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Microsoft’s Live Search is adding more instant answers to the main search page. There are two new areas of instant answers being featured: Shopping and Flights.

For shopping, if you type in a keyword or phrase for the model of consumer product you’re interested in, you’ll get results for that product containing images with a price comparison and a links to the different e-tailers carrying that product. There’s also a link to review and use Cashback to enhance your search.

For flights, simply type in Flights from (point A) to (point B) and, in conjunction with this year’s acquired Farecast, you’ll get a result for a flight with those destinations.

What do you think of these Instant Answer additions? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Last month, Google AdWords launched a display ad builder. And already the tool is getting updates. According to the Google AdWords blog, here’s what you can look forward to:

• Image picker: You can now choose from previously uploaded images when creating your ads.
• Real-time editing: See what your text and other customization edits look like, automatically — without having to click the ‘update preview’ button.
• Quicker way of seeing available ad sizes: You can see which sizes your ad can run in for each ad template without having to complete the ad creation process. You can also preview how your customization choices affect each size.
• Additional templates: Choose from even more templates for customizing your ads.

Have you used the Display Ad Builder? What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments.

Local search site Local.com has integrated local video ads throughout its site. Initially the ads will come from Jivox, an online local video advertising provider. Eventually, the video ads will expand to include more providers.

“We believe that video advertising provides consumers with relevant, timely information about local businesses, products and services. It’s natural for video to be integrated into our local search ecosystem over time,” said Kim LaFleur, Local.com vice president, product management. “Local video bridges the product gap that exists between businesses that advertise in print, but perhaps don’t have the budget to move to television advertising yet, and unlike TV advertising, ROI is fully trackable. We plan to incorporate additional video capabilities and syndication to our network next year.”

Related Reading:
Local.com Partners with Hearst’s White Directory Publishers
Local.com Launches Ratings and Reviews Engine
Local.com Renews With Yahoo As Search Partner

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.

Citysearch appears to be going for the jugular with its newly rebuilt site. While many sites add a little social here and a little mobile there, Citysearch is going for the three hottest trends all at once: Social, Local, Mobile.

“We rebuilt the Citysearch platform to give our users what they asked for — a new site that drills down to the hyper-local level with content for specific neighborhoods,” said Jay Herratti, CEO of Citysearch. “We also expanded our social and community tools by integrating Facebook Connect deeply into our site experience. Now users will be able to see their Facebook friends on Citysearch and share reviews and recommendations.”

This is a completely smart strategy as the economy gets tighter. Expect to see these trends grow even hotter despite the Wall Street-Capitol Hill drama.

I can see all sorts of possibilities. People are relocating or working in a different part of town. The ability to check out new local restaurants, entertainment venues, etc via their mobile and connect with people socially will be powerful.

Here’s what Citysearch is saying the new experience will be like:

– More local — Citysearch is expanding its local coverage from 140 local city guides to over 75,000 cities and neighborhoods nationwide. New geo- targeted search technology provides a truly local experience to users, allowing them to target businesses according to zip code. Citysearch also restores balance to local business coverage by providing content from three distinct voices: users, editors and merchants.

– More social — With Facebook Connect, users can log into Citysearch using their Facebook account, allowing them to discover new local businesses and share reviews with their friends online and providing a personal view of their neighborhood and favorite local spots. New social features also enable users to create profiles, more easily review businesses and infuse their opinions and unique local content into their social graph. Connectivity to more major social networks will follow in the coming months.

– More mobile — Mobile by Citysearch puts reviewing into the palm of the consumer’s hand. Key features include an interface tailored to each individual mobile device — optimizing content layout and keystrokes required to surface search results — on-the-go reviews, and mobile menus.

– More intuitive — The new interface offers a streamlined registration process, easy review writing interface, new search refinement and navigation tools. Other new features include a follow-along map with integrated content that moves as the user scrolls down the page, making it easier for users to see everything they need in one place.

What do you think of the update? Let us know in the comments.

Related Reading:
MapQuest Partners with Citysearch for Comprehensive Search Results
AOL to Distribute Citysearch Content, Ads

New market research has found that blog readers are strongly influenced by blog content when it comes to purchase decisions across a number of categories, and that blogs play a key role in ushering readers to the point of an actual purchase. BuzzLogic, a social media analysis company and ad network, sponsored the market research and JupiterResearch, a Forrester research company, conducted the survey of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US.

