Closing the Online Research to Offline Sales Gap
Is online research tied to offline purchases? A recent JupiterResearch study (sponsored by iProspect) found that 62% of those who researched products online used a search engine, and then, of these 67%, almost half of them made purchases offline.
Out of their survey of 1700 online researchers 1140 of them used search engines. Of these searchers, 536 bought offline.
So... why did 536 of these people choose to buy offline?
How many of the non-searching online researchers bought offline?
And how much business did, say, Amazon lose because they don't have a way to track online research to offline sales?
GarbageScout = Google Maps + Useful Trash Pics/Locations GarbageScout enables trash finders to post locations and descriptions of crap they see on the side of the street that they don't want.
Cool mashup! Looks like it's only in NYC right now. This could be a craigslist killer ;)
From the FAQ: How do I post stuff to Garbagescout? You email it from your cell phone. You can also email it from your computer, but you're more likely to have your phone with you when you're out and about.
Email a picture to street @ garbagescout . com, and in the message put description @ location.
Google Calendar Nearing?
Oh man I hope they do a calendar - tie that puppy in to gmail and I'm all set. If Google tied blogger into gmail too they'd have a veritable MySpace...
Yahoo! Trademark Guidelines: Comforting Madison Avenue?
Yahoo's has new regulations for bidding on the keywords trademarks of competitors: don't do it.
In light of Yahoo's very public wooing of search marketing dollars from large agencies I suspect this is a bid to draw them more completely into search marketing buys to accompany Yahoo! network purchases.
From an agency and branding perspective this certainly makes search marketing more compelling. If it plays out for Yahoo (if we see big branding efforts in Yahoo paid search results) watch for Google to try it again.
(thx to MSI Marketing Consultant Geoff Lamm for conversation on this one) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Wikipedia in Yahoo
Wikipedia's info now has quick links in Yahoo. All the more reason to make sure that your company has reliable information listed. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
February 23, 2006
Google Page Creator = Another Hole in the Web's Head Garrett indicates that if Google’s page creator had increased business functionality it would be a valuable contribution to the web. I disagree.
Even if this product gets as savvy as Yahoo stores with databases, site search, rss feeds and full eCommerce the basic problem will remain. 99% of these people don't really know what they are doing. That is why they use these tools in the first place.
With Web2.0 all around us and highly functional sites like LinkedIn, MySpace and Match allowing people to create online content that is building personal interactions in ways that could only be dreamed of years ago, am I seriously supposed to care that Google allows people to create a free web page?
In Garrett's post he closes with "I'll leave you with this thought - what percentage of the time has the information you've been looking for online been on a geocities site?"
With this I couldn't agree more.
Furthermore, I would like to call some attention to the fact that the world now has one more highly publicized source where ugly, useless pages can be created at bulk and published to the internet for none of us to ever find useful. I guess that’s Google’s problem to solve when they decide what to put in the SERPs for the rest of us.
Throwing another typewriter into a room full of monkeys is not going to get them any closer creating Shakespeare and following it up with a cash register will get them no closer to building Amazon. Adam Schultz - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Hitwise on Banks and Search
The main keywords drinving traffic to the banks are the names of the banks themselves. Of the top 10 phrases that drove traffic to banks, only one term, the 10th, was NOT the name of a bank (it was mortgage calculator).
What does this mean to search marketers?
In areas where searches are highly branded people have already made their crucial decisions before they come to the search engines.
Identify the key strategic direction of your campaign. Pushing small business loans? Optimize for [bank of america small business loans]
If you're a banking upstart selling small business loans optimize for the same thing [bank of america small business loans] and put up a comparison page that shows your loans next to theirs.
full disclosure: I asked MSI's Tansy OBryant for ideas.
Here's the source: As more and more Americans sign up for online banking, visits to bank websites increase, as do the products and services offered by the banks to their customers. Hitwise data shows the top bank websites visited by U.S internet users and the top search terms driving traffic to the Banks and Financial Institutions category. Hitwise: Bank and Financial Data Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Page Creator: neat I guess
This 20% product is neat, but why would the average web publishing new-comer want to create a site instead of a blog (I know that blogs ARE sites, but you know what I mean)?
