ArticleSnatch Blog

You are browsing the search results.

Today, there are more updates to Google products than you can shake a stick at. So intead of writing a bunch of short, little posts, I have consolidated them into one for you, faithful SEW reader.

Both my awesome husband and my awesome 11 year old son have pointed out to me the new changes to iGoogle. I personally don’t use my iGoogle page all that much (Keepin’ it real [simple]), but I did browse over to it and found some cosmetic changes (The Foo Fighters theme was already there.)

Notice the tab on the left hand side. It includes links to the widgets on your iGoogle page. When you click on one of the links, it switches to a screen with that widget. Some take up the whole page. Others present a list of similar widgets as suggestions. Still others make use of Google reader to present a feed.

Moving on to other Google properties….

Webmaster Tools now testing a Message Center warning that alerts webmasters to possible vulnerabilities with their Content Management Systems (CMS).

Google TV ads has announced new partnerships with COREMedia Systems and Harris Corporation. The COREMedia partnership allows CoreDirect customers to view their Google TV ads right along with their CoreDirect data. The Harris Corp. one adds more inventory for Google TV advertisers.

AdWords has separated the metrics for Google and search partners such as Ask, AOL, etc. This is probably in preparation for the implementation of the Yahoo search advertising partnership.

Last but most important is the changes to the Google algorithm regarding Adobe Flash. Brian Ussery has a writeup about it on his extremely minimalistic-looking blog. Basically, he finds that indexing of Flash still isn’t ready for prime time. I know there may have been some hope with recent news of Adobe working with Google to provide better indexing, but we’re just not there yet, folks.

And that concludes the flurry of Google updates for Friday, October 17, 2008. Leave your thoughts, impressions, etc in the comments!

Yahoo’s new board of directors met on Tuesday and approved new talks with Time Warner regarding a possible sale of AOL. Yahoo recently expanded its board to 11 members, adding investor Carl Icahn in a settlement after his attempt to takeover the company with a new board. Frank Biondi and John Chapple also joined the board.

AOL has also been going through some changes, refocusing its business model on media and not on internet access. Subscriptions to its internet access product have declined in recent years due to the increased (and ironic for the Time Warner-owned AOL) broadband high speed internet subscriptions via cable companies.

No talks are currently underway. Tuesday’s decision simply approves a move to proceed with them.

via Financial Times

Microsoft has released an update to its servers and new enterprise search features are included in the mix. The update (which is a series of three bundles) affects:

• Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Search Server 2008
• Search Server 2008 Express
• Office Project Server 2007 and Office Project Professional 2007

The new enterprise search features include:

• A federated search capability, which can index content stored in other repositories
• An administration dashboard
• Performance updates

These updates were already included in Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.

via PC World

Related Reading:
Fast Search Acquisition Completed by Microsoft
Social Media Marketing in an Enterprise Environment
Large Enterprise SEO: CMS Duplicate Content

Last year, Microsoft added a record 11,200 employees last year, according the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Many of those employees were gained through acquisitions that are part of Microsoft’s attempt to make a land grab in the search market.

The acquisition of aQuantive added 2,600 employees to Microsoft’s payroll. Travel search site Farecast and enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer out of Norway were also acquired by Microsoft in the past year.

But don’t expect any more internet acquisitions anytime soon. Microsoft is ruling out buying up major internet real estate, such as Facebook, in the wake of its failed attempt to acquire Yahoo, according to the Financial Times. Steve Ballmer and Kevin Johnson told FT that search is a part of the larger goal of generating revenue from advertising.

Now it seems those goals will be pursued internally. Microsoft just announced plans to build a search technology center in Europe. And recently, they rolled out the Cashback program, which rewards searchers who conduct online shopping at Live Search.

Microsoft did make an ad-related acquisition recently, but it was for television ad solutions provider Navic Networks. Still, this looks like an attempt to catch Google, which released opened up its Television Ads in Adwords up to everyone last month after being in private beta since last summer.

Google Website Optimizer has launched the Technology Partner program, which shows which CMS platforms are compatible with their JavaScript-based testing tool.

Website Optimizer can still be used on CMS platforms not listed in the program, but the certified CMS partners come with documentation and support.

Jon Stona of the Website Optimizer team, wrote on their blog, “We see this program as a win for CMS providers and website-owners alike. CMS platforms of any size can offer their customers a powerful A/B and multivariate testing solution, which might have cost them millions of dollars to develop internally.”

What do YOU think of the Technology Partner program? Useful or useless? Let us know in the comments.

