headlines
You are browsing the search results for "headlines"
Go To SES Berlin Or SES Chicago For “A Ranking in the Top Three”
As you plan you schedule for the rest of the year, consider attending SES Berlin, which will be held November 24-25, 2009, and SES Chicago, which will be held December 7-11, 2009.
For a sneak preview, watch the interview with Matt McGowan, VP Publishing at Incisive Media, by John Mulligan of SEO-PR. They talk about the upcoming SES Berlin and SES Chicago events.
McGowan says after having SES shows in various cities in Germany, including Hamburg and Munich, it was time to schedule one in Berlin. He says attendance is expected to be around 500 for SES Berlin in November. And SES Chicago is expected to attract thousands of marketing executives, managers, professionals, specialists and consultants in December.
Matt McGowan, VP Publishing, Incisive Media previews SES Chicago and Berlin ‘09
Now, why should you go to one of these shows at the end of the year?
There are a dozen reasons, which I will roll out over the next several weeks. But, let me begin by singing the SEO version of “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”
If you read my article in Search Engine Watch back in January 2007, you already know the words. If you didn’t, they are: “A Ranking in the Top Three.”
If the search industry didn’t change so rapidly, then you could attend one or two Search Engine Strategies conferences a year and stay up-to-date on the latest market trends.
But, Google issues two to four press releases a month and two to four blog posts a week that impact your search engine ranking or represent a new marketing opportunity. For example, Google Fast Flip was announced just this week.
Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting.
At the same time, Google provides aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, and Newsweek. And it gives you the ability to share content with your friends and community.
Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is both serendipitous and personalized.
Google has also made a mobile version of Fast Flip with tactile page flipping for the iPhone and Android-powered devices, so you can browse on the go.
And, Microsoft isn’t shy about making announcements early and often, either. Just this week, Microsoft introduced a new Visual Search feature on its Bing search engine to make Web content more visually appealing. Although not directed at news, it displays some categories of search results using thumbnail images instead of text.
So, if you attended SES San Jose in August 2009 and don’t go to another event until SES New York in March 2010, I estimate that you’ll be about seven months behind the eight ball when you get there.
Now, if you don’t mind letting your search engine rankings drop below the top three listings for several months — or if you aren’t worried that your competitors will take advantage of new opportunities before you find out about them — then happy holidays.
However, if falling behind in a rapidly changing world does concern you, then take a serious look at attending SES Berlin, which will be held November 24-25, 2009, and SES Chicago, which will be held December 7-11, 2009.
If anyone asks you why you’re going, simply sing out that you want to get or need to keep “A Ranking in the Top Three.”
Italian Regulators Expand Investigation to Google, Inc.
So much for hoping that Italian regulators would see how newspaper publishers were contradicting themselves. The probe into Google’s Italian news site is now expanding to Google’s main search engine.
Italian newspaper publishers are saying that Google is using their material to generate online advertising revenue on the News search site, then turning around and complaining that they’re not being indexed in Google’s main search.
There are so many problems with their argument. First up, the obvious problem with the complaint about Google’s News search. Call me crazy, but if you’re a newspaper, I would think you would want to be found on a site dedicated specifically to news.
Secondly, why is it ok to be found, via link, in Google’s main search but not on Google’s News search (also via link). If you purposefully opt-out of one search,
Thirdly, Google is a private company and can index however they want. Even if they were excluding newspapers who complained from the main search, too bad for those publishers. It’s a business and Google can run their algorithms how they please, whether other people like it or not. Of course, it would not be very consumer friendly to leave out major newspapers from their index. So, Google would have to risk looking like they have a crappy search engine if major publishers were indeed omitted from the search results.
Last but not least, if they’re going to go after Google for News Search, why not go after all engines that provide news search or sites like Techmeme that aggregate headlines? The very act of investigating Google proves how much news search is worth to the newspaper industry. Punishing Google will only make it worse for everyone involved. Let’s face it, print newspapers are never going to trend back in.
Google News Launches Four Arabic Editions
Google News is now available in Arabic for four countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The editions are just like the original Google News, with computer-generated aggregate headlines.
Also like the original, they include niche headlines for Business, Sports, Entertainment, etc.
With over 40 million Arabic speaking in the world, Google says this is just the beginning of expanding their News product to the Arabic-speaking world. They plan to release additional Arabic editions of Google News in the future.
