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A month ago, LinkedIn unveiled its new search platform. Now they’re rolling it out to their 31 million users.

Here’s what you can look forward to in the new search platform:

Suggestive Search - When you type into the search box, a list of suggested names from your contacts pops up. You can select one of the names without having to type in the whole thing. I think this might come in handy when you’re having a hard time remembering a name. Maybe you remember the first letter or the first name, but the rest of it just isn’t coming to you - this can help.

Streamlined Search Results - LinkedIn changed the design to make it easier to scan the results. They also added photos. Results can be sorted by relevance, which includes the social graph, or by relationship, relationship + recommendations, and keyword.

Customizable Views Users can determine what info they want returned in their search results. Just click the “Views” drop down menu (next to the “Sort” drop down menu at the top of the results). You can decide whether you want to view headlines, photos, locations and more of the people returned in a search.

Take Action Straight from the Search Results When you mouse over a result, you’ll notice links that let you take action. You can send InMail, get introduced (through a common contact), or add that person to your network.

Modify Your Search On the right hand side of the results, you’ll notice a form where you can type in additional information to narrow your search down and pinpoint it to more exact specifications. You can search by name, job title, company location, and school.

Save Your Search If you want to return to the results, you can save your search. This is a good idea if you’ve modified your search or customized your view.

Check out this video to get a good visual for all of the above:

Of course, you’ll need to be signed in to LinkedIn to take advantage of all the features in the new platform. Not LinkedIn yet? Our own Carrie Hill explained why you need to be in her article, Small Business Owners Need Twitter and LinkedIn.

Head over to LinkedIn and give the new search a test drive. Then come back and let us know what you think in the comments.

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

E-commerce growth slowed to just 1% last month, according to comScore. This is the lowest rate since comScore began culling the data in 2001.

Let’s just rip this bandaid off (more like ripping your heart out) with the raw data. Here are the growth rates for every month, beginning in June 2007 and ending October 2008.

For the visually-inclined:

After you’re done throwing things against the wall and cursing at your screen, feel free to leave a comment.

Related Reading:
Women Plan to Spend Less this Holidays, First Cuts Going to Themselves
Bill Tancer of Hitwise Analyzes Economy on SES Webcast
60% of Marketing Budgets Remain Unchanged by Economy
Landing Pages: Test Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

Last week, we reported that AdWords was making updates to Quality Score and Ad Rank. The update included how ad position affected click-through rates and factored into Quality Score. But many of us were not sure exactly what changed since ad position influence has been taken into account for awhile now.

Google is now clarifying that update. Here’s the word straight from the horse’s mouth:

We also wanted to emphasize that AdWords has always accounted for the influence of ad position on CTR and removed it from the Quality Score. This specific improvement updates this system to make it fresher and more accurate.

Also, the updates are now live.

JP Morgan Internet analyst Imran Khan is lowering projections for search ad spend for 2008 and 2009. The forecast for 2008 growth is now 23.4% year-over-year, down from earlier projections at 27.4%. The forecast for 2008 is a dismal 17.3%, down from 25.5%.

Khan sees specific sectors as being hit harder than others, particulary travel, telecom, autos, and retail. Still, Khan expects search advertising to hold up better than display advertising.

What do you think of Khan’s revised projections?

Related Reading:
Online Advertising Networks Struggle As Industry Growth Slows
60% of Marketing Budgets Remain Unchanged by Economy

I just noticed when checking my Gmail late Saturday/early Sunday that Google did not move the clock back in New York when it turned 2 am. My computer clock moved, my cable clock changed, but I guess Google works from Mountainview time, not GMT.

Surprising, but hey we know the center of the universe is based at Google HQ - the rest of the world just needs to change I guess.

I’ve just returned from the PRSA International Conference in Detroit, Michigan. The Public Relations Society of America is the world’s largest organization for public relations professionals.

But there were a number of sessions on the agenda about search engine optimization. On Saturday, Oct. 25, Lee Odden taught a half-day workshop on “Optimizing Content for Optimum Search Results: Search Engine Optimization of News.” Lee, as most of us in the search industry know, is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing.

Bill Wagner, the CMO of Vocus, talked about “Uncovering the Potential of PR to Drive Sales.” Lee Odden, Rob Key, the founder and CEO of Converseon, and David Bradfield, senior vice president and partner of FH Digital, discussed “The Changed PR Landscape: What Works, What Doesn’t.” And Laura Sturaitis, senior vice president of media and product services for Business Wire, and I spoke about “What’s the ROI on Your Press Release?”

In other words, SEO and PR people are starting to “reach across the aisle” to build some pretty interesting alliances.

In February, I interviewed Lee Odden at SES London 2008, about news search engine optimization and related topics. And in December, Lee and Sally Falkow, the President of PRESSfeed, will be speaking about “SEO Through Blogs and Feeds” at SES Chicago 2008.

Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing, at SES London 2008

As Frank Watson noted earlier this morning, Lee and Jay Byrne, President of v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations, are holding a free PRWeb webinar entitled, “Use PR To Drive Better Search Results,” today at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.

And PRSA has asked me to teach a teleseminar on “The Secrets of Search Engine Optimization” on Thursday, Nov. 6, at 3 p.m. Eastern.

What’s all this mean to search engine marketers? Get the folks over in public relations to check out this topic. They may have missed it at the PRSA International Conference. But it is a subject that they’ll want to understand as they prepare for 2009.

And getting your PR specialists on the same page with your SEO specialists could give you the best bang for your buck in a global recession. Consider this tip a “recession special” you won’t want to pass up.

One last note: I hadn’t been back to Detroit in a long, long time. Wow, is the Renaissance Center impressive. And the Detroit Riverwalk. And the GM Next Showroom. Now, I remember Detroit as Motor City and Motown. But it has experienced a renaissance while I wasn’t looking. Cool. Very cool.

So far, the majority of marketing budgets are not facing changes or cuts due to the economy, according to survey results released by eMetrics.

60% of respondents said their marketing budgets haven’t changed.

After that, the news gets a little discouraging.

27.6% said their budgets are being affected negatively, while 6.9% answered very negatively.

Only 3.4% said their budgets were being affected positively and a miniscule 1.7% answered very positively.

Don’t stay bummed for too long. The economy seems to finally getting senior management on board with those ever important analytics.

80.4% of marketers say interest in web analytics from senior management in the past 6 months has increased. On that note, it might be a good time to start pitching landing page testing as well.

So what advertising campaigns are specifically being affected? Check out this chart:

Some of the channels are being outsourced:

You can view the full report here (pdf).

What are your thoughts on the economy and marketing budgets? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Video listings cause us to reexamine the way we’ve traditionally viewed search engines, and this is simply part of the natural progression. After all, it wasn’t too long ago when universal search rocked the world of SEO or social media changed how we use the Web. In today’s SEM agency issues column, “The Universal Mastery of Video Content,” William Flaiz walks you through the proper way to optimize video content for universal search.

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