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Stories - Can I write consistently, even when I really don’t want to?If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to email me. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll tell you and try to find …
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Can you feel the nervousness in the business community? Even search — the golden child of marketing — has been getting pushed around by the market. In today’s Link Love column, “Recession-Proof Your Business by Building Links,” Sage Lewis warns that search marketers need to wake up and stare reality in the face.

Educating employees in SEO and PPC marketing can seem impossible when they have no search background. In today’s SEM.EDU column, “How To Educate Search Staff from Scratch,” Ron Jones offers advice for those struggling to organize a program to teach employees the fundamentals of search.

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Seems the European Union is becoming more sensitive to the workings of the internet. Recent rulings have changed their once strong position about its impact on Europe and its people.

Recent reports tell that they are ready to approve the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google - regardless of what had previously been thought to be a move closer to an online monopoly.

The latest is their decision not to make ISPs give the information of users who have used P2P software for sharing files, a battle that has been fought globally for copyright issues of music and film.

“The European Union’s highest court ruled this week that Internet service providers in the EU do not have to give entertainment companies the names of Web users suspected of illegal file sharing.

Internet service providers only have to disclose the names of suspects in criminal cases, not in civil lawsuits, the EU court upheld.

EU countries generally provide consumers a broad range of privacy protections,” AVN reported today.

It will be worth watching how these new decisions change the internet legal landscape in Europe.

Yahoo’s Yodel Turns Into a Whimper. That’s how BusinessWeek described the Yahoo earnings call. In his NY Times Tech blog, Saul Hansell savaged Yahoo execs on the conference call for not articulating a strategy, obfuscation, and excessive use of jargon.

I disagree, so we’ll let our search industry readers decide for themselves.

Here are the 5 most important questions Wall St. analysts asked and Yahoo executives answered about Search, excerpted courtesy of SeekingAlpha.com, where you read the full transcript of Yahoo’s earnings call and tomorrow’s Google earnings call (January 31).

Judge the answers for yourself. There are golden nuggets you’ll be able to use when developing your search engine strategies.

Brian Pitz, Banc of America: Would you comment on whether you continue to see click-through rate improvements from Panama accelerating since Q3?

Susan Decker, President, Yahoo: Brian, the click-through rate improvements have been the primary driver of the RPS (revenue per search) gains, as we have said in the past. We don’t get too specific on all the components, but I did mention that in Q4 a couple of initiatives that will help advertiser ROI actually may have limited our gains and were deliberate moves against coverage. We have seen continued improvement in click-through rates and as I mentioned, the RPS gains in Q4 were pretty consistent with what we saw in the prior two quarters of close to 20%.

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Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• Search Engine Market Share: comScore’s December Scorecard
  Google increased its slice of the growing global search pie in just-released search engine market share stats from comScore.
• 1,000 Yahoo Layoffs and 4 Key Yahoo Trends for CEOs
  Improving the quality of traffic with domain controls and ad quality filtering promise to improve lead quality and advertiser ROI over time. The cleanup, though, limited Yahoo’s revenue growth in Q4.
• Microsoft adCenter Partnering With WSJDN
  Microsoft has announced it will provide the advertising for the Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN), which includes Barrons and marketWatch as well as WSJ.com.
• Who Are The Real Online Influencers?
  The prominent players in our space may not have the impact they think they have.
• Where’s The Online TV Search?
  TV networks have started delivering deep inventories of video clips and longer-form videos online. That sounds great until you want to actually find something.
• SEW Experts: The Day the Agency Model Died
  Endless possibilities might not be the best way to label the latest round of partnership redefining. It will end, just maybe not how the agencies would like.
• SEW Experts: The New Age of Search Marketing
  One of the more misunderstood parts about the Web environment today is just how much the user is in control.
• Hospitality Social Media Marketing: Influence Critical Customer Reviews
  More and more search marketers lay awake at night, in pools of sweat, freaking out about losing brand control in light of user-generated content.

