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New Blog Post - links for 2008-10-25:
Microsoft's Net Income Increases by 2%
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CPR Certification Courses: Be a Real Lifesaver! Posted By : Amy Nutt: CPR when done well can be a r.. http://tinyurl.com/6mzu2v [...]

Google Webmaster Central has released a couple of updates: one to the API settings and one to the crawl errors feature.

Here’s the sparkling new things you can do with your API settings:

• Crawl Rate: You can request that Googlebot crawl your site slower or faster than it normally would (the details can be found in our Help Center article about crawl rate control). If many of your sites are hosted on the same server and you know your server’s capacity, you may want to update all sites at the same time. This now a trivial task using the Webmaster Tools GData API.
• Geographic Location: If your site is targeted towards a particular geographic location but your domain doesn’t reflect that (for example with a .com domain), you can provide information to help us determine where your target users are located.
• Preferred Domain: You can select which is the canonical domain to use to index your pages. For example, if you have a site like www.example.com, you can set either example.com or www.example.com as the preferred domain to use. This avoids the risk of treating both sites differently.
• Enhanced Image Search: Tools like the Google Image Labeler allow users to tag images in order to improve Image Search results. Now you can opt in or out for all your sites in a breeze using the Webmaster Tools API.

For the crawl error feature, you now get to see the URL of the inbound link that is linking to an error page.

Related Reading:
Google Extends Webmaster Tools Access Program to Qualifying Hosting Providers
Google Webmaster Central Blog Addresses Duplicate Content Issues
New Google Webmaster Tool Aids Robots.txt Creation

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Selection of Wedding Supplies / Wedding [...]

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New Article - Get Rich While You Can Free Advertise With Google Adwords Posted [...]

Google has launched a new metric geared towards marketers: Google Insights for Search. The tool is very similar to Google Trends, but includes “Rising Searches” and a map representing Regional Interest, which is also broken down by ballpark figure numbers.

Check out these screenshots for a better idea of what the tool is like, then go try it for yourself. (Don’t forget to come back and leave a comment about your first impressions of the tool!)

Related Reading:
Does Google Analytics Share Data with Google Trends and Ad Planner?

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Safety [...]

Over at Yahoo’s Search Marketing blog, Marketing Communications Manager Roger Park is offering up tips on converting your search ads. He breaks down a bunch of best practices principles to three main steps: Optimize, Navigate and Track.

Optimize

Optimizing your landing pages is crucial to a profitable search marketing campaign. Park advises:

• Have a “deep link” to a product on your site
• Offer several contact methods
• Online shopping carts should be secure and easily visible
• Remove broken links
• Have good server availability

Navigate

Park encourages site owners and developers to put themselves in the shoes of their web site visitors. I personally have found that many of my clients have a difficult time being able to do this. They’re just too close to their business. So, it was nice that Park also served up some tangible tips:

• Create an obvious pathway to the product that the visitor searched for
• Don’t have too many layers between the landing page and the end goal - no more than 2 clicks
• If the end goal is sale, move non-commercial content below the fold

Track

Successful marketing campaigns are built on solid data. Consistently evaluate your data and tweak your paid search campaigns accordingly. Yahoo’s conversion-only analytics tool can help you do that. The tool can help you analyze keywords, tweak landing pages, and improve under-performing ads.

What do you think of Park’s advice? Anything else you would add to the mix? Share your ideas in the comments!

There was a new service launched at the beginning of the month that follows all uses of your brand, domain, special keywords and more - Search Monitor. And before you jump at me for the plug I am not associated with it at all.

I was sent the press release and information about the product and from what I have seen so far this could be a great tool for reputation management, keeping an eye on competitors using your name etc. or even to track affiliates.

The press release states:

The Search Monitor (“TSM”), an online monitoring service that tracks competitive advertiser activity on paid search, blogs, news, and web sites, announces the product release of three new automated monitoring utilities: Competitor Monitor, Trademark Monitor, and Affiliate Monitor.

With this launch, interactive agencies, marketers, affiliate managers, and compliance teams gain critical insight into search marketing strategies, affiliate activities, trademark abuse, and brand buzz. The Search Monitor offers important information that can only be gained by careful 24×7 automated monitoring, and surfaces the information in 3 easy to use reporting sections:

1. Competitor Monitor gives insights into competitive bidding strategies, competitor market share and visibility, ranking on sponsored search, ad copy strategies, and promotions like free shipping, trials, or sales.

2. Trademark Monitor eases the tasks associated with reputation management by auto-detecting advertisers sponsoring branded keywords, use of trademarks and slogans in ad copy and display urls, and brand buzz on blogs, news, and web sites.

3. Affiliate Monitor simplifies oversight of affiliate programs by auto-identification of affiliates using sponsored search to detect violations of rank requirements, keyword restrictions, ad copy
requirements or restrictions, and landing page copy requirements or restrictions.