Related Reading:
Testing Landing Pages Includes Testing Best Practices
Testing Applies to Widgets and Accessories, Not Just Landing Pages

Short term financial success in social media can be a multi-layered enigma, ranging somewhere between daunting and infuriating. As the socialized Internet explodes it has become increasingly difficult for companies to ignore the ramifications of not tuning in to deal with SMO vernacular & channels.

We all hear buzz words like "reputation management," "social news," "blogs," and "Wikis" but exactly WHAT the heck does all this mean to a business? How do I convince my boss or client that forays into the social media universe will actually pay cash-money any time soon? How DO we engage visitors? Where’s the revenue?

In Part One we discussed ideas for Facebook social PPC, the PR tactic of pinging sales prospects with outbound links, increasing landing page conversion by mashing in "evidence of human life" and touched on the Tao of one-on-one conversational marketing.

In this installment, we’ll talk about using blog comment threads to create uber-targeted micro-topical email lists, a tactic which can easily result in short term sales and cash. ("Thread" simply means the ongoing exchange of comments in a blog type CMS structure.)

At base, a blog is an open source (free) content management system (CMS) with built in goodies like RSS feeds, automatic content archives, easy WYSIWYG publishing and many other friendly features designed to engage visitors. A staggering percentage of websites incorporate blog-type software for some purpose. What’s important to understand is that blogs are much more than the stereotypical perception thereof.

Everyone knows email marketing works. I’m not talking about the junk-spammy kind, rather nice clean opt-in lists that companies build over time. Responsible and compliant email marketing is a component of many a corporations’ array of marketing tactics and proving ROI is not difficult. Email just works. Benefits include great "open" and conversion rates, customer loyalty, predictable results, low costs and repeat sales.

It’s true that payday loan email blasts are not going to convert at the same level as $1.50 bagged cereal coupons but it’s all good. Email is a timeless and undeniable SEM tactic. That said, building great targeted lists takes time and ingenuity. Conversations that take place using blogging software like WordPress are an excellent source for harvesting incredibly focused segmented lists quickly by inviting user interaction, mining the data, and using the thread’s mini-list to send email blasts now and later.

Blogs and Email: Anatomy of a Comments Thread
When a site visitor comments in a blog, they automatically subscribe by email to the conversation if you’ve set it up properly. Then with each new comment, including yours, every previous visitor magically receives the new comment by email. Think about it. The pot of gold at the end of successfully engaging users in blog-type comments-dialog is the ability to email all of the conversation’s participants simply by commenting yourself. As with all of social media, there is profitable power in marketing to micro-targeted highly specific demographics.

Perhaps you’ll return comments by answering users’ questions, refuting incorrect assertions, clarifying a situation, explaining a product, or just indulging in a little ol’ fashioned meet & greet. Bottom line: get users to converse with each other in a blog and you’ll have the entire group at your fingertips to exploit just by commenting again yourself and pressing submit. Everyone who has participated in the thread to-date gets an email! It’s so easy.

Now that you understand the theory, the obvious question is "how DO we engage users in comments-thread conversations?" The answer is only limited by your team’s creativity. Since every product is different somehow, there is no "one size fits all." However here’s a couple of examples from clients aimClear works with to provide insight into the "market think" required to start conversations like a pro. These are all real examples of opportunity turned into creative comments-thread solutions for engaging users for micro-email list building purposes.

1. Opportunity: Your company publishes service manuals for devices you sell. In the existing website hosts about 4000 daily visitors search for and access .pdf product manuals spread across 57 previous and current products.

   Solution: Install the ability for customers to comment or ask specific questions in a publicly posted thread prominently featured just to the left (and outlined in red) of the .pdf download. New visitors see prior questions and have the ability to directly engage previous commentors.

   Seed the interaction by encouraging visitors to post questions for the product’s design team with a promised response time of 24 hours. Respond by…you guessed it…commenting. Over time hundreds or thousands of users will engage as they likely own or are considering purchasing the device. Just about anyone looking for a product manual has some kind of question they need answers for. NOW you have a very targeted micro-list of those interested in specific devices. The list is worth it’s weight in gold. The next time you announce an add-on, upgrade, or other news about the device, all you have to do is comment. Everyone who has previously participated gets an email until they opt-out of the thread.

2. Opportunity: Say the regional niche’ music production school you market has a staff of experts in their respective fields. Organic traffic brings tons of unique visitors for searches directly related to the academic offerings. The success metric is information-requests from qualified prospective students. The site harvests organic leads each day at a nice conversion rate from which any sale could be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Out of the organic visitors who do not convert, over half come back within 90 days. That’s a lot of potential customers just waiting to be engaged. There are millions of dollars on the table.

