seattle have helped me in an open-hearted, small-town way that I might not have found in the Valley.

And where Michael and I really disagree is on whether it is good some times to be away from all the me-too Valley companies trying to make money on Internet ads, even though he complains about them every day on TechCrunch.

I was very lucky to get some of that same "open-hearted, small-town" help, even in the Valley. A few years ago, Michael Eisenberg introduced me to Nirav Tolia, a former EIR with Benchmark, and the two of us have become fast friends. Nirav's just completed a test release of a great startup - Fanbase (should be launching formally in a few months) - and has introduced me to a number of terrific entrepreneurs, nearly all of whom have great interest in SEO. At dinner one night, a fellow CEO (Thomas Layton of Metaweb), crystalized the question that had been weighing on my mind for the last 8 months - should SEOmoz take another round of funding?

Here, word for word (to the best of my memory), is what Thomas said to me:

Let's make this easy. I'll give you three things, you prioritize them, and I'll tell you whether you should take the money.

I don't actually remember which one I picked on the spot... I think I struggled a bit to be confident in my response, and that's because honestly, I hadn't been asking myself that question, even though it's something every CEO/founder should inherently know. A few days later, though, the answer was clear - #3. I want SEOmoz to be all that it can be. I believe in SEO. I believe in the people here. And I believe that with the right help - and another dose of all the positive things our first round brought us - we can achieve even more remarkable things.

Thus, we're exploring the VC path, talking to those folks who've been calling and thinking a bit more seriously about a series B. It's not something we're definitely pursuing, and plenty of circumstances could change our minds about whether it's the right option. As the media is quick to remind us, valuations and deal terms are not great right now, and with SEOmoz in such a strong position, we can afford to be patient, be picky and choose the right partner.

What I've Learned About Myself

My Top Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

Questions & Answers

In the spirit of this post, and of SEOmoz's guiding principles, I'd like to open the comments to questions and offer to answer anything I reasonably can in a post next week. You can also feel free to email me if you have private questions. One quick thing I'll say is that for those seeking VC, three resources have been of great help to me - OnStartups, VentureHacks and Hacker News.

I sincerely hope this blog post has brought you value and helped bring a little more transparency to a world that's rarely seen outside of Sand Hill Road meeting rooms.

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Posted by Danny Dover

If you have any other story sources that you think are worth sharing, feel free to post them in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my profile: Danny Thanks!

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Posted by great scott!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Correlation, Causation & SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by Sam Niccolls

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At SES San Jose 2009, I've been asked to make a solo presentation to kick of the Search and Community Track. The title of the session is "How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community."

I've been working on my presentation, but it lacked a compelling case study that illustrated how a community organization had used search engine optimization and YouTube video to generate measurable results. I had planned to show examples of videos created by Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Monty Python, and Blendtec, but plans have a way of changing.

Then, I got involved with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), a national non-profit community advocacy and homeownership organization headquartered in Boston.

NACA is organizing a series of Save the Dream events to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, restructure home loans, and reduce mortgage rates. They have already held events in Columbia, SC, Stamford, CT, and Washington, DC. And NACA plans to hold more Save the Dream events in Cleveland, OH, July 17 - 20 at the Wolstein Center; Chicago, IL, July 24 - 27 at McCormick Place; and St. Louis, MO, July 31 - August 3 at Chaifetz Arena.

Although I don't have my case study wrapped up just yet, I do see one in the making. And it offers lots of lessons to search engine marketers, YouTube directors and entrepreneurs about how to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community.

For example, we issued an optimized press release yesterday announcing that NACA CEO Bruce Marks and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11) will hold a joint press conference on Monday, July 6, at the Wolstein Center at 11:30 am to discuss the upcoming Save the Dream event in Cleveland. You can get the gist of the news at NACA and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (Oh-11) Announce Same Day Solution for Homeowners with Unaffordable Mortgage.

But we also embedded a documentary video created by DigiNovations of Concord, MA, in the optimized press release. It provides background on NACA's Save the Dream program, which has helped homeowners across America restructure and renegotiate home mortgages and home loans they can no longer afford.

Documentary: NACA's "Save the Dream" - Mortgage Restructuring and Renegotiation Rescues Homeowners

Now, the press conference hasn't even been held yet -- and the Save the Dream event in Cleveland is still two weeks away. But I was stunned yesterday when one Twitter user near Memphis, TN, said "this is fantastic news" but she couldn't afford to wait, had called NACA and was "on hold" waiting to talk with someone.

I initially tweeted back that NACA will have over 500 staff and volunteers at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, including over 250 counselors providing counseling from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. from Friday July 17 through Monday July 20. Then, I realized that this information wasn't helpful today, this minute, now. So, I sent her a direct tweet with the cell phone number of the person I was working with at NACA -- in case she needed it.

I got a direct tweet back saying, "Thanks for the info... my process is well underway - so I'm all set (I hope!)"

