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Does your site maintain its usability across many browsers? If not, you could end up leaving money on the table this holiday season. Browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (which comes standard on Macs) now make up about 30% of the browser market. Firefox alone enjoys 20% of the overall market share.

Matt Poepsel, vice president of Gomez, Inc., whose services test and monitor the performance of websites says that the increase of non-Internet Explorer browsers could cause some e-tailers grief.

“This year more than ever, websites can look and function differently from one browser to another. Online retailers can no longer assume that all shoppers are using Internet Explorer. They must ensure their sites look good and work well across a wide range of browsers - or risk frustrating customers and losing the sale.”

After news came that Jerry Yang would be stepping down as Yahoo!’s CEO, the immediate reaction by analysts, Wall Street, and your neighbor’s cat was: MICROSOFT ACQUISITION TIME!

But Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, is saying: Not so fast.

Ballmer has said time and again that Microsoft has moved on from the possibility of returning to the good ol’ days of negotiating a Yahoo! acquisition.

And while it’s tempting to think that he’s just waiting for that stock to drop to around $2-3 a share (hey, only $6-7 more to go!), consider this: Yahoo’s VP of Search Technology, Sean Suchter is leaving the Sunnyvale search engine. And I hope he likes rain and coffee, because rumor has it that he’s headed to Microsoft.

That rumor was reported by none other than Kara Swisher, who is pretty much never wrong. The only thing I’m wondering is: Where’s the noncompete agreement?

Amidst the rumors and denials, one thing is for sure. No matter how much Ballmer would like the speculation to end, it won’t.

I spoke at PubCon last week — about How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns To Grow Traffic and Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDFs, and Blog SEO.

But, enough about me. Let’s talk about the top trends spotted at last week’s search engine and Internet marketing conference and expo in Vegas, baby!

For the record, I not only spoke at PubCon, I also looked at the 88 articles about it in Google News, the 77 articles in Yahoo! News, the 406 posts in Google Blog Search from the past month, and the 799 posts that IceRocket has found from the past month.

Then, I used a new tool called Twist, which lets you see trends in Twitter, to chart the hundreds of Tweets about PubCon over the past 30 days.

But, I could have just as easily looked at the session agenda grid for PubCon. Why? Because Brett Tabke, PubCon’s organizer, had set most of the agenda for 2009 when he selected the keynote speakers and creating the conference tracks. That’s why.

So, it was dead easy to spot the top trends at the six-track educational conference hosted by SearchEngineWorld and WebmasterWorld. Heck, even the most sleep-deprived attendee would know they were video, blogs and Twitter.

Video is hot — and YouTube video is red hot. This was reflected in the choice of George Wright, the VP Marketing & Sales at Blendtec, as one of the keynote speakers.

Described as the “The best viral marketing campaign ever,” George’s viral marketing campaign, “Will it Blend?,” has changed the face and the future of online marketing. Seen by more than 100 million people on the Internet and reported on by traditional media outlets like the Today Show, the Tonight Show, and the History Channel, Will it Blend? continues to deliver unprecedented corporate awareness through social media channels. This new form of marketing has delivered a 700% increase in sales for Blendtec, a small Utah based blender manufacturer, with an initial investment of $50.

Oh, and in case you didn’t notice that video is hot, Brett added a Video and Multimedia track with five sessions to drive the point home.

Blogs were big, too. This was reflected in three tracks at PubCon: one on Social Media Marketing, another on Social, Brand, and Reputation Management, and a third on Linking as Social Media Networking.

Now, blogs certainly aren’t considered the “newbies” of the social media scene – “granddaddies” is probably a more appropriate name. But that gives them an advantage from a marketing perspective – the medium has matured and moved from early adopter phase to the mainstream. That means more consumers are not only reading blogs; they are being influenced by blog content when it comes to what they decide to buy and who they decide to buy it from.

If you want a second opinion, sign up for tomorrow’s free webinar: “Consumers and the Influence of Blogs: What it Means for Your Marketing Mix.” It starts at 2:00 P.M. EST/11:00 A.M. PST and will be moderated by Kevin Ryan, SES Advisory Board Chair and CEO of Motivity Marketing. It will feature Barry Parr, Analyst, JupiterResearch, and Rob Crumpler, President and CEO, BuzzLogic. They will be discussion a new BuzzLogic-sponsored research study conducted by JupiterResearch, entitled, “Harnessing the Power of Blogs.”

But, you could also see the power of blogs at virtually ever session at PubCon.

In fact, there were tables in the sessions so the dozens of bloggers who were live blogging the event could blog more comfortably. (I think this is a first: I’m not sure that I’ve ever put bloggers, blogging and blog in the same sentence before.)

And what about Twitter? No, none of the keynote speakers was from free social networking and micro-blogging service. And, no, there were no Twitter tracks. And I can’t even find Twitter mentioned in the title of any of the 85 sessions.

But, trust me, you couldn’t miss the Twitter trend if you’d hit every one of the special events — from the exhibitor cocktail reception sponsored by Bruce Clay and Apogee Search, to the SEOmoz WereWolf Event, to the WebmasterRadio Search Bash, sponsored by Microsoft Live Search.