   Solution: Set a cookie for every organic visitor based on the incoming query and only delete the cookie if they convert. The next time the visitor shows up, read the cookie and direct them to a landing page which has headlines from thread featuring teacher-experts discussing topics specifically related to the user’s original search query. Invite the return visitor to ask a question themselves, in public, and promise a response. You guessed it! Everyone who has previously engaged gets an email with the visitor’s question and your response.

   The next time the college announces a new program, wants to highlight a student’s success, or announces a famous instructor, all you have to do is comment and everyone gets an email. (BTW, this tactic is called SMO post-search retargeting.)

When discussing possible social media plays with bosses and/or clients, the first question is often "how can we make money with this effort." Setting short and mid-term financial goals for social media efforts straight away can help smooth the pitch and bring in much needed cash to justify the investment.

Blog comment threads are a great way to harvest highly targeted micro-email lists which can earn money in a relatively short amount of time. Developing strategy and tactics to exploit the turnkey capabilities of free blogging software is only limited by the creativity of the SEM team. An excellent approach is to analyze site traffic that already exists, engage users, track behavior over time, and continually serve up opportunities to interact until they just can’t resist. Such is the power of social media.

OK, everyone knows the nearly mythological powers of social media to help grow long term site equity. Link building comes to mind immediately to most. Traffic waves can carry motivated visitors who might subscribe to your feed, engage in comment threads, complain about how bad your company sucks, and/or rave about fantastic customer service. It’s all good.

True, leveraging digital assets and hot social channels for long term SEM benefit has now become SEO 101. However your boss or client may need to be convinced that investing in another layer of content management system (CMS), content, and conversational networking WILL in fact yield measurable financial results soon. There is no better way than to set and achieve short term goals for immediate social media cash flow, to get folks excited about the long-term.

Here’s a few ways to get hands plenty dirty and flow cash in the first quarter of your initial social media forays:

1. Social PPC starts with Facebook if your demographic includes 14-26 year olds. Make no mistake; savvy clients are making millions of dollars in the space. Drill down into the Facebook social graph and you’ll find fascinating PPC categories (aimClear has charted about 10,000 preset interest-categories on the USA Facebook PPC social graph.)

   Anything in the pop culture, sports, music, education categories fly really well. Software, games, kissy, and in some cases even an emerging young corporate mindset can work. FB is noisy, applications are really annoying, and sometimes carefully crafted PPC works very sweetly amongst the clutter. Make it go Ka CHING$$$ the first day with landing pages segmented by interest categories (Buzz Pockets) rather than keywords.

2. Other communities have different gateways to insert paid advertising.  StumbleUpon, Digg, MySpace, and LinkedIn have advertising options. Whatever the community there is nearly always some paid method to insert advertising by way of a the site’s own and/or major ad platform partners like Google, MSN and/or Yahoo. Some communities use multiple ad platforms, both internal and third party.
3. 
   Open a door with outbound linking for your boss or client to make a sale right away. You’ll find an abundance of blogging-tips in the SEM trade pubs regarding the incredible value of outbound linking as a PR mechanism. At base, link out to bloggers and corporate sites to benefit your clients and customers. Any marketing department quality enough to warrant your outbound link will soon discover that you did it. Identify 30 authority-writers in your product or service’s space (who don’t directly compete) and ping them with an outbound link on compelling anchor text.

   After linking out to them in properly published content, have your VP send an email to alert your target site’s VP to the link. Tell your sales department that you’ve “made a new friend.” Suggest they invite the friend out for gruyere and Fume Blanch. This tactic is a more aggressive version of linkbaiting and can work really well. A) The social media department softens the target up. B) The sales staff at corporate follows. Case in point, here I invite distinguished CopyBlogger Brian to the table @ SEW Blog. He’ll hear about it in a daily alert. “Hello there” Brian Clark! Use this technique and make a goal of directly associating a SINGLE sale in the first 60 days from which the conversion can be directly attributed at least in part to a social media tactic.

4. Increase conversion on traditional (AdWords/Panama/AdCenter) PPC landing pages by mashing in headlines from feeds of corporate or customer activities. In other words, take the top 3 headlines each from the corporate media and community relations feeds and display them just above or below the conversion goal mechanism you’re trying to get users to bite on. aimClear’s data shows that when PPC landing pages display mashed-in headlines radiating from true community activity, conversion rises in a measurable way. Ka CHING$$$ again!