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Google increased its slice of the growing global search pie in just-released search engine market share stats from comScore. In 2007, searches at the five major search engines — including partner searches and cross-channel searches — finished with 9.6 billion searches in December, 2007.

The surprise winner? For December 2007, total searches on Google sites increased more than 30 percent year over year, totaling 5.6 billion searches.

Yahoo sites ranked second with 2.2 billion searches. Microsoft sites, third with 940 million searches in December.

Time Warner Network with 442 million searches finsihed neck-and-neck with Ask Network, at 415 million total searches - but lost ground: down 4 percent from this time last year.

Microsoft sites gained 8 percent year-over-year, with Ask (415 million) posting a 5 percent gain on a small base of 396 million searches last December.

AOL (part of the O&O Time Warner network) didn’t fare much better than Yahoo, posting a 4 percent decrease in total search volume.

It’s important to note that searches conducted on mapping sites, local directory sites, and video sites (read YouTube) are not counted in the core search statistics.

On the Yahoo earnings call, Yahoo President Sue Decker complained about the accuracy of the comScore numbers. Unlikely Eric Schmidt will do the same.

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Yahoo Panama posted a 20 percent improvement in RPS (Revenue Per Search) in Q4, following three consecutive revenue growth quarters. “Yahoo O&O” - owned and operated — was the new search buzzword tossed around during the conference call. More good news: search revenue grew by approximately 30 percent. International search for Yahoo properties showed RPS gains accelerating into the high teens.

Improving the quality of traffic with domain controls and ad quality filtering promise to improve lead quality and advertiser ROI over time. The cleanup, though, limited Yahoo’s revenue growth in Q4. Yahoo’s stock price dropped below $20 again.

Search marketers, agency owners, CEOs, and CMOs need to know whether Yahoo CTR improved due to Panama; how the recession will affect search and display advertising; and how much Yahoo share of total searches improved.

4 Yahoo Q4 Trends All CMOs Need to Know

1. Search marketers can count on improved click-through rates from Yahoo searchers clicking on paid search (PPC) ads.

2. Search continues to be strong and as close to “recession-proof” as any form of online advertising. Advertisers can expect high ROI unless the recession significantly reduces commercial searches.

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Microsoft has announced it will provide the advertising for the Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN), which includes Barrons and marketWatch as well as WSJ.com.

Microsoft signed a deal to be the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search advertising on their sites. WSJDN is a leading provider of business and financial information news and analysis on sites such as WSJ.com, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, allthingsD.com and more. WSJDN reaches a savvy worldwide audience of over 20 million unique users and serves over 330 million page views per month on its sites specific to the highly sought-after financial services audience for advertisers. In addition to being a traffic leader in the Business & Finance verticals, the WSJDN reaches a highly qualified audience:

• A larger concentration of C-level Executives than any other original financial news sites
• A higher concentration of affluent males than any online network
• More Business Decision Makers and Technology Decision Makers than any other online publisher of original financial news
• A high number of active investors, both institutional/professional and self-directed
• 983,000 WSJ.com subscribers
• 723,000 C-levels
• Average age: 48 years
• 67% male

The Microsoft press release noted:

“Relevant and targeted digital advertising is important to our business and to the quality of the experience that we deliver to our users,” said Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “Microsoft’s state-of-the-art advertising platform will enable us to dramatically improve our revenues from this key sector, and we look forward to working together.”

“This deal is a significant win for Microsoft for two key reasons. First, it makes the extended Microsoft advertising network the premier destination for advertisers interested in reaching financially minded users, as it complements our offering in this vertical through MSN Money and other syndication partners,” said Brian McAndrews, senior vice president, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft. “Second, this deal is a strong indicator that we’re gaining significant traction with our advertising platform. The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is one of the largest financial services publishers in a very dynamic vertical segment, and we’re delighted to add it to our portfolio.”