So, something extraordinary is happening. And as I prepare for my presentation at SES San Jose 2009, I hope you won't mind if I share the story as it unfolds. That's one of the lessons I've already learned: You can't plan a search campaign and expect the community to wait to respond when you are ready -- especially if you are offering an answer to the huge subprime and predatory lending industry.

This is bigger than a case study. This is people's homes.

Buzz has been building about real-time search. Of course, you can search real-time Tweets on Twitter, Facebook is testing search on its live Feed, and Bing just added limited Twitter search to its engine.

Now, FriendFeed is launching real-time search and it has the potential to be the mackdaddy of them all.

Here's why. FriendFeed is a social aggregator. It's a one-stop shop to check and update a bunch of different networks, blogs, etc. Now, you can search all of that in real-time.

The drawback? It only searches what people submit to FriendFeed. Whoever does that can basically say "Check" in the chess match of social real-time search.

Still, this is a tremendous step in that direction. Even better, FriendFeed has released an embeddable real-time search widget you can put on your website.

What do you think of FriendFeed real-time search? Let us know by leaving a comment.

In January, four trade groups announced that they would be developing behavioral advertising standards. The groups are The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The standards have now been released and are as follows:

The Education Principle calls for participation in efforts to inform individuals and businesses about online behavioral advertising. The industry intends, in a major educational campaign involving over 500 million ad impressions over the next 18 months.

The Transparency Principle calls for clearer and easily accessible disclosures about data collection and use practices. The result will be a new notice on the page where data is collected and will occur via links embedded in or around advertisements, or on the Web page itself.

The Consumer Control Principle expands the consumer's ability to opt-out of data collection. The opt-out will occur via a link on the page where data is collected. This principle also requires service providers such as Internet access providers and desktop application software companies to obtain consent of users before engaging in online behavioral advertising.

The Data Security Principle calls for reasonable security and limited retention of data.

The Material Changes Principle calls for the acquisition of consent for any material change to data collection and use policies as well as practices to data collected prior to any change.

The Sensitive Data Principle requires parental consent for consumers known to be under 13 on child-directed Web sites. This Principle also calls for heightened protections to certain health and financial data when attributable to a specific individual.

The Accountability Principle calls for the development of programs to monitor and report uncorrected non-compliance to appropriate government agencies. The CBBB and DMA will work cooperatively to establish accountability mechanisms under the Principles.

If you can access the mobile internet via your cell phone, then you now have access to newly optimized Google Mobile search. It reaches 38 different languages in over 60 countries.

The optimized Google mobile search experience began last December when it was rolled out to iPhone and Android phones in the US. Then in March, it was rolled out to iPhone and Android phones in over 20 countries.

The optimizes mobile search incorporates universal search when appropriate. There's also a focus on local search due to the nature of searching on the go.

Real estate search sites Zillow and Trulia are seeing big growth in traffic, despite the economy and its housing woes. Zillow saw a 67% increase in unique visitors while Trulia saw a 40% increase in uniques.

Zillow averaged 8.3 million unique visitors per month so far in 2009. They're experiencing 35% more listings with a current total of 3.6 million listings. Customers submitted 265,000 loan requests which returned 3.5 million custom loan quotes during this time. Zillow is also experiencing great success with its iPhone app, which has has seen 535,000 downloads.

Trulia saw 30 million unique visitors across the six month period. Contributions to the Trulia Voices Community grew by 85% and has achieved the 5th spot in both Hitwise and comScore's real estate matrices.

These numbers are coming during an uncertain time in the economy, fueled by crises in the credit and housing markets. Taking all of that into consideration, congratulations are in order for these achievements made by Zillow and Trulia.

If you're a celebrity or some other figure Bing has deemed "prominent," then searches for your name plus the word Twitter will turn up a few of your Tweets above the organic results. You can also search for a person's screen name, preceded by the @ sign.

Prominence is deemed by number of followers and volume of tweets. Bing uses the Twitter API to pull in the Tweets. But the feature is inconsistent.

Of course, I assumed Ashton Kutcher, the King of Twitter, would be included since he has 2.5 million followers. But the first search for his name didn't include Tweets. The second one didn't either. The third one did.

And here's what it looks like when it happens:

What do you think of Bing integrating Twitter into the results? Share your reaction in the comments section below.

Like many of you, I was saddened to learn on Sunday that Billy Mays died at the age of 50. My family has been watching the Discovery Channel series Pitchmen, featuring Mays and fellow pitchman Anthony Sullivan.

I had been planning this post for a few weeks, but there has been so much search news to cover, I haven't had the time. Now, I'm publishing it to honor the tried and true techniques Billy Mays used to sell millions of products. Mays' style may not be your cup of tea, but the foundational concepts behind his pitches are something every search marketer can learn from. His incredible success was proof of that.

So, without further ado, here are 7 marketing lessons from the late, great Billy Mays.

1. Have a solid product. On the show, Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan saw hundreds of inventors who want their products sold through direct marketing television. Mays and Sullivan only chose the products they believed in. Even then, they tested them to make sure they worked and met safety standards.