Five More Newspapers Join Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium
The Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium has grown by 5. The new papers joining the mix are the Orange County (Calif.) Register and TheGazette in Colorado Springs, Colo.; the North Jersey Media Group’s The Record and Herald News; and The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The consortium began in November 2006 with 176 newspapers and has grown to 814. It started out by connecting the newspapers with Yahoo!’s HotJobs job search engine. The partnership has grown to include products like search and content.
“Selling targeted and measurable advertising campaigns to local businesses is really delivering results for our newspaper partners,” said Lem Lloyd, vice president, U.S. Partnerships, Yahoo! Inc. “With more and more local advertisers shifting dollars from traditional media to online, local advertising is a great growth opportunity for the newspaper industry.”
In fact, 350 newspapers have been the recipient of 23 million referrals per month as a result of the distribution of headlines across Yahoo! sites.
In a day where newspapers are struggling to survive, partnerships like these can give a boon to their online business.
News Blogs Are Becoming the New Online Newspapers
Back in December 2007, I observed that “Blogs Are the New Trade Press.” Today, it appears that news blogs are becoming the new online newspapers, too.
According to “The State of the News Media 2009,” an annual report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet.”
It adds, “Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating. The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19% in the last two years; in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%.”
In other words, people are still looking for news, “But audiences now consume news in new ways. They hunt and gather what they want when they want it, use search to comb among destinations and share what they find through a growing network of social media,” reported the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
A Pew Research Center Survey in December 2008, found the number of Americans who said they got “most of their national and international news” online increased 67% in the last four years. The presidential election was almost certainly a key factor in the growth. More than a third of Americans said they got most of their campaign news from the Internet in 2008 — triple the percentage in previous presidential election year.
Although the growth in online news consumption cut across age groups, the growth was fueled in particular by young people. Young voters and activists now rank the Internet as a news source of importance parallel to television, according to the Pew Research Center Survey.
The State of the News Media 2009 added, “And the video site YouTube also became a major delivery system for people to get news posted and recommended by friends and associates, and often from political campaigns. The Obama camp reported more than a billion minutes of campaign-produced material was downloaded from YouTube. And Youtube reported that the Obama campaign’s 1800 web videos were viewed 100 million times in total.”
According to Pew Research Center data, as of August 2008 the percentage of Americans who went online regularly for news (at least three times a week) was up 19% from two years earlier to nearly four in ten Americans (37%). No other medium was growing as quickly. Most saw audiences flat or declining.
The new numbers put the Web ahead of several other platforms for the first time. In the same August survey, 29% of Americans said they “regularly” watched network nightly news, 22% watched network morning shows and 13% Sunday morning shows.
The percentage of Americans, who relied on the Internet regularly, according to this data, was now roughly similar to that who regularly watched cable television for news (39%). More people still read a newspaper “yesterday” (34%) or listened to news radio (35%) than had viewed news online “yesterday” (29%). But the gap was narrowing.
Although the shift in audiences from print newspapers to online newspapers is “old news,” Newsknife, which rates the top news sites at Google News, has just reported some “new news” that indicates of source gathering the news is also shifting.
According to an article posted yesterday, Newsknife noticed changes at Google News at the beginning of March that could affect traffic to news sites.
It appears to Newsknife that Google News has significantly increased its listing of blogs. “Compared with our previous findings there’s now a real blogstorm,” it reported.
Newsknife found 150 blog sites at Google News during March. “The growing number of blogs appearing at Google News seems to offer a simple success formula to news site owners: start blogs for your site and increase your chances of being listed at Google News,” it advised.
Many news site owners started doing this a year ago. For example, Newsknife reported on March 1, 2008, a that blogs from the Washington Post, New York Times, Baltimore Sun, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times were starting to appear in Google News.
The topic of news business models for publishers in these changing times was addressed at SES New York last week. I moderated a panel that included (in aphapbetical order): Mark M. Edmiston, Managing Director of AdMedia Partners; Murray Gaylord, Vice President of Marketing and Customer Insights at NYTimes.com; Erik Matlick, CEO of Madison Logic; and Gill Torren, Associate Publisher of SC Magazine at Haymarket Media.
Following the session, Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed Gaylord about the changing media landscape. Gaylord says The New York Times was aware of social media’s impact back in the 1990’s and has taken steps to integrate such developments into its brand making it the largest news site on the Web.
Gaylord added that NYTimes.com has more than 55 blogs and is integrating thousands of videos and related digital media into to its website, making the NY Times the most shared site on the Web. He went on to highlight a particular New York Times collaboration with Facebook, in advance of President Obama’s inauguration.
S. Murray Gaylord, VP Marketing, New York Times, on social media’s impact on publishing
What does this mean to readers of this Search Engine Marketing News Blog, which is also one of the more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide that have their headlines aggregated by Google News?
