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Microsoft and Yahoo took a tumble in their year-over-year search share in October 2008, according to Nielsen Online. All searches were down 2%, which is quite surprising considering the election and the economy. Yahoo was down 12% and Microsoft was down 19%. Ask.com took a hit as well with a decrease of 22.9%

The news was much brighter for Google and AOL. Both saw sizeable increases at 8.1% and 14.5% respectively.

Google continues to dominate the search engine industry at a 61.2% market share.

Here’s the full chart:

Related Reading:
E-commerce Growth Slows to Just 1% in October 2008

Microsoft’s adCenter is launching a new offer for Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) members: $1000 in free clicks. Campaigns created through the promotion will be placed on Live Search and the MSN portal. Those who wish to become SEMPO members to take advantage of the offer must join the organization by December 31, 2008.

“SEMPO members, both agency and corporate search marketers, represent some of the most knowledgeable and innovative search marketing leaders in the industry,” said Valerie Bolduc, senior global product marketing manager, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions, Microsoft. “Working with SEMPO provides Microsoft with the opportunity to engage and learn from the search marketing community, which enables us to enhance our products and offerings to better serve our mutual customers.”

SEMPO President Jeffrey Pruitt noted, “SEMPO’s continued growth is tied to the strong support of its sponsors. Microsoft has long been our lead sponsor and advocate on several fronts including the SEMPO Training Institute, as well as for special programs like the adCenter search advertising promotion. Our industry association greatly appreciates Microsoft’s strong commitment and ongoing participation.”

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SEMPO Institute to Develop Career Opportunities for Young Chicagoans
New SEMPO Chairperson Dana Todd Has Big Dreams for Organization
SEMPO Selects Officers for New Board of Directors

TopRank Online Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association have just announced a partnership to develop and deliver a series of educational workshops on social media marketing entitled, “Social Media Smarts: Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Tactics.”

With marketers facing tighter budgets in the coming months, social media marketing offers new opportunities for companies to engage customers, improve brand awareness and increase sales with budgets that are more recession friendly than many traditional marketing efforts.

Leading the workshop will be Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, who will introduce participants to the marketing opportunities with social media through best and worst practices examples. As you can see from the photo in this post, I’m much taller than Lee.

But, according to George Markham Director, Education Services at Direct Marketing Association, “Lee is a well rounded digital marketer uniquely qualified with over ten years experience as an internet marketing consultant and a background in corporate training.” Markham adds, “As a consultant working on the front lines of social media marketing for companies large and small, Lee brings first-hand knowledge and real-world examples to teach attendees how to develop a successful social media strategy.”

But I’m still taller.

The Social Media Smarts workshop will provide attendees with insight into blogging and blog marketing, social networks, microblogging, social news and bookmarking, video sharing, image and audio sharing, wikis and social media analytics.

Rounding out the workshop is a social media strategy exercise that will empower attendees to create their own social media strategy and develop a framework for building a business case within their organizations.

Lee is quoted in a press release as saying, “As a high demand digital marketing and PR agency, we’re seeing tremendous benefits from educating in-house marketing staff on the finer points of social media marketing.” He adds, “Offering both good and bad social media marketing examples along with strategy, tools, tactics and analytics can really empower companies to succeed.”

Now, I’ve served on panels with Lee. I know Lee. And that’s exactly the way Lee talks.

The first of the Social Media Smarts workshop series will be conducted in New York, December 4th and 5th, at the Microtek training facility in lower Manhattan. If you are in the nieghborhood, drop by and heckle Lee.

And remember: I’m taller. Actually, I was standing on my toes for this photo. Lee’s actually pretty tall, too.

Walmart has sent a DMCA notice to TechCrunch and SearchAllDeals.com, a shopping search engine and deals aggregator. (Think of it as the Techmeme for deals on the web, with a Google custom search engine to boot.)

Both sites posted some information about “Black Friday” sales for discount giant Wal-mart. But Wal-mart is claiming copyright infringement. It’s also saying the info wasn’t supposed to be out before November 24th.

The problem is SearchAllDeals doesn’t host content. It simply links to it. This amounts to free advertising for Wal-mart.

And since TechCrunch also has the info, then Wal-mart has a leak problem, which is neither TechCrunch or SearchAllDeal’s problem.