I'm not excited about page creator until it:
a)sets up a non-googlepages url (for a fee of course) b)comes with analytics pre-installed c)integrates blogger easily d)you get gmail addresses for your site e)has gwallet tied in
That's when we'll start to see some new and creative online business models - when the business tools are easy and free. I'll leave you with this thought - what percentage of the time has the information you've been looking for online been on a geocities site? It happens but it's rare. Neat tool from Google, but not a big deal.
Here's other coverage:
Want to create your own web page, but don't know how to begin? The new Google Page Creator is a simple, free tool that allows you to publish to the web with ease. Google Introduces Web Page Creator
A new day, a new Google product. Today, Google releases the Page Creator, a tool for easy website creation. You can log-in to it using your Google account, and your site URL will then be yourname.googlepages.com. Google Page Creator
Oh, and by the way, it looks like Google has released a tool to make mini-websites. The Google Page Creator at http://pages.google.com/ lets you throw up a quick set of pages without a ton of hassle. Looks like a bunch of different look ‘n’ feel choices: Google Page Creator
The blogosphere is awash with news of Google's latest beta product, Google Page Creator. Page Creator is destined to be a part of Google's Web Office Suite It's a WYSIWYG tool, which publishes "in seconds" has auto-save and comes with 100MB storage. Google Page Creator: retro, or part of a future Web Office Suite?
Judge: Google Violating Image Copyright Holders
In a case that started in '04, it appears likely that Google will be held responsible for Perfect10's subscription losses of 35 million due to pirated images of its models showing up in Google's Image search.
MediaPost reported that Google and Perfect10 have until March 8th to "propose terms of the injunction."
So you have until March 8th and then it's back to paying again.
I'll be interested to see who else jumps on the copyright violation train once Perfect10 settles - will newspapers try to use this? How about book publishers? Will we see a class action porn publisher lawsuit?
And uh, will this raise keyword prices? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Search Engine Loyalty Survey
When surveyed, the folks who search the following engines exclusively are as follows:
I'm amazed at the loyalty numbers for Excite - they beat out AOL! I'm not sure I've ever searched on Excite in my life. Also I'm curious about the A9 users... are they loyal because of the personalization?
48% of Paid Search Conversions Occurred in Q4 + Holiday Shoppers Go Farther Down SERPs
Double Click released their Q4 search trend report and they've got some tasty Q4 info about the Perfomics 50:
Campaigns are getting larger - average number of keywords under management increased by 58% 48% of all conversions happened in Q4 Holiday Shoppers go further down the page for ads
From the conclusion: "This then serves to reinforce a point made in the previous Search Trend Report, that marketers can derive value from keywords at any rank, provided they understand the differences in how keywords at differing ranks behave and how those different behaviors affect strategic goals."
"One clear pattern we have seen is that users convert on keyword ads further down the page when Christmas rolls around. This should not be surprising, as we are dealing typically with people who have a much higher level of purchase intent than at other times during the year. These seasonal changes might also be leveraged at different times of year depending on the seasonality of a particular vertical market."
"In Q4, we see price pressure coming not just from the top of the range – typically attributed to increases in competition – but also from the bottom, likely due to a significant shift in how bids are addressed on Google."
So, if your Holiday paid search campaigns weren't where they should have been let the Search Trend Report (pdf) be another reminder to you to get your paid search in order. MSI delivers some heavy-hitting paid search management too I'm told ;) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
THK to Complete Merger with Litmus Media: Click Fraud Prevention + Order Abandonment Recovery
I got official word this morning that MarketSmar Interactive's completing our merger with Litmus Media - I can't wait to get a peek at what they've got under the click-fraud hood!
THK announced the intent to merge on Dec. 19, 2005.
Rules for Creating Beautiful URLs
Richard MacManus posts on crafting well-designed URLs, including quotes from Tim Berners-Lee, Jakob Nielsen and the W3C. I include this because of the SEO value of a well-designed URL. If it's readable and useful to your visitors it will be to the search engines too:
As Mike Schinkel once put it, "Well Designed URLs are Beautiful!" Mike has a strict set of requirements for a beautiful URL - they should point to content that doesn't change, the URI itself shouldn't change, they should be Readable and Heirarchical, they should "mean something", and so on. URL Hotties Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Blogger Database Woes
Greg Linden reports on Blogger database problems that Blogger asked its users to fix:
Blogger recently had trouble with some of the databases that support the service.