2. Listen to consumers. When considering a new product, Mays and Sullivan often took it to the streets. They had people try out the products and give their honest response. This is one of the first indicators of whether or not a product might do well. Paying attention to what is said about your brand or product online can similarly be very informative to your marketing campaigns.

3. Show how your product can make people's lives easier. One of Mays' most popular products was Oxyclean, allows you to wash colors and whites together. Before the ShamWow, Billy Mays hawked the Zorbeez, a shammy towel that absorbed tons of water and could save tons of money on paper towels. Even non-infomercial products are successful when they do this. Think about the Flip video camera. It's simple and easy to use. It makes capturing moments and uploading them to YouTube very easy. This should be a key element of your campaigns.

4. Include a Call-to-Action. Billy Mays knew this well. He was always "doubling the offer," urging people to act now. Give people incentive to buy your product now. A great incentive for online retailers is offering free shipping.

5. Run a small test before launching a broad campaign. When Mays developed a commercial for a new product, it was run in a few markets to see if it was something consumers would buy. The profit margins had to be there in order to expand. Many times, if the product doesn't do well, they had to stop the campaign to prevent further losses. Test a few keywords before running a broad campaign with tons of longtail keywords. You may need to adjust your campaign or product, but you'll want to preserve your marketing budget in the meantime.

6. Conduct A/B Testing on Successful Ad Campaigns. For the Awesome Auger, a product that was doing very well, Mays shot a second commercial. It looked almost exactly like the original one, but the framing of Mays in the camera was slightly different. That slight cosmetic change was a big one. An A/B test showed sales rose even higher!

7. Watch the competition. When Vince Offer began hawking the ShamWow and the SlapChop, Billy Mays was pissed. These were products he had already been advertising in the form of Zorbeez and QuickChop. Offer's products did very well, selling millions. So, Mays shot new commercials in order to gain back his market share. Pay attention to your competition. Watch your rankings and your paid search positions. Never stop optimizing and adjusting your paid search campaigns. Stay on your toes to maintain or even grow your sales.

What did you learn from Billy Mays? Share your lessons in the comments below.

Get out your cameras, it's time for a couple of search-related contests. If you enjoy the large images Bing features everday on its homepage, now you have the chance to see one of your images featured on the brand spankin' new decision engine. Bing is holding a photo contest where the winner's image will be featured on Bing.com for a 24 hour period.

Photos are submitted via Facebook. You have until July 16 to submit your photos. The winner will be determined by public voting, via the Facebook application. The winning image will appear on Bing.com on August 3 and will include "hot spots" created by the Bing team, just like you see with the daily images.

Meanwhile, ChaCha has launched a video contest. The theme of the contest is "Life with ChaCha." The deadline for submissions is August 10. Judges will pick 5 finalists and the winner will be chosen by a public vote.

There are three criteria that the judges will use to choose the 5 finalists. They are:

The prizes here are worth moolah. The grand prize winner will receive $5,000 in cash as well as an Apple Final Cut Studio 2 and a Sony HDR-XR500V 120GB High Def Handycam Camcorder. The runner up gets $1,000 and third place gets $500.

Overstock is the next company to drop affiliate programs in states considering or having passed affiliate nexus bills. While North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Hawaii affiliates are already seeing programs dropped by Amazon and Blue Nile, this time California affiliates are also getting the boot.

"It's painful to have to terminate these relationships with affiliates, simply because they live in states where counterproductive (and likely unconstitutional) laws are being passed," said Patrick Byrne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Overstock.com. "However, politicians have to remember that a tax is a price that government charges for a service, and when they raise their prices, we're going to buy less of their services."

Last year, Overstock was one of over 200 companies to drop their affiliate program in New York, which was the first state to enact an affiliate tax. The cancellation affected 3,400 affiliates, 200 of which were active.

StatCounter made news fast and furious in Bing's first week when they offered up data showing Bing had surpassed Yahoo! in search. And now they're making a splash again by quickly releasing data for the whole month of June.

Overall, things are relatively steady, but there's an ever-so-slight increase in Microsoft search share.

The data shows Bing gaining .5% search share in June compared to May. But Live Search had gained about .5% in May over April.

One percent growth over the last two months may not seem significant, but it could be the beginning of momentum.

"At first sight, a 1% increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date."

Plus, the 1% growth has come at the expense of Google. The search mammoth saw its search engine share according to StatCounter decline by 79.07% in April to 78.48% in June.

By the way, despite that first week of traffic for Bing, Yahoo! still retained its second place status for the entire month of June. Yahoo!'s traffic has remained fairly steady over the past three months in StatCounter data.

Google has updated their Toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser to make language translation easier. Instead of manually copying and pasting text into Google Translate, the Toolbar now automatically detects if a language is different from the one set as your default.

Google will then serve up a message saying it has detected a language foreign to your own and asking if you would like it translated. Simply click the "Tranlate" button in order to receive the translation.