For example, I was sitting in the session entitled, Five Bloggers and a Microphone - What’s The Worst That Can Happen? It was moderated by Ken Jurina, and the speakers included:
• Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant, Marketing Pilgrim LLC,
• Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing,
• Michael McDonald, Managing Editor, iEntry Inc.,
• Barry Schwartz, President, RustyBrick, Inc.,
• Jane Copland, Search Marketing Consultant, SEOMoz.

When it came time for Q&A, one of the first questions came from a woman in the audience, who said, “I asked my circle of friends on Twitter what I should ask you, and I got eight questions. If I eliminate the seven that are inappropriate, here’s one that the panel can answer….”

That brought down the house.

Oh, PubCon also had lots of tracks and sessions on SEO, SEM and interactive site reviews. But they’ve had those for years. The new news is video, blogs and Twitter. These are the top trends that I spotted at this year’s PubCon.

TNS has launched the next generation of its online advertising monitoring tools. The TNS Digital Suites combines cookie tracking with the TNS 6th Dimension Panel for what they say is a unique analysis of online ad consumption. TNS says current tools overestimate audience sizes, but that their updated online ad tool provides target audience insight with little interference to the user experience.

Mike Saxon, Senior Vice President, Brand and Communications, TNS, explains the need for new measurement and monitoring systems, “For digital advertising, current tools are not meeting the industry demands because the fundamental relationship between advertising and the media that carries it has changed. TNS Digital Suite surveys our panelists, not site visitors, delivering the same kind of accountability and rigorous analysis for online advertising that our customers expect for traditional advertising.”

TNS is touting the benefits of the new tool as:

• No more unpopular pop-up surveys
• Control for cookie deletion, capturing ad exposure on multiple computers (home/work/school) for each panelist
• Accurate ad effectiveness measures for the target audience, using the 6th Dimension panelists profiles (over 150 panelists characteristics)
• Advanced analysis through longer surveys (up to 30 minutes long against 7-8 minutes)
• Surveys taken at the convenience of the panelists instead of the current proximate surveys which occur immediately after ad exposure
• Analysis available based on frequency and time since last exposure

What do you think? Leave a comment.

Related Reading:
TNS Surrenders to WPP Takeover
Compete Acquired by TNS
Compete Unveils Premium Version of Analytics Product

China Central Television (CCTV), the largest state-owned television network in China, recently ran a report accusing Baidu of questionable practices regarding medical search advertising. The accusations suggest that Baidu was allowing non-licensed medical companies to advertise while preventing some of the licensed ones from bidding on popular medical terms.

Baidu engaged in talks with CCTV to learn more about their accusations. They also removed paid search listings of medical companies who did not have proper licensing on file with Baidu.

Baidu maintains that they do not prevent the licensed companies from advertising. Advertising by medical companies makes up about 10-15% of Baidu’s revenue.

Of course, this is not the first time that state entities in China have caused unnecessary, undemocratic problems for Baidu.

Related Reading:
Baidu’s Profit Increases 91% in Third Quarter 2008

Contextual advertising network Chitika has announced that their Premium Ads product has seen 200% growth in 2008. The ads are now being served on the sites of 34,000 publishers.

Chitika says the ads work best on sites that garner traffic from search engines. The ads on the publisher’s site target the keywords that the visitor came in on. The ad also offers the ability to search within the ad, never having to leave the page of the site they’re currently visiting.

Chitika calls it search-targeted advertising. Because of that, they’re comparing the program to search engine ads. And they’re saying they’ve surpassed Ask.com’s August 2008’s numbers of 364 million searches.

Related Reading:
Chitika Injects Video, Social to Ads
Chitika Launches Automatic-Merchandising Ads

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is planning to introduce a net neutrality bill in January, according to Reuters. President-elect Barack Obama has said he supports net neutrality, though it is not yet clear whether he backs Dorgan’s bill.

The bill would prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from blocking web content. Net neutrality supporters say some ISPs have blocked content because of concerns over the amount of bandwidth used by customers. Others have slowed downloading activities for the same reason.

Internet service provider AT&T told Reuters it would be crazy to block content because the customers would just jump ship to an ISP that doesn’t. Blocking content would be akin to shooting themselves in the foot.

Indeed, the bill would pit ISPs such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless and cable companies against content providers such as Google and Microsoft.

Yes, in Washington, enemies make the strangest bedfellows.

Related Reading:
Uncle Sam Says: Thumbs Down on Net Neutrality
Without Neutrality, What Happens to Search?

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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Google and Yahoo have revised their search advertising partnership in the hopes of winning over the DOJ. Primarily, the deal has been reduced from 10 to 2 years and a cap has been placed that would restrict Yahoo to only being able to bring into 25% of their search advertising revenue from the deal with Google.

It’s unlikely that shortening the deal will qualm the fears of advertisers. Robert Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers, which opposes the deal, told the New York Times, “If a deal can’t survive long-term scrutiny, what’s the benefit of allowing it for the short term?”

Still, keeping Yahoo alive as the second place competitor in the search market is ultimately good for advertisers. As Mike Masnick over at TechDirt wrote, “We’re still waiting for a clear explanation of how this deal will actually negatively impact consumers, but some people still insist it will. For those who believe so, let’s ask a simple question: how is this any worse than Yahoo disappearing from the marketplace? Because if the company doesn’t do something soon that may be what we’re looking at.”