Apparently, some of the boxes in their database cluster had the right data and some did not. This is a relatively common problem in a database cluster. It can happen if replication fails because the network gets partitioned or whatever.
The normal solution is to backfill the databases that missed updates, resolve any conflicts, and go on your merry way, all without impacting users.
Instead, Google is asking their users to correct their database for them. My jaw dropped. From the post: Blogger and database inconsistency Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
February 20, 2006
Google Trusted Tester + Gmail Voice Mail + Gmail Evite
Blogoscoped has the scoopity scoop on what's coming at Google:
If it ain’t password-protected, then it’s live – be it in a comment in the HTML source, a folder you never linked to, or a JavaScript you just uploaded for internal tests. Especially if Garett Rogers snoops around your servers. This time, he found the Google Trusted Tester Program FAQ*. Google Trusted Tester Program
Garett Rogers did more snooping around in the Gmail source code, and found bits and pieces hinting at voicemail and Evite integration. Gmail Voicemail? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Clickonomics Adwords + AdSense Profit Calculators
What do you make of the Clickonomics calculator? It looks like the foundation for what could eventually be a useful site. For now it's linkbait of the tools-for-the-industry variety, and I don't know enough about paid search to tell if it's useful.
What do you think? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
30DayTags: Can This Community-Tag Site Develop Community?
On Friday we covered PreFound, an engine that encourages users to tag their searches for others who come after them.
Today I received an email from 30DayTags, which, by name, sounded to me like some kind of million dollar home page only with tags.
Not really. The concept's based on delivering the freshest information possible: "Tags (and mainly their respective links) can catch fire, spread and flame out just as fast. That’s ok. 30daytags was built around the idea that tags need to be fresh. They expire and are retired in 30 days."
The homepage shows a cloud of all their tags, and the left nav bar expands in directory fashion to show more tag categories, some of which are quite spare. 30DayTags also delivers new submissions for a given tag or category directly to your RSS reader (that's pretty cool - does anyone else do this?).
I think the look and feel plus layout are intuitive and the site just feels nice. However I don't think I'm going to use this site because I don't know the people posting the tags.
If these were tags posted by engineers at Google or Yahoo? Sure! I'd probably visit weekly. I'm a regular reader of Zawodny's link blog, which could just as easily be tags.
So if 30DayTags gets geek celebrity taggers then I might be more interested in their index. Also, if it offered an API up to communities like the SearchEngineWatch Forums so that I could see how people there are tagging posts I'd visit frequently. A tag cloud might actually be an interesting way to navigate a forum's vastness of topics.
In each of these cases though the primary idea behind 30DayTags is lost - this tag model's focus is on freshness of tags. Maybe I don't use tags enough to understand why they need to be completely wiped out every 30 days.
I'm just not sure why a community would form around 30DayTags. Who are the people willing to submit tags that will be lost again in 30 days? There's certainly an interesting ephemeral quality to it but I'm not sure it will catch on.
They did an excellent job with their logo though - the green leaves seem minty to me and all the cool blues give it a toothpaste freshness. I also dig their start-up get-it-done mentality: "We're a couple of guys in Columbus, OH that create Internet businesses. We're a laid back (actually, pretty intense) crew that likes to take back-of-napkin ideas, throw some sound judgment and solid economic fundamentals at them, and create killer sites that offer real value to our users."
Check out the site and let me know what you think.
Also, be sure to check out their blog. Keep your eyes on these guys from Ohio - one of my favorite things about the web is finding all these creative people! Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Online Retailers Over Reliant on Paid Search Says Piper Jaffray
Internet Retailer paraphrased Piper Jaffray's senior research analyst Aaron Kessler: "As retailers deal with rising competition over Internet paid-search keywords, they need to rely less on search engine marketing and develop a more comprehensive, multi-channel strategy."
Even if paid search prices remained low companies should be looking at other channels.
Sam Taylor, vice president of online stores and marketing for Best Buy Co. Inc., noted that "Our SEM effort has been very profitable because we manage it as part of an overall online advertising portfolio and because of our strong brand, which we build through multi-channel national advertising and in-store service"
According to the article "Best Buy will aggressively expand its budget for search engine marketing this year, just as it did last year." Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
February 17, 2006
Social Search Engine Paying "Featured Finders" to Edit Topics PreFound, who graced our pages on the 20th with news that its early adopters were educators and researchers, has decided to offer "Featured Finders" positions to the general public.