The new feature is available for all languages of the Toolbar (but again, just for Internet Explorer). The languages include: English, and the translation service supports 41 different languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

YouTube is now allowing advertisers to incorporate a "Call-to-Action overlay" on their videos. With the overlay, advertisers can drive traffic to their sites where they can make purchases, sign up for email newsletters or whichever action an advertiser wishes.

The Call-to-Action overlays are available for Promoted Videos only. Promoted Videos, you may remember, are essentially the paid search of YouTube. They were once called Sponsored Videos, similar to paid search listings called Sponsored Listings.

In order to set up the overlay:

1. Set up your Promoted Video campaign like you normally would in YouTube 2. Under My Videos, go to the Video Details page 3. Fill out the fields for the Call-to-Action overlay section

You're all set. Once the campaign is in full swing, you can check YouTube Insight to see how many people are clicking on the Call-to-Action overlay.

What do you think of this new option for YouTube advertisers? Share your thoughts in the comments.

I've been attending SES San Jose every year since 2003. And each year a healthy proportion of attendees are attending their first search engine marketing conference ever.

This is healthy because it expands the number of marketers who "get it."

I can't tell you the number of times when prospective clients mistakenly assume that search engine marketing (SEM) isn't rocket science. Or they mistakenly believe that search engine optimization (SEO) is something their information technology (IT) department took care of years ago. Or they mistakenly think that a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign takes 15 minutes to set up. Or they mistakenly hope that their public relations (PR) people have a good handle on social media marketing.

So, I'm delighted to see the large number of first time attendees at Search Engine Strategies conferences -- because after they've sat in on a dozen sessions over three days they come away knowing how much more there is to learn.

Hey, if it were easy, we'd all rank #1.

So, with SES San Jose 2009 coming up August 10-14, I thought I'd highlight some of the conference sessions that I'd recommend to first time attendees. I've been doing this for several years -- and even spoke along with Matt Bailey of SiteLogic in a few "First Timer's Guide to SES and SEM" sessions at some events.

But, most marketers like to plan ahead. So, look over the SES conference agenda and check out some of the sessions that address your needs and your organization's issues.

If you want some suggestions, here are sessions specially focused on search fundamentals for first time attendees: • Introduction to Search Engine Marketing provides a clear and concise overview of the concepts involved in search engine marketing. • Successful Site Architecture offers a fresh look at topics on how to successfully design a site for search engines, including JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage and much more. • Turn Brain Science into Bucks: Incorporating Persuasive Messaging into Your Content Strategy showcases current online content campaigns and explains the best content strategies to help persuade buyers, build trust, and get great search engine listings using Twitter, white papers, optimized web pages and more. • SEO Tools of the Trade: What's in YOUR Toolbox? describes the tools that will help accomplish tasks, including indexing, competitive analysis, site ranking, diagnosing and remedying problems and much more. • Search Advertising 101 describes the basic principles and applications of paid placement. • Keywords & Content: Search Marketing Foundations presents an overview of the important keywords customers are searching for and how to target the right terms in paid and organic search marketing. • Discover the Power of Linking: Link Building Basics focuses on the role of link analysis in search engine site rankings and how to increase site traffic by building quality links. • The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to SEM features search engine guru Heather Lutze taking a fresh look at how search engines find content and what steps to take to ensure a successful online marketing campaign. • Extreme Makeover is a series of four sessions held throughout day three of the conference. Volunteers are taken from the audience, their websites are examined and feedback is provided. Sessions include: Extreme Makeover: Live Site Clinic provides general feedback about improving websites and gaining more traffic from search engines. Extreme Makeover: Live Twitter & Blogging Clinic provides general feedback about how to improve your website's use of Twitter and blogging. Extreme Makeover: Live Landing Page Clinic provides feedback on how to improve landing pages. Extreme Makeover Live! Why Am I Not Making Enough Sales? covers the most common reasons many sites have low conversion rates and gives tips on how to turn more site visitors into paying customers.

I think you can see from the suggestions above that there is more to SEM, SEO, PPC and social media than a handful of tricks that you can pick up by reading a blog post. Oh, and if the folks over in finance are still cutting travel budgets these days, ask them this rhetorical question: "If I don't learn how to improve our search engine marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or social media marketing, then how will the company be able to pay your salaries next year?"

Okay, so maybe you don't want to actually say that to their faces. And you don't want to start calling finance the "department of sales prevention." They are just doing their job.

But you can show them the SES conference agenda and let them know that you've picked out sessions to attend that will provide your company with a return on its investment (ROI) in marketing. Finance folks love it when you talk about ROI. Your talking their language.

Or, ask them to watch the video below. Yes, yes, it makes the case for going to Search Engine Strategies. But it also demonstrates visually that SES San Jose, which is the largest search engine marketing expo on the West Coast, will be packed with more than 70 sessions, multiple keynotes, and Orion panels, over 150 exhibitors, networking events, and more.

Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo

If you are searching for a good current "real-time" example of how twitter can help publicize your cause celebre, look no further than the latest being tweeted out today by the likes of such "twitterers" as @wholefoods

@WholeFoods - tomorrow, July 1st, is the monthly Twitter for Food event - it would be great for you to join in again! http://tr.im/m1Pq

And what are your instructions once you click on the link?

Post this message to your twitter account on June 30th and July 1st:

#twitterforfood Skip a meal July 1st and fund local or global hunger relief. http://tr.im/m1Pq

Now imagine that. Skip one meal and donate to any one of the great organizations listed on the landing page featured.

Want a snapshot of how many people have so far been tweeting #twitterforfood? And this is only page 6 of a Twitter search on #twitterfood.

@WholeFoods grabbed hold of this contest and tweeted it to their nearly 800,000 followers! But the idea for skipping a meal and donating money to an organization which serves the hungry came from Tim Blair.

Tim had this to say to me about using Twitter to promote a cause:

"This is a personal passion of mine, so I am absolutely thrilled with the response. I started it last month and plan to run it once a month until it is no longer getting traction. My plan was that it would grow over the next few months as word got out. Humanitarians and philanthropists are a large demographic on Twitter from my experience.

I run twitter accounts for people and have 6 of my own for different causes. I find that it is easy to connect with locals and with specific demographics if you know what you're doing. I have accounts in green, religious, personal security, books, social marketing and have been able to connect well with people - especially people at high levels in organizations.

Results for some of the promos I have done have been good. Nothing earth shattering yet, but certainly worth the effort and growing. I am definitely sold on the value of using Twitter for promotions and will continue to refine how it is done."

It will be interesting to see how much $$$ is indeed donated to food organizations from this Twitter campaign. But no one can deny the immediate impact Twitter can have to promote a cause or campaign.

Chris Crum at WebProNews.com has pieced together some very interesting pieces of information regarding Facebook, a former Googler and a new payment system.

Facebook in May announced that it was testing a new payments system that would deal in real money, rather than virtual currencies that it had been using for any number of applications. This might work fine for Mafia Wars and other light games that Facebook has increasingly added, but if you were to want to move into, say, storefronts or product comparisons, you'd clearly want to be able to deal in real currency.

Enter announcement two: Facebook has hired an ex-Google Checkout director to develop these payment systems. Given Facebook's immense and growing popularity, its standing as place for sharing opinions and favorites, its open platform and an army of marketers desperate to monetize work on Facebook, it could wind up being an absolute perfect storm.

Imagine classified ads or, bigger yet, entire storefronts integrated directly into a social networking site a la A Small World - except instead of a half million very exclusive members considering five and six-digit purchases in between their social networking activities, it's 200 million+ people worldwide who could have their friends' opinions of a product just a click away from being able to purchase it.

Chris has screenshots and more details - worth checking out.

What do you think? Would you purchase or shop on Facebook? Would your customers?

There are several venues for meeting fellow search engine enthusiasts and marketers: Danny Sullivan’s SMX, Search Engine Strategies, the Webmaster World conference and the PPC Summit. Here are the upcoming events.

Webmaster World PubCon

The Webmaster World “pub conference” stated out as a simplistic meeting of people over some beers in a pub in London in 2001.

Since then the show has turned into something much bigger, with a huge annual search engine marketing conference and expo in Las Vegas.

This July 24, however, PubCon is back at the Cittie of York pub in London for an informal afternoon.

The next big event is in Las Vegas November 10 to 13. Search Engine Strategies on August 10 to 14.

The next Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo is in San Jose in California

Europeans may want to take part in the Berlin conference on November 24 to 25.

SMX Search Marketing Expo

SMX is all over the world this year. Just look at this itinerary:

SMX is, like PubCon and SES, a great place for networking and keeping up to date on the latest in search engine and social media marketing.

PPC Summit

The PPC Summit focuses on pay-per-click text ads and search engine advertising.

The next two venues are in Los Angeles September 23 - 24 and Chicago November 4 - 5.

photo credit SMX: Scott Clark

photo credit SES: CircumerroStock

Ready To Get New Customers?

It’s Sunday and Pandia gives you the most important search engine news headlines of the week.

Popular search engine Google not only dominates the web game but has taken to lead the mobile search domain globally as well, a report from Web browser company Opera said recently. (PCWorld June 27 2009)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. (Wired June 22 2009)

Real-time search allows users to find out what’s happening now on any topic, unlike traditional search engines, which bring up the most authoritative results over time as judged by page links. (The Industy Standard June 26 2009)

Prior to the test, all the subjects used Google as their main search engine. Following the test, 4 out of the 12, or one third, said that overall they preferred Bing. (TechCrunch June 25 2009)

I’ve had a lot of trouble with courts around the globe pinning blame on search engines for what they find, using a questionable interpretation of the law for “contributory” infringement or “inducing” infringement. (techdirt June 26 2009)

Bing, the search engine from Microsoft, has a better design than Google, a usability study from Catalyst Group has found. (ComputerWeekly June 26 2009)

You have some great video content to promote and generate additional leads! (SE Journal June 26 2009)