   BTW, yes it’s certainly OK to moderate what excerpted content is allowed to bubble into PPC landing pages, or any pages for that matter. If you’ve not incited much user generated content yet, prime the pump by originating the mashed-in feed content as “push PR” from a department of your company I.E. like customer support and relations. There’s nearly always good recurrent content available to source somewhere which will prove interesting to potential clients.

Money Talks, BS Walks
Methods to immediately quantify the value of investment in social media are limited only by the creativity of the SEM team. With social PPC and other paid SMO, financial objectives are immediately attainable. If cash matters and you’re used to PPC, the first questions to ask of any potential social value are “what are these folks chattering about” and “What Ad Platforms insert ads into the SMO stream?”

Outbound linking targeted to savvy customers (who monitor their reputation) can be a terrific door-opener. Partner with your sales department and upper level executives to maximize the “overture of friendship” embodied in giving a high quality outbound link.

After priming community activity within your own site’s data flow, mash-in community feed content to traditional PPC landing pages and watch how the authentic nature of the content spurs conversion. Show your boss or client the cash-money early in the game in order to achieve buy-in for long term link, traffic, and community building CMS and content building investments.

There’s unused “white space” lying between the regulated TV signals and Google has big plans for them. In new lobbying effort, Google is asking the FCC to auction the unused airwaves. The search giant hopes to use any airwaves it wins to establish faster internet access that has a wider reach.

Expanding Wifi will have major implications for mobile search. If the FCC goes along with the request, and if Google wins airwaves, then devices supporting the technology will be out as early as next year. Should all of this happen, get ready for mobile monetization.

Google has some obstacles in convincing the FCC of its plan. The government agency has concerns about the use of this “white space” interrupting existing TV signals. But Google doesn’t want to touch all of the signals, and recommends that some be left alone.

The other FCC concern has to do with the devices. Microsoft had an embarrassing flop when its prototype broke during FCC testing. Google again, has done its homework, backing a Motorola plan that would require a device to receive permission from a local transmitter before using one of these wave lengths.

This effort comes less than a week after Verizon and AT&T were the big winners in the 700 megahertz spectrum auction. But Google didn’t bear a complete loss. They were able to get a requirement for one part of the spectrum to open its network to any devices and internet services.

Andy Weatherwax, a Partner and the Director of Search Operations at Global Strategies Intl., spoke at the Big Site, Big Search session at SES London 2008, which looked at the problems and solutions unique to those running big sites or from big companies and brands.

I interviewed Andy about the session, which tackled tough questions like: “How do you cope with doing search engine optimization for a company with tens of divisions, hundreds of products, thousands of web pages and seemingly no way to bring order to the chaos?” and “Where do you begin with the SEO process?”

Andrew Weatherwax Global Strategies Intl. at SES London 2008

If you don’t know him yet, Andy Weatherwax is a founding partner of Global Strategies International (GSI) and has served as embedded search consultant on accounts including Nokia, BP, Cisco and Kodak. A specialist in the area of enterprise CMS configuration and Consumer Intent Modeling, he is currently working with clients and their agencies to leverage search in the marketing mix.

Prior to Global Strategies, Andy was owner of BrainBug Internet Marketing, an award winning digital marketing consultancy providing online marketing strategy for clients including MetLife, Konica Minolta, Pfizer, WebMD and Priceline. In 2003, he was contracted by Position Technologies to develop the user experience design for Yahoo/Overture Site Match and Site Match Exchange.

A frequent speaker at industry conferences, Andy has been involved in online marketing since 1995. He has been the recipient of many prestigious awards for digital design including the Codie Award.

When he is not working, Andy can be found off-shore sailing or playing music. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jazz Studies from the Hartt School of Music.

You can view other video interviews from SES London 2008 at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo channel on YouTube.

If its proposed acquisition of Yahoo goes through, don’t expect Microsoft to rush to integrate Yahoo’s technology into its platform.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said that Microsoft will proceed carefully with any kind of integration, due to both technology and culture differences between the companies.

This comes on the heels of Microsoft’s declarations of its intentions to catch Google in the search and online advertising game. While the $41.6 billion takeover of Yahoo is a core element of increasing its search market share, the company will also be rolling out more internet services aimed at complement existing traditional software.

Yahoo has been resisting Microsoft’s courtship. Last week, the search engine was talking to AOL about a possible merger, though many saw the talks as simply a delaying tactic.