"These “Featured Finders,” will be responsible for heading up certain topic areas (can be any topic) and ‘editing’ results. PreFound will give 100 percent of the advertising revenue generated by each Featured Finder’s page to those Finders."
This is an interesting idea (anyone seen this before?). I'll holler at PreFound in six months or so and see how it's worked out. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
GenieKnows.com Expands Global Pay-Per-Click Platform GenieKnows, a privately held, Canadian search company, is announcing the expansion of its global pay-per-click platform in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Brazil, U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Says Barbara Manning, CEO of IT Interactive Services, Inc., "this is especially important for clients owning portals receiving a mix of international users into their networks. This global platform will allow publishers to better monetize their website visitors".
Content publishers can feed geographically/internationally targeted ads. Advertisers can buy them. Break off a chunk of your AdWords spend and try them out. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Maps + the Sopranos
Enterprising crop circle messengers aren't the only ones finding creative uses for Google Maps. Clever marketers for the Sopranos have mashed the Google Maps API with fictitious events from the show.
An AdAge article indicates that the show's advertising on the term [Sopranos Map] in Google (starting Feb 27th) AND that they paid Google Maps for something. I couldn't tell from reading it what they would have paid for since the API is free and all... Is there a paid API? Do you have to pay for commercial uses?
Conversion Rate by Search Engine: AOL Tops All
WebSideStory compared the median conversion rates of the four search entities (where's Ask?) and found that AOL searches were most likely to result in sales for b2c searches.
"With portals rich in content and services, AOL, MSN and Yahoo may tend to appeal toward a more buyer-friendly demographic," Ali Behnam, senior digital marketing consultant at WebSideStory, said yesterday. "Google, meanwhile, may appeal to more browsers -- those with less of an intent to buy."
Remember this is for b2c sites - how many people search on AOL for enterprise-related solutions?
Jump Start Your Search Marketing
Occasionally I'm asked to earn my keep here at SEL, so I'm gonna talk a little today about the new MSI Jump Start Search Marketing program.
We designed it for companies that want to quickly lay the foundation of an online marketing campaign but don't want account management.
The Jump Start program includes our Search Engine Visability Analysis, Usability Analysis, Competitive Intelligence and more.
The program delivers actionable - and profitable - changes you can make to your website that will not only drive your presence on the search engines but drive the conversions on your website.
So you want to jump start your online marketing? Shoot me an email and we'll holla atcha. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
KowaBunga! Blog Services Launched
Jim Kukral over at KB! recently launched a blog service. I just read his business blogging white paper and was impressed with his analysis of the three types of business blogs he identified. This is great stuff if you're wondering how a blog could be useful to your business.
What tipped me off that he's got good information? His opening assertion in the white paper that, "not every business should have a blog. There are many reasons not to have a blog. But for anyone to tell you that you MUST have a blog is ridiculous."
If you're thinking about getting started with blogging then - at the least - check out Jim's white paper. You should be able to tell pretty quickly whether a blog's going to be a viable strategy for marketing your business. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Search Advertising to Increase 26% in '06 Says Outsell * Spending in online marketing will increase 19% in 2006, while growth in search engine advertising will increase 26%. * Growth in online advertising is eight times the rate of television ads and at six times the growth rate of print advertising. * Advertisers find Google search keyword advertising more effective than both Yahoo! and MSN, and Google contextual advertising more effective than Yahoo contextual ads. Search Engine Advertising to Grow 26% in 2006 Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google, Yahoo, Cisco, MSN are "Abhorrent, Disgraceful" For China Business Practices House members contended that Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Google Inc. sought to explain their business practices in China only after a recent crush of negative media and government attention.
"Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace," said Rep. Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. "I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night." Congress Chides 4 Tech Giants Over China
Bill Gates asserted recently - and he's right - that it's hard to block everything online. I think he's right in that you can't block information, but his argument ultimately sounds like "information's going to get out anyways, so it's ok if we support China's censorship."