Use advanced search option on Google News. (PageTraffic June 24 2009)

According to Efficient Frontier’s latest analysis, Bing’s share of paid clicks increased to 13% from 8% prior to its launch two weeks ago. (SE Journal June 24 2009)

Kayak, the popular multi-airline airfare search engine, thinks Microsoft Bing’s new travel search engine looks so much like its own that it’s confusing Kayak users. (Wired June 24 2009)

The Google Grants blog offers a course in search engine optimization (June 24 2009)

Given China has its own internal search engines and the government has strict control, Google has acknowledged it is censoring search results in the country. (SE Watch June 27 2009)

The rush of traffic was so severe that Google initially thought it was under attack. (SE Land June 27 2009)

…have more logins than you do pairs of socks. Chelsea Blacker’s Top 40 (Marketing Pilgrim June 26 2009)

Creating a website design that is appealing, while also search engine friendly, is one of the hardest parts about SEO web design. (Marketing Pilgrim June 26 2009)

Cuil is talking to Google about a text ad deal (Yahoo Finance June 23 2009)

Since the 10.8 percent UK peak on the 3rd, traffic to Bing has declined quite considerably (SearchCowboys June 23 2009)

The pagerank lift for Bing is remarkable. Not only is the leap from a PR2 to a PR9 pretty high, it’s also remarkable that a site which might be Googles biggest competitor in the next coming years gets such a high PR from their main rivals. (SearchCowboys

The new branding of Yahoo, said several people close to the situation, might be built around the latest relaunch of its main homepage design. (BoomTown June 24 2009)

The inclusion of Wikipedia articles among the thousands of publications used by Google News began as an experiment that was seen by a small percentage of users (NYT June 21 2009)

You need to include the full ticker name, prefixed by the name of its stock exchange. (SE Roundtable June 2009)

Nice resource - simple, easy and quick to use. Great to have easy to hand at the public library enquiry desk when the question is asked. (P Bradley June 23 2009)

Ready To Get New Customers?

At the end of two and a half years, the EU project CHORUS concluded its work at a conference in Brussels recently. The conference focused on status and challenges of multi media search engine technology, but also addressed the challenges, gaps, commonalities, difficulties, targeted/expected impacts and success criteria related to search initiatives.

CHORUS has been a European Coordination Action which aims at creating the conditions of mutual information and cross fertilisation between the European projects dealing with Multimedia Content Search Engines. National and international initiatives have also been included.

The conference was accompanied and animated by a stand exhibition of 11 research projects participating in the CHORUS cluster and two external research projects (all in the domain of multi media search engines). The complete list of projects can be found at the end of this report or on the Conference Web site.

All Powerpoint presentations from the conference are available, as well as video of of the talks.

The conference was attended by more than 120 people from a wide range of professional backgrounds, covering private and public research institutes (various universities, INRIA, IFAAR, IDIAP, CERTH, Fraunhofer), industry (Nokia, Yahoo, Exalead, Thomson), public bodies (The European Commission, German Ministry of Economy) and national initiatives such as THESEUS and QUAERO.

photo credit: david.nikonvscanon

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Pandia discusses the role of search engine rankings in online marketing and reviews a new tool that helps you keep track of your own results.

There used to be a time when a number one position in the search engines was considered the highway to online marketing heaven. More people used to click on the three top positions than all the others combined.

Mixing different types of results

Lately things have become slightly more complicated.

Google’s Universal Search mixes results from various databases, including regular web pages, news sites, image and video listings and blog posts.

Bing sorts results into several topic sections, encouraging searchers to scan the whole of the first search engine result page before clicking.

This means that more of the first page of results become valuable marketing property.

That doesn’t change the old saying, though: Being on page 1 for a popular search query will bring you a lot of traffic.

Personalization

Then there is the case of personalization: All search engines will give a different mix of search results to people in different geographical locations.

The search results at google.co.uk are not the same as the one found by an American searching google.com.

Search engines will even use your IP address to serve you search results tailored to your city, county or state.

If you have activated personalized search in Google, Google will also take your personal search history into account.

This means that two persons sitting in the same room may, in extreme cases, get different search results.

Search engine intelligence

That being said: There continues to be a large amount of overlap between the various versions of search engine results, especially for sites and services with a global appeal.

This means that it still makes sense to keep track of your general search engine popularity to get a feeling for how well your search engine optimization strategies are working.

Given that your local search results may vary from the ones of someone at the other site of the world, it actually makes sense to use data generated from one destination. In this way you get comparable data that can be used to measure the success of your search engine strategy over time.

KPMRS

KRMRS is an acronym for Keyword Positioning Monitoring Positioning Reporting Service. It is a new free search engine positioning tracking service that lets you compare your rankings for selected keyword phrases on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Unlike some web search analytics tools, they keep it very simple. Enter the query and the url of your site and click go and you get your position for the major search engines.

If you sign up for the free subscription you will be asked to list your most important queries. KPMRS then gives you a result page that lists your positions for all these keyword phrases.