Their Harnessing the Power of Blogs survey also found that blog readership has grown 300% over the past four years. The results also suggest that consumers who read blogs more than once per month — or frequent blog readers — use blogs as the top online navigation tool to discover other blog content, ranking higher than general Web search or blog search.

The new market research will be the focus of a free webinar, “Consumers and the Influence of Blogs: What it Means for Your Marketing Mix,” which will be held on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT. The free webinar will be moderated by Matt McGowan, vice president and publisher for Incisive Media’s digital marketing businesses, and will feature Barry Parr, Analyst at JupiterResearch, and Rob Crumpler, President and CEO of BuzzLogic.

Looking more closely at how blogs factor into consumer purchase decisions and the nature of blog influence on buying behavior, the survey found:
• Blogs influence purchases: 50% of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information.
• Blogs sway more purchases among readers than social networks: More frequent blog readers say they trust relevant blog content for purchase decisions than content from social networking sites. Enid Burns of The ClickZ Network focused on this finding in her recent story about the survey, “Study: Blogs Influence Purchases More Than Social Sites.”
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3631303
• Niche focus ups influence factor: For those who have found blog content useful for product decisions, 56% said blogs with a niche focus and topical expertise were key sources.
• Blogs go beyond tech: Outside of technology-related purchases, for which 31% of readers say blogs are useful, other key categories include: media and entertainment (15%); games/toys and/or sporting goods (14%); travel (12%); automotive (11%); and health (10%).

According to the study, blogs factor in to critical stages of the purchase process, weighing most heavily at the actual moment of a purchase decision. When it comes to respondents who said they have trusted blog content for purchase decisions in the past, over half (52 percent) say blogs played a role in the critical moment they decided to move forward with a purchase.

Blog readers were also surveyed about the influence of blogs as it relates to the following steps of the purchase process:
• 21% decide on a product or service,
• 19% refine choices,
• 19% get support and answers,
• 17% discover products and services,
• 14% assure,
• 13% inspire a purchase
• 7% execute a purchase.

For frequent blog readers, ads on blogs are on par with sponsored search results. However, trust of blog advertising exceeds that of social networking site advertising. A quarter of these readers say they trust ads on a blog they read; paid search links also accounted for 25% of the responses, while 19% say they trust ads on social networking sites.

The study also suggests that ads on blogs spur a number of activities: 40% of blog readers have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; 50% of frequent blog readers say this is the case. The top activities include:
• 17% read product reviews online,
• 16% sought out more info on a product or service,
• 16% visited a manufacturer or retailer website.

JupiterResearch designed and fielded the survey in August 2008 to online consumers selected randomly from the NPD Group US online consumer panel. A total of 2,210 individuals responded. For more information on the survey’s methodology, go to JupiterResearch.

Now, blogs certainly aren’t considered the “newbies” of the social media scene – “granddaddies” is probably a more appropriate term. But that gives them an advantage from a marketing perspective – the medium has matured and moved from early adopter phase to the mainstream.

This may come as a surprise to some search engine marketers, but blog readers do not appear to rely as heavily on search as a means to find new blogs as consumers of traditional online media do. According to the new survey, one in five consumers who have read a blog in the past 12 months — or general blog readers — use blog links to discover new blogs. Further, the study suggests blogs are not consumed in isolation — 49% of blog readers and 71% of frequent readers read more than one blog per session. Other key findings include:
• Links more powerful than search: For frequent readers, links beat search as a navigation tool: 38 percent said blog links were the top tool for discovering new blog content as compared to 34 percent who voted for Web search.
• Links signal trust: For frequent readers, blog links appear to have similar impact as a trusted recommendation from a person (a response from 39 percent of survey participants).
• Blog search not yet mainstream: Blog search engines received the lowest ranking from respondents: 6 percent of general readers and 11 percent of frequent readers say they use these tools to discover new blogs.

If you are interested in getting more details about Harnessing the Power of Blogs, register for the free Webinar. Again, it will be held on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT.

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This article is a review of the popular online freelance writing site Constant Content. This freelance writing website offers a lot of opportunity for …
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