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking. It is an interesting thing that the tools of technology are creating a level of openness that is good in some ways. Gates On Information: You Can't Stop It Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Local Search to Reach $13B by 2010 Says Kelsey Group The global online local search market, which includes Internet Yellow Pages, local search and wireless, is set to grow from the $3.4 billion it brought in last year to nearly $13 billion by 2010. That's according to a new forecast by the Kelsey Group. Local Search to Hit $13B by 2010 Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Pay Per Call Caught in the Act (and so was Matt Cutts...) Google continues to roll out the call-per-click functionality. While I don’t see it on the normal Google.com results from Germany, a search for Hotels New York put through the Google translator does the job here. Google's Call-per-click in Action
Not only were Google's pay-per-call advances caught in action, Matt Cutts was too on a recent visit to the Ask Jeeves Capbell office. He posted on the trip recently: Camera-phone in hand, I nonchalantly approached. First, I saw the sign for Ask Jeeves–I was in the right spot! Road trip: Ask Jeeves in Campbell
And not long after Ask posted a security photo of Matt taking the early-morning picture: Matt Cutts had a funny post recently about his random sidetrip to photograph our Campbell office. Pulling off the freeway, looking up the address of someone's satellite development office, and taking photos of the premises during non-business hours is something everyone does from time to time. Especially after eating chicken at Left at Albuquerque for breakfast. A Visitor Among Us Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Bringing Measurability to All Media GOOGLE MAY BE DIVERSIFYING OFFLINE into radio, print and potentially TV advertising sales, but its plan is to utilize its powerful online backchannel to measure results of those deals. Google To Use Online Backchannel To Measure Offline Media Results Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
February 15, 2006
Merging Search and Television Advertising
MSI's Adam Schultz wrote some time ago on Pontiac's "Google Pontiac" campaign. Kevin Ryan looks at missed opportunities for Super Bowl advertisers and notes the explosion in searches for Super Bowl ads. He also brainstorms a little on what companies could be doing to maximize television buys and search campaigns. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
80% of Advertisers Include Online in Marketing Mix An increasing number of advertisers commit a portion of their budgets to the Web. The "Annual Ad Spending Study: Where and Why Advertisers are Moving Online" released by Outsell, Inc. says 80 percent of adertisers include the Internet in their marketing mix.
The 80 percent figure is expected to increase to 90 percent of all advertisers by 2008. This year, online marketing spending is expected to increase 19 percent. This is eight times TV and radio's expected 2.4 percent rise, and six times print's 3.3 percent. The report says "the median online percent of ad mix will grow 50 percent." Online Seizes More of the Advertising Mix Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
MSN: MotionBridge + Classifieds + Magic Keywords Revealed Today, at the 3GSM World Congress 2006, Microsoft Corp. announced the acquisition of MotionBridge, a leading provider of search technology designed specifically for mobile operators and the mobile Internet. MotionBridge, based in Paris, is a worldwide leader in mobile search technology that is currently available to customers through contacts with major mobile communications companies in Europe and North America. MSFT Acquires MotionBridge
MSN LAST WEEK QUIETLY BEGAN a pilot of its social-network-based classified listings service, Windows Live Expo, which allows users to post online ads in a variety of categories, including employment, real estate, personals, cars, and events. MSN Pilots Classifieds Service
The company is kicking off a promotion called MSN Search and Win, which will reward random users who search on certain keywords over the course of the next several months. Prizes include gift certificates from American Express, Target, REI and Nike. Digital cameras and MP3 players are also on the prize list. Three winners each month will also get to choose charities to receive $10,000, $25,000 or $50,000 donations. MSN Tempts Would-Be Searchers With Prizes
Yes, it appears just one day after the plan was announced, Oilman has figured out all of the "winning words" and Threadwatch has written a script that eventually resulted in a win. MSN's Magic Keywords, Outed! Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google: MeasureMap + Help Entry Change Indicate Loosening Hand Job Policy? Bringing Measure Map to Google is an exciting validation of the user experience work I've been doing with my partners at Adaptive Path for years. By opening up the app to more bloggers through Google, we hope to help even more people become passionate about their blogs. Here comes Measure Map
Google in response to their new censorship policies in China (in which they agreed to remove results unwanted by the Chinese government) changed another help entry. This is what was available before, live until at least late January:
WSJ Covers SEO Contest Spat
Wow. I read some of the flames but dismissed it as non-news. Apparently the WSJ didn't...