You can sign up for email alerts telling you when your position has changed or one of your competitors have outranked you. You will also get a weekly report. (Go to “Settings” to select or deselect these services).

What you get

If you subscribe KPMRS will give you several options for each site:

KPMRS does to a certain extent take geographical variation into account as it lets you search one of two data sets: US or UK search engines. The US version gave the results we asked for. The UK version reported N/A for all keyword phrases and search engines.

A lot of potential

We like the simplicity of this service and we think it has a lot of potential. It may be especially useful for those that do not have the time or skills needed to sift through all the data generated by more complex web analytics tools.

We have a few suggestions for improvement, though:

Click here to take KPMRS for a spin!

photo credit: Mariano Kamp

Here are some of the search engine news articles we found interesting this week:

Google has acknowledged that the Chinese government asked it to disable a search feature with the goal of censoring pornography (Cnet June 19 2009)

On June 4, 2009, Google.cn blocked all searches for “Tiananmen Square,” even ones not related to the massacre that took place on that date in 1989. (Cnet June 16 2009)

Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google’s online photo map service (Blogoscoped June 19 2009)

Google is once again flying rainbow colors to support gay pride celebrations (SE Land June 19 2009)

Probably the most popular way to envision PageRank is as a flow that happens between documents across outlinks. (June 15 2009)

Lycos wants to re-launch their search services pretty fast (Search Cowboys June 17 2009)

A new Explore Google Search page. (SE Land Jun 17 2009)

Articles redirect to affiliate pages (SE Roundtable June 17 2009)

Three Richmond residents have been sued by software giant Microsoft for “perpetrating a massive ‘click fraud’ scheme.” (Richmond Review June 17 2009)

Google Inc. is willing to concede to German demands the company erase photos for its panoramic mapping service (Google Blogoscoped June 18 2009)

Microsoft recently published a PDF about Search Engine Optimization called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. (SE Land Jun 18 2009)

The Bing Maps for Enterprise, previously known as Virtual Earth, is a team of some 600, with 260 developers (Liveside.net June 18 2009)

This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file—whether it’s text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.—we can index this external content too (Google Webmaster Central June 18 2009)

Google has added Persian (Farsi) translation to their Google Translate tool. (SE Journal June 19 2009)

The project is a visual way to read Google News, or to flip through it, as it were. (TechCrunch june 18 2009)

Bing kicked off with a bang on June 1, doubling the number of unique visitors MSN/Windows Live received on the previous day and nearly overtaking Yahoo! Search for the No. 2 spot. (Nielsen Online June 16 2009)

Infonortics Ltd., a publisher in the United Kingdom, has announced “The Google Trilogy”. Stephen E. Arnold’s three monographs (June 17 2009)

It pulls live updates from Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious ‘and more’ (P Bradley June 16 2009)

Internet bandwidth grows at an annual rate of 50 percent, compared with compute capacity, which grows at 60 percent, meaning that over a 10-year time period, computer power grows 100X, but bandwidth grows at 57X. (Gigaom June 14 2009)

An indexer of data from the living social Web, which includes things like blogs, twitter Digg, etc. (ResearchBuzz June 20 2009)

Google product ads will feature product specific information directly in the ad such as price and product image (Google Watch June 20 2009)

In practice, once the excited searcher deviates from the carefully chosen examples Google offers things fall to pieces very quickly. (P Bradley June 20 2009)

“. I dutifully answered the questions (didn’t take long, no more than a couple of minutes) and then Hunch told me that it knew enough about me to start being helpful.” (P Bradley June 19 2009)

Google and Facebook have set the blogosphere afire with breathy promises of adding the Persian language, Farsi, to their list of translation services. (Google Watch June 18 2009)

Google adds embedding, thumbnail view and makes it easier to see exactly where your search term appears within the book (Inside Google Book Search June 18 2009)

How does a company with 20,000 staff manage to keep innovating? (Guardian June 17 2009)

“I would probably say I would start sooner on search” (TG Daily June 18 2009)

photo credit: phauly

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Ask and Ask Jeeves go back to basics and launch an enlarged question and answer database that allows for natural language search queries.

Those who have followed Ask.com AKA Ask Jeeves since 1996, know that it started out as a natural language query search engine. The idea was that you should be able to enter a regular question in the search box and get a sensible reply in return.

Originally: a human powered Q and A directory

Given that computers are pretty stupid beasts at best, Ask Jeeves used human manpower to generate a database for the most common questions and answers.

In that way the search engine was more like a human edited directory than an automatically generated search engine.

Adding keyword search

They did add results generated by a regular search engine, though, and in 2001 they acquired the Teoma search engine, switching the focus over to more traditional keyword searching.

Now, however, Ask seems to revive its old belief in natural language queries.

Back to basics

This week Ask.com unveiled its proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for consumers in the United States and United Kingdom.

This time, however, they are not using their own editors to match questions and web pages. Instead they crawl and index questions and answers from different sources across the web.