Search engine marketing has become a critical component for advertisers. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), North American advertisers spent $12.2 billion on SEM in 2007 and that figure is estimated to more than double to reach $25.2 billion by 2011. The Search Monitor was developed to provide the tools necessary to optimize the sizable investments being made in this medium and to protect brands from competitive threats.

“There is a big problem in the industry known as ‘Piggybacking’ which is when smaller advertisers use the trademarks or slogans of bigger advertisers in ad copy or display urls to lure consumers into clicking on their ads”, says Shaun Martinec, a TSM founder. “For our larger brand clients, we have discovered as many as 1 in 10 competitors engaging in this practice. We were quite alarmed to learn that some violators are parked domains, phishing, and spyware sites. With The Search Monitor, our clients are able to catch these activities and react quickly.”

Another advantage of having a monitoring tool such as The Search Monitor is that marketers and agencies can glean insights into competitive online advertising campaigns including ad copy, promotional offers and ad placement strategies.

There are some products out there that cover some of the elements, but the interface is easy to navigate and provides some valuable monitors that many of us can use.

If you give Google a cookie it will probably want to store your search behavior and given the scope of its publishing network….

Something tells me this story does not end happily.

Though this story has been developing for months, the New York Times article on Friday seems to have sparked a deeper look and the issue of privacy has come in to play.

And so it should at this stage. What really needs to be discussed is the establishing of what is allowed to be collected; how it is collected, stored and shared; what would be needed to opt in or out; and consequences of breaches of any limits set.

There seems to be a need to monitor what is being done and the extent our privacy can be invaded - since many times it is the fringe that uses technology to grab a little more than what we want.

The NYT article by Saul Hansell quotes Nick Fox, who - just so NYT knows for the future - is Senior Product Manager for Ads Quality. Nick will have a lot more to measure for Ads Quality if the traffic can be sorted in some quality manner.

As a marketer I would gladly use the information to improve my media buys. But then again we largely do with almost all other media and ours could be more accurate. I am sure the argument distills to Google would be providing the best connection possible between marketer and audience.

The synethesis of the “good user experience” with the “successful marketing effort” may be more than a cyberUtopia. But there are many who see this as the “belly of the beast”.

Given the beta launching of Ad Planner - which Google intends to give away free (guess another industry is in jeopardy) - the depth of knowledge available could be quite large. Marry the cookie with Ad Planner information and the knowledge of our online behavior is soon extensively recorded.

As the Wall Street Journal noted:

“Some ad executives say they are concerned that Google could use the data it compiles about their campaigns to make a business pitch to a competitor. They imagine a scenario in which the biggest online advertiser in a category is running its campaign through Google’s ad-serving systems. Not only would Google be helping that marketer deliver ads to particular Web sites; it would also be capturing data about which Web sites and types of ads work best. Advertising executives fear that Google could then resell that same intelligence to competitors. (Any data that marketers put into Google’s ad systems will remain confidential, a Google spokesman says.)”

Interestingly I have had a presentation from Microsoft that used aggregated industry info and five ‘not named’ competitors’ information. Nothing specific or against rules but enough that I would not want to share. And the advantage of the marketing pioneers is given away to late entries - so why do the exploration, just wait for the report.

Steve Baldwin of Did-It made an interesting comment during OMMA Behavioral 3.0:

“Whenever I read something about Behavioral Targeting, I am reminded of the classic television show, “The Prisoner,” in which the doomed protagonist #6 repeats that he is “not a number, but a free man!” Today, #6 would be protesting (in vain) that he is:

“not a target”
“not a set of behaviors”
“not a source of data”
“not a click”

Of course, no amount of protesting matters because there’s so much money to be made in BT.”

Though there is, as Zachary Rodgers at ClickZ notes, “a loose coalition of Internet watchdogs that have bent their will toward fighting this new breed of comprehensive behavioral targeting.”

Interesting that he was talking about recent legal problems with NebuAd and their attempts to gather behavioral information using ISPs and other access providers. When you have the internet user information available to Google the reach is even greater.

Nick Fox told NYT “Google’s approach was different from what Yahoo, AOL and others call behavioral targeting. Those companies look at what a user did a few days earlier to show them ads about the same topic today. Google says it believes that search engine advertising is most effective if it relates to what the user has most recently searched for.”

But then Larry Page has already told Reuters: “On the more exciting front, you can imagine your brain being augmented by Google. For example you think about something and your cell phone could whisper the answer into your ear.”

Danny Sullivan openly admits he had the implant.

Google has the technology and wants to use it. In the mobile space it is being offered to jump start advertisers apparently. Democratic Media’s Digital Destiny reported:”Google has made presentations to advertisers about its mobile marketing capabilities. It appears that mobile cookies are part of their targeting marketing plan. Google told advertisers that “Google provides mobile conversion tracking on phones that support cookies. Google can measure clicks, impressions and conversions for all campaigns.”

How all this plays out will change the way many things are done. Being aware of the various directions at least has you thinking. Add to the opinions at the forum.