The Wall Street Journal today covers the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem SEO contest. WSJ on SEO Contest Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Poetry Searches Tops for Valentine's Day Chocolates, flowers and other gifts each grew in online market share this Valentine's Day, however searches for love poems gained the highest according to Hitwise.
The search term, "love poems" grew 83 percent for the week ending February 11, 2006. Traffic to the top poetry site, Poems for Free, increased 55 percent in that time period. Poetry Rules Valentine's Day Online Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
February 13, 2006
Search Frequency Increasing Nielsen//NetRating's latest data indicates that the number of searches continues to grow at a more than healthy pace, totaling about 5.1 billion in December 2005, an increase of 55% from the almost 3.3 billion searches made in December 2004. Meanwhile, the number of Internet users rose just 3%, clearly showing that searching is becoming an ever more significant online activity. link
(my writing's light cause I'm out of the office... will be back Wednesday... G) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
GOOG Roundup: Corporate Gmail, Stock to Tumble Further?, EFF Warns Against Google Desktop Gmail for your domain is currently available as a limited beta. If your organization is interested in helping Google test this service, we'll consider your domain for this beta. You'll need to sign in with a Google Account (or get a new one), and answer a few quick questions about your organization and your email needs. corporate Gmail
Barron's has a reputation for hitting the darling of the moment in the groin, and this weekend that darling is Google. Google's coming fall?
...the latest integration between IM and e-mail is astonishing in its correctness. Given Google's communications application history, I was not expecting nearly as sensible and graceful an experience. Google just might have pulled ahead of AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple for this particular communications hub function. rave Gmail/Gtalk mashup review
A high-profile privacy watchdog group has a terse warning for business and consumer users: Do not use the new version of Google Desktop. EFF says don't use it Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Online Spending to $144 Billion by 2010 Says Jupiter JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation, forecasts that online retail spending will increase from $81 billion in 2005 to $95 billion in 2006, and will grow to $144 billion in 2010. The report also reveals that the internet will influence nearly half of total retail sales in 2010, compared to just 27 percent in 2005. online onfire Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Marketers: Try Out Become.com Shopping Search and Comparison for Free Try it out.
SHOPPING SEARCH AND PRICE COMPARISON site Become.com this week will begin targeting retailers with a month-long offer to test drive Become's service for free. via Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
GM's Getting Smart Online When last we heard from GM, the company was drafting off Ford's Super Bowl hybrid ad by buying the keyword "Kermit." Now it's turning NYPost.com yellow as part of its "live green, go yellow" alternative fuel effort. Great takeover images, ears of corn and links to the company's microsite. The call to action? "Just how fast can a corn-powered car go?" It got me curious. via clickZ Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
New My Web 2.0 Features + Yahoo! that bitch Yahoo has enhanced My Web with a number of new features including easier access to your saved searches from the My Web 2.0 homepage, the ability to search everyone’s tags and share them with the world, a My Web To Go button for bloggers and the ability to edit 20 saved pages at once. Yahoo Adds Features to My Web 2.0
Yahoo! Launches "Yahoo! That Bitch!" Campaign to Combat "Google" As Verb OK not really. But they should.
Last night over dinner a friend (who is on the marketing side at CAA so he's moderately qualified) suggested Yahoo! combat "Google" as a verb (you know, when someone says, "I Googled Nicole Ritchie last night") and go with a "Yahoo! That Bitch!" campaign. Some examples:
YOU: I missed the Olympics last night. Did that dude from Texas win the super long speed skating race? ME: I dunno, why don't you Yahoo! that bitch?! hahahaha!
Zawodny On Yahoo's Loyalty Program Some people fly American because they offer more room in coach. But those frequent flier miles don't hurt either. link Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google's Secret Plans + Promiscuity Rank (+ more gNews)
Is ValleyWag my new favorite blog? Duh. Mostly for what I'm not linking to though. This item showed up in bloglines this morning and is a nice start to this all-Google post.