Ask then makes use of a so-called semantic search technology (a technology that analyzes the meaning of sentences) to cluster, rephrase and determine the relevance of answers.

The result is, according to Ask, “a Q&A database that is fine-tuned to give consumers the best answer, the first time, every time through streamlined, localized, concise results to their questions.”

It should be noted that this “answer farm” was originally launched last year but that this year’s versions has tripled the number of Q and A’s.

The answers are mixed in with more regular search results in Ask’s default web search option.

Searchers asks Ask questions

Ask refers to research by comScore which apparently shows that consumers enter search queries on Ask.com in the form of a question three times more than on any other major search engine.

Ask’s reputation of being a natural language search engine apparently lingers on, and the company has decided to take advantage of that

You can limit your search to the 300 million Q&A pairings database by clicking on the “Lots of Answers” link on the homepage of Ask.com or AskJeeves.co.uk

Ready To Get New Customers?

PickySite is a brand new social networking site for webmasters, internet marketers, web designers, web developers, and SEO experts. Along with PickySite’s editors, they write group and individual blogs and communicate with other members sharing the same goals.

How it works

On PickySite you can start your own personal group, or corporate blog and share information, links, and photos. You can also start conversations around posts, or show that you like someone’s article by posting comments or voting on the post. The most interesting or important articles will make it to the homepage of PickySite.

Most of the users of PickySite are Web professionals. Consequently, the website could prove to present valuable resource. Currently, blogs cover 35 topics, such as:

Sink or swim?

If PickySite manages to gather sufficient users, it will provide opportunities to share your ideas and knowledge, find partners and develop your relationships. It might aslo provide companies with a way to grow their brand, build their reputation, market the products, and interact with clients.

However, PickySite is targeting a very competitive niche. Webmaster World has provided first class news sharing and discussions for Web professionals for more than decade. Search Engine Land has a thriving community for SEO professionals called Sphinn.

PickySite has a wider target group and this might attract the DIY crowd who do their own web design, SEO and affiliate marketing. At the moment of writing, though, the 76 members do not make for a bustling community.

Here’s a list of search engine and SEO discussion forums and social networks.

photo credit: luc legay

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It is widely known that dissidents in China have had their blogs deleted and in at least one case a major search engine (Yahoo) have contributed to the arrest of a Chinese journalist. This, along with the Iranian regime’s poor track record when it comes to human rights, is why many Iranian protesters use the a search engine that guarantees search privacy.

Ahmed Hossain, CIO of Yauba, tells Pandia: “Our traffic from Iran has jumped 300% over the past several days, as many of them are using the Yauba Search Engine and the anonymity proxy filter to access blocked sites and get news from foreign sources.”

Search and privacy

After pressure from the EU commission, Google last September reduced the period the search engine stores personal data in its logs from 18 to 9 months.

The metasearch engine Ixquick used to store IP addresses for 48 hours. Now they don’t store IP addresses at all.

Hossain explains that Yauba goes even further: “We are the only search engine that offers 3 levels of privacy protection for our users:

More information about Yauba. Reporters Without Borders on repression in Iran.

photo credit: .faramarz

Make Pay Per Click Pay Off Big!

Elsevier and NextBio recently signed a partnership to enrich ScienceDirect content. The hope is that this will accelerate life science, health science and chemistry research.

NextBio provides a platform that enables life science researchers to search, discover, and share knowledge within public and proprietary data. Information from NextBio will now be used to enrich the content of ScienceDirect.

“Combining the depth of our search and discovery capabilities, and our unique content with the breath of the ScienceDirect platform will create new opportunities for Life Science, Health Science and Chemistry researchers to quickly gain access to the most current and comprehensive insight in their field,” says Saeid Akhtari, co-founder, president and chief executive officer, of NextBio.

The new enhancement will become available on ScienceDirect and accessible by subscribed users in summer 2009.

Science Direct

Elsevier’s ScienceDirect contains over a quarter of the world’s full text scientific, technical and medical peer-reviewed articles. The full-text collection covers titles from the important scientific literature including The Lancet, Cell and Tetrahedron.

ScienceDirect covers over 2,500 journals published by Elsevier and dynamic linking to journals from approximately 2,000 scientific, technical and medical publishers through CrossRef. These are interlinked with major online reference works and handbooks.

photo credit: Mario Caruso

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If you search the web for information on almost any subject, your search results on Yahoo and Google will be littered with shopping info. Start-up search engine Duck Duck Go now separates shopping sites from information sites in your search results.

After entering a search, you click one of three new search buttons. These buttons produce normal results, mostly info sites, or mostly shopping sites respectively.

This solves a common problem, as many people have trouble finding real information about topics that have lots of shopping results. So instead of struggling to come up with a search phrase that will produce the right results, you just choose the right button.

Duck Duck Go has uncluttered and appealing user interface, which is easy to grasp even with three search buttons. The search results are equally easy on the eye and easy to navigate.

You might also want to check out these articles: New search engine Duck Duck Go has less spam and more content How to block 44 million spam domains

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