It means news search SEO is larger than press release optimization. It’s larger than news article optimization. It includes blog post optimization.
And based on the latest Newsknife findings, it appears that news bloggers may be better at optimizaing their posts than traditional newspaper reporters. And this was happenening even before the economy collapsed.
What are the implications? The news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought. And it has to do this at a time when economists are trying to draw the line between a recession and a depression.
In the meantime, marketers need to focus on the news blogs that are becoming the news online newspapers.
Google News Expands Local Feature to UK, Canada, and India
In February 2008, Google News launched a feature that allowed users to view local news. The feature is a section of the Google News homepage. Users simply type in their zip code or city and get headlines from their area. The feature, like most Google products and updates, debuted to a US-only audience.
Now, users in the UK, Canada, and India are getting the local news feature for their respective Google News sites.
If you can’t find the local section on your page, click the “Personalize this page” link in the top right corner. Select “Add local section” and you should be good to go.
AOL Adds Collapsable Widgets, New Theme Color to Home Page
AOL has made two updates to their home page. First up, some widgets are now collapsible. For example, if all of the current news about the economy is too depressing, just click the arrow next to “Financial News” in said widget, and the box tightens up to just display the title bar. Click the arrow again to display the headlines again.
Secondly, a new theme has been added to the options available for customizing the homepage. Due to popular demand, a pink theme has been added. You can find all of the theme options in the upper right corner of the home page.
Related Reading:
AOL.com Homepage Ad, Traffic, and Time Spent on Site Stats Up Since Relaunch
New AOL.com Launches; Due Diligence on Yahoo Merger Reported
Yahoo! to Launch New, Comprehensive Mobile Portal
Yahoo! will launch a new mobile experience called, wait for it, Yahoo! Mobile. It will be available via mobile web and downloadable mobile applications for the iPhone as well as smartphones powered Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. An app will also be available for smartphones with the Windows Mobile operating system.
Yahoo! Mobile will feature a ton of stuff including:
- Yahoo! oneSearch - Yahoo!’s award-winning mobile search service providing the most current, relevant answers you need.
- Today – The most interesting stories buzzing on the Internet right now, selected by Yahoo!’s editorial team.
- Yahoo! oneConnect – Yahoo!’s service designed to provide consumers everything they need to stay in touch with the people about whom they care:
- Email – Access to Yahoo! Mail and other popular email service providers, including Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and AOL Mail.
- Pulse – Access totheir social networks, including Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Last.fm, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube.
- Yahoo! Messenger – An upgraded version of Yahoo!’s popular mobile instant messaging service.
- Yahoo! Address Book – Keeps consumers’ contacts always handy and in sync.
- Yahoo! Calendar – View, add and edit appointments when users are away from their PCs.
- Yahoo! News – Breaking headlines across popular topics.
Yahoo! onePlace – Access and manage your favorite content, all from one location including news topics and sources, RSS feeds, weather conditions, sports scores, stock quotes, websites/blogs, horoscopes and movie theaters.
Smartphone apps will include:
- Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice – Allowing users to launch searches by simply speaking.
- Maps – Powerful improved tools that let consumers locate, learn about and get directions to points of interest.
- Opera Mini 4.2 – An integrated version of the world’s most popular mobile web browser, with easy return to the Yahoo! Mobile app, that launches when web site access is needed.
- Widgets - Enhanced mobile-optimized experiences for services from Yahoo! and other brands. Users can browse, add and remove these at anytime according to their tastes.
LinkedIn’s New Search Platform Goes Live
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.
Twitter Updates for 2008-11-12
links for 2008-11-11: New Way To Have profitable, Fully Optimized PPC Campaign The Minute It Launch.. http://tinyurl.com/6frfqq #
Twitter Updates for 2008-11-11: links for 2008-11-10: Twitter Updates for 2008-11-09 Find Legitimat.. http://tinyurl.com/65hfhn #
New Blog Post – links for 2008-11-11:
New Way To Have profitable, Fully Optimized .. http://tinyurl.com/5mwbsh #
New Blog Post – Twitter Updates for 2008-11-11:
links for [...]
![[image]http://kelsocartography.com/blog/](http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/2BKQpi/kelsocartography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan.jpg/t:4b175835c86fe;src:favorites){kind=link}
![[image]http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs44/i](http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/1pq3kF/fc02.deviantart.net/fs44/i/2009/146/c/5/Beautiful_Day_by_Dr4kon.jpg/t:4b175835c86fe;src:favorites){kind=link}
Comments