Google has a project codenamed trogdor, an ajax webpage editor for creating web pages. = geocities except with a javascript page creator. Calendar for GMail, basically like ical in javascript
Clearly, Google's cold calling sales force has been mining Alexa or somesuch for lists of prospective new AdSense clients. Battelle gets cold-called by Google
WHEN CONSUMERS PERFORMED A GOOGLE search for "NBC Olympics" on Thursday, a link to a two-minute NBC-produced music video promoting the Torino games appeared above Google's natural search results, and next to it a note stating "in collaboration with NBC Olympics." The placement was the result of a partnership that NBC announced with Google on Thursday, along with a host of other initiatives to promote the Torino Games. Google olympics Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
IAC Revenues Up 45%, Turns ProfitablePaid Content reports that Ask Jeeves' parent company IAC reported better revenue and earnings figures for the last quarter of 2005:
Are Jeeves' Days Numbered? Given his [Diller's] past comments about the butler, and his tendency to refer to the property as Ask.com instead of Ask Jeeves, it may be time to sound the death knell for old Jeeves. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Opens Print Ad Bidding Outer-Court digs ink: I’ve placed a $30 bid for a 1/4 page at Information Week. By far not enough I guess, but maybe at least that helps me find out what the winning bid was. Google says they’ll email those with a winning bid by March 3.
ClickZ has deets: Google, the search giant and would-be multi-media advertising enabler, has opened up the bidding on its much-talked-about print venture. AdWords advertisers can now bid for 1 page, 1/2 page and 1/4 page ads in nearly 30 different lifestyle and technology magazines. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Up 5 Points in Search Share; Yahoo, MSN Down
Google rose nearly six percentage points to garner a 49 percent share of all searches in December 2005 from a year prior (see Table 2). Yahoo! Search and MSN Search experienced slight declines in their search share points. link Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Yahoo Incentivizing Search (Sans Relevance)
Yahoo confirmed on Wednesday that it's polling some Yahoo Mail users about what they would want in exchange for making Yahoo their primary search engine. The survey was sent to a random sampling representing about 5 percent of its Yahoo Mail users, a Yahoo representative said. link Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
February 08, 2006
Murdoch's Web Play: MySpace and Ads in Books
Yesterday I covered Murdoch's interview in Newsweek, where he announced he's not going head to head with Google and Yahoo in search.
Today I talked at lunch with Barry Parr, Jupiter Research's News and Entertainment analyst about MySpace's evolution into a personal media distribution platform (video's coming soon). Barry asked me if I thought MySpace was a fad or a viable model. I told him it's both. The personal media creation (personal home page, blog, pictures, email, video soon) is the bedrock of the web. The site itself will be a fad when something cooler comes out.
disjointed leap 1: Yahoo doesn't get the ghetto chic of MySpace - they're buying great companies like delicious and flikr, but these are geek chic companies. I think Murdoch, with MySpace, will be Yahoo's strongest social media competitor. With VoIP in MySpace, plus the chat function, plus the built in audience/network why will kids go anywhere else?
Then again I don't know jack about facebook and I hear they're blowing up now too.
disjointed leap 2: I can't help but see some of Murdoch's web-mindedness behind the Harper Collins release of a new business book online. According to an article in NYBusiness, "the title is also an advertising vehicle, with different ads appearing on every one of its more than 200 Web pages. Ad revenue will ultimately be shared between the author and the publisher. "
Brian Murray, group publisher at HarperCollins, noted that “This book covers a genre in which there’s an awful lot of interest on the Web. I don’t know if this model would work for other types of books; fiction would certainly be a stretch.” Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
GM Slashing Marketing Budget, Moving Online, into Events GM plans to stretch its smaller budget by shifting from traditional magazine and TV ads to alternative media like digital media and events.
Great. Online = poor corporation's marketing. If they get a smart interactive firm they'll turn the ship around. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google + Dell Rumors Instigate GOOG Price Drop Google shares were down 5 percent, or $19.23, to $365.87 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq. Analysts cited concerns that the Web search company was prepared to dramatically increase the cost of acquiring new customers by agreeing to pay huge upfront fees to win deals with PC makers. Reuters
Google is in serious negotiations to get its software installed on millions of Dell PCs before they are shipped to users, according to people familiar with the matter. Under the deal being discussed, Google, of Mountain View, Calif., could pay Dell fees approaching $1 billion over three years, these people estimate. The terms might change and the discussions could fail. WSJ from Battelle
This is another sign, along with the introduction of the Google Pack, that one of the great battlegrounds for search engines, and other internet software providers, is control over the default settings on PC desktops and other devices. RoughtType
There's lots of detail on Google wanting Microsoft to ask consumers to make a conscious choice about search providers, rather than IE7 automatically using their choice in IE6 (which is probably MSN Search, for most people). It's an odd argument, given that Google has not demanded that Firefox make consumers do similar choices in that browser. A partnership deal makes Google the default in Firefox, except for Asian-language versions where Yahoo cut its own deals. SEW
According to the Reuters article Google outbid Microsoft after Yahoo dropped out of the running... Ouch! Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
BMW Back In Google Outer-Court broke the news to me: BMW has been talking to Google/ Matt Cutts and apparently filed a reinclusion request (formal or informal) – they’re back in Google with BMW.de, as Christian Mayer notes in the forum. Ricoh.de is back as well.
Nice point from the ClickZ blog: The BMW/Ricoh debacle will bump SEO and accountability up into the ranks of senior management, where it belongs.
Jenny Halasz got us mad traffic to SEL yesterday with her opinion piece: Yesterday, PCWorld posted an article about the recent removal of BMW.de’s website from Google’s search results. Matt Cutts, quality engineer for Google, said “BMW.de had been removed last week because certain pages on the site would show up one way when the search engine visited the page but when a Web user opened the page, a redirect mechanism would display a completely different page.” He further stated that Google would not tolerate the blatant disregard for their terms of service, and that it would likely require a reinclusion request for BMW.de to get the penalty lifted.
Danny Sullivan notices how quickly big sites get back into Google's index: It demonstrates once again how public spam reports can be so effective and how big major web sites really don't get the "death penalty," when it comes to spamming.
Gmail Chat + Robots.txt Checker + Your Site's Most Common Inbound Link Anchor Text
I logged into gTalk this morning and it asked if I wanted to log my chats directly into my Gmail account. No thanks, but it is a great idea, and a natural mashup. Is gTalk getting smarter?
Sullivan wrote: "Wondering how a search engine will process your robots.txt file? Google now provides a way to check on that through the Google Sitemaps program."
That same link also shows you how to check the most common words used on pages in your site and the most common anchor text pointing to your site. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Turn: New Ad Network from Former Alta Vista CEO BusinessWeek spoke with Turn CEO, and apparently didn't get sworn to secrecy like Battelle did: "He has $10 million in venture funding, and some 16 PhDs in-house. The idea is that advanced search will target advertisements to users with a precision we've not yet seen."
It's an AdSense competitor. Supposedly. A non-story except for the $10 million in funding. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Ask Jeeves Opens European Research Hub in Pisa, Italy
From the press release: "The research center will serve as Ask Jeeves' European hub for search technology research and development, working directly with the company's U.S.-based research centers in Campbell, Calif. and Piscataway, N.J."
Antonio Gulli leads the new group. SEW has several interesting links to Gulli's work.
Murdoch sounded pretty ok with Chinese censorship: "In China you can bar a certain word. But Google will still enable billions of people to get a great deal more knowledge and education, though it may not be political information."
He's pretty pumped about Google overall: "...I admire Google enormously. It's a great competitive force. The great thing about Google is the 56 [million] or 57 million ads that are coming from people who never advertised before—the local pizza store or shoemaker. There's been a huge democratization of both distribution and retailing."
And he's staying out of the search space: "But no way will we do a frontal assault on Google and Yahoo."
Though I would argue he'll be doing more to assault Yahoo than Google, given the MySpace acquisition and existing media properties.
Speaking of MySpace, it sounds like the site's still growing strong: "We are expanding so fast just to keep up with new registrations. With 50 million people there, the traffic could cause a physical breakdown."
Video's on the six month horizon: "MySpace will be a much richer site in six months. We expect to come in with video. People will put video up—videos of people hot-dogging in the snow, or whatever, as well as videos of themselves corresponding with each other."
Google: Orwellian, Irrelevant, or Just Doing Their Job?
Yesterday, PCWorld posted an article about the recent removal of BMW.de’s website from Google’s search results. Matt Cutts, quality engineer for Google, said “BMW.de had been removed last week because certain pages on the site would show up one way when the search engine visited the page but when a Web user opened the page, a redirect mechanism would display a completely different page.” He further stated that Google would not tolerate the blatant disregard for their