If I were a competitor such as Target or K-mart, I’d be stepping up to the plate and making the most of this “controversy” by freely offering up my own deals.

h/t TechDirt

Related Reading:
Judge Throws Out Copyright Infringement Suit Against Online Video Site Veoh
Pro Intellectual Property Act Passes House
Google Talks On Its Approach To Content & Copyright

The accountability of online marketing is only as good as the analytics an advertiser employs. In today’s vertical search column, “Offline and Online Conversions Tracking: Increase Your ROI,” local search expert Gregg Stewart explains that tracking conversions — both online and offline — can be tricky, but it is an important part of any online marketing program, especially for businesses with a local presence.

» Full story

It’s easy to pick on Microsoft. It’s practically a national pastime at this point. So when they announced their Cashback program to help grow Live Search, the snears came fast and furious.

“You have to pay people to search?” they said.

Turn your laughter into claps, people. It turns out that Cashback is working. Microsoft is seeing positive results on three goals it said it would report. They are:

• Number of offers in the system
• Advertiser return on investment (ROI)
• Percentage of commercial search queries as measured by comScore

There’s been a 30% increase in the number of products offered via Cashback. 4.5 million unique users per month are generating 68 million commercial queries. eBay has seen an increase of 50% on their ROI.

“We believe this early traction speaks to the differentiated and unique value proposition of Microsoft Live Search cashback for both consumers and advertisers, especially in these tough economic times,” said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Microsoft Live Search.

Is it really any surprise that incentives work? No. Have you ever been listening to the radio and they’re having a $1,000 giveaway? You have to be listening at the right times to call in.

Incentives are nothing new. Microsoft was smart to implement them into Live Search. People don’t necessarily use Google because it’s any better but because it’s familiar. Live Search needs a way to get people searching, and Cashback is working to help accomplish those goals.

That may be why Microsoft is expanding Cashback by partnering with shopping cart providers Miva Merchant, Early Impact Inc. (ProductCart) and 3DCart. Through the agreement, merchants who use the shopping carts are eligible for Cashback.

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Though I maintain blogs in both Wordpress and Blogger, it seems to me that there are more developers focusing on Wordpress and as a result, there is always something new to do with a Wordpress blog.  Of course, I could be wrong – it could just be my impression.
Anyhow, I read a press release from [...]

AOL’s Platform-A has collaborated with T-mobile for a two day ad blitz. The campaign will have the mobile carrier buying 1 billion impressions over the two day time frame, which is expected to reach 81.5 million consumers. Platform-A currently reaches 90% of the U.S. internet audience.

What will be advertised? The new Android-powered G1, of course!

“The T-Mobile G1 offers a rich, accessible mobile Web experience for the masses, so we want to drive that message to the broadest range of U.S. consumers possible,” said Brett Dennis, director, branded entertainment and media management, T-Mobile USA. “The groundbreaking experience of the T-Mobile G1 is really what motivated us to pursue this exceptional online advertising program.”

Clearly, both AOL and T-mobile are gunning for the upcoming holiday season:

“The innovation behind the T-Mobile Billion Block clearly demonstrates the value marketers place on the combination of reach, impact and innovation that only Platform-A can offer,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A. “It also spotlights the role online media will play in the upcoming buying season, with strategic marketers like T-Mobile relying on the near-universal reach of Platform-A to connect with United States consumers in an effective, efficient and engaging way.”

Microsoft is attempting to pull the rug out from under Google’s talks with Verizon to be the default search engine on its mobile phones. And they’re doing so by dishing out the dough.

It’s no secret that Microsoft has a bunch of cash on hand. They’ve been using some of it to create incentive programs like Cashback and SearchPerks to essentially pay people to search.

Now, it looks like they’re willing to shell out some green by offering Verizon a larger piece of the revenue-sharing pie than Google has thus far offered.

Could this be why Google was unwilling to spend moolah on a costly court battle defending its now-defunct search advertising deal with Yahoo? Both Google and Yahoo said they could have won the suit, but Google declined to pursue it.

Could this be why Steve Ballmer is saying he’s not interested in acquiring Yahoo anymore (depsite the blue light special)?

Mobile is hot and it’s only going to get hotter. Becoming the default search engine on the largest mobile carrier in the U.S. (Verizon recently won approval for their acquisition of Alltel) is prime